Vigilo Confid...Damnit, Missed the Target

I'm looking down the sights, the plasma-rifle wielding X-Ray at the other end. He's taken out half my team already (damn these Thin Men alien bastards), but I can still pull this one out and stop the abductions in Italy. I just need to take this guy down, then the other two members of my squad can bury the last two with explosives.

32% hit chance.

Never tell me the odds.

Squeeze the trigger.

Fuck.

Despite all my careful sequencing, that one miss screws up my entirely plan, causing the remaining aliens to quickly mop up the last three poor sods unfortunate enough to be sent on 'Operation Sinking Feeling'.

---

'We can save this world'

Anyone who has played XCOM is probably familiar with this sort of experience. Playing the game is an oddly masochistic relationship - somewhat a characteristic of the roguelike experience (while I've only rarely heard XCOM described as a roguelike, it does share many of the same properties - encouraging repeat play, refinement of strategy and a willingness to fail and relearn).

If you don't know what XCOM is already, seriously, check it out. If you have any love of strategy games, roguelikes, or just videogames in general, it's worth a look. Heck, even if you like boardgames, the pacing and play style can feel very 'boardgamey'.

My usual MO with this game is to sink 10-20 hours into it over a week or weekend, before finally setting it down after an excess buildup of frustration and coming back to it a few weeks later.

The alien threat is consistently paced just ahead of your own soldiers and technology until at least the mid- to late-game. Then, if you have been playing right and have got just a little bit lucky, you can start to pull ahead.

Suffering breeds skill. Progress is fun and frustration is, well, frustrating. It falls into the niche of some games from the last few years (Demons' Souls and Dark Souls spring to mind) that make success all the sweeter for being hard won. No hand holding, no desperation to show off the story, just a good, consistent challenge.

I believe this is the point where I started singing 'Shittity-doo-dah'

Not that the game doesn't play on your emotions - in fact, it does so in a way that it shouldn't really be possible in such a story-light game. Part of it is the frustration factor, yes. Even the best-written story in a game struggles to compete with the sheer controller-throwing frustration of a properly challenging game (sidenote: we PC gamers really lose out on the 'throwing controller' front. Hurling a keyboard and mouse is a) expensive and b) challenging, what with all those cables. Any tilting tips?).

The face of XCOM pain

But XCOM kicks that up a notch - the ability to name all your soldiers can just make the pain of losing a soldier mid-mission so much worse. I like to name them after my friends and loved ones. That might be a little weird (it is), but it seems metaphoric self-flagellation is what I look for in my spare time.

Counting the losses on my current Classic Ironman playthrough

XCOM makes it personal; it makes it hurt. It's simple to pick up and play (and there are some not-so-insane difficulties), but has enough depth that, even having logged 70 or so hours, I'm still finding new techniques, tactics and making stupid, glorious mistakes. It encourages careful planning, meticulous execution, and risk-avoidance, while practically forcing you to take risks at the same time.

In case you hadn't figured it out by now, I really can't recommend XCOM enough. It's one of my favourite games released in the last few years, and I seem to only be able to go a few weeks without coming back to it. It's on sale a whole bunch these days and is available on pretty much every platform (including iOS). If you love strategy gaming and a bit of pain, check it out.

Board Games Tube Map

I've mentioned the upcoming Draughts London Board game café before. They just revealed their 'Board Game Tube Map', and I think it's really rather great.

Check out their website if you're interested - they're on the verge of launching their Kickstarter to make this project a reality.

Gearing Up 2.0: Decking

The post I wrote last year on the various geeky gear I had procured was one of the most popular on this blog (which, admittedly, isn't a high bar to leap). Having just done much the same thing (a.k.a. 'ridiculously overloading') for my desk as for my bag, I though I'd give the rundown on my setup here.

The Desk
When I first got my own furniture, the desk was by far the most important thing (with the accompanying chair a close second). I spend a big chunk of my time (arguably too much) in that space, so it made sense to get it right.

The IKEA Malm desk was a solid choice. Quite literally - it's thick and sturdy, as well as providing a great amount of space, with a 'shrinkable' footprint, useful if required to move it to a smaller space, thanks to the sliding side section. Since I lived first in a studio flat, it was almost the only non-kitchen surface, meaning it was hugely overcrowded with stuff. That is now very much fixed, and three years on, it's pretty much the best desk I could wish for (sapient pearwood notwithstanding).

The full ensemble, complete with added work laptop

The Shelf
'The what?' you say. 'How important is a shelf?'. Well, let me tell you now - adding a raised unit was just about the best 'upgrade' I made to the desk. If you have one or more external monitors, the ability to raise them up clears a surprising amount of room. You can slide keyboards and other stuff under it, giving yourself more space for papers and hand writing as needed. It also enabled some neat stuff that I'm about to mention.

The Laptop Raiser
This is one of those things that definitely fits in the 'not necessary, but surprisingly useful' category. I use a combination of my desktop PC and my MacBook Air (as well as another laptop when working from home). Up to now, I have mixed and matched how I set these up with my external monitors, but the laptop generally sits on the side unit.

Adding a good laptop raiser - the Griffin Elevator raiser - has brought the screen and keyboard to a better height, such that I can turn to it and use it comfortably without having to shoot down on my chair.

There are ancillary benefits, such as better cooling, but these generally don't really factor in 95% of the time.

The Screens
Now we get to the fun stuff. Anyone who knows me may well think I have somewhat of a screen addiction. I'm not going to dispute that, but a good screen setup goes a long way if you're using a computer for any length of time.

I installed a clampstand with articulated arms for my main screen, fixing it to the shelf (as this is where the Malm desk's thickness works against it - you can't clamp things onto the main surface). Annoyingly, my secondary screen turned out not to be mountable, but this has actually worked out better than I thought. I've strapped up my smaller, 19" monitor vertically. This works well as a Twitter feed, Evernote screen, A4 PDF viewer, or even just for showing general widgets. Both it and the main screen are easy to rotate, adjust and move as required. My secondary, 24" screen sits nearer to the laptop stand.

While I'd love to stick more screens in here and have the full three running off each machine, the (probably better) compromise I've come up with is adding an HDMI switcher to the main monitor. This means I can quickly switch whether the macbook or the PC displays there. The PC is my main gaming machine, but I use the Macbook more for writing, so that flexibility is really useful.

Tablet and Phone Clamps
To round it out, we have what's probably my favourite part. If you use a tablet with any frequency, I strongly suggest checking out one of these clamp stands. There will almost certainly be somewhere you could benefit from it, be it at your desk, in the kitchen, even on your bed.

The tablet clips in easily and can be held in just about any position by the gooseneck, while still being easily adjustable and rotatable. Having your tablet just there in front of your face is surprisingly useful. I use it to display my calendar, check social media, email or messages, or just for quickly looking up things while in game. Its default position isn't great for typing on it, but it's easy to adjust or work with voice commands.

The same applies for the phone - it's good as a hands free from taking calls, or just as a FaceTime/Skype camera.

Added bonus - if you take out the tablet and use a bulldog clip, you can hang printed documents from the tablet stand.

The fact that I'm writing this at all probably shows you how obsessive I can be about this sort of thing, but seriously, this feels like a great setup. Not everyone has the space or even the want/need (I'm not sure that I have the need, really) for this sort of setup, but even little things like raised units and tablet stands can make a great deal of difference.

The overall effect is to give a functional yet flexible workspace, where you have access to a good amount of screen real estate (usefully positioned), but still have plenty of workspace to put things (books, reference material, whatever’s your jam (don’t put jam on your desk)) or handwrite or whatever. Proper monitor stands, clamped goosenecks (honk) and raised units can go a long way to ‘creating’ additional space, regardless of what you started with.


As ever, you can question/vent/share thoughts in the comments, and find me on Twitter @mastergeorge.

Short Story: Breadcrumbs

This is more of a bit of flash fiction than a short story, only running to around 1,100 words. It comes with a minor content warning, which is why I haven't dropped it in straight here as a post.

It's about a person who can't stop finding bodies...

Click here to read Breadcrumbs.

If you struggle with the white-on-black text of the blog, or just want to read it offline more easily, you can grab a PDF version here.

Twilight Imperium: First Impressions

I finally got the chance to play Twilight Imperium recently, and wanted to share my experience. It really  is the behemoth of board games, and it requires a significant time investment if you ever get the chance to play it, so it's worth knowing what to expect.

That said, I don't think its fair to couch this as a review in the way I did with Pandemic and The Game of Thrones board game, since I have only played it once. So, instead, here are my first impressions of Twilight Imperium (TI). 

Space: it's full of plastic

Firstly and most obviously is the scale and scope. The game has you vying for control of the galaxy following the fall of the tyrannical Lazax empire. While TI has much in common with Risk as a game of strategy warfare, it is so much more than that. You don't just have to consider the military arena, but also the economic, political and technological.

It's not only possible to survive while being militarily weaker than your opponents, but also to thrive, as you lean on your other advantages to gain leverage on the other players. I took on the role of a race that was, broadly speaking, the 'military-industrial complex' - the Barony of Letnev - while the player to my right was a race of more pragmatic, trading-focussed space lions - the Emirates of Hacan.

While I started in a position from which I could threaten and bluster my way into profitable trade agreements - to ensure 'mutual coexistence' given our proximity (read: not turning my fleet into a giant space vacuum cleaner and blasting the kitties into the nearest supernova) - his economic superiority, combined with some of my own poor fortune (read: poor planning), meant that I became pretty dependent on that relationship to maintain any grip on power by the middle of the game. Since my race needed trade goods to gain an advantage in combat, the cancellation of that trade agreement would have been pretty disastrous. I found myself Harkonnens, beholden to my very own Guild.

My fleets about to get into trouble with the dreadnoughts from my left

The fact that such a dynamic relationship is actually possible in the game speaks volumes of what TI is all about. But that also comes with its downsides. It took me around two hours just to clip out and bag all the pieces that came in the box. Setup and explaining the rules took around 30 minutes each - and this was with a group who had familiarised themselves with the principles ahead of time.

For all that there are a lot of rules and pieces to get your head around, the complexity of each part isn't so bad. Pretty much every piece of the puzzle makes sense in isolation, it's the just the whole picture taken together can spin the brain faster than one of my cruisers going down in flames.

Even once we had gone through all of the rules, it still took some hands-on figuring out before we really got to grips with the flow of the game, and I think it was actually pretty near the end before we got a good handle on how it 'should' be played. The game makes many different strategies viable, depending on the race you're playing, but it takes some familiarity to figure them out. As it was, being our first playthrough, we lacked the context to make defensibly sound decisions, but at least everyone was on the same level coming into it.

That's both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it rewards repeat play, offering a depth that allows you to experiment and find your stride, getting 'better' over time, which is generally very satisfying. Additionally, if one strategy bores you, there are plenty of alternatives available (play a political or trading race!). The flip side is that, given an average eight-hour duration, getting to play it with any frequency becomes a challenge.

There are also some well-known and well-justified balance issues. Generally, everything is pretty finely designed to avoid weighting advantage to any one player early on. However, one of the Strategy Cards (each player selects one Strategy Card per turn which defines their special action) is a fast and reliable means of scoring victory points - the whole goal of the game - meaning that it becomes 'technically correct', in terms of optimal gameplay, to select this card whenever you are able, regardless of the other choices. If the card is not available, your second choice should always be the 'Initiative' card, which sets you up to take it next turn.

As long as players are aware of this, it's not 'game breaking', but it does suck some of the fun out if you feel compelled to take it all the time, rather than trying to plot and execute a wider strategy. We were aware of this, but still didn't do enough to prevent it throughout the game. The expansions contain some alternative versions of this card which 'fix' the issue, but it's quite a frustrating limitation of the core game, and I'd recommend house-ruling it if that's all you're playing with.

At least the expansion has a normal-sized box

Twilight Imperium is a very deep game with more replay value than I've seen anywhere else. There are so many optional additions and other play styles enabled in both the core game and the expansions that you could play this game over and over without it getting stale. The playtime and dense-if-not-actually-high barrier to entry are marks against it, but, as long as everyone is on board with this from the start, it's actually fine. Just don't let it take you unawares. 

The group that I played with was overwhelmingly enthusiastic about how TI played out and the epic drama it let us build, and seemed interested in picking it up again if there was the chance (unless they were just trying to justify investing eight hours of their time...!). 

So, should you play TI, or even buy it? If you're a fan of 'big box' boardgames in general, it's hard to see you not liking this, since it's a big strategy game on steroids, so give it a go if you ever have the chance. That said, it is a reasonable investment to buy, not to mention store, so I'd say skip purchasing it unless you know and love the game already, or you have a guaranteed audience of (almost) equally enthusiastic people to play with.

Pax Magnifica Bellum Gloriosum

The Hap This Week - 4th July

In the spirit of last week’s short collection of interesting (and old links) from across the ‘net, I thought I’d stick in a few more topical and relevant ones this week.

Posts This Week:
The Long Haul - my review of Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter's The Long Mars

Top 5 Tabletop Games to Play in the Pub

Stupid Decision Overturned in 'Sanity Prevails' Shocker
I don’t really follow Hearthstone or the associated community, and thankfully missed the first outcry about this when the news broke that an upcoming Hearthstone qualifier tournament would be gender segregated. The article sums this up far better than I can, as well as why it’s just a plain dumb idea, but some credit should be given for actually listening and changing the decision, as well as keeping ‘woman only’ brackets an option. You can debate the ‘equality’ issue in terms of men-only vs women-only, but it’s not just about complete parity - it’s about ‘redressing the balance’ and trying to fix an existing problem, namely, the underrepresentation of women.
Esports Org Divides Men & Women, Changes After Outcry - Rock Paper Shotgun

Firaxis Announces Release Date for Alpha Centauri Successor, George’s Time Management Weeps
I always forget just how highly Firaxis rates in my hierarchy of awesome game makers. Their most recent giant time suck for me was XCOM: Enemy Unknown (and Enemy Within). A truly phenomenal game which I just can’t tear myself away from. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (essentially Civilization in space) was one of my all time favourite strategy games, and a successor to this, if done right, should be a blast.
Civilization: Beyond Earth enters orbit on October 24 - Joystiq

I finally got the chance to play Twilight Imperium on Sunday, and am going to share my first hands on impressions soon. I’ll leave you with the old but interesting ‘History of Social Games Flowchart’, showing the development of gaming from the ancient world to today (well, more or less). Original source: http://radoff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/HistorySocialGames1.jpg

Top 5 Tabletop Games to Play in the Pub

One of the hardest things about games is finding the time to get everyone together in one place. This is particularly difficult if you need to assemble everyone in someone's house or flat - apart from being a pain in the proverbial, travel also eats into valuable gaming time or makes the whole affair untenable.

So great indeed is the game that you can play in the pub (or equivalent dispensary of jollity) with your friends. Sadly, there aren't that many establishments where you can get away with whipping out large box and battling for supremacy over Westeros - if nothing else, the giant throne tends to attract attention. That said, if you're based in London, check out the nascent 'Drafts', or any of other UK board game cafés, such as The Thirsty Meeple in Oxford, etc. In a regular pub, though, it's all about finding the right game.

Here are some of my favourites. Criteria for success are having a small footprint (no big boards or the like, which is why you won't see Forbidden Island on here, despite it being both portable and amazing), compact and portable, and as simple and light-hearted as possible, while still remaining interesting.

So here they are, in no particular order.

Fluxx

Fluxx is almost as simple as they come. Every turn, draw a card, play a card. At first, that is. The catch is that some of the cards change the rules as you go along, meaning it might become something different, like 'draw four cards, play three' every turn.

It comes in all sorts of flavours, such as 'Star Fluxx', 'Zombie Fluxx' and 'Chthulu Fluxx' (because what tabletop game can't be improved by adding 'space', 'zombies' or 'fhtagn'?).

Just look at him - doesn't he just scream fun?

It's not exactly what I'd call 'strategic', though, since the extremely high randomness and variance make strategic execution somewhat ...tricky. Normally, that's precisely what I dislike about Fluxx - it's essentially 'prescriptive', lacking many meaningful excision points - but in the pub, where people are already impairing their ability to follow an ever-changing set of rules, it seems more fun.

Play if: you want your game to move as erratically-but-amusingly as that man trying to find his way back to the bar.


Zombie Dice

Another pretty obvious inclusion here. I seem to include it just about every one of my lists. It's simple, it's easy, it comes in a cup, and none of the important components are made any the worse by acquiring beer stains. What more do you want?

Seriously, if you want to know more about it, check out my previous post.

Play if: all this talk of brain-eating isn't going to make you too hungry for a tasty and totally non-suspicious kebab.


Cards Against Humanity

Oh boy, what's left to say about this one? To call CAH 'foul mouthed' would be about as understated as saying the sea is 'quite wet', or that the Tube can be a 'wee bit cramped in the morning'. It's profane and contains some truly horrible concepts, but it has such potential for extreme hilarity.

For anyone not familiar, each turn, a player draws a black card and reads it out. This usually poses a question or 'fill in the blank'. The other players anonymously lay down an answer card from their hand, in a bid to impress(/amuse/disgust) the judge for that round. It's not for the faint hearted, but is genuinely far more funny than it deserves to be. It is, though, best played with drink in hand! to steel yourself if for no other purpose.

The one limitation is that, after repeated plays, you can get to know the cards a little too well, rather taking the edge off. Luckily, there is a slew of expansions to bulk out the material when you need to.

Play if: you want to feel like a bad person, and don't mind if the people at the next table give you death stares as you laugh about Boris the Soviet Love Hammer.


Story War

Story War is part of a crop of 'imaginative narrative games' that have appeared out of Kickstarter in the last couple of years. These are certainly not new (just look at Dixit), but there seem to be more and more twists on this theme.

The premise hinges on a couple of decks of cards, representing characters, such as Frankenstein or the Abominable Snowman, items, such as a magic carpet or a really fast car, and battlegrounds, such as the ice palace or a spooky graveyard. Players or teams then choose their character for the current round from the available cards, and then try to weave a narrative which shows why their choice would win in that fight, using the 'environment' of the battleground and items to assist. One player acts as the judge each round to decide outcomes.

As a game, it has its flaws, and it's not my favourite. Everyone has to be on board with the concept and be in roughly the same frame of mind. A hesitant or sadistic judge can lead to a round vastly outstaying its welcome. But if you have friends with a slightly sideways imagination (and, critically, drinks), this can be a lot of fun.

Honourable mention: there are actually a couple of games in this category that I prefer, but are less suited to such a publican environment. Machine of Death has a cooler premise and a tighter play-style, but has more 'moving parts' - more elks of cars and required components, and can cast a bigger footprint. Dixit cards is too beautiful to sully in a pool of London Pride.

Play if: you have friends who like to spin outrageous tales after they've had a few.


Love Letter

Ah, Love Letter. This one has been round for a couple of years now, but I only got to play it recently, and it's fast become one of my favourite 'quick' games, super simple, but rewarding solid strategic thinking. It requires only 16 cards (and a few tokens, but beer mats will do) to play, and can be explained in about thirty seconds.

If you haven't played this one before, check it out. It's truly elegant, and you can buy it for under a tenner.

Play if: the only courting you want to do this evening is of a beautiful (and thoroughly fictitious) princess.


A quick note to close: in many of these, I put forward that these games are often more fun alongside alcohol. While that can be said of most tabletop games, none of these games are really the worse without it (with the possible exception of Fluxx), so people who do not partake don't need to feel excluded! Sobriety would probably improve your win rate in many cases...

Did you enjoy this list? Check out my list of Top 5 games to play with normal people, and my 'Top 5' worst board games.