Game Session, May 7, 2006

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Richard, Brad, Ken, Paul.
Played: Runes, Struggle of Empires, Die Heisse Schlacht.

Thanks to Brad for the high quality pics!


Runes: A word deduction game from the publisher Eon, who also produced Darkover; I gather they are now defunct. In this game, players nominate their own secret word of a given number of letters (5 in this case), and then take turns to guess individual letter elements from the others. Those letter elements are from a set of 4 different pieces, being a long stick (eg, the side of an D, N, H or A), a short stick (eg, the crossbar of an A or H, the tail on a Q), a small tight curve (half an S, the curves in B, P and R), and half of a large circle (used in C,
D, G, O and Q).
I arrived well after Pat, Brian and Richard had started playing, but joined in anyway. In fact, within one round these three were past the score threshold for winning, and the first to correctly guess anyone else's word would win. Brian managed to guess Richard's word "BRINE" in quick time, after Pat successfully added a number of letter elements first. Curiously, Brian's word was "BRAIN"!



Struggle of Empires: Although perhaps not setting a precedent for us to play the same big game two Sundays in a row, it was certainly unusual. The unique circumstances were that Ken was in Sydney and eager to play, a certain keenness of the part of some of last weeks' players (me and Richard in particular), and no strong motivation on the part of the others to play something else! So we had a full compliment of seven players, and given last week's fairly ordered proceedings with 6, every reason for expecting a good game with 7.
As the set-up was laid out, things began to look frighteningly similar to last week's game: Pat seeded into the German States, Brian in the Americas, and I drew three markers in the Med! Of course, there were cries of "he's got the game before we've started!", but I knew that actually the opposite was true - a concentrated set of tokens starting in a good 2nd-tier scoring region meant that I'd have little real choice but to defend them, at the expense of protecting the colonies (my other two tokens), or effective expansion elsewhere. The logic is simple: If I leave them undefended then they are the obvious lowest hanging and juiciest fruit. If I leave them defended weakly (after all, in the points reckoning I can afford to lose one and probably still be OK), then I am also inviting a whacking because even 4 points for 2nd in the Med is nice. But then having lost that battle I am sufficiently weakened to prompt one or more additional attacks (especially with 6 other players), and within a few rounds I'm gone. So no choice but to defend with a force that should look just strong enough to deter any attacks.
I ended up erring just on the side of being too weak in the Mediterranean, eventually losing two tokens by the end of the second war to Ken, which also cost me significant casualties along the way. Because organic growth from this position will be highly constrained, I really should have bid highly for the privelege of going first or second in the turn order. Again, with so many players I was put off by the rapid price laddering of the alliance aution, knowing that to be successful in round one I probably would have had to bid above 10, and therefore 4 or 5 unrest up on everyone else from the get-go. I ended up coming last in turn order, which I thought I could use to my advantage by having the final battle. Alas, this was a mistake, and if I were to find myself in similar circumstances again I'd be bidding high...
I also didn't position alliances very effectively in this game compared to others past. And there were a few 'gentlemen's agreements' that arose throughout that were a little unsettling. In particular, these were between Brad and Alex in Central Europe, and most effectively in the last turn between Brian and Richard in the Americas. Brad and Ken also appeared to have some agreement in the first war which Brad re-neged on at the end to take one of Ken's tokens!

Pat made the point - and I have to agree - that once you are beaten down by multiple opponents in the first half of the game, it is difficult if not impossible to recover any reasonable standing by the end. Craig discovered this last week, and to a lesser extent Pat and me this time. I'd be interested to hear any stories or strategies to the contrary that didn't involve frank negligence or stupidity on the part of the other players. The problem is that you've suffered multiple military losses and therefore had to spend population just to keep pace with those losses and protect the precious tokens you have left on the board. Each token loss takes away revenue generation (in addition to points!) at the end of each war, as well as ramping up your unrest. If you do manage to catch your opponents off-guard through clever play and (re-)capture valuable territory towards the end, you've almost certainly accrued so much unrest that your score will be headed south in the final reckoning anyhow!

Richard and I had a brief email discussion on chaos and loss of control in a game with many players. He commented that with 7 players, this game was still remarkably unchaotic, in that from one turn to another the on-board shift in pieces was minimal. In many games when there are a lot players, the shift in the pattern of pieces on board is so great between successive turns that it becomes impossible to plan ahead.
However, there are other phenomena that did arise in this game due to a large number of players, in particular, loss of control. R identifies two forms of this: 1) minimal influence, in which the actions available to you are not strong enough to impact significantly your position, and 2) straightjacketing, in which there really is only one or a few actions available to you in a given turn, regardless of their impact. As this game proceeded I suffered progressively from the minimal influence syndrome, with one exception: The decisive capture of one of Brian's tokens in South America. I gather Pat felt minimal influence also for much of the second half of the game. Towards the end, straightjacketing was also a factor for me, with the only reasonable way of gaining victory points being to attack soft targets, and India was about the only one left. Brian had earlier fought for and captured my sole second-place token there in an earlier turn, and this was the easiest and most lucrative target for me in the final round. Having said that, I gather that for many if not all of us the course of meaningful actions available within the last few rounds would have been significantly restricted. The most successful would have been those planning for their last big push a few rounds in advance, perhaps Brad and Richard.

Overall I found this second playing of SoE less satisfying than the first, but I put this down to too many players and the minimal influence effect. I'm still keen to play again of course, ideally with 3 others for a 4p game, but I'd also be happy with 2, 3 or 5p. I do think a 2p game is worth a try, although the alliance aspect would be totally removed of course.

Timing for this game was faster than the first, with 30 mins setup and rules explan for the noobs (Brad and Ken), then both war 1 & 2 coming in at 60mins (exactly) each. War 3 was about 67mins, for a total of 3hrs 37mins (217 mins).

Score data, in the format Player (Nation): 1st war progressive score (position), 2nd (position), final (position).:
Richard (United Provinces): 18 (1), 37 (1), 55 (1).
Brad (Britain): 17 (2), 34 (2), 53 (2).
Brian (Prussia): 12 (6), 24 (7), 45 (3).
Ken (Russia): 11 (7), 26 (6), 39 (=4).
Alex (Austria): 15 (=3), 29 (=3), 39 (=4).
Pat (France): 15 (=3), 28 (4), 38 (7).
Paul (Spain): 13 (5), 27 (5), 39 (=4).



Die Heisse Schlacht: After a tense and intense sitting of SoE, this was the perfect way to wind down the evening. Richard dug up an extra token from another game to make it accomodate 7p. The theme of greedy patrons racing around a buffet table pushing in front of one another is a bit thin, but actually quite fitting. One of the great moments in dice rolling came in the very last turn. With just the lobster (7 points) left available, and a string of opponents lined up to take it in their next turns, I was back on the starting space, requiring a roll of exactly 7 on 3 dice to take it. Following Ken's lead, I just picked up all 3 and rolled. But unlike Ken's bust result, mine scored the perfect 7, to much celebration. Pity it was not enough to win the game!

Results: Brad: 23. Richard: 12. Paul: 11. Alex: 8. Pat: 6. Ken: 5.