Spiel : Boardgames in the UK

This week, I’d just got a copy of The World Cup Card Game 2010 which, unsurprisingly, is a card game version of the board game The World Cup Game, centred on the 2010 tournament. Designed by Shaun Derrick and published by Games for the World, it is simply a deck of cards and a two page rule sheet.

The game is split into two phases: The group stage involves the 32 teams in 8 groups playing in a round robin league format. Each team receives 7 or 8 cards and the team manager will choose between 1 and 4 of the cards to allocate to each of their three matches. The cards vary between goal cards (1-3 goals depending on the strength of the team); attack cards, a pair of which counts as a goal and a singleton giving a chance at a goal based on the draw of a further card; penalty cards which are similar to singleton attacks but with a greater chance of scoring; defence cards which cancel attack cards; and foul/offside cards which cancel goals or attacks. Games are quickly resolved but choosing how many cards to allocate can be tricky as you need to determine which games you need to winn or can afford to lose. Still, if you’ve drawn rubbish cards to start with, you aren’t going to create many scoring chances however hard you try to perm them.

Once all 24 matches have been resolved, the top 2 teams in each group progress to the second phase, the knockout stage. Game play is different here and more closely follows that of the board game. All the teams in a round are available for players to play cards against up to a maximum of four cards for each team. However, goal and attack cards can be covered by foul/offside/defence cards to negate their advantage. Once all cards have been played, each match is resolved and the winners move on to the next round. At this stage, players who no longer have a team left in the tournament cease taking part in the card play and are just left to cheer / heckle the remaining managers. Drawn games in the knockout are resolved by penalty shoot out, which means that England will inevitably lose by these means at some stage in the tournament. Eventually, the final is resolved and the winning team/manager is crowned champion.

TWCCG is a fun game to play and has some interesting tactics but is to a great extent dependent on the cards you draw. I found the group stages more interesting than the knockout as allocating cards between three games involved more planning and guessing what the other team managers would be doing; the knockout was in the main just an exercise of placing good cards on your team and bad cards on your direct opponent so really  came down to who had drawn the better cards. Still, the game is easy to play, gives lots of opportunity to cheer your own good fortune or laugh at others’ misfortune, and is one that is easily played anywhere as it is simply a deck of cards. You do, however, need to download the score sheet to keep track of the tournament. We all enjoyed our first game although it took us just a bit longer than the 75 minutes advertised on the box. However, this is another good addition to the collection and will definitely see more play as we get closer to the real tournament.

In our game, we slightly varied the initial allocation of teams: The rules say teams are dealt out at random but I decided to split the top eight seeds so that all six of us got at least one decent team. Thankfully, everyone got a team through the group stages, although I was down to my last team, Argentina, having only drawn four teams (rather than most others receiving five) and my others being the mighty North Korea, South Korea and Japan.

In the round of 16, we saw two penalty shoot-outs with Ivory Coast defeating Switzerland 4-3 and my own Argentina scraping through 7-6 against Mark G’s France. However, my luck came to an end in the Quarters and both Mark K and I were relegated to spectators for the rest of the game. England (Guy) lost in the semi-finals and inevitably lost to Uruguay (Mark G) on penalties in the third place play-off. The final ended up being a goal-fest with Cameroon (Nige) eventually overcoming The Netherlands (Steve) 6-4, although Nige’s top decking skills in the final had to be seen to be believed. Great fun.

With the Superbowl coming up this Sunday, it was time to dig out Pizza Box Football for my annual predict the score using the team sheets produced specifically for this game by On The Line Games. So, here’s a quick summary of what you can expect to happen in Superbowl XLIV.

The first quarter started slowly with both teams unable to make significant ground and trading punts. The Saints were first on the scoreboard with a 44 yard field goal but the Colts replied on the following drive with a field goal of their own. As time ticked down on the first quarter, New Orleans took the ball down to the opposition’s 16 yard line but the next play saw a completed 14 yard pass fumbled. Luckily for the Saints, they recovered it and ran the ball in next play.

On the Saints’ next possession, they again drove down the field but quarterback, Drew Brees, saw a pass intercepted in the end zone and, after a couple of traded punts, Peyton Manning completed a 50 yard touchdown pass to tie the scores. With just over 2 minutes left in the half, New Orleans capped a 13 play drive with a second converted touchdown to end the half ahead 17-10.

In the third quarter, the Saints were more than ready to use their rushing game to run down the clock and successfully converted two more touchdowns, with Indianapolis struggling to get their offense to click. However, Manning wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet and the Colts took it into the End Zone on the final play of the quarter (31-17).

New Orleans continued to concentrate on the running game in the fourth quarter but neither team were able to make much progress. However, with just over five minutes left on the clock, a blocked punt from Indianapolis gave the Saints the ball on their opponents’ 5 yard line. Three rushing attempts later saw a fifth touchdown for the Saints and one hand on the trophy. Manning and the Colts knew they had to take risks and their next drive left them with a fourth and goal attempt, which resulted in a completed pass held up by the Saints defence one yard shy of a touchdown. So it was all over, the Saints ran down the clock and registered their first ever Superbowl win with a score of 38-17.

January turned out to be a bit slow on the game playing front with me missing two of our Friday night sessions. This coupled with a few new games meant the unplayed total only reduced by one during the month:

4 new games acquired (World Without End, Municipium,Burger Joint and Say Anything);

5 games no longer unplayed (Corsari, Hansa Teutonica, World Without End, Fleet 1715 and Say Anything);

0 games sold.

This month’s target is the same as last month’s i.e. to get at least below 75 this time next month.

Shaun Derrick has just announced that a card game based on his popular World Cup Game system is now available to buy.

The WCCG has 64 cards divided into 32 Team cards and 32 Action cards. Each group match is played individually but this takes seconds to resolve, then the KO stages are played in a similar way to the Board Game. The game costs £5.95 plus p&p and can be ordered from the Games For The World website. Further details including a detailed example of play can be found here.

Played this follow-up to Pillars of the Earth with Chris yesterday and enjoyed it a lot. Working out the best way to generate points was interesting and the perm six from twelve actions each round was novel. Chris did the better job as he scored loads of points by building up his medical knowledge and curing several villages from the plague. Ended up 65-56 to him. Interested to see how it plays with four as there should be more competition for building projects.

Played a couple of games of this neat little card game designed by Leo Colovini and published by Rio Grande. It is a set collection game that feels like gin rummy but the tavern adds an extra element of tension because, if somebody changes the prisoner colour you were playing for, it can wreak havoc with your hand. And the penalty for setting sail without the fewest stowaways is pretty harsh so you need to watch how other people seem to be doing before risking a declaration. I’ve only played two player but that works well and I suspect, with more players, there is a bit more chaos and setting sail is more risky. The only downside is that I have tended to declare early (and usually successfully) and Jan has found it a bit frustrating when she has been seeking to improve her hand just a little bit more. Hopefully, it hasn’t put her off too much.

Spielbox is a very professionally produced magazine on boardgames that has only one downside really - it’s published in German. Notwithstanding that, I still subscribe but it looks as though they’re considering producing an English version. If you’d like to join in encouraging them in this venture, you should email them as outlined in this article.

Played this again the other night with Jan and Chris. I’m still not sure about this one. I like the ideas behind it and the multiple areas you need to play in but I’m not sure if it gets hindered by the randomness of how long each round lasts. This time, we had a long first epoch, the second was so short none of us got to re-flood our Niles and the third was somewhere in between.

2009 saw me play 229 games of 157 different titles. 

My most played game was Tumblin’ Dice which saw 12 plays. I ought to be getting better with each successive outing but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Good job it’s just a really fun game that can be played with virtually any group.

My only other games that saw 5 or more plays were Weykick (8), Hamsterrolle (7), Finito (6), Fits (6) and Dominion (5) although it seemed like I played more Dominion + variants than I’ve recorded.

2009 didn’t seem to produce any outstanding game although there were several really good ones. My six picks for the year were a mix of good gamers’ games (Peloponnes, Diamonds Club and Endeavor), a couple of really nice family games (Roll Through The Ages and Tobago - the second of which we’ve still to play at a games club night) and one party game (Tumblin’ Dice). A lot of the games this year appeared to add complexity and time to previously elegant game mechanics in the expectation that adding another layer to a previous design would make for a more fulfilling game. Generally, not for me it didn’t. I see me preferring those designs that distill lots of decisions into short playing time. Let’s hope 2010 can come up with more of those.

So I’m halfway through my mission to get my unplayed games down below 20 by the end of June 2010. Well timewise I am but I’m definitely off the pace with the number crossed off, not helped by Christmas having few gaming opportunities and those generally being filled with old favourites. I also acquired half a dozen new games, which doesn’t help the goal:

6 new games acquired (Aber Bitte Mit Sahne, Cardcassonne, Court of the Medici, Fzzzt!, Hansa Teutonica and Ilium);

6 games no longer unplayed (Aber Bitte Mit Sahne, Dice Town, Dungeon Lords, Medici v Strozzi, Mosaix and Priests of Ra);

1 game sold (Sicilianos).

This month’s target is to get at least below 75 this time next month.