Planning

Castaways – Improve your teamworking skills

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Teamworking in the frame of the prisonner's dilemma.  The game categorizes itself as a "semi cooperative adventure", and that's exactly what it is (and good at it).  Castaways is a 1-4 player game that plays in about 3 hours, but mind you, it's not just a game, it's an adventure. When you finish playing you'll be surely driven to reminisce a bunch of anedotes and discus with the other players on how you could/should have done this or that differently.  This post will be slighter longer than the previous, but I think the game deserves it. So what was that about teamworking, the prisoner's dilemma and semi cooperation?  I'm going to be more generic than in other posts describing the main aspects of the game since this one is more complex.  Here we go: All the players are stranded on an island after a shipwreck and must get rescued.  To be rescued, they must meet a certain criteria when they have finished exploring the whole island, which comprises things such as having built a [Read full post...]

Splendor – Improve your networking skills

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Build momentum through asset acquisition.  It sounds simple enough and Splendor does a great job in making it easy, but being efficent at it is an art form.  This is one of those games that possesses the dichotomy of those brilliantly designed: the rules are simple and the layout is minimalist, but developing a winning strategy is far from easy.  It's a 30 minute, 2-4 player game easy to grasp by new players, but the complexity hidden behind the simple mechanics makes it interesting, challenging and will leave you wanting to play it again. Before I explain how the game mechanics follow the same principles as networking, let's have a look at these first: There are cards (assets), poker chips (gems), and noble tokens (victory points). During a player's turn, he may take up to 3 chips or buy cards (paying their cost in chips).  The chips and card prices are of different colors, and so to buy a particular card you must pay the correct combination of colored chips. Each card you [Read full post...]

Blood Bowl – Improve your planning and risk management skills

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Evaluate the risk of taking actions, plan the order in which you will carry them out according to the risk involved and then execute the actions in that order.  That is the heart and soul of Blood Bowl. Blood Bowl is a board game for two people where two opposing fantasy teams (as in made up of elves, dwarves and such) play a "football" match. It has a very interesting game mechanic (summarized and simplified):  during your turn you can do an action with each of your players on the field, some of which will require a dice roll, and if you fail a roll your turn ends then and there automatically.  This implies that when you are going to play your turn, you have to have a clear idea of what you want to do (or the disposition of your players on the field at the end of your turn), and execute your moves in an order according to a "minimum risk - maximum benefit" principle. It's very tactical, but I've chosen it as a "make me better" game for the following reasons: Risk [Read full post...]