Author: David Sanchez

Cosmic Encounter – Improve your diplomacy

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Create alliances, negotiate and bluff; in other words, practice diplomacy.  That's what's at the core of Cosmic Encounter, a 3-5 player game that plays in about 1,5 hours.  In this game you'll take on the role of an alien race battling for the supremacy of the galaxy. But don't mistaken this with a tactical game, you won't be a general here: you'll be a diplomat. The main game mechanics can be summarized and simplified as follows: Each player will take on the role an alien race with a special power and have 5 planets on which initially there will only be space ships of his race.  Also, each player will have cards in his hand which he will be able to use, primarily for resolving attacks, but also as special abilities.  The goal of the game is to have 5 colonies (ie. space ships) in other player's planets. To do this, players will take turns at attacking each other's planets.  At the begining of a player's turn, he will draw a card that will tell him which other player he will [Read full post...]

Information and decision-making

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You're walking through a park and see a couple of 7 year old kids in the playground area. One walks up to the other and the latter, without provocation or even saying anything, starts hitting the former. What would you think of this situation?  What would you do?  A normal reaction would be to stop the fight and reprimand the aggressor.  Under a given situation, we make decisions or judgments based on the information we have, but it's important to keep in mind that this information maybe out of context and incomplete or maybe even manipulated or incorrect.  Here's more information on the 7 year olds' case: John has been bullying Matt for the past year every day in school.  Matt has had to make up stories at home to explain the bruises.  Once his self esteem hit rock bottom and the anxiety was unbearable, he took the determination to face the situation: next time he saw John, he'd confront him, he'd show him that from that point on he would stand up for himself.  He might win the [Read full post...]

Neuroplasticity and tabletop games

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Neuroplasticity is the attribute of the brain that enables us to change it; "it refers to how entire brain structures, and the brain itself, can change from experience" What implications does this have?  Well, below is a clear example of how doing something in one way for a long time reinforces this behavior in such a way, that even knowing you want to do it in another way, you will be unable to: But then again, we can change all that with practice (as Destin does in the above video).  But this does only apply to biomechanical activities, also to mental and behavioral aspects of ourselves.  As you might have noticed, the whole idea behind this blog resides on this principle:  I encourage the repetition of exercises, in the form of tabletop games, to improve in certain skills (mainly management and soft skills). If you want to know more of the possibilities of neuroplasticity, here is an astonishing video of a real case:

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...]

How to know you’re a good strategist

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[Spoiler alert for the movie Rounders (1998)] In the movie Rounders, staring Matt Damon, John Malkovich and Edward Norton, the character played by Matt Damon (Mike McDermott, from now on Mike) is a law school student who is paying his tuition with money he makes out of playing poker.  His friendship with the character played by Edward Norton get's him in debt with a russian mafia boss played by John Malkovich (Teddy KGB, from now on KGB), who also likes playing poker (and is really good at it). Mike has one night to raise up 15K dollars, or else... well you can imagine.  He is lent 10K, so he's still 5K short. Here is the thing: what he decides to do is go to KGB's place and play him for the remaining 5K.  Mike manages to beat KGB enough to be able to pay his debt with him and return the 10K he had borrowed (he even has some extra left).  As Mike is gathering up his things to leave, KGB is not happy with having lost and want's a rematch, so he starts mocking Mike up to the point [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...]

Sheriff of Nottingham – Improve your negotiation skills

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Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate.  Sheriff of Nottingham allows you to do one thing, but it does it really well!  This is a light, social and really fun game for 3-5 players.  The main game mechanic for Sheriff of Nottingham could be described as follows: Each turn, one of the players will play the role of the Sheriff, and the others the role of merchants that are trying to get goods past customs, of which the Sheriff is in charge. The game has 2 types of goods (represented as cards): legal and ilegal. In each turn, the merchants will put all the cards they wish (legal and/or ilegal) from their hand into a bag and give it to the Sheriff, who will decide if he lets the goods into the city without inspections or if he decides to open it.  If he inspects the bag, he will receive gold for all the undeclared goods, but if the merchant had truthfully declared his goods, the Sheriff will have to pay him for them and the merchant may keep them. Merchants are allowed to negotiate [Read full post...]

Citadels – Get better at doing your thing (and avoid being denied)

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Backstab and watch your back while you do your thing.  And by doing your thing, I mean building your citadel; hence the title of the game, "Citadels".  This is a great game to play with 4-8 players; it's fun, easy and gives the impression of being fast paced due to players usually interacting socially during the downtimes. The main game mechanics could be summarized like this: Each player will have cards representing districts of a citadel in his hand, which he will be able to buy during his turn with the money he also has. During a player's turn, they will be able to get more district cards or more money, and build a district using the money.  A few special districts will give some special ability that will benefit you or hurt other players. But the spice of the game is that every turn, each players has the chance of exclusively using a character from a shared pool.  They are chosen secretly in turn, and each character has some special ability such as: stealing other [Read full post...]

Once Upon a Time: The storytelling card game – Improve your storytelling and listening skills

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Get your message across, lead a "conversation" to your desired conclusion, listen up to detect your chance to jump into the "conversation" and be creative on the fly.  These are all things you'll do, skills that you'll develop, when playing Once Upon a Time: The storytelling card game. This is a peculiar game (and in my eyes, a stroke of genius) for 2-6 players.  It's not very competitive in nature, but surely very enjoyable.  Summarized, the rules are: Each player will have a certain amount of cards in their hand.  These cards show random objects, events, places, aspects, etc.  Also, each player will have one "ending" card, a sentence to finish the story: if you are able to get rid of all your cards and finish the story coherently reading your ending card, you win. A player will start narrating a story he will be making up as he goes.  He will try to fit in the best he can the things his cards say (objects, places, events, aspects, etc.); as he does, he will place down on the [Read full post...]

The Resistance: Avalon – Improve your people reading skills

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Detecting lies, reading people's ulterior motives, negotiating, deducing, bonding a team and deceiving: that's what The Resistance: Avalon (from now on, just "Avalon") is all about. This is a great 5-10 player game for practicing you people skills.  Summarized, the game goes like this: Each player is dealt a random character (card), which will belong either to the Good or Bad team; each player will keep his character secret throughout the game.  The Good team members will not know to which team the other players belong to, but the Bad (which are a minority) do from the begining of the game. For several rounds (depending on the number of players), all players will vote which subgroup of players will go on a mission; then, that subgroup will vote if they make that mission a success or a failure.  The Good players will want to make the mission a success, and the Bad players a failure; but if even just one of the players votes the mission a failure, it will fail.  So the idea of [Read full post...]