We tackled a large scale game in Starcraft this past month (though not nearly as large scale as Twilight Imperium by far). Starcraft is an appealing adaptation of an enormously popular real-time strategy game on the PC. We thought this would be an interesting game to study (much like when we played Doom) since it [...]
Published by Fantasy Flight Games (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/), Tannhauser (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/tannhauser.html) is, at its core, a tactical miniature combat game. Players take control of soldiers either from the Army of the Union or the Reich’s Obscrura Korps in a paranormal infused alternate reality in which WWI never really ended (refer to the promotional video released by Fantasy Flight [...]
In this game players take on the role of managing a network of power, a power grid if you will (sorry). The board consists of a map of the USA or Germany. Cities are placed throughout the map and are connected by lines that have distance values. Players must purchase hubs on [...]
Ranked number one at boardgamegeek.com, Puerto Rico is basically a game of economics. There is no killing, major conflicts, or much interaction between the players (in terms of mechanics) in the game. Everyone is allowed to do the same actions and may choose how to foster their economy independently.
The premise is that you are a [...]
So, Ben posited the question earlier:
I’m wondering, since the computer does a lot of the calculations for you does that seem to take away the “mechanic”. Picking a skill to use and rolling die are taken away and made quicker decisions for instance in Doom. Does that add or take away from [...]
Written by Steve Jackson and illustrated by John Kovalic (of Dork Tower fame), Munchkin is a card game (of the non-collectible variety) published by Steve Jackson Games that takes a humorous and cockeyed look at the D&D, dungeon crawl setting. The game is appropriate for 3-6 players, and usually runs about an [...]
We have played a game of Settlers of Catan as a five person game…which is fairly different of a game. All players can do more actions each turn. This likely was introduced to keep people involved in the game, as turns can be dragged out as players make difficult decisions. I have [...]
Mechanics
Lost cities is a turn-based card game. There are five colors of cards. Each set of colors has four start cards and nine number cards that have the values 2-10.
We have gotten through two solid sessions of playing Ra, enough to constructively talk about the game but not enough to satiate our desire to play it. Ra is a fairly simple, easy-to-learn game that can be very engrossing after a single time playing it.
We want to discuss these games and answer key questions [...]