Hello Peter!
The latest issue of TGR arrived yesterday along with the back issues I ordered. You have an excellent newsletter! I've been searching for news on European games without having to subscribe to European newsletters. TGR fills a void on this side of the pond!
I was especially pleased to receive all those back issues. I always want to see what I've been missing; obviously a lot! Your game reviews are very well written, so well written that yesterday my wife and I went into Cambridge and bought two games at Games People Play; Quo Vadis? and Pipeline. I've had my eye on Pipeline for quite some time after reading a review in Games magazine. However, after reading your report in TGR I decided I just couldn't chance letting this game slip into the "out of print" category before I owned a copy.
Pipeline was very popular and even a few diehard wargamers gave it a try. Everyone enjoyed playing. My other new game purchase, Quo Vadis?, was popular also. The game is beautiful and the game concept (diplomacy mixed with bribery) is perfect for the game theme (Republican Rome). I was especially pleased with how well the game action flowed and was quite surprised at how quickly a game could be played. The many subtle strategies slowly became apparent and I'll be better prepared the next time I play! I believe this game has the potential of becoming the number one multi-player game in my collection.
Without doubt the day's highlight was The Lifeboat Game (Rette Sich Wer Kann). Who says only roleplayers can make noise! I never thought I'd enjoy voting to throw my wife overboard, but I did! The game was an absolute riot with the two assertive personalities quickly becoming shark bait. If you push a little too hard or become overbearing it's "swim call"! But even the quiet types like my wife quickly made loud protest when they saw their crewmen threatened. The game took a few hours to play but overall it was very enjoyable.
Next game meeting I hope to play Rheingold, Tutanchamen and perhaps a few other new purchases of my own!
Stick close to Alan Moon. Alan is a very nice fellow and a real game personality! His game contacts are legion and his expertise in European games is unequaled in this part of the world. I've had the great pleasure of playing several European games with Alan and he is responsible for introducing many gamers in this country to these high quality games.
I was also hoping to pick-up copies of TV Wars, Favoriten and Banana Republic, but they weren't available at the store in Cambridge. I intend to contact Ray Pfeifer who advertised German games in the last issue of TGR. There are several other European games I want to add to my collection. I hope to make this one of my best gaming summers yet!
I recently introduced my gaming class to Pipeline and they greatly enjoyed it. Because of the large number of games I have and my lack of a regular gaming group, there are a bunch of good games I just haven't had the chance to play in a while. Pipeline is one of them. I'll have to drag it out the next time I get a group together. One frustration with Pipeline is that if you draw a rack of all straight pipes, you're at a severe disadvantage. At my class, I had this idea: after drawing your tiles at the start of a round, you may elect to pass your first turn and discard your rack instead, drawing four new tiles to replace them. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, so let me know how it works if you do.
Dear Peter,
Please forgive me for taking so long to thank you for the copy of your excellent "The Game Report" and for the kind things you said about A Gamut of Games. What I particularly like in your publication are the reviews that capture the real flavor of the game, rather than just a superficial glance. I am also glad to see coverage of German games, such as that fun Banana Republic.
All the good things I said about A Gamut of Games were entirely earned. I really must learn to seek out your games, Sid-- twice now (with Acquire and Can't Stop) I've played one which has been around for years and found myself wondering how on earth I'd managed to avoid it for so long. Then there are the ones like Bazaar which I can't find no matter how hard I look. Perseverence will undoubtedly pay off in the end.
Dear Peter,
Thank you for issue 2.2 of The Game Report. And sorry for my late response to your letter, as my life has been quite busy lately. Alan Moon added my name to the Gathering of Friends mailing list after I had the opportunity to meet with him while visiting Spiel '93 in Essen, Germany last October. I wasn't able to attend the Gathering this year, but I hope to in the future. There are many people who attend the convention that I associate with through play-by-mail gaming channels. And I enjoy playing games such as Modern Art, Airlines, Shark, and Um Reifenbreite (aka Demarrage or Homas Tour). But our (that is, mine and my wife Elaine's) plans this year are to attend Origins in San Jose and GenCon in Milwaukee. Hopefully, I will be able to attend the Gathering next year. You certainly mailed the right issue for me to peruse, as I was a devout Cosmic Encounter fan in the late seventies and early eighties. I also had an opportunity to contribute to the short-lived Encounter magazine published by Eon. There was a fine article on the story of Eon in Games magazine, back when things were going well for the company.
Granted, I've never been to Origins or GenCon (my understanding is that they're quite heavily oriented toward role playing, an area of gaming I'm not particularly interested in anymore). But The Gathering of Friends is definitely a don't-miss event. No matter what else I'm doing next year, I will find the time and money to attend. I recall the Games Magazine Eon article you're talking about (I've subscribed since 1980 and have a bunch of earlier issues), and reread it before writing my piece. With the success of Magic: The Gathering, a friend and I are hoping Mayfair will decide to do a trading card version of Cosmic Encounter. We kicked around some ideas, and I think it could work pretty well. But given Mayfair's apparent abandonment of the game (they stopped publishing the Encounter newsletter), I'm not holding my breath.
Dear Peter,
I just received my first issue of The Game Report (2.3) and I'm already broke! In two days I've ordered five games for $147 (granted, Games By Mail is partly responsible). There are two more that I want but can't find (San Diego Wilderness Park is definitely out of Wildlife Adventure). My copy of TGR is already pretty dog-eared.
Given my predicament, what do I do? Order more!! I want all the back issues (I want to see your Desert Island Games list). I also want to subscribe. Gimme gimme gimme! Did I mention you have a great mag yet? No? Great mag!
Dear Peter,
I don't think anyone reading your Opening Move column in Game Report 2:3 should apologize for delving into Eurogames. The sad fact is that unless your gaming is confined to very narrow niches (war games, role playing, fantasy) the American game market has next to nothing to offer. A leading designer for America's largest game company has told me repeatedly that his company is not interested in any game that only has a flat board (no three dimensional molded play surfaces) nor is it likely to produce a game without a licensing tie-in for added publicity. Europe still has a gaming atmosphere that allows medium-size companies to thrive and sell creative products that exist for the game system, and not for the Power Rangers or Jurassic Park beasties on the cover. These companies don't have to sell a million copies of a game to consider it a success. The only companies on these shores that seem even half willing to take a risk these days are Avalon-Hill and Mayfair, both of which seem to be sorely lacking in marketing savvy [And Avalon Hill is deemphasizing board gaming in favor of computer games - Peter]. Their cause, of course, isn't helped by a retail atmosphere in which a company like Toys R Us can have a significant impact on distribution and refuse to carry products unless the manufacture can practically guarantee sales and pay for a large part of the store's advertising.
I've been enthused about European games since my first trips to Montreal years ago uncovered shops in the French quarter that imported games from overseas. The play value of these finds was unlike anything comparable in the U.S., a sense that has only grown until this day. If you play games and you want innovation in board games, and if you are a designer and you want an atmosphere that allows you to get your creation in front of the public, you have to go overseas. Sad but true. I'm glad publications like The Game Report can give these games more exposure. Perhaps this will help create more of a demand for these games over here and make them more readily available.
Dear Peter,
Did you receive my Automania review? I emailed it to you some time ago. Do you have any games in mind for review? Do you mind obscure games or are you trying to avoid the Just Games crowd?
I've launched my own entry in game zine publishing-- but I'm all online! We've set up a World Wide Web server at Kaleida and I've created a set of pages about games. The Game Cabinet has been queried over 600 times in its first three weeks of service and looks to be a real cooker when more folks find out about it. I view it more as a repository or archive than a site for active news and latest game reviews like The Game Report. Many of the articles were gleaned from rec.games.board or my personal archives. I'm working on an ever growing gameography so folks can follow the work of their favorite designers. Tim Trant and Carl Schnurr have contributed all of their Formula De mods, as well. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun.
We've been playing a lot of Rette Sich Wer Kann but I think the game may not last long. It seems to boil down to bashing the leaders while trying to hold back enough sailors to win it on the last boat.
Conspiracy, one of the games I picked up at the Gathering, has been a huge hit with our group. It's an old game produced by MB in the early 80's and is based on the German Sigma File. The game centers around the struggle for a briefcase full of secrets. Each player represents one of four spy agencies and there are eight freelance spies on the board. Each agency has a budge of $10,000 to use to bribe the various spies to follow their orders. If conflicting orders are sent to a spy players enter into a bidding war, gradually revealing their level of investment in the spy in question. The players are under no obligation to reveal their full investment and may drop out at any time. The spy follows the orders of the highest bidder. Well, bidding is a misleading term as the players are only revealing bribes made previously but you get the idea. On each turn the player must choose between ordering a spy to move, placing an additional bribe into the pocket of one of the spies, or ordering a spy to kill another spy in the same space. The last option reduces the bribe level of the spy in question by $1,000 so kills are costly. Any time a spy starts in the same space as the briefcase they can take it with them when they move. I still haven't worked out a good strategy for the game. One of my friends likes to save several thousand dollars in case a killing spree starts and the game is reduced to one or two spies. Then he bribes the survivor and calls them in from the cold. The strategy works like a charm except that if all but one player tries it then the one early investor waltzes home with the briefcase or drags the whole game down into a killing spree and we're back where we started. Maddening. I recommend it.
What have you heard about Avalon Hill getting out of the board game market and going all electronic? This could be good as we may get some quality games out of a newcomer with the way clear (like Mayfair) but it will probably be bad as there may be no newcomers. Sigh. Does this mean we'll need to do our own marketing of Euro-games to get them into the country? Hey! Wait a minute-- we already do that. Sigh, again.
Odd, I don't recall ever receiving an Automania review from you, Ken. If I had, I'd certainly have printed it. If you emailed it to me, it may have fallen victim to my Internet provider's system crash-- all my files (including email, aliases, and .newsrc) were irretrievably lost. You should have heard the outcry when the users discovered that the admins hadn't made backups of user directories! As for what kind of game reviews I'm looking for, I'm really quite open to anything you want to write about. Newer games are best for obvious reasons, and obscure (but available) games are great because they're often impossible to learn about otherwise. But feel free to review whatever tickles your fancy.
I haven't played enough Rette Sich Wer Kann to get bored of it yet. Yes, beating on the leaders is de rigeur, but it's not always that simple. And thus a key to winning is making yourself look like you're not winning.
I have Sigma File and have only played it once. Although we had a great time playing it, we were frustrated because the game ended in a stalemate. Only two agents were left, and a different player had control of each (the other two players were effectively out of the game). And it was impossible for the agent with the file to make it past the other agent without getting killed. So we had a lovely little dance around the board for a while, until we reluctantly agreed to call it a draw. I don't know if this was a fluke and would not happen again with more experienced players, but it was a real bummer of a way to end our first try at it.
Dear Peter,
I got pointed [to The Game Report's folder on America Online] to respond to some comments about the Mayfair train games. As the principal designer and publisher of the n-Rails series of games, I have two observations: 1. The nature of the competition between players in the n-Rails series is certainly more subtle and demanding than you are used to, but it nevertheless exists. The routes on the maps are not of uniform value, the cards are not of equal value to the players, the need to enter cities controlled by other players presents subtle negotiating opportunities, and other play mechanisms affect the play in ways controllable by fine players. If such is not your cup of tea, so be it, but empirically the fine players consistently finish together in tournament play and wipe out less able opponents with ease; these players consistently choose the n-Rails games for their competiveness and ease of play.
2. Based on the relative sales performance of the two systems, the n-Rails games are more highly sought after and have consistently out-sold the 18xx games for so long as the n-Rails games have been in print. Many more people have found the n-Rails games to be the better, more playable games than those playing the 18xx games.
I would suggest that you try one of them again, this time with a master (taking but 2-3 hours in a long game of 4-6 players) who can introduce you to some of what has made this the best selling train games in the U.S. over the last 10 years.
By the way, we are using the strength that Mayfair has gained from the n-Rails system (and our card game Express and other train games) to relaunch the 18xx game system in the US. 1856 is expected in the next 6 weeks and 1870 shortly after then; try them and you will find levels of competition not even found in 1830.
The n-Rails games are neither more subtle nor more demanding than games I'm used to. In my experience, however, they've been far less entertaining. If you feel that I'm missing the boat, consider: I'm far from an inexperienced gamer. If I don't get it, perhaps that points out a flaw in the system. I would think that a truly great system would have immediate appeal, especially to a veteran game player.
Note, also, that just because n-Rails outsells the 18xx series doesn't mean it's a better or more playable system. It's certainly more approachable-- I know a number of people who play Eurorails who would never go near 1830 because the latter looks too complicated. Its short learning curve makes the n-Rails series an easier, but not necessarily better, buy.
I really would love someone to show me the light about n-Rails. But given my past (admittedly limited) experience with the series, it'd take a lot of convincing to get me to sit down with it again.