Humans are bad at randomness. That’s just a fact. The most salient example I can think of is that Apple had to make their shuffle feature less random on their early generations of iPods because of complaints that the randomization of songs didn’t feel random enough. It feels ironic that in order to make the playlist ‘feel’ more random, they actually had to make it less.
To take this a step further, video game developers have been ‘fudging’ the numbers for a long time. There are often hidden values and design tricks that are utilized to make the player feel like they’re successful, or to encourage more ‘barely survived’ moments, or to make the game feel more fair. Things like, the last portion of your health is actually much more than it appears to be in the health bar, or the first or last shots will always miss you, or in Civilization there is a value that keeps track of your combat losses, and will make your odds of winning your next combat slightly higher, to prevent a constant string of losses.
All these tricks make games feel more fun. In tabletop role-playing games, some DM/GMs will opt not to keep track of enemy hit points, but to just do what feels narratively best. If a player risked it all and did something awesome and pulled off the roll, then that’s the killing blow. So much more satisfying than a rogue who scratches the dragon’s toe that just so happens to be the final point of health. If a party is beating the hell of a boss that should be much more difficult (due to narrative importance), a DM can just, extend their HP until they feel the foe has served its purpose. There’s a whole discussion to be had about tabletop role-playing games about which is more important, mechanics or narrative, but I’m not equipped to facilitate that discussion.
All of these examples are ways that designers tweak systems to make games feel epic. The stories that we remember, well after the game session has ended, the memories that bring smiles to our faces when we reflect on these experiences, and the memories that keep bringing us back to games.
It brings to mind a question then, how can you create the awesome narrative moments, squeezing out a victory when all odds were stacked against you, in a board game? The very nature of a board game demands transparency. You can’t obfuscate the stakes when the players are also responsible for maintaining the system. The most obvious example I can think of come in the form of competition between players. There have been a few moments in board games where a clutch roll of the dice is the difference between victory and defeat. “The only way you can beat me, is if you roll four 6’s on this turn.”
“Damnit!”
But what about cooperative games? I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth and the balance of some of the missions feels off. One mission had flat out running through a cave, only for us to take the wrong fork at the end, and need to backtrack, but didn’t have enough time to do so. I think back to that mission and I actually can’t think of anything that we really could have done better, other than to have taken the correct fork at the end. Other missions we succeed with more than half of the remaining time. Neither of those scenarios feels good.
The best cooperative experiences are the ones that have you succeed by the skin of your teeth. I’m amazed at just how often I’ve won a game of Matt Leacock’s Pandemic on the last possible turn, or, in Tim Fower’s Burgle Bros, having a 50-50 shot of the last guard moving into my path and catching me red-handed just before I escape. Those moments are exciting, even when we lose, we loudly proclaim just how close to winning we were.
“Better luck next time, coppers!”
I know a lot of time, effort, and playtesting goes into modern board games and tweaking the balance to make it feel just right is a difficult challenge. Finding that sweet spot between a deterministic puzzle, and a random luck fest, is a feat in it’s own right. Generally a balance of randomness, and how much information a player has before they make their decisions seems to be key. In Now Boarding, players know where their passengers are spawning in from, but don’t see their destinations until the 15 second real time phase begins. You might have a perfect plan, but as soon as those cards flip up, you might just need to throw your plans to the wind. Having that imperfect information prevents players from ‘solving’ the game before the real-time phase begins. I suppse that is what seperates a game from a puzzle.
So what are the games that feel the most tense to you? What are your favourite cooperative games, and what is it about them that makes your heart sing? Let me know in the comments below!
I don’t own many train games. I never considered myself to be the kind of person who is enamoured with large vehicles like tanks, ships, or trains. But then in 2020, I discovered a game called Train Valley 2, and suddenly, I was hooked. 200 hours of gameplay later, I had 5 starred every level and my partner was making fun of my mid-life love of train awakening. Now when I see trains (which, to be fair, is incredibly infrequent due to the fact that I live on an island with no functioning rail system), I can’t deny I feel an excitement in my chest.
With that excitement in my chest, I find myself staring longingly at board games that feature gorgeous trains on the cover. Ultimate Railroads, Age of Steam, and the Iron Railseries to just name a few. So when Switch & Signal popped up for sale, I just couldn’t say no! After all, I barely own any train games!
How to Play
Switch & Signal is a cooperative game in which you are tasked with corralling speeding trains from their points of origin to cities to collect goods, then to the port to deliver the good. The board contains 4 different cities, each producing 2 goods of the associated colour, and 11 points around the board in which a train might appear. Players win if they can deliver all the goods to the port, but lose if you run out of departure cards.
The game starts with 8 signal discs and 26 switch discs on the board. At least one signal disc must be on each city at all times, leaving you with 4 extra signal discs to deploy as you wish. The switch discs mark which direction a train will move at any junction. All 9 trains start in the depot on the side of the board at the start of the game, and will be deployed as the game wears on.
Players are dealt 5 action cards, of which there are 3 different kinds. Signal setting, switch setting, and train movement. A turn always starts with a Departure card being drawn, which will either spawn a train and/or move all the trains of a colour on the board. The location in which a train spawns depends on the deployment dice, two little cubes that will ruin your day. Roll two dice, and place the train on the location matching the sum of those dice. Train movement is similar, in that it’s controlled by a cube that hates your guts. You roll the same coloured die for each train on the board, and move that train that number of spaces.
A train can only move through a signal location if the signal is green. If a train reaches a junction, it must move through the open route. Should your train run into a red light, you lose time tokens. If a train runs into another train’s rear, you lose time tokens. If two trains collide head on, you lose time tokens and the moving train is removed from the map. If you can’t deploy a train because a train already exists on that location, you lose time tokens.
So I just talked about time tokens a bunch, but what the heck are they? At the start of the game, there are 7 time tokens on the board. If you ever run out, you discard one of the departure cards to the box, then refill your time tokens. If you run out of departure cards, you lose the game.
Anyway, with train deployment out of the way, you’re finally able to take your turn. Playing a signal setting card allows you to move a single green disc, opening a new path for trains to travel, while closing the path left behind. Similarly, playing a switch setting card allows you to move a single switch disc, changing a direction a train would travel when it reaches that junction. The Train Movement card allows you to pick a single train and roll its die, moving it along the track. You can also discard two cards to do any of those three actions of your choice.
When you’re done your turn, you draw 5 cards, then the next player can take their turn, starting with drawing and resolving a departure card. Play continues until you win or lose!
Review
Switch & Signal starts slow. With 3 trains on the board (one of each colour), and no movement on turn one, you can almost hear the gears of the system creak and groan as the game slowly inches forward to leave the station. Players are tasked with picking up goods from the hub cities, and delivering them to the port. It’s pretty easy to get the first train to that city by adjusting the signals and switches as necessary.
By the third or fourth turn, things start to become a bit dramatic. A few more trains have spawned, perhaps a pair of trains have moved somewhat unexpectedly, and while your primary goal may be still to deliver that first good you picked up, a bottleneck is starting to develop. Two trains are approaching the same junction from different directions, and you don’t have enough signals to allow everything to move. The engine has built up speed now.
Plans will get changed, losses will get cut. You’ll deliver empty trains to the port just to get them off the board, you’ll risk collisions, hoping that a train only moves one or two spaces, so it comes to rest just behind the train waiting for a signal change before it can move into a city. You’ll juggle switches and signals, closing paths the moment a train crosses the threshold because that signal resource is required elsewhere. Everything is moving too fast now, and you’ll desperately lean on the brakes, lest everything crashes in a spectacularly horrible fashion.
Just as the bottlenecks get cleared, and the start to trains flow down a single track, the game will approach its end. The departure deck will be nearly empty, and you’ll need to step on the gas and take risks to get your trains delivered in time. Maybe that train you delivered empty in round 5 when you had too much on your plate means you just won’t have enough trains to deliver all the goods. Maybe if you had rolled a 10 instead of a 4 when deploying that last train, it would have been on the right side of the board, and you could have secured your victory. Alas, that’s the game.
Cooperative games have some unique challenges to overcome, like, how to avoid being a perfectly solvable puzzle, while not being totally and completely random. How to balance long term projects against short term goals. How to give players agency when their friends are bossing them around. I feel like Switch & Signal does a good job in offering competing objectives. It’s tempting to direct an empty train to the port city, instead of having it cross the entire country to get to a goods city, then back again. But when unexpected things happen, like a train failing to deploy because you left one train in a station somewhere, You’ll be glad you have a backup plan. Unless that backup plan is a black train barrelling down the tracks faster than you can keep up, and now it’s on a collision course with the plodding grey train!
Switch & Signal isn’t a complex or difficult game. After a handful of plays, you’ll know the basic strategies that should lead you to victory. If you happen to find yourself in a good position early in the game, then it behooves you to pass early and take extra cards into your hand. Once your hand is full of 10 cards, you’ll pretty much always be able to do anything you want to. With only 3 card types, the odds are that you’ll have at least 2 of each action, and, if you have a surplus of one type of action, discarding two literally lets you do whatever you want. I appreciate the flexibility, but once your hand of cards is full, the game is just to mitigate your luck.
Switch & Signal includes two maps to switch up your gameplay experience, but the level of discovery in this game is low. I do like that you can randomize the stations, so you don’t always have trains flowing in from the north, or, if you just hate the deployment dice, can use cardboard chits to randomize the train deployments. But the game is the same every time. I would love to see some expansions for Switch & Signal, just to shake up the experience a little bit.
I’ve mostly played Switch & Signal solo, which has been a really enjoyable experience. It’s fast to play, and the tensions I feel mid-game when I’m corralling several trains simultaneously is exciting. There’s a lot of luck, as all the train deployments and movements are decided by dice. “If only my grey dice rolled anything than a 3 this round!” or, “Deploy this black train to anything higher than a 4”, then rolling a 2 can leave you a bit disheartened. But overcoming these calculated risks is what makes the game fun. Including other players doesn’t change the game at all, other than each player has their own hand of cards.
Overall, Switch & Signal is a fast, fun, and easy to play cooperative game, with some lovely little train toys to play with. I like lighthearted games that give me space to just laugh and have fun with my friends. There’s a lot of luck, there’s a lot of flexibility, and there’s not much variability. Switch & Signal is a great game to use to introduce others into the wonderful world of cooperative games, or, to lull them into a false sense of security in thinking train-themed games are light and breezy, then suggest playing a cutthroat game like Age of Steam.
The risk I took was calculated. But man, I am bad at math
Good morning, it’s Valentine’s Day (actually the evening of Feb 13, 2023 as I write this) and I feel obligated to talk about Fog of Love.
Fog of Love by Jacob Jaskov and currently published by Floodgate Games but originally published by Hush Hush Projects, is a 2 player role-playing game. You and your partner will create and play as two characters who meet, fall in love, and try to complete your own hidden objectives, which may end with a happily ever after, or, a tragic break-up.
How to Play
The main board in Fog of Love is a stark white colour with two sections along the sides for each player to create their character, and track their satisfaction. The centre of the board features 6 colourful personality traits that will track how a player develops over the course of the game. Each player is given 5 trait cards and choose to keep 3, forming the bedrock of their personality, and will provide some satisfaction if your trait goals are realized by the end of the game. An occupation card for each character adds a bit more flavour, then players introduce each other by playing a few feature cards for their partner, representing the aspects that first attracted each player to the other.
Great, setup is completed. During the setup, as you reveal features and occupations, you’re encouraged to start role-playing. Tell each other what you noticed about each other. As you place those cards in your character slots, you also place your personality tokens on the colourful personality traits. The board offers suggestions to what these traits mean, like having a high curiosity score means you’re curious, creative, and unconventional, while having a low curiosity score means you’re close-minded, prosaic, or conventional.
Fog of Love contains 4 scenarios that will set up the story and guide it through its arcs. There are expansion packs if you want more variety in the stories, but honestly, the variety comes from you and your partner. It’s up to you to make this narrative tense and exciting! Swapping occupations and traits, embodying your favourite sitcom characters, is much more interesting than a new story framework.
Like most romantic comedies, the first act is filled with the feel-good, exciting scenes. Going to a masquerade party together, or pulling your partner into a fortune-tellers’ booth. The events give players a prompt, and it’s up to the players to role-play and use their improv skills to weave a narrative. The scene cards generally explain what to do, most often, they offer a multiple choice. You hold the scene card in your hand and describe the situation to your partner, then tell them what their choices are. One or both players place their chosen answer in the centre of the board, then reveal their answers, filling out the rest of the scene on their own. The choices will generally have you place more tokens on the personality trait sections of the board and/or affect your and your partners’ satisfaction levels.
As the game goes on and scene by scene gets completed, the story continues in the form of chapters. After a number of scenes have been completed, you flip a chapter card, resolve the effect, and draw new cards from the serious and the drama decks. These cards depict dramatic situations that will put your newly formed relationship to the test. Switching Jobs, affairs, and surprising reveals are all potential scenes in your romantic comedy. In addition to these new scenes, you’ll also be winnowing your destiny deck, which represents your end-game goal. Perhaps you realize that being equal partners is unachievable with a partner who’s so undisciplined, so you discard that destiny and start working toward the goal of self-realization. Once all the chapters are completed, each player reveals their destiny, and the player(s) who have fulfilled their destiny have ‘won’ the game!
Review
I’ll be upfront and say that I’ve only played Fog of Love twice, both times with my partner. The first time, we were able to submerge ourselves in the storytelling and acting portion of the game, making up wild stories based off the prompts the game provided. I was a baker with odd socks and bedroom eyes (whatever that means), while she was a slow-speaking athlete with perfect teeth and worn out jewellery. Back and forth, we played scenes and spun a tale that ended with both of us fulfilling our destiny and living happily ever after.
I had middling feelings about the game itself, but my partner really enjoyed it, and said she’d like to play it again soon. The overall experience was enjoyable enough that I kept Fog of Love in my collection, surviving the upcoming purges and trades that the year would bring.
Our second play was exactly one year later. This time, it fell flat. Perhaps we were both tired that evening, or maybe it was just the wrong pick for the night, but the creative juices just weren’t flowing, and if one or both partners aren’t able to keep up the improv, Fog of Love turns into a hedgehog. A prickly game of little rules with a soft underbelly, and an adorable face.
Fog of Love requires what I call an ‘above the board’ attitude. The fun of the game occurs between the players, the actual mechanics of the game itself is mediocre, bordering on frustrating. The personal traits that you keep hidden can be at odds with the features your partner chooses for you. Trying to work in your sense of justice and get a high sincerity score is impossible when your partner’s goals are directly opposite to yours. Narratively, some couples just aren’t meant to end up together, but from a gameplay perspective, it’s frustrating to play scene after scene only to have your partner wipe out the progress you make on your turn. Bitterness and resentment forms as you struggle to make your partner bend to your goals. At some point you start to eye those other destiny cards, the ones that focus on your own satisfaction, eschewing your partner’s desires. Maybe you just can’t see how you can ever make this work, and decide you’re breaking up with them. Maybe more like a real relationship than I initially gave it credit for.
If you are mechanical minded and come to board games for interesting rulesets and elegant designs, this will leave you wanting. Instead, if you’re hyper and excited, you’ll have a great time just making stuff up just to make your partner laugh. If you like to tell stories, Fog of Love gives you a framework and prompts to do so. But as a board game, with all its rules and seeing who comes out a winner, it’s lacking.
The tutorial for Fog of Love is excellent, it eases you into playing the game and what all the decks of cards are meant to do, and how and why you’re tracking all of your character stats. It’s unique and makes a great first impression. If you and your partner hit your groove, you’ll likely walk away with a smile on your face. And that’s the charm! Not everyone wants to learn a whole new game every Friday night; just how many farming games can one brain sustain!? Fog of Love mixes up the play we’re used to, encourages board gamers to flex the creative muscles and ham it up with one another. As the story goes on, serious and dramatic scenes steal the energy away. Even though we both are acting, and we know we’re playing a game, I never want to even pretend that either of us would be unfaithful. Some of the event cards that come up that can trigger some baggage in your past, that can sour your experience. That said, no one is forcing you to play uncomfortable cards. Toss them across the room and focus your attention on what makes you happy.
There’s a delicate balance in Fog of Love. It’s trying to both be a game with mechanics and a score, as well as be a role-playing experience. I’m glad we played it, it showed me that my partner and I enjoy embodying characters and improv and gave us a real high experience. Once that was established, the game mechanics pulled us back down. The goal of ‘winning’ by achieving our destinies had us sabotage our relationship and left us deflated. Fog of Love isn’t for us anymore, if we want to be creative, we’ll do something that allows us to flex our creative muscles unhindered. If we want to play a game, we’ll play a game that really focuses on what makes games fun for us. I know this is the point, designer Jacob Jaskov says the point of Fog of Love was to fill the void of romantic games that would draw his romantic comedy loving partner into his hobby. I applaud Jacob, he’s designed a unique experience in Fog of Love. But ultimately, it doesn’t do either of it’s two roles well for me to fall in love with it.
Do you have control issues? Does the idea of relying on others to achieve your goals make your skin crawl? Are you the type of person who detests group projects and ends up doing everything because your teammates won’t do their portion of the work up to your level of expectations? Well, have I got a game for you!
Quirky Circuits by designer Nikki Valens and published by Plaid Hat Games is a cooperative action programming game for 2 – 4 players, and each mission plays in about 15 to 30 minutes. Quirky Circuits boasts 21 scenarios across 4 different characters to test your mental mettle and optimization skills. Each scenario will offer different objectives, from cleaning house while avoiding vases, to preparing and delivering sushi to hungry customers.
Released in 2019, Quirky Circuits sports an adorable calico on the box atop a roomba, chasing down a dust bunny as chaos reigns in the background. The cover and art by Danalyn Reyes is bright and colourful through the production. With 4 different characters, each sporting their own deck of action cards, depicting how the character is performing the action on the card. There’s charm and cuteness throughout the entire production that is sure to attract anyone passing by your table.
To play Quirky Circuits, all players told the only communications allowed are ‘BEEP BOOP”, and then are dealt an equal number of action cards. Players play their cards face down into a queue along the bottom of the board and after each player has played at least one card, they can indicate their intention of being ‘done’ by placing their hands flat on the table and passive-aggressively spew beeps and boops at the players who are needlessly pushing fate.
Once all players have agreed to end the round, the queue of actions is flipped up and executed. Once the command has been entered, there is no going back! After the queue has been exhausted, the cards are swept up, shuffled, and redistributed. The battery marker that acts as the game timer depletes by a single stage, and players continue on their quest.
Quirky Circuits is the kind of game that makes you assess why you’re coming to the gaming table. If the goal of the game is to win, making sure everyone is on the same page with priorities and strategies prior to playing is essential, as conflicting priorities will literally spin your character around in circles. If your goal is to have fun, then removing that fog of war also leaks the fun out of the game. I’d argue a perfectly played game is just an exercise in sorting cards. Yes, winning feels good, but overcoming the puzzle against all odds is immensely satisfying, and even losing in a spectacular fashion is more fun than following a pre-determined strategy and winning every-time.
The chaos and silliness is the beating heart of Quirky Circuits. We played a game where we were on the precipice of winning. It was the final turn possible, everyone played all their cards. By some stroke of luck, we sucked up the final dust bunny and were headed for home. We narrowly made it back to the spot adjacent to the final square. All that was left was to turn left, then move forward a single space. We flipped the second last card, it was a turn right. With dejected and heavy hearts, we flipped the final card, which was a move backwards. Elated, we threw our hands in the air, celebrating and laughing at our stroke of luck! The joy and full bellied laughter was an experience that most games can’t even come close to.
I’ve played a few other limited communication cooperative games, The Mind by Wolfgang Warsch, Magic Maze by Kasper Lapp, and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by Thomas Sing are all games that I’ve enjoyed in the past. All feature limited communication, and share the same core joy of overcoming the puzzle through telekinesis, or pure luck. Where Quirky Circuits stands above these other titans is in its emergent narrative. Like, one time we had Gizmo move past a post that held a vase, leaving it unscathed. The next few cards had Gizmo backup, turn to face the vase, backed up a square, and RAN at the pillar, sending the vase crashing to the floor. Then, turning and continue on it’s original path. The story in our heads became Gizmo waltzed by the unscathed vase, then backed up saying “NOT ON MY WATCH, BUCKO!”. And it’s these stories and experiences that will stick in our minds and hearts, not an immaculate win rate.
If you want to hear me read this post out loud, you can listen to my Whatcha Been Playing Wednesday segment on Cardboard Conjecture podcast!
Introduction
Civilization building games aren’t something that I explicitly seek out. I’ve played a small amount of Sid Mayer’s Civilization (mostly Civ 4 and 5), and I’ve played dozens of games of Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization on both Board Game Arena and on the Android app. Those two games capture the civilization building gameplay so well, I feel satisfied. I’m never seeking new experiences because that quota has been filled.
Nations, designed by Rustan Håkansson, Nina Håkansson, Einar Rosén, and Robert Rosén, and published by Lautapelit.fi in 2013, is a card based civilization game for 1 – 5 players. In Nations, you’ll take control of a civilization and lead them from the age of antiquity all the way through the industrial revolution.
How to Play
In Nations, you’ll need to balance improving your infrastructure (by purchasing building and military technologies, and employing your citizens on them), with the stability of your nation, and your military might. Completing wonders, hiring advisors, and claiming colonies will provide persistent benefits over the course of the game that could give you the edge. Wars and famine on the other hand threaten to steal away your resources, costing you precious victory points if you end up in a deficit of any resource.
While there’s no direct conflict, there are lots of points to interact with each other. On the Progress board, where all the cards come out, taking the precious cards before others can get to them is an important aspect, as is hiring the limited number of architects to complete your wonders. Whoever has military supremacy gets to go first each round, and should anyone declare war, each other player needs to meet or exceed the might threshold that the warmongering player was at when they declared the war, lest they suffer the ill effects. A way to offset those effects is to maintain your stability, a stable nation is able to weather the effects of the war, for every point of stability a nation has, they lose one item less during a lost war. Every player who lost the war will lose a single victory point, regardless of its stability.
Players take turns preforming a single action during their turn (take cards from the progress board, deploy workers, hire an architect, or pass) until all players have passed. At the end of every round, players produce all the goods from their workers (depending on which technologies they’ve been deployed to), the player order is adjusted, war is resolved, and two historical events happen. Generally, these events involve giving boons to the player with the most of a certain resource (often stability), and a detriment to the player with the least of something (often stability). Ties in this regard are as unfriendly as you can imagine, if you’re tied for ‘most’, no one gets the benefit, and if you’re tied for least, all tied players get the punishment. Finally, a famine happens, in which all players need to discard some amount of food (revealed at the start of the round).
Every two rounds, there’s a ‘book’ scoring, in which each player earns a single point for every other player that they have more book points than. Then, the world progresses into the next age. After 4 ages, the game comes to an end. You’ll earn points for the colonies and wonders you’ve claimed, points for workers on technologies, and for all the excess resources you’ve accrued (1 point for 10 resources, a really terrible trade). Scores in Nations are MUCH lower than other Civ games, the average score is ~35 points.
Review
I think every review and how to play summary I read or watched of Nations before playing said something along the lines of “It’s kind of like a lighter Through the Ages”, which isn’t wrong. Both are card based civilization games. Naturally, games with similar themes and mechanics will get compared against each other. Nations feels lighter and faster than Through the Ages, but not by very much. I will concede that Nations was easier to play, less fiddly than TtA. But in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve only played Through the Ages physically once. During that play I found all the movement of cubes and cylinders and discs back and forth tedious. Nations does a bit better, in that you can only do one thing per turn. You don’t get to the end of a 6-step progress, only to realize you’re a single resource short and need to walk back your entire turn. I enjoy the turn structure in Nations; it creates tension as you need to prioritize what you’ll take with your first action and hope that the second thing you wanted will still be there when the turn comes back around to you.
The iconography in Nations was a bit confusing. Red is good, while black was negative (every accountant just shook their heads in despair). Circle icons only produce at the end of the round, while square icons take effect immediately. Once a player has passed, they’re out of the round. This can allow you to posture yourself as a peaceful, stable nation until your neighbours have passed, then move all your stable government workers into chariot positions, ratchet up your military and declare war in the last moments. Provided there’s a war on the Progress board that you can afford, and no war has already been declared.
Unlike Through the Ages, you won’t see every card in every game, and, there seems to be a much wider variety of cards. With 7 different types of cards in the game, and only a maximum 15 cards coming out every round (in a 3 player game), there’s a chance the card type you’re wanting isn’t going to show itself, or, if it does, doesn’t fit in your strategy well. Sure, the Samurai are powerful warriors, but they have a production cost of -1 gold. If you were already pinched for gold, and they were the only military card that came out that round, you might just be up the creek without a katana.
It’s common in Nations to feel a bit starved for resources, especially if a player is being a warmonger. Other players are forced to commit their few workers to keeping up with you in military might, or, keep their stability quite high to offset the cost of those wars. Coupled with famine sucking away your food stores, it can be hard to get ahead in all the different resources. Instead, you may find yourself sucking up the cost of redeploying your workers every round to cover any shortfalls that the round is introducing. It’s tough, but rewarding when you manage to have 11 grain and can move every employee into the mines for a few rounds.
One thing that really impressed me was a tiny touch, every card had a date and a place, showing when and where the item or person depicted on the card was representing. Augustus, 63BCE – 14CE, Roman Republic, the Hanging Gardens, 600BCE, Babylon. Marie Antoinette, 1755 – 1793, France. It felt great having that little historical anchor in this civilization game. Of course, some will complain that it’s not realistic, having Augustus lead a legion of Samurai into the Hundred Years War. And my retort to that complaint is that Augustus would never have fit on a card either, so, whatever!
A disappointment in Nations, is the art and graphic design is pretty dreadful. It’s the kind of art that I would expect to see on someone’s refrigerator. I feel hypocritical saying so, as my art skills are pretty much nonexistent. And maybe I’m spoiled by all the beautiful games that have come out in the last 10 years, but Nations is an eyesore. I would love to see a modernized version of this game be produced with colourful artwork, because I really did enjoy it! Nations was smooth to play, and while the rules were a little hard to wrap my head around, we all agreed that it was quite good! Streamlined and engaging, tense, and exciting. We thoroughly enjoyed playing Nations, and agreed that we absolutely would bring it back to the table soon, especially since Otter missed out on playing this game, and we think he would really enjoy it.
If you have Nations, sitting unplayed on your shelf, and you enjoy games like Through the Ages, but find them just a little too tedious or fiddly to play much, I highly recommend getting Nations to the table. And heck, if you enjoy Nations, but it’s fallen to the wayside in favour of much brighter, flashier, and newer games, this is your reminder that just because a game was published in 2013, doesn’t mean it’s not exciting or interesting. Get Nations back out and make your civilization stand head and shoulders above the rest!
Age of Steam (2002) by John Bohrer and Martin Wallace has a long and storied history, but I’m not privy to the details. The game has been reimplemented by Railways of the World and by Steam: Rails to Riches. There was also a lengthy legal battle between Martin Wallace and John Bohrer as to who owned the trademark for Age of Steam that seems to be resolved now to both Bohrer’s and Marin’s satisfaction.
But let’s not talk about that part of history, let’s talk about the actual game. Age of Steam is a train game in which you and your opponents are trying to develop your train company and delivering goods in the longest way possible. Efficiency will not be rewarded on the free market.
Gameplay begins with players selling shares of their company into the ether. You earn $5 per share you sell, but you’ll need to pay one $1 for every share you’ve sold per round for the rest of the game. You can sell as many or as few shares as you want, but just be aware that you’ll be paying for it every round.
After selling shares, players bid for turn order. It’s a classic rotating bid where players either up the ante, or pass. The first player to pass doesn’t have to pay anything, they get the privilege of going last for free. The final two players will need to pay their full bid, regardless of who actually wins the bid, and all other players will need to pay half their bid rounded up. Around and around players bid until the player order is decided. This is the first point where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You lost first place because you ran out of cash, why didn’t you sell more shares??
Once player order has been chosen, players then choose a special bonus for the round. Only one player can choose each action, which makes the player order fairly consequential. The actions are as follows:
First move – the player who chooses first move will get to move a good first, regardless of player order
First build – just like first move, but with the build action
Engineer – Allows the player to build 4 items instead of the usual 3
Locomotive – Moves the player’s link disk up the engine track one space. This allows goods to travel over more stops, and will earn more money in the end.
Urbanization – Allows the player to place a new city on the board, creating a new hub for goods to be delivered to, and possibly spawn from
Production – Allows the player to put two goods cubes back onto the production board, which may have them be placed onto a city during the production phase
Turn Order (pass) – Allows the player to pass once during the next bidding phase.
Every action has the potential to be useless, or, extremely important, depending on the current state of the game. If only you sold more shares, so you could go first and get your pick of the actions
Once all the actions have been selected, the build phase begins. Players can build up to 3 railway tiles leading out from any city. If they connect to another town or city, they own that rail link for the rest of the game. If the rail link just ends in the middle of nowhere, they’ll need to progress it during the next round, or they’ll forfeit ownership of that line, possibly letting someone else claim ownership. This is the second step where you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. You don’t have enough money to build what you want to build! Why didn’t you sell more shares??
After everyone has built, the move goods phase starts. Players take a turn moving a cube from a city, over rail links, until the cube arrives at a city of the matching colour. Every town or city the cube moves through is a new link, and when the cube is delivered, the player earns perpetual income based on how many rail links the cube passed over. Players are limited by their Engine track, which at the start of the game, is only 1, so direct sales only. But as the game goes on and players improve their engines to 5 or 6, a cube can snake through the entire board before landing at its destination, netting the player 5 or 6 income points. And here’s the hook, players don’t have to use their own rail links, you can move a cube over someone else’s rail line. But the player who owns the line will earn the money for that stretch of the journey. For example, if I move a cube over two of my links, then over two of Bigfoot’s rail links, and finally, over one of my own to deliver the cube to a city, I’ll earn 3 income, and Bigfoot will earn 2.
After the goods have been delivered, all players collect their income, based on their location on the income track, then debts come due. For every share you’ve sold, pay $1. For every space on the engine track, pay another $1. This is the third time this round you’ll regret the number of shares you sold. Why did you have to sell so many??
Then, taxes show up. If your income is over 10, it gets pulled back 2 spaces. If the income is over 20, it gets pulled back 4 spaces. This forces players to be cognizant of the growth of their company. It can also lead to a player giving another player a single income space to put them over the threshold of the next tax bracket, pushing them further down the income track.
Finally, dice a rolled and goods are re-seeded onto the board. At the start of the game, goods will be flying out, but by the end, if no one took the production action, players will be scrapping to deliver the last few, possibly unprofitable goods.
And that’s the game! Play continues round after round, regret after regret until after a specific number of rounds (depends on the player count), the game comes to an end. Players earn 3 points per space on the income track, plus one point for every track tile they’ve placed. Players also lose 3 points per share they sold throughout the game.
I quite enjoyed playing Age of Steam, it was tense, interactive, and at times, cutthroat. This was all of our first time playing, so we definitely missed out on some efficiencies. There were a couple of times when we were scratching our heads wondering why someone would ever do something, like take the pass action. Then a few rounds later, had a lightbulb moment where we realized just how powerful that action can be. I think Age of Steam would really shine if we played a few more times, the nuance of track design and understanding how to utilize the towns wasn’t obvious during our first play, I can absolutely see the potential for mastery here.
The first two rounds are tense and tricky as you’re playing with a deficit. You don’t have the ability to increase your income track to break even, let alone earn a profit, forcing you to sell shares next round. Around turn 4 things pivot where suddenly cash is flowing in, and skipping a move good phase to increase your locomotive starts to make sense. It’s mildly painful to make that choice though, do you deliver a 2 link good now, or upgrade, so you can deliver 3 link goods next round? Taking the low-hanging fruit is tempting, but as soon as you see someone deliver a 5 link good and leave you in the dust, the regret in your stomach will double.
I haven’t played any 18xx games, but after playing Age of Steam, I find myself wanting to explore those as well. During this play of Age of Steam, I found myself wishing I could buy other players stock, so they’d have to pay me at the end of the round, instead of buying and selling to the bank. Then I realized, that’s kind of the whole thing with 18xx games. Players generally don’t own a rail line, but they can invest and make decisions based on how many shares they have. I know each game is different and has their own nuance, but I find myself more intrigued by the genre than ever before.
The copy we played was the third edition, published by Eagle Games in 2009 I think? Some things were great, I loved that each player got little plastic locomotives to play with. The map was functional, with plain colours and very little texture to confuse the eyes. My big gripe came from the side boards. The Goods Display and Selected Actions board, and the income track and score board were on good quality cardboard, but were completely grey-scale! The colourful cubes and player disks quickly covered most of the boards, but still, what an eye-sore.
In the days that followed our Age of Steam play, our group chat was pretty enamoured with the game and expressing interest to go back and play it some more. I realized that I owned the Android app version of Steam: Rails to Riches, developed by Acram Digital, so I gave that a play to satisfy my Age of Steam cravings. If you’re interested in the app, you can find it on Android and Steam (and yes, I do appreciate the irony of searching for Steam on Steam).
I’m looking forward to returning to Age of Steam. There’s a level of mastery to be achieved, and a plethora of fan-made maps to explore. I enjoy the anguish of needing to sell shares at the top of the round, then regretting it for the rest of the game. The cat and mouse of bidding for player order, egging on two players locked in a game of locomotive chicken.
