(This is a guest post written by our very own Patrick Cahalan!)
If you play games frequently, you may have a somewhat nuanced answer to the question, “what does it mean to win?”
When I was a child, winning was fairly evident. Monopoly was over, and you were the player who had all the property, and all the money. Your fourth little plastic dude or dudette was parked in “Finish”, and you got to stand up and yell out, “I WIN!” In the U.S., generally the first game that really introduces kids to an alternate version of winning, if they play games enough, is either Risk or Clue.
In Risk, for the first time, you have Winning… and you have Not Losing. Very often, in Risk, the player that fist attempts the Win winds up getting some very bad dice rolls, fails to eliminate the player whom they’ve targeted for the “kill and turn in their cards” bonus, and winds up not only Not Winning, but giving away the game to the person who sits to their left… who promptly eliminates both the nearly-dead player who has the cards, and then immediately following with the player who went for the Win, and failed. Unlike Monopoly, Sorry, Parcheesi, and the other simple games like them, trying to Win actually significantly lowers the bar for anybody to be the Winner… so if you don’t close the deal, you’re usually giving the game away.
The sneaky and smart Risk player learns this first, and always sits to the left of the least-patient player in the game. Note to self: ask pater familias if he did this, back when he played Risk with us as children. Dad was one of those parental units who believed that children ought to learn to win on their own merits; we played generally age-appropriate games, but us all being a competitive lot meant we were always asking to play the Bigger Kid games, which meant we lost really often, usually to Dad.
In Clue, you see the sneaky and smart player do things like the Red Herring.
If you haven’t done this, here’s the skinny: move immediately to a room which you own, which is farthest away from the other players in the game (the Ball Room is good for this one, if you have it, the secret passage rooms are all bad). Immediately guess a Suspect and Weapon that you already have, meaning that all of the other players have to pass on revealing you the card.
Now everyone else on the table must either guess or accept that you’ve asked for three things you own, or they must suspect that you already know one of the three things in the little packet in the middle of the board. They will start guessing the Weapon and Suspect immediately, of course, and really smart opposing players will then rapidly figure out that you have them (even if you haven’t shown them directly to them) because you’ve shown a card on those guesses multiple times. Everyone will have to travel to the Ball Room to verify that you have that room, though.
Or, best, they’ll try to figure out the Suspect and the Weapon first, assuming that the Ball Room is the Room, and by their play you’ll get clues as to what the Suspect and Weapon actually are, while you travel around and find the actual Room. Successful Red Herring!
Which brings us to the post topic. What does it mean to Win, for you as a player? Do you have a fairly standard approach to games, or do you vary by the game in question? Or by the players? If you’ve played Clue, was your favorite win a Red Herring? If so, do you actually try to Win using the Red Herring often?
When you play Risk, do you always go for it? Or do you sit to the left of the person who will always go for it?
If you’ve played Diplomacy, do you try for the Honorable Win? My father’s favorite moment in any Diplomacy game he’d ever played (which is a not-inconsiderable number) was when he simultaneously managed to betray every other player on the board, while playing Germany. Which led very shortly to his actual Defeat, by the standard metric of Winning Diplomacy, but gave him a Story Worth Telling to those Who Play Diplomacy, which is a certain type of a Win.
My friend Marc once successfully pulled off a first turn offense with Russia at the beginning of Axis and Allies, and then astonishingly survived the German counterattack. Probabilistically, it was a remarkable case of damn fine luck. Strategically, it was insane. For getting a Story Worth Telling, it was genius.
My friend Andy, back when we were nerds playing Car Wars routinely, would very often build a Pat Killer. Rather than try to Win the match against all players, his Victory condition was Making Pat Lose His Mind.
Do you play cooperative games, like Arkham Horror or Pandemic? Do they appeal to your desire for Winning?
If you play zero-sum games, do you have a preferred strategy that you like to use, even if it’s not optimal for Winning, just because it suits your psyche’s sense of a fun way to play (and also makes Winning, when it happens, that much more satisfying)?
Two notes:
One: I interestingly found my narrative voice in this post to be somewhat Jaybird-esque. Anyone else notice this? Is it my imagination?
Two: should have been the “Billiard Room”, not the Ball Room. Too long since I played Clue! Ball Room has more accessibility to the board than the Billiard Room or the Library.
I interestingly found my narrative voice in this post to be somewhat Jaybird-esque. Anyone else notice this?
I think that the basic rules of the site contribute greatly to the voice here. The point is more to “play together nicely” than to “win”. This makes me re-write paragraphs that I wouldn’t think twice about submitting if it were a comment on the main site.
It wasn’t just you:).
Thank you for an awesome guest post!
(Remember: if *YOU* have a guest post on some mindless diversion that you’d like to share and explore, send it to askjaybird@gmail.com and we’ll put it up here.)
To answer one of the questions:
Most games from my childhood, I realize, kinda suck. I’m not talking about the Timeless Classics (Checkers, Chess, Go… those kinda games) but the ones in the box from… well, let’s not name names. It seems, however, that on one level you have the basic “teach children to play and take turns” kinda games that, by necessity, allow the youngest to win based on rolls of the dice (think Candyland or Chutes and Ladders) and then jump to games like Risk or Diplomacy (which, for all of their awesomeness, are *NOT* entry-level games).
Stratego might be there in the middle. Maybe.
It wasn’t until, oh, Shogun (now Samurai Swords) that I discovered a boardgame that was actually both easy to pick up (seriously: much easier than Risk) *AND* relied more on strategy than sweet dice rolls…
All that to say, I’m now more interested in games like Descent or Mansions of Madness (or Dungeon Lords!) where the mechanics are just as much fun whether or not you’re “ahead”. (There’s probably a post when it comes to the Road to Legend expansion…)
Personally, I’ve reached the point where the point of the game is the other 3-4 people around the table rather than “winning” under those circumstances. I mean, if I didn’t like them, I’d find a reason to not show, you know?
I’ve been starting to get into some of the card-based Eurogames for that middle level. My wife and I play Ticket to Ride: Europe a couple times a month (the wife does not like anything not named Monopoly which takes more than an hour or so to play), and if we have certain friends over we’ll also pull out Tikal (which isn’t card-based and takes a round or two to understand properly, but is really quite simple). On very lucky occasions, I can even get her to play BattleCry!, since it’s so quick (she’s not a fan of war-themed strategy games for some reason). We also played Witches’ Brew a few months ago with a friend who brought it down on a visit…that turned out to be a surprisingly fun and easy-to-understand game with lots of strategy involved.
But damn do I long for the days, before kids and marriage got in the way, when the people who would play games with me had the interest, time, and patience for games like Risk and A&A. I long for this even more since A&A came out with new rules and country-specific traits, less time-consuming victory options, etc. a few years back.
We usually played A&A as every man for himself, often with shifting alliances and the like, with special rules to even things out a bit for Russia and Japan (IIRC, if we were playing with 4 people in a shifting alliance free-for-all then one guy got both Russia and Japan). Nothing short of a total victory was acceptable, and games took about 12 hours to complete. (Sigh.) Those were the days….
But I think Stratego is definitely there in the middle. Though I could make an argument that it is more appropriately categorized with the Timeless Classics.
One other thing – it occurs to me that, to the extent it is not viewed purely as a drinking game, Asshole is a pretty fantastic example of the OP here.
> Personally, I’ve reached the point where the point
> of the game is the other 3-4 people around the
> table rather than “winning” under those
> circumstances.
I think all long-time game players get here, eventually. This makes the Winning condition for the evening dependent upon the social context of the group of players with whom you’re currently playing.
There are groups of players that I won’t play Diplomacy with, because they can’t Be Evil Like That and enjoy it in the context of the game without carrying it outside of the game. There are players I won’t play Arkham Horror with, because they just aren’t into co-op games.
So many games, so little time. Recently I have found a new love in board games. It first started with Descent. What an amazing game, part co-op, part competitive. Then the Road to Legends expansion came out and this game became D&D Lite for me. But I had a problem, I was the evil overlord who was supposed to try and whack the other hero players. I found I was playing this more like true D&D and was get streesed when I was beating the tar out of the players and not have fun in the process. For some reason it felt too much like I was the DM of the game and not the opponent of the others. Winning was not working for me.
Then other games came along for me. Small World, Dungeon Lords, Ravenloft, and Mansions of Madness.
Small World is a much better version of Risk (I have always disliked that game), with incredible race/power combos and a very simple set of rule, but huge depth of strategy. That is the type of game I love. In this game I ‘win’ by being defensive. I love to set up a base that other do not want to attack, I look for races that help make this easier and then expand out from that. Trolls are the best for this, but the Fortification power does a great job too.
Dungeon Lords is a differnet animal. This is almost a game of four player solitare, but you are competing for the same resources, so that is where you clash with the other characters. I love how the game make the resource better for the person who grabs them second or third instead of first. Makes you really try to think what the other players are trying to do.
Ravenloft being a co-op game is fun and trying to beat the game a nice time of adventure for the players. My only problem is that the rules are set up very strict for the game and that make it feel a little too regimented for me.
Now, Mansions of Madness… Incredible game. I cannot believe how well they did to make a game that has a mystery in it for the explorers to solve and for some reason (most likely the Cthulhu setting) I have no problem going for the kill as the evil Keeper against the hero players. So, I go right for the throat in this game. I hope they come out with a Road to legend version of this game (though it will take greater minds than mine to figure how to do that).
I saw you mention Clue. I recently came across a game called Kill Dr. Lucky. It’s a prequel to Clue. Everyone’s trying to kill Dr. Lucky and he can only be murdered when no one is in adjacent rooms. I’m going to look into buying it soon. Since you have a friendly local gaming store they will most likely have it in stock or happily order it for you if you are inclined.
I played this once with friends and I remember it being a lot of fun.
I adored Risk and A&A but never could find enough people who shared the love of it to play with. If only the Hasbro game had been published later and came with online multiplayer matchmaking.
I have discovered just now that Diplomacy is extraordinarily easy to play online (for free, no less!). Despite somehow having never played it before, I have found a new outlet for my gaming jones.
FWIW, I’d not be opposed to a LoOG Diplomacy game.
I’m in.
Warning: I’m a thoroughgoing utter bastard at Diplomacy.
Anyone else? We need to get to 7.
Do you need seven *PLAYERS* or just seven people to sign up? (I can do the sign up thing… I just don’t think I can do the playing thing with my time constraints.)