Earlier in June I posted a brief survey asking readers about their gaming preferences. There was light response to the survey, however, I still want to follow up with the results. Level of Interest Top response: Hobby (medium-weight games) Second: Hardcore (heavy-weight games) Favorite Gateway Game Top response: Catan Second: Pandemic and Ticket to Ride (tied) Favorite Types (categories) of Games Top response: Strategy Second: Tactical Combat; Social/Family; Adventure/Mission/Campaign (three-way tie) Third: Video Games; Card & Collectible Card Games; Role-Playing Games (three-way tie) It's always interesting to get feedback and find out what opinions people have. This survey only touched the surface of some basic interest levels in gaming, yet it still gives a little insight into what the most popular choices were. The majority of people answered that they are in the Hobby or middle-weight of gaming interest and for favorite gateway game Catan was quite a bit ahead of Ticket to Ride and Pandemic. The favorite game type/categories were a different story. The answers were varied, with Strategy being the clear-cut top answer, however all the other options had some votes. It seems that readers of this blog have similar interests. My interests are similar as well. My answers were not included in the survey, but for point of comparison, here's how I would have answered:
I hope you've enjoyed this little dive into our game preferences survey. Let me know if you'd like to do participate in future surveys or not. Please feel free to comment on the post or send me a message using my contact page. Game On!
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This week at my weekly GameNight a couple of the games that our gaming group had yet to play together finally hit the table. I had mentioned both of these in a previous post. First we played Dominion followed by Puerto Rico. I'll describe how it went. DominionJennie and Dave brought over Dominion along with expansions. We played a five-person variant of the game using the additional expansion cards. Published by Rio Grande Games and designed by Donald X. Vaccarino this is a "deck-building" card game. As a matter of fact, this is probably considered to be the "first" deck builder. I'll try to describe what is meant by "deck-building", at least in this game. Each player starts with a small number of cards (all the same). Throughout the game players choose to "purchase" new cards by playing money and action cards from their hand. As new cards are taken they are placed in a discard pile along with the played hand of cards. Eventually a player will run out of cards in his playing deck and hand and must shuffle the discard pile to make a new playing deck and hand of cards. As the game goes on, the deck grows and becomes seeded with cards you have purchased from the selection available on the table. Your "deck" becomes unique to you and your choices throughout the game. This was really my first opportunity at playing a deck-building game as I believe it also was for Jeff and Chris who were also learning the game for the first time. The goal of the game is to gain the most victory points throughout the purchase green Estate, Duchy and Province cards worth one, three and six points respectively. Once four of the stacks of cards were depleted the game ended and all victory points were counted. Dave won! Of course, the guy teaching the game wins. Next time we're coming after you Dave. Our game took probably about an hour including setup and teaching of the game, plus we played with a larger player count of five. Once familiar with rules and at a count of three-four, the game should play in about 30 minutes or so. We really enjoyed learning and playing this classic deck builder. Unfortunately I wasn't thinking and didn't get any photos of our game-play. If you'd like to learn more, I've provided a link to Board Game Geek for you: DOMINION (BGG) Puerto RicoBrian showed up a little later with Puerto Rico. This game designed by Andreas Seyfarth and published by Alea is a colonial era game of farming and city-building in Puerto Rico. It is a game for three to five players and we had a total of six (Jennie, Dave, Chris, Jeff, Brian and me). So Jennie and Jeff decided to work as one team, which I dubbed "Jeffnifer". Brian taught us the game. To summarize, each player is given a player board to place their plantations and build a city. Using an interesting action selection process, the active player chooses a "Role" on their turn. That role defines the action that can be done – All players get to perform the selected role/action, however the player who made the selection gets a special "privilege" that usually gives them a little something extra for having selected it. The general objective in making these selections is to give yourself the best action possible and attempt to cause other players to either get little-to-no benefit from it. Colonists, plantations and buildings are gradually added to each players tableau adding benefits and production. Eventually the game end triggers when the colonists run out, victory points run out, or one player's city is completely full. Then, the current round is completed and victory points are calculated. In our game Brian won and Dave came very close behind in second. This game definitely had a higher level of calculating and decision making. It was a bit of "brain burn", but not too much. Very enjoyable. I think I speak for the group when I say we all enjoyed playing Puerto Rico. Our game took us over three hours to setup, teach/learn and play. I believe a typical game with four-five would take around two hours. If you'd like to learn more, I've provided a link to Board Game Geek for you: Puerto Rico (BGG) As I mentioned, we finally got a chance to play these two games with our GameNight group. I can see them coming back to the table again. The trick is trying to find time to play all the games we enjoy as often as we'd like. Both Dominion and Puerto Rico are highly regarded in the hobby board-game world. I think I'm safe in saying they could be considered "classics". If you liked my brief descriptions of gameplay, consider finding a copy to play or purchase. Hopefully your group will enjoy as much as the group at King's-GameNight.
Game On! One topic that doesn't get covered a lot in board gaming is the setup. Not interested? Don't blame you ... most people probably consider this topic as boring as setting up a board game. I'll attempt to give it a go by explaining some of my opinions regarding board-game setup, additional things that add to setup time, and why this factor should be considered the next time you plan to break out a game for your group. Set-up TimeFirst to define "set-up time". Generally, this is the time it takes to open the box, remove its contents and place everything on the board in its preferred location on the table. Board and card games vary wildly in their setup times. I would say you could have a game that's ready to go straight out of the box while others can take 30 to 45 minutes to set up. An example of a game that I can pop out of the box and start in about a minute is Roll for It. A simple dice game that requires only to get out the dice and shuffle a deck of cards. An example on the other end of the spectrum is Lords of Hellas. This game requires you shuffle and place multiple decks on the board as well as set up miniatures. Some are multi-stage monuments which will set off the side of the board. When adding in the expansions with cities and temples miniatures and new game boards and cards etc... it can easily take a half-an-hour or more. So why discuss setup time? I've found that it's something we commonly forget to factor in. Many times there are time constraints around an available time to game. If your time is tight, that extra 30-40 minutes to get it setup may be a deal breaker. Some game instruction manuals do a nice job of explaining the setup, using reference photos, numbering, diagrams, etc... Anything that helps to streamline the process is a welcome one. (I've included photos below of three different game manuals that do a nice job in helping with game setup.) When planning to host a game night, I always prefer to know what game we're going to play ahead of time for this very reason. If we're going to be playing a game requiring a lot of preparation, then I am able to get it out and set it up ahead of time. This time-saver allows the group to get up and playing a lot more quickly, unless I need to teach the game to new players. Teaching/Learning TimeWhat if you need to teach a game? When planning the amount of time to get ready to play a game, you should also include the time it may take to explain how to play. Teaching a game is to some extent an extension of setup time. I enjoy teaching others how to play games. It's something I'll probably share more about in a future post. For this topic, I'll keep it relatively brief. It's always a good idea that you factor in the time to teach a game. This may also depend on your familiarity of the rules and gameplay. If this is your first time playing and you've only taught yourself through reading the manual and watching videos it might take a bit longer to teach than if you've played quite a bit. In either case, I recommend taking a little time ahead of the game to read through the rules again or watch a how-to-play video. Teaching a game and having new players can typically add 20-40 minutes to a game. A Recent ExampleThis past weekend my wife, Brenda, and I had our friends Don and Shannon over. As usual, we like to play board games. I really wanted to teach them how to play Champions of Midgard. This game takes a bit of set up and I was going to need to teach them how to play. Before they came over I got out the game mat and started setting up the game. It probably took me a about 20-30 minutes to get the game out of the box, shuffle and set up each of the decks and get out the dice and various other pieces (I was planning to use both expansions which adds additional cards and pieces). When we were ready to start, I took the time to explain the game board and describe how to play. That probably took an additional 30 minutes. They seemed to catch on pretty quickly. I think we probably only added an addition 10 minutes to the game due to new-player questions and uncertainty. That game lasted approximately 2 1/2 hours. After the game I suggested, now that we all had the rules down and the game was pretty much set up we try a second game, as it should go much more quickly. We played again and as suspected finished in less than two hours. To recap the approximate time needed for setting up and teaching a this game...
Final ThoughtsWhen planning to play a game it is important to factor in setup time. It's easy to forget about it. I've been caught in that trap before. (Example: When asked how long does it take to play and I say "about two hours". Then I have to explain three-and-a-half hours later when we finish about the set-up time and teaching time I hadn't factored in.) A couple of other factors that can effect setup include:
What if you don't have time to set up ahead? It's okay to not have the game setup ahead of time, just remember to factor it into the estimated time allotted for play. Another helpful tip is to use the setup as an opportunity to teach new players about the game or refresh the memory for others who have played before. Have them set out the resources and explain what they are as they set them out. Have them shuffle cards and place on the board as required, explaining how the cards are played. Try to make good use of the setup time so that it involves everyone and gets them ready to play as well. How do you plan for set up? Do you think teaching time is a part of it? What are some things that you've done to help shorten this delay in getting to the action? Please share by leaving your comments. Let me know if you have found this helpful/interesting by going to the contact page and sending me a message. Until next time... Game On! This week at my weekly game night, we played Champions of Midgard. You've probably seen some of my previous posts about this game. This is one of my game group's current favorites. This spawned a discussion about what our group's other favorite games are. We also talked about some games that we'd like to get back to the table. Between all of us, I estimate that our group probably owns about 75 to 100 different games. Many may not be ones that we play at a weekly game night as they may be social, family or classic games. Our group tends to reserve this weekly game night for the meatier games. Games which play 4-6 players and usually take 2-3 hours to complete. In a previous two-part series, I went into more depth about Games that Repeatedly Get to the Table (Part 1 & Part 2). You can check those previous posts to get further explanations about some of our groups most popular games. With those thoughts to set the stage, let me give you the rundown of some of King's-GameNight favorite games. If you'd like to investigate further, I have also included a link to the Board Game Geek page for each. Favorite games from King's-GameNight:
Games we'd like to get back to the table: Sometimes we enjoy a game, but just don't seem to get it back out often enough. Many times we're caught up playing newly acquired games or the player count doesn't facilitate playing very often. Other times, the game weight might seem to easy or not as strategic as we're craving. Below are games that we're anxious to play again.
Other games to try in the group: I want to also mention some games members in our group own which we haven't played in the the weekly game night. We discussed that these might be options we want to try sometime. Collectively we own these games, have played them in other circles and think highly of them. For whatever reason, we just haven't decided to play on a game night. In general, these seem to be games that are a little shorter in length and lighter in weight, which is probably why they haven't gotten to the table at the weekly game night. I think our group may choose a night to play two or three of these games back-to-back rather than one of the longer games we typically play. All of the games highlighted in this post are terrific games. They came to mind because we continue playing them during the weekly game night, would like to bring back to play, or want to introduce to the group. As with many things, every group dynamic is different. Its typical to play games with several different types of groups and gatherings. Sometimes with family and friends. Other times in a dedicated gaming group, like my weekly game night. No matter what the preference is for difficulty or length of game or player count, etc... there are tons of games that will fit the bill. As I continue to let you know my thoughts on games and game night, I am curious of your thoughts. Do you have a group that plays board games frequently? Are you playing completely different types of games? Leave a comment to add your input. Also, don't forget to participate in my brief survey from my last post. SURVEY LINK I hope to report on results of the survey in an upcoming post.
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