Modern Art

Alan, Joe, Todd, Jamie and I played our first game of Reiner Knizia's Modern Art Friday evening. Just so you're not under any suspense: Alan won. As usual. One of these days I'll play a game with Alan and actually beat him.

Modern art is a card game with an auction mechanic. Each player plays an art dealer, and auctions off various paintings by one of five (fictional) modern artists: Lite Metal, Yoko, Karl Gitter, Christin P., and Krypto. The game takes place over four "seasons." In the first season, each player is dealt a certain number of painting cards; more cards are dealt out in the second and third seasons. Player take turns auctioning off cards to other players. The auctioneer also takes part in the auction. The player that wins the auction pays the auctioneer, unless the auctioneer wins the auction, in which case the auctioneer pays the bank for the painting.

Each painting card has a different type of auction associated with it. There are open auctions, in which anyone bid in any order; once around auctions, in which each player gets one bid going around the table clockwise; sealed auctions, in which each player offers a bid in secret; and fixed price auctions, in which the auctioneer sets a price and the first player (again, going around the table clockwise) to accept it wins.

A season ends when a fifth painting by any artist is played; this painting is not auctioned. The paintings that were auctioned are then sold for an amount depending on the popularity of the artist. The paintings of the most popular artist, i.e. the one with the most paintings auctioned, are worth $30,000. Those of the second most popular artist are worth $20,000, and those of the third most popular artist are worth $10,000. Those of the two least popular artists are worth nothing.

The value of the paintings is cumulative over the four seasons: so if Karl Gitter was the most popular artist the first season, the second most popular the second season, and the third most popular in the third and fourth seasons, his paintings will be worth $70,000 at the end of the fourth season ($30K + $20K + $10K + $10K). So for the first couple of paintings the first season, you don't have any idea of what paintings will be worth, but after that you have some informations.

Like in most auction games, you win not by getting good deals (paintings that are worth more than what you paid for them), but by getting better deals than your opponents. Furthermore, since it is usually one of your fellow players that you will be paying for the painting, you don't want to pay so much that your opponent makes more than you do on the sale. For example, if you think a painting will be worth $50K at the end of the season, and you buy it for $30K, you've potentially made $20K on the painting - but your opponent has made $30K on the sale.

This was how Alan won the game. He hung back and let other players overpay for paintings; in particular, paintings that he sold.

The painting cards themselves are beautifully designed. It would be nice to have paintings from actual modern artists on the cards (I'd suggest Picasso, Modrian, Dali, Rothko, and Lichtenstein), but I'm sure that would make the game a lot more expensive because of copyright fees. The only complaint I have about the components is that money comes in denominations of $100K, $50K, $20K, $5K, and $1K, but no $10K. I played banker, and it would have been much easier making change if I had some $10K chips.

I hesitate to put a rating on the game just now, since I think that this game may well improve if all the players have played before. In an auction game, having just one player who overbids can throw a big element of randomness into the game, and we had several players doing that in this game. I look forward to playing it again with a group all of whom have played it before.

Ra

I borrowed Alan's copy of Ra last night for a game with a couple of friends. Ra, designed by Reiner Knizia, is one of my all-time favorite games.

The game is Egyptian-themed, although the game itself has very little to do with Egypt. The game has an auction mechanic, and could accomodate just about any theme. The rules are simple. On each turn, a player may take one of three actions: draw a tile from the bag (bag not included, we use a Crown Royal bag) to add to the collection of tiles to be auctioned; exchange a "god tile" that one has for one of the tiles on the track; or call an auction by "invoking Ra" (done with a small wooden Ra statue). Thus each turn a player faces a choice: add to the collection to be auctioned, or force the auction before the collection becomes to valuable. Obviously, a player who anticipates winning the auction will sweeten the pot, and a player who anticipates losing the auction will call an auction rather than let the pot get too valuable.

Auctions are of the "once around" variety, and the player who calls an auction is required to bid if no one else does. Thus if you call an auction too soon, you could be forced to pay for a group of tiles that is not worth much.

The most unusual feature of the game, which sets it apart from other auction games, is that the auctions are conducted not with money that can be spent in arbitrary amounts, but with "sun tokens." The sun tokens are numbered 1 through 16, and each player starts an epoch (Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom) with the same number of tokens. You may only bid with one token, and higher tokens beat lower tokens. Furthermore, the winning bid is placed in the center of the board, and is auctioned off with the next group of tiles.

Scoring is based on the tiles one wins at auction, and is done at the end of each epoch. The tiles themselves are of various sorts, and score in different manners. Some tiles, like the gold tiles, are worth a fixed number of points. Others, like the pharoah tiles, are scored based on who has the most and least number of them. The civilization tiles earn points by having three or more distinct tiles, and the monument tiles earn points by having sets of three or more that are alike. The god tiles score a fixed amount, like the gold tiles, but can be exchanged for any one tile on the auction track, without having to bid. There are also "disaster tiles" that lower the value of the pot.

Each epoch comes to a conclusion when either all players have spent all of their sun tokens, or when the Ra track fills up. Whenever a Ra tile is drawn, it is added to the Ra track, and an auction is forced. No one is required to bid in a forced auction, but when the last spot on the Ra track is filled, the epoch is over and there is no auction. So towards the end of the epoch, when all but one of the spaces in the Ra track is full, a player (often there is only one left at this point) faces a very tough decision: draw a tile in hopes of sweetening the pot, and risk drawing the final Ra tile; or call an auction to take what's available. This is the most exciting part of the game, whether it is you or your opponent doing the drawing.

The game only lasts about 30-45 minutes, so it's a good game for situations when you don't have a lot of time. The board and tiles are beautifully designed, although I wish that Rio Grande had included an Egyptian-themed bag to draw from. The biggest downside to the game is that it is currently out-of-print. Hopefully Rio Grande will reissue it soon.

Rating: 10 out of 10.

Memoir '44

Alan, Todd, and I played a couple of games this afternoon at Cafe Francisco. One was Java, which Todd will be reviewing. The other was Memoir '44, a game in which you recreate battles from the Allied invasion of Normandy.

The game is played on a hex board, with tiles such as woods, villages, rivers, and bridges, that are arranged in different ways for the various battles. We played the battle for Pegasus bridge, which took place shortly after midnight on June 6, 1944. Players command units, which consist of plastic army men, very similar to the ones we all played with as children. (There are also armored units, but there are no armored units in the Pegasus bridge scenario.)

Players may order the units based on the cards they have in their hands. A card may say something like "order two units on the left flank," or "order one unit in each section of the board (left, right, and center)." One order consists of attacking, moving one hex then attacking, or moving two hexes. The cards are one random element of the game. The other random element is the dice rolled to make attacks. Up to four dice are rolled to attack, depending on how far the target is from the attacker, and what sort of cover (such as forests, sandbags, or wire) the defender has.

Each side scores points based on battle objectives, such as capturing the bridges over the Orne River and the Caen canal, and by eliminating enemy units. The first side to score a fixed number of points (which I believe is scenario-dependant), wins. Since one side may well have a distinct advantage over the other in a scenario, you're supposed to replay the scenario with the players switching sides. We only played the Pegasus bridge scenario once, however.

Unfortunately, unlike in history, the Allies, played by Alan and me, lost to the Axis, played by Todd. We made a bold rush on the machine gun nest near the Caen canal bridge, and our units were quickly gunned down.

The rules are easy to learn, and playing a single scenario only takes about 30 minutes. There's more randomness to the game than I really like. The gameboard and pieces are well-designed, and the historical information makes the game very educational.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

El Grande

We (Alan, Todd, Nick, Ram, and I) played a fantastic game of El Grande last night at Alan's house.

El Grande is a political conquest game set in medieval Spain. The board is divided into the provinces of Spain, such as Valencia, Aragon, and Basque, and scoring is based on who has control of the regions, by having the most, the second most, or the third most "Cabaneros" in a given region.

Each player has a home region, containing the player's Grande (lord), and players score bonus points for controlling their home region. The King moves from region to region, and controlling the King's region also scores bonus points. There is also a special region, the Castillo. Cabaneros placed in the Castillo are moved onto the board right before scoring, which gives players a final chance to seize control of a region.

Each turn has two phases. In the first phase, the bidding phase, players bid on the right to go ahead of other players in the second phase, the action phase. Each player starts with thirteen "power cards," numbered through 13, and bids using these cards. No player may bid the same number as another player, and the second phase goes in order, from who bid the lowest to who bid the highest. The power card used to bid also determines how many Cabaneros the player may bring from the "provinces" to his "court," in preparation for placing them on the board in the action phase. The lower numbers let you bring in more Cabaneros to the provinces, so there's an advantage to bidding low as well as to bidding high.

In the action phase, players choose from one of five "action cards" from five stacks. These action cards determine how many Cabaneros a player may move from the provinces to the board, and also grant the player an optional action he may take. Actions may be something like "move five Cabaneros of your choice," or "score one region of your choice," or "send all the Cabaneros in your opponents court back to the provinces." One action card is always present: the card that lets you move the King. The King's region is special, in that no Cabaneros may move into or out of it. So if you move the King into a region that you control, no one else may seize control of from you without moving the King first.

All regions are scored at the end of the third, sixth, and ninth turns (or after the second, fourth, and sixth turns in the short game).

The rules can be learned very quickly. The only thing complex about the rules is interpretations of the action cards, which are sometimes ambiguous. Fortunately, the rule booklet has a clear explanation for each of the action cards.

El Grande uses a scoring track, which is a feature I like in a game, as this gives you a good idea of each player's standing. The board is not so complex that one can't have a pretty good idea how scoring would go if it took place at any given point. The state of the board, however, can change greatly in a few turns, and a person who looks like they have a comfortable lead may see that lead evaporate.

This happened last night. Todd was well ahead of everyone else on the scoring track going into the final three turns. Alan was in second place, and Ram and I were tied for third. When the final round of scoring took place, Ram pulled ahead of Todd, and then Alan pulled just ahead of Ram to win by one point.

A lot of the strategy in El Grande is psychological. How you decide to act is determined greatly by what you think other players are going to do. We played one action that said "Each player secretly picks one region to score. If more than one player picks a region, it is not scored." You choose regions secretly with a cardboard wheel and pointer that each player has. When we did this, two regions were both chosen by two players, and so only one region scored. (The one I picked, New Castille!)

The only downside to the game is that the psychological elements to the strategy can make it easy to get caught up in "analysis paralysis," and slow the game down. This is compounded by the fact that one's strategy is very dependant on what other players do, making it difficult to plan what one is going to do in advance of one's turn. A group decision to limit table talk, i.e. giving other players advice, can make the game go quicker.

The game lasted about two and a half hours, which is quite a bit longer than the playing time listed on the box.

Overall, I'd rate El Grande 9 out of 10. The only five-player games I like better are Princes of Florence and Ra.

Princes of Florence

(This is a repost from May 15 from my other blog, Signifying Nothing.)

I played two games of Princes of Florence this afternoon at Cafe Francisco downtown.

The theme of the game is Medici-era Florence, and the goal of the game is to gain the most prestige, which you get by building a magnificent Palazzo, with lots of buildings and landscapes, and by commissioning works from artisans, artists, and scholars.

Turns in the game consist of two phases, an auction phase and an action phase. In the auction phase, players bid to add landscapes to their Palazzo and hire architects and jesters. In the action phase, players build buildings and commission works. Each artisan, artist, and scholar has a preferred type of building to work in, a preferred type of landscape for recretation, and a preferred freedom (travel, opinion, or religion), which makes the works they produce more valuable.

There are three things about this game that make it one of my favorites.
First, the auction mechanic acts as a natural balancing mechanism for the game. There can be no consistent winning strategy for the game. If there were a winning strategy, everyone would pursue it in the auction phase, bidding up the value of the items. This would give an advantage to anyone not pursuing that strategy, since they could buy the items they need cheaply.

Second, the game appeals to the amateur economist in me, since it illustrates so well the concept of opportunity cost. Each player can only buy one item in each turn’s auction, so even if you get a good deal on, e.g., hiring a jester, you might have gotten a better deal on hiring an architect. The game is won by getting a better deal than everyone else at the auction.

Third, the goal of the game illustrates Aristotle’s virtue of magnificence. It’s good to earn money, but only because it lets you do great things with it.

If you live in the Memphis area and would like to play Princes of Florence or other strategy board games, you should sign up for the Memphis Strategy Board Gaming Community Yahoo group. We meet to play games at least twice a month.