Love Shack

I was once a member of a gaming group where the host would play this track whenever there was a head-to-head conflict. It was kind of funny the first time, but got old pretty quick and Star Trek just didn’t match those games with, say, an agricultural theme. But now I approve of the arbitrary inclusion of music when tied to specific in-game activities.

And of course I have the perfect music-game combo to bring in this new era:

Love Shack by the B-52s

and.... Wait for it....

Stone Age!

Go ahead, click on the link above and let your ears experience the auditory massage that is Love Shack. Actually, keep your eyes open too- the music video is sublime. It strikes a balance between unadulterated good-time vibes and the inescapable wonder of how we ever landed on the moon as a species.

So, from hereover and henceforth, whenever someone places their Stone Age meeples in the love hut, the table is required to listen to Love Shack... the whole thing. If you need a thematic rationale just think of it as prehistoric birth control.

——

Stone Age is one of my favorite games. It hits that sweet spot between presenting you with interesting decisions while also remaining accessible to all types of gamers. Yes, I would use the word “gamers” here. Stone Age is what I would consider a “next-step” game, which is one that you pull out when someone new to the hobby finishes playing Ticket to Ride or Catan, and asks “So, what other games are there?”

In Stone Age you are a leader of a prehistoric tribe, trying to survive. You send your tribesmen out to collect food, wood, clay, stone and gold. Each of these require an increasing amount of cumulative dice pips in order to collect that specific good. For example, you need 2 pips to gather a single food, whereas you need 6 pips to get a single gold.

That pretty much covers the top third of the board. The middle part of the board is the town, which has a bunch of useful stuff. Just think of it as Q’s lab in the James Bond films. It has the farm, which gives you a recurring source of food and the love hut (queue Love Shack music), which gives you an additional worker (two go in and three come out!). The last spot is the tool maker shed, which gives you tools (duh) that allow you to add pips to your dice rolls, which is really, really nice to have when you’re 5/6 of the way to collect a gold. The bottom of the board has building tiles and civilization cards, both of which are purchased with your collected resources and contribute to your score.The game ends when one of the building stacks (bottom left) or the civilization cards (bottom right) run out.

In order to understand why this game is fun (simply experiencing fun isn’t enough anymore), we need to discuss output randomness. This is a term that I think was coined by Geoff and Ryan in one of the first episodes of the Ludology podcast. Basically, there are two flavors of randomness- input and output. We’ll cover input randomness in a different post, but basically the type of randomness is determined by the player’s agency relative to the random event. The what where? On a player’s turn he/she will perform some action that will affect the game state. Assuming the player doesn’t act randomly (again, another post!), the random event will happen before, after, or before and after the player’s action. Output randomness is when the random event follows the player’s action. Stone Age has this in spades.

Each round of Stone Age has two phases: the Caveman Regional Assignment Phase (CRAP) and the Collect Yer Sh*t Phase (SH*T). Yes, those are the official names- why do you ask?

CRAP
Each player assigns one or more tribal workers to an area on the board. Each one must be placed on one of the little circles for that given area. The exception is the hunting ground, where there isn’t a limit. Just like any worker placement games, it’s first come, first serve. So your first decision each round can really be onerous: That hut really looks enticing... did I just see Frank glance over at it?? Buuut it requires 2 clay to build, which I don’t have any right now. Joe’s been hitting the clay pit pretty hard all game (by the way, what’s with that?). Maybe I should grab the hut now and try for the clay later.... Waitaminute, the love shack, um “hut” is available. But that’ll use up two of my workers this round and I had BIG plans to do... stuff. Which was what, exactly? This Love Shack song is making it so hard to think!

There you have it. Luckily, as spaces become increasingly occupied your decision space continues to shrink, with your plan hopefully clicking into place.

SH*T
Now that we’re done with the CRAP phase, it’s time for us to collect our sh*t. In the CRAP phase, we all took turns placing our tribefolk in piecemeal fashion. Now we collect them, all at once, in whatever order we choose. And yes, the resources we collect are available for immediate use. Stone Age is great for those one-two, collect-spend combinations.

But this phase is also named after where your carefully laid plans can quickly end up- in the sh*tter. This is where Lady Luck and output randomness decide your fate. And get to find out where Trevor worked that day*. The lowest die roll, especially when you really needed higher, of the round is always Trevor’s fault. He probably fell asleep... again. But you better hope you have some tools to offset Trevor’s negative influence, otherwise you might miss out on that beautiful combination you set up in the CRAP phase.

DAMMIT
Welcome to the Dammit Phase. Surprise! No acronym here, but rather this is what you’ll be saying when you realize that you forgot to collect food for your workers while you were pursuing other ambitions.

——

Well, there you have it. Stone Age is made up of CRAP, SH*T and DAMMIT. I know this must make the game seem fairly unappealing, but hey, at least you’re listening to some pretty groovy music. And Stone Age is even groovier.

——

*Another fun thing to do: at the beginning of the game, pick the name of your village idiot. Mine is usually fictional, but I sometimes include one of the Kardashians, because, you know.

Cosmic Funcounter

Cosmic Funcounter is probably the best game I’ve ever played. No no, you heard me right- Cosmic Funcounter. Funtasy Flight Games has promised to change Cosmic’s name in time for its 50th anniversary. Speaking of which, this game is old- it was published in 1977. Let’s take a trip down memory lane... what else happened that year?

• It snowed in Miami.
• The Apple II was released.
• The first Chuck E. Cheese restaurant opens, its ball pit already smelling like urine. 
• Elvis “died.” 
• Orlando Bloom was born in Mirkwood.

That’s it. Nothing else happened that year*. Don’t bother confirming because it’s just a waste of time. Thankfully Cosmic Funcounter swooped in to save an otherwise remarkably unremarkable year. 

So what do I love about Cosmic Funcounter? Picture you are on a road trip with Nikola Tesla, Bugs Bunny, Mark Twain, Michelangelo, Rod Blagojevich and David Copperfield. In a Corolla. Tesla is riding shotgun, chittering in my ear about alternating current. Blagojevich sits in the middle back (aka “the bitch seat”), trying to convince Michelangelo of his innocence, who is nodding emphatically, but hoping Blago will just shut up already. Bugs and Copperfield play some card game in the trunk. Mark Twain silently looks out the window taking in the countryside, wondering why he found himself in such a poorly constructed analogy.

Okay, there's a lot to deconstruct here, but let's go through each of these individuals and how they relate to Cosmic Funcounter:

Bugs Bunny - This one is easy- Bugs provides the wackiness and zany gameplay that gamers have come to expect when playing Cosmic Funcounter.

When we play Cosmic, I will typically hand each person two or three different alien races from which to choose. I love listening to my friends reading aloud and/or reacting to their choices. With 3 options to pick from, chances are that at least two of them look really fun to play. This really gets the game off to a great start.

Nikola Tesla - No, not the guy who started the Tesla Motor Company (you're thinking of Steve Jobs). No, Tesla was a brilliant scientist who stood up to Thomas Edison and won! You have him to thank that we don't have electrical power plants built every mile or so (yay alternating current!), and these thingies:

Tesla was also known for his eccentricity, not just electricity! Give his Wikipedia article a read, it is definitely worth your time. After a life of crazy experiments and outrageous claims (e.g. he could destroy the Empire State Building with 5lbs of air pressure), he spent much of his final years and money caring for pigeons. Because, you know, he wanted to.

Michelangelo - This game is an artistic masterpiece. Not so much for the art itself, but I would say with the scaffolding of complexity that is done nearly perfectly. The core of Cosmic is pared down to just a dozen or so rules, serving as the means to support the zany alien powers. Nothing more, nothing less. Once players understand the base game, all that's left are learning the alien powers, of which there are only 196, with all of the expansions. Better start reading through them now.

Of course I'm kidding. You really only need to know your own alien power, which is written down in front of you, and a cursory knowledge of how your friends are going to screw you over with their own aliens.

Rod Blagojevich - Speaking of screwing with people, this game is a near-constant stream of d*ckish behavior. However, since the game forces you into most of these situations, and with every player at the table some time or another, no one has hard feelings. But you're still being a d*ck. I had some trouble thinking of someone who could come on our Cosmic Funcounter road trip... Who is someone that is clearly a bad guy, but whose rap sheet is somewhat forgivable? Maybe that guy who won't stop talking politics at your kid's birthday party? Nah. What about the guy that cut me off on the road yesterday, nearly killing my entire family? Nope, he's already got his ticket punched for hell.

No, it ultimately came down to two somewhat-but-not-very unsavory characters: Dennis Rodman and Rod Blagojevich. I picked Blagojevich because he's a local guy: he lives about 10 miles away in federal prison. If you've forgotten who Rod is while he's been wasting away, he's this guy:

Let's just make a conservative estimate that 98% of politicians are crooked. Rod was simply one of those who got caught... trying to sell President Obama's vacated senate seat... while using a phone that was wiretapped. During the lead-up to his trial, he asked the judge to allow him to participate on a celebrity reality TV show in Costa Rica in order to help pay the bills. Sadly, the family man was denied the opportunity to travel out of the country, and his wife went in his stead. She got to eat a tarantula.

Mark Twain - Mark Twain is arguably the greatest American storyteller. I pick him, because his works are still enjoyable to read today, unlike many other classics that read like you’re swimming in wet cement. Cosmic Funcounter is probably the greatest story-generating game of all time.** 

The stories from Cosmic are probably my favorite thing about the game. Here are a couple snippets:

• I was in a 3 player game (which I do not recommend), and my friend and I kept pulling these d*ck moves on each other, which usually consisted of breaking promises to negotiate. This kept up until we were each one colony from winning. We had an encounter and made our usual promise to negotiate, which had, at that point, lost all meaning. And guess what? We both played a negotiate and swapped colonies, resulting in a shared victory. It was so funny, and our other friend at the table was not thrilled, which made it even more funny.

• The last time we played, one of my friends was the Sheriff, an alien race that gives you the power to ticket other players for various infractions. None of us knew what infractions were on his cards, but my friend, who has a great sense of humor, was always threatening us with mostly bogus tickets that kept us all on edge (in a good way). His favorite thing to say was “I’ve got the ticket right here, the ink is still wet and just needs my signature...”

• Possibly my fondest memory was one of my first games of Cosmic. My alien race was the Pacifist, whose power is that you win all encounters where you play a negotiate card and your opponent plays an attack. Now, this wouldn’t be especially fun or useful on its own, but I had stumbled upon the Filch flare, which is a card that allows you to steal from the draw and discard piles, and is only negated if you get caught. Obviously I started to dig through the discard pile, feigning curiosity. I grabbed negotiate cards... all of them. And started winning encounters... all of them. My brothers didn’t suspect a thing, and with each encounter/negotiate card, they got more aggressive, thinking I had used all my negotiate cards. I couldn’t stop laughing. I ended up losing the game when they decided I was too powerful and colluded against me. If I remember correctly, they shared a 3-way victory with me coming in second/last place, but I’m pretty sure I had the most fun.

David Copperfield - It is probably a stretch to include this passenger, but we squeezed him into the trunk with a fictitious rabbit, so he probably has plenty of space. Copperfield is a world-famous magician. Magic is, after all, a ritualistic sacrifice to the demon overlords. In exchange for their rituals, the devil gives magicians their power. Or maybe it's just light-hearted deception and sleight of hand. I guess we will never know for sure.

It's this deception in magic that reminds me of Cosmic Funcounter. I have played this game several times, with several different groups of people. When I pitch Cosmic to the group, I will usually say something like: "This is my favorite game. It is really, really, really silly, but it is some of the most fun I have ever had with a board game!" None of this is deceptive. I make no promises of future results, but I have commented on my past experiences. I have also over-emphasized the silliness of the game, just so no one feels like they've been deceived.

Despite these carefully chosen words, someone always feels like they've been tricked into playing something that is “barely a game” and it is simply wonderful. I don't feel any guilt when this happens, because I wasn't the one being deceptive. It's not my fault that the game is ranked #131 on BGG (it was in the top 100 for a very long time). It's not my fault that the game is considered a classic. It's not my fault that many game designers credit it as a source of inspiration for the games they made. None of these things are my fault!

But...

Maybe it isn't Cosmic Encounter's fault either. Our hobby has been trending towards what I like to call “complexity elitism,” where games are valued for their difficulty. But maybe a game should be also be considered "good" by how much it makes you smile, by how many high-fives it generates, and by how many laughs are shared at the table. Using those as a benchmarks for greatness, Cosmic Encounter has been the world’s greatest board game for 43 years and counting.

————————————————————————————————————————

* “WHAT ABOUT STAR WARS, EPISODE I/IV?!?!” you scream. I’m sorry, it simply does not make this list. Go ahead, watch it again. I’ll wait.

...

You back? Why do you look so disappointed? Oh right! Your nostalgia was the only thing propping up your memories of what is, at best, a D+ movie. You are mad at me for saying this, but deep down (or maybe not that deep down) you know that I’m right.

** Another game, called Tales of the Arabian Nights, is probably tied with Cosmic for first place. But that discussion is for another time.

Got Beans?

Think back to when you were a kid. What did you want to be when you grew up? My guess is that none of you wanted to be bean farmers. Not that there is anything wrong with being a bean farmer, but it just doesn't have the same appeal as being an astronaut, the president, a firefighter, or mid-level business professional who has already reached his glass ceiling and is just waiting to retire and die (don't judge!). Nope, bean farming just isn't sexy. Sorry.

One of the beautiful aspects of gaming is that it allows you to be something you aren't, do something interesting, momentous, exciting, or just simply different. You can be pharaoh, building your legacy out of gold and stone, expand your financial empire as a 19th century industrialist, pilot an X-Wing, taking on two Tie-Fighters at once (and living to tell about it), or head a ruthless alien race, destroying your piteous neighbors like some sort of galactic juggernaut. With games like these, why would anyone bother with bean farming? Well, Bohnanza may just change your mind.

In Bohnanza, you are all bean farmers trying to plant sets of like-typed beans, harvesting them, and turning them into gold. Honestly, even this sounds boring. But what I didn't tell you is that you can't rearrange your hand, which acts as a substantial roadblock to your beautifully laid plans. To get around this, you must work with your opponents, wheel and deal with them, in order to cultivate a productive bean farm. Through the course of the game, loose alliances are formed, promises are made and broken at a dizzying rate, and grudges evolve into open hostilities, where you shift your focus from trying to win the game to BURNING YOUR NEIGHBORS' FARMS TO THE GROUND!

---

Sorry, got a little carried away... What smoke? Oh, never mind that. It's probably just my neighbor having a barbecue... with the fire department. Umm... Let's keep talking about Bohnanza! A turn is broken into three phases: planting, market, and drawing cards.

Phase 1

You start by planting the first bean in your queued hand. This may involve ripping up one of your fields, which may be a real bummer because you start the game with only two available* (you can buy a third later). Then, you MAY plant the second bean from your hand. There you go. Phase one is complete. Pretty straightforward.

Phase 3

For the purposes of saving the best for last, let's talk about the third phase. You draw three cards, which get put into the back of your hand. This is where I tell players that this the ONLY time cards come into your hand. Cards attained by any other means are to be planted.

Phase 2

Phase two! This is where Bohnanza really shines. Flip over two cards from the draw pile. I call this the market. You can plant, trade or donate these beans. There are really only 3 rules (one that I slightly modified) that everyone must follow, but other than that, you are free to wheel and deal (and BURN) to your little heart's content:

1. Once the dust settles, any cards in front of you must be planted. You can do so in any order, but you must follow the usual planting rules.*
2. All trades must be directly with the active player, or brokered by the active player.**
3. Planted cards cannot be traded. Cards in the market and cards in your hand are free to be traded.

And that's it! You know how to play Bohnanza! If this game is any indication, it's that theme isn't everything. Rather, what IS important is the space the game creates in which players can operate. You want a game in which you can outwit your opponent with your cleverness and cunning? Try a heavyweight Euro. Would you like to turn up the intensity dial up to a "ten"? Maybe try Pandemic. Want to vacillate between boredom and frustration? Try Dominion. Want a knock-down, drag-out fight with your opponents that will make you whine, beg and laugh more than you did all last month? Try Bohnanza. You'll be glad you did.

I hope this game inspires a new generation of bean farmers, maybe with less of a proclivity to commit arson.

---

Yay, footnotes!

*This is a rule that gets everyone confused, so I'll try to make sense of it here. You have two fields. If both fields have 2+ beans planted in each, you can pick either to rip up. Same goes for the person who has 1 or 0 beans planted in each field. The gotcha is when you have one field with 1 bean, and the other field has 2+ beans. In that case, you must rip up your 2+ field. This prevents someone from having a junker field that is being constantly ripped up, while having a nicely pruned, mature field right next to it. Aren't rules fun?

**Okay, so this is where I explain my homebrew rule. Technically, players may not indirectly trade with one another through the active player, who acts as the broker. This results in a purely hub and spoke trade situation, which can be a little boring. BUT if you allow for players to indirectly trade with one another, through the use of the active player/broker, things get a lot more chaotic and engagement soars through the roof, which is what I think this game is all about.***

***Yes, this is a footnote about a footnote. So, even though I will take full credit for this amazing house rule, I do have to be honest in that I came across it by accident. I read the rule wrong and had been inadvertently been playing this version of the game for quite some time. It was only much later, upon re-reading the rules, that I found out that we had been playing it "wrong". We then tried playing by the official rule, but we found it to be kind of dull compared to our house rule, so we switched back.

On the Topic of Buttcracks...

Why would I talk about anything other than buttcracks for this blog’s second entry? Well, one might surmise that I may have chosen to tackle my list of topics in order of importance. You may be more right than you think…

A couple of years ago, when I was new to the board game hobby, a friend showed me this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link (or don’t want to leave the enlightened sanctuary that is this blog - I don’t blame you), the page contains a series of pictures with a man posing behind Magic: The Gathering (MTG) players whose buttcracks are hanging out for all to see. Unfortunately, the venue seems to only have your run-of-the-mill folding chairs, with their built-in buttcrack viewing windows.

My initial reaction was, as you can expect, pure glee. Did these guys know? Even so, would they have cared? It was only later, when I tried to answer these questions, that the darker implications began to emerge.

The board game hobby has an image problem. Straight and simple. This problem is sufficiently prevalent that a meta-hobby has emerged within the board game community: evangelization. You may not have noticed it before, but now you will. Countless forums, blogs, and videos have been dedicated to getting new people into our hobby. Although the content creators may not be aware of it, they are fighting an uphill battle, trying to convince outsiders that we aren’t all socially awkward, hyper-competitive, middle-aged men living in our mom’s basement. In actuality, participants within the board game hobby are incredibly, wonderfully diverse. We are women and men who are young, old, married, single, competitive and casual gamers. But the stereotype is never as interesting as reality. It never is.

My solution? Get out there and show that we’re boringly normal people who happen to have a pretty cool hobby. And maybe wear a belt.

Why Board Games?

I debated whether or not to have this as my first topic. While it does seem to be an appropriate starting point for a blog like this, my assumption is that the few readers that find themselves in the dark corner of the internet that is this page will need no introduction or sales pitch, since they, like myself, are scouring the web for anything cardboard-related, that can temporarily scratch their ever-growing itch.
 

So, maybe it would prove more beneficial to tailor this post to my most likely audience: gaming addicts. Let’s use this as a PSA against the idea of board gaming. I care about your well-being, after all, and should therefore dissuade you from feeding/forming this addiction in which you have become so sadly afflicted.

Reasons to Avoid Board Games:

•You have to interact with other human beings… for hours at a time. As a millennial, I know how difficult co-locating can be (there’s a reason why multiplayer video games no longer support split-screen). There’s the logistics of it all, the inability to mute the other players, and the pervasive odor (Where is that coming from?). It’s all unpleasant and decidedly “uncool,” according to my reputable sources.

•Games are for kids. Acceptable grownup interests include: current events, investments, politics, arguing about politics, judging others (see: politics), and cultivating a general sense of worry. Kids just don’t know what they’re missing.

•Games are also for geeks and nerds (don’t mistake the two). These losers are located in the lower echelons of our society, just above those with pink eye and crazy cat ladies (What’s the lowest social strata, you ask? Crazy cat ladies who also happen to have pink eye, of course. Can cats catch pink eye?). And don’t be fooled by what appears to be a reemergence of geek culture in wider society. Look closely- it’s actually just a bunch of hipsters in disguise. Their skinny jeans give them away.

Anyone left? Oh good, you’re still here. Still not convinced that board gaming is the absolute worst, despite the compelling arguments I laid out for you above? Well, don’t say that I didn’t warn you…