Last weekend, we were visiting friends and I had the opportunity to play two full games of Settlers of Catan (with the Knights of Catan expansion). I have menitioned my love of board games before on the blog, but I had not really had a chance to dig into a eurogame (more mathy than "American" style games). It was nice to play a thinking game; it reminded me why I love them. The strategy, the mental work of figuring out the math, making plans, revising plans. I tend to prefer the European games as they tend to use luck as a disrupting element rather than a main component of the game, so you don't feel that you are working a slot machine but an actual game. They also have many roads to victory allowing for everyone to still be "in the running" through the entire of the game. I really recommend trying these sort of games, as they show a different way of thinking about the world; a contrast to the constant use of sports metaphors when thinking how things are. I can be convinced that life is a like a semi-cooperative game over it being an American football game.
Back to Settlers, it was an interesting experience to play one of the building blocks of Eurogames. It is probably the best known euro-style designer board game. I would argue it is similar to Monopoly in that a lot of people have copied or have worked to build a better version of the game. As a person who plays a lot of games, I have played these "Children of Catan" and I can honestly say they have improved on the original design so it is weird to plan an earlier model so to speak. It threw me off my game. I came in second both times, but the first game I stalled at 9 points (you need13 to win) because my strategy was not taking into account the expansion. The second game was better with two players having 12 points when the winner reached 13. The couple we were playing with plays it all the time which is always a challenge, but there is a lot of luck in the game as well. The winner knew the game and rolled well. I was proud of my performance in the second game as it showed improvement.
(as a complete side bar, the biggest design challenge for these sort of games is removing "dead time" where you are waiting for your turn to happen. The main problem is that you acquire/lose resources at the start of your turn which makes it hard to plan until the start of your turn, with all the other players watching you)
To dove tail this experience, we had a first game night of the year (at the new house). It was a small affair but a number of games were played. Augustus which is essentially Roman Bingo, Tsuro a tile laying game, and Village (another euro game). These are all newer games and have learned lessons from Catan. That said, they are more "light" games (Village to a lesser extent) and so the mental bar was a little lower. But as a wise game reviewer once said, "the important question you need to ask is 'Is Everyone having fun?'" In answer to that question I would say yes.
Now I just need to convince six people to play Twilight Imperium. :)
S
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