Counters, miniatures and blocks -- more durability discussion

IJN cruiser Kumano from the Avalon Hill game Midway. 1969 counter on the right, a somewhat newer one (ca. 1980) on the left

Comments on mounted vs. unmounted maps below prompted me to consider the durability of other common game components. Maps, as a matter of fact, even the paper kind, are rarely the component that fails first in my experience.

Usually the first component that starts to disintegrate is the rule book, especially if it's a complex game or one with poorly drafted rules and you're in the darn thing all the time. Good quality paper and printing is really useful in rule books, but this is an area where many companies scrimp an use cheap paper. Still, there's not an awful lot that can be done about this, past using good quality paper and writing clear rules. A rule book is necessarily going to get a lot of handling by sweaty fingers.

Another component that should use high quality material (but often doesn't) is cards, if the game uses them. It's my practice to buy extra cards if the game uses them a lot and it looks like I'll get to play it a lot. I bought an extra set of cards for Up Front, for example, although I still haven't busted the seal. While my original card are still usable, they are showing some wear and given the likelihood that Up Front will never be reprinted I'm glad I have it. Some other games where I bought back up card sets included Commands & Colors Ancients, Gunslinger and Memoir '44.

Finally there are the unit pieces. The winner in the durability contest are figures hands down. While occasionally they can get damaged or destroyed if stepped on, for the most part they remain in near pristine condition if minimally cared for. I have copies of Broadside and Dogfight from the 60s that I bought on eBay that are in pretty tough shape in many ways, but the planes and ships are in good shape. I have metal painted miniatures that are decades old and I'm quite certain will be around long after I'm gone. Even the pre-painted miniatures from collectible games I expect are virtually immortal so long as they are not abused.

Nearly as good are wooden blocks. I have had some cases where stickers have come off a block or two, but with the exception of an old copy of Rommel in the Desert, in no cases has it been common and many of my block games are getting long in the tooth. And those block games that have embossed or screen printed blocks seem as permanent as the plastic figures. They could be used as grave goods.

Card board counters, on the other hand, are another story. The oils from hands and the friction from the playing surface and stacking means that counters can get some serious wear, even if the game isn't played often. Back when Avalon Hill was in business I ordered replacement counters for a number of games over the years, such as Afrika Korps and Midway. Most companies don't offer this service though, and I can see problems down the line for some games in my collection. The main reason why this isn't a bigger problem is that I have so many games that few get the kind of intense play that AH games got back in the day. And many popular games go though multiple printings, sometimes with multiple companies, so that you can get a newer (Perhaps improved) copy later. Some games I have in my collection that are NOT the original copy I owned include OGRE, The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, A House Divided, For The People, Bitter Woods, Monopoly, War of 1812, Wizard Kings and Quebec 1759.

Another factor with cardboard counters is different degrees of wear. It's often the case that some counters and markers see more use than others. It's not unusual for the turn marker to wear down to a nub first. In games where you have to draw activation chits these often wear out fast as well. Sometimes a unit spends a lot more time on the board than others. The German panzer regiments in Afrika Korps often show a lot more wear than any other pieces -- while the British substitute units are sometimes in mint condition! Usually this doesn't have an impact in play, but I could see times when it might matter, such as if the game uses inverted units.

Counters do have many advantages, of course. They can hold much more game information than blocks or figures. They cost less to make and weigh less when shipping. You can stack them. So lots of times they're a good choice. But there is a trade off in durability.

One thing that game makers could do more often is offer replacement parts. I think cards should always be available for separate purchase. You shouldn't have to buy a whole new game just because the cards wore out. Rule books should be online. That way they can be updated easily and players can download a new and updated version oft he rules when their original comes apart. And I think counter sheets should be available. One thing I also hate seeing is blank counters on a counter sheet. Put something on it. Extra "Game Turn" makers never hurt. There's no excuse for blanks in any game that uses any kind of status markers, either.

For me, because I tend to dabble in a large range of games rather than play any one game intensively,. durability usually revolves around storage issues. But a lot of people like to play the heck out of their favorite games -- and for that sort of player how well the game components stand up to repeated usage is important. It's a real shame to have your game fall apart before you're tired of it.

Not gaming related, but please watch

For anyone who thinks wargaming is dying -- 212 games/expansions were published in 2009!

Here's the list compiled by Alan Poulter.

This far exceeds the glory days of SPI.

From the list I bought: Memoir ' 44 Tigers in the Snow; Memoir '44 Sword of Stalingrad; 1805 Sea of Glory; Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion Pack #4 Imperial Rome; Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion Pack #5 Epic II; Ship of the Line; Axis & Allies 1942; Axis & Allies Pacific 1940; Battle Above the Clouds; GD '42; S&T #258 The Santiago Campaign; Waterloo (Treefrog); and Caesar's Gallic War. So even though I bought a game or expansion every four weeks, I only acquired about 6 percent of what was available. Or to put it another way, a grognard would have to buy a game or expansion four times a week to keep up.

Seems like a pretty healthy rate of production to me.

Lessons Learned from the Games Workshop/BoardGame Geek controversy

I think there are three different, but related, aspects of this whole brouhaha on Boardgame Geek that everybody can take away as lessons learned if they choose -- although some may not.

The first is Games Workshop's aggressive defense of its intellectual property. I was unaware of the Warhammer/World of Warcraft connection and I can understand how GW may feel quite burned by that experience. I think they were within their legal rights on 90% of what they claim, although on some specific points their IP policies make claims unsupported by the actual state of the law. The reality is that those assertions will probably stand until they tangle with someone with the economic resource sand interests to contest it. On the other hand, there's serious grounds for doubting the wisdom of their approach. Making a significant portion of your most dedicated fans angry with you seems like a very bad business idea. While most of GW's customers are not on BGG or members of GW fan sites, those who are tend to be the opinion leaders in their groups and probably have an influence outside of mere numbers,

The second lesson is BGG's response to GW's demands. Here I think there are some legitimate ground for criticizing some details of how BGG responded, but BGG's overall response was a prudent one given the magnitude of the legal threat and the relative peripheral nature of the possible benefit. Games Workshop is just one company whose products are on the site and it doesn't make sense to risk all the other valuable content here related to more consumer-friendly companies for the sake of the products of a company that doesn't appreciate the free advertising. BGG is a growing site and becoming the premiere game-related site in the world devoted to all games. GW benefits more from BGG than BGG needs GW. It's unfortunate that the controversy broke out while Aldie was unavailable to address it quickly, but it appears to me that BGG is taking lessons learned from the experience and implementing policies and procedures that will reduce future problems.

The third lesson is for us, the users of BGG. One thing many of us could do a better job of is respecting the legitimate intellectual property rights of game publishers. I see an awful lot of stuff posted on BGG that really is egregious copyright and trademark infringement. We have open advocacy by some of making your own copies of games so you don't have to buy it We have users scanning high-resolution images of the complete components of some games. In many cases users are posting clearly derivative works without bothering to ask permission (which many companies would probably grant -- see the nice alternative map available as a download for Bonaparte at Marengo. For example, I often like to post examples of components when I am writing a game review. I am always careful never to scan in complete copies of the component in question -- a part of a map, a few examples of the counters, an extract of a play aid, one or two cards. This is fair use. Scanning in all 108 cards at full-size for a card game is not. Lastly, fans of a game should realize that the content they generate (let's say a really nice, upgraded player aid with snazzy logos and photos of miniatures) may not be theirs, even if they did a lot of work on it. Spend your effort on companies that appreciate and encourage that kind of work. Don't waste your time supporting a company that doesn't.

Games everywhere

Took a ride down to New Jersey today to visit friends. I happened to stop at a urban Dunkin Donuts in Plainfield, N.J. for an ice coffee and came across a bunch of guys playing chess in the coffee shop.

Aside from one older gentlemen, everyone else looked to be 20-something and 30-something African-American men. There were two games going on, each using a set that looks like the tournament sets you can get from the US Chess Federation, similar to this:


I'm not sure if the observers were there just to kibitz or to play. One game wrapped up just before I left and the same two players were setting up for another go. It appeared to me that this was some sort of regular gathering, from the way everyone interacted. It was a nice reminder of how you don't have to be a game hobbyist to get a lot out of gaming. Earlier that day while we were visiting I notice that there was a Monopoly game set up in our friend's living room (and they are definitely not gamers).

I know that Monopoly, and even chess, are looked down on in some hobby gamer circles, but I think it's nice to see any kind of gaming going on out there. There's a lot more to the board game scene than just Settlers of Catan or Tide of Iron

Cheaters

A discussion on the Hexwar forum prompts this musing --why cheat?

Any Ty Bomba game that involved an element of hidden information usually carries the warning that social science research shows that anyone will cheat if they perceive the stakes are high enough.

I'm not entirely sure this is true. I suppose anybody who refused to cheat would just, by definition, not believe the stakes are high enough. Yet we do have plenty of examples of people maintaining their honor at great cost, so I am not entirely on board. Still, I will admit that most of us would cheat under certain high stakes circumstances. And cheating at casinos, for example, seems pretty easy to understand.

But it's hard to imagine that a game played for pleasure could achieve the status of "high stakes." Yet clearly it does. I just can't figure out what those stakes must be. If it's ego, then surely that ego must feel empty because the cheater knows he's just a fraud. Or can self-delusion protect the ego from that?

I've never been one to worry overmuch about Ws and Ls. I used to track them for a while and under certain conditions it can be useful knowledge that may help improve the quality of one's play. But as a general rule it doesn't mean very much. If i have a 24-4 record in a game does that mean I am a good player or does it just mean I'm careful to select weak opponents? Can't tell unless you examine many factors.

The bottom line is that cheating only makes sense if you care an awful lot about winning and THAT only makes sense if you're willing to play under controlled conditions that give the games meaning. The allegation is that Hexwar's die rolling program is either flawed or can be manipulated. I don't know which it is, if either. But what is the point of winning that way? There's no money and very little fame involved. it's not the World Series of Poker. It's only even known to a hundred or so hardcore wargamers. Winning a trophy at the WBC is a much bigger deal.

I hope some resolution to the issue can be found, because it does threaten the trust needed to keep the site going.

That explains a lot, old age begins at 27!

Or at least some research suggests that: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1162052/Old-age-begins-27--scientists-claim-new-research.html

To summarize, researchers suggest that mental ability peaks at 22 and starts to decline at 27. Presumably experience counts for a lot, and allows for improved performance for many decades afterwards, but the actual peak of our cognitive abilities comes much earlier.

I don't find this surprising, actually. Einstein made his biggest breakthroughs while still in his 20s and chess masters arrive at their exalted status as teens or young adults, not as people nearing retirement.

I've noticed that the intricate, detailed wargames that fascinated me as a young man no longer hold as much attraction now that I'm much older. I thought that I'd simply lost patience with them, or "matured" in my tastes or something like that. But it may be something as simple as the fact that I'm not quite as sharp as I was back then for that sort of thing. It's too much work now. Back then it didn't seem like work.

Retrenching?

Macro-economic reports seem to indicate that consumers are in an extreme retrenching mood.

This report, for example, indicates a decline in December, making it the sixth consecutive monthly drop:

http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/02/news/economy/personal_income_spending/?postversion=2009020210

I find it hard to believe that this won't have an impact on the game industry, especially considering that most of the companies are small businesses that are not operating with a big cushion even in good times.

I plan to go to the World Boardgaming Championships this August. It will interesting to see what the vendor area looks like.

Overall I am sensing a slowdown in new offerings. It appears that a lot of product plans may be on hold. Many companies are relying on a P500 system to guide their publishing plans, but if they don't have a hard P500 with credit-card backed purchase orders they may find their P500 less of an insurance policy than they think.

Games are definitely a discretionary purchase. While I don't think game playing will suffer during the recession, purchases of new games very well may. Many of us already have more games than we will ever likely play, so it will be easy to talk ourselves into deferring purchases for a bit.

Does the game hobby need a non-FLGS based model?

BoardGame Geek has a couple more announcements of local game stores closing, and given that everyone is expecting a very weak holiday retail season I wouldn't expect these to be the last. Many will no doubt try to make it through Christmas somehow and end up closing shop after the holiday sales numbers are in.

No doubt this will be a retail industry-wide problem, but here we're just concerned with the impact on gaming.

For a generation the game hobby has largely organized itself around local game stores. People would purchase and play their games at the same place. These were often not exclusively game stores. Many were some combination of hobby (kits and trains), card (sports and magic) and/or comics retailers as well. The important thing is that they would provide space for gamers on a scheduled basis. Collectible game sanctioned play is based on the existence of these venues.

But they seem to be becoming quite rare. Here in Connecticut, for example, there are just a handful of places and just one pure game shop (The Citadel in Groton). Can this model survive?

I suspect not, but then the question becomes, how do gamers find each other and get together to play? Finding like-minded hobbyists is always a challenge for niche past times. The rise of the Internet and various meetup sites seems to have the most potential in my opinion. There are a couple of gaming related meetup groups that I know about locally.

The biggest challenge for meetup groups is securing a regular meeting place, especially one that isn't dependant on one particular host. It's a big demand on someone to expect someone to make their home available every week no matter what. The best venues are often local colleges and libraries, but I wonder if there's a big enough demand for a dedicated meetup site to operate, perhaps as a "Meetup Club" where different meetup groups could rent space. This kind of site would be especially useful for game groups, who often have a fair amount of stuff to lug around.

It's hard to say whether this is the solution, but it seems clear gamers can't count on their favorite local gaming store to be around much longer, especially outside of major urban areas.

WBC report: First impressions

Well, first off, I didn't win any trophies -- not that I expected I would.

I really hoped to get a chance to play some stuff that I've been wanting to play and haven't gotten to for various reasons. In that quest the WBC was an enormous success. I got to play Acquire, Napoleon's Triumph, Memoir '44, Battle Line, Nuclear War, For Honor & Glory and Axis & Allies: War at Sea. I only managed to eke out a victory in one game of Battle Line and the game of For Honor & Glory.

I was close to a second victory in Battle Line but my winning claim was thwarted by two consecutive Tactics Cards (they were using the rule that you could only claim at the beginning of your turn, giving the opponent a chance to affect the outcome with a Tactics card.)

Napoleon's Triumph as a learning game and I see today on re-reading the rules that we played at least one key rule wrong, so that loss can be chalked up to experience. A lack of experience also pretty much doomed my chances in both Memoir '44 and Acquire, but in both cases I learned a lot from the defeats and feel my play will improve.

The Axis & Allies battle was pretty close but I can definitely attribute my defeat to poor unit selection. Note to self: Never buy PT Boats!

The Nuclear War tournament was surprisingly frustrating. The game is, by nature, a real crap shoot anyway, but I definitely got more than my share of crappy card draws and other bad fortune. I played four rounds and in the first three I was either the first or second player eliminated. In the first round my initial population draw (seven cards in a 5 player game) netted me less than 20 million people! Needless to say it didn't take long for that to go away. The third game was the worst one, as I didn't even get to play a turn. I got hit with one of those 25 million people Top Secret cards and I had exactly 25 million and was out before I got to even play a card! The tournament was saved from being a totally sour experience by the fourth game where I managed to be battling for the win and fell victim to a propaganda card during a brief interlude of peace.

The con, as always, was well organized. By this time Greenwood's got a workable system in place and many of the attendees have been there enough times that everyone pretty much knows what to do. The same veteran faces were there. Damn! We're all getting old.

There's definitely a changing of the guard under way, though. The euro-style games are becoming ever more prominent and wargames less so, although there are still quite a few wargames in evidence.

The wargaming crowd has pretty much moved en masse to the card-driven style games first made popular by We The People, although some of the most popular games of that genre are not even wargames -- Twilight Struggle and Making of the President 1960!

The other real growth area among players was Borg's Commands & Colors system, which saw well-attended competition of all four of his games (C&C: Ancients, Battle Cry, Memoir '44 and BattleLore).

It still made me feel good to see some old standbys still going pretty strong and when I got there Friday the final rounds of such stalwarts as Waterloo, Afrika Korps, PanzerBlitz and Battle of the Bulge '81 were wrapping up.

There really wasn't a lot of buzz about new games as far as I could see, although there were a few new ones out. I think it's fair to say that the Hot New Game of the convention was the one that was barely there. There was a demo copy of Agricola in the Open Gaming tent that got constant play and I spotted a couple of other copies that folks had managed to get, although at least one of those was the Germ edition. Z-Man games was there and I overheard them being asked about the status of the game -- completely sold out -- with a new shipment expected later this summer. All their copies were sent out in preorders and they had none left to sell at the WBC.

It does look like an interesting game, in the euro way. As to whether it will live up to the hype and be the new Tigris and Euphrates, Puerto Rico or Ra I can't say. On the other hand, all those games' events were well populated, along with the Ticket to Ride and the other titles.

The rise of the Euro has also affected the demographics of the attendees substantially. While there are plenty of us classic old wargamer types still wandering about -- bellies and beards included -- the WBC now also features notable numbers of younger and female players as well. While it's nice, of course, to see more women gamers, the most hopeful sign of the WBC for me was the large number of younger players. Many are, no doubt, attending because of gamer Dad, but overheard snippets of conversation in the cafe, bar, corridors and game rooms showed that at least some of the attendees are members of gaming groups that are sprouting up around the country. At least some are probably getting organized using the Meetup Internet services.

Overall, it was a good time. My goal next year is to win a little more, though.