Dungeoneer: Realm of the Ice Witch

This entry on my journey through my game collection brings us to one of my Dungeoneer games. The Dungeoneer series consists of 8 different sets at the moment, each one being a combination of board game and card game. Some of the cards are used to create the playing board, while other cards represent various hazards that can afflict the player characters, even more cards are items and magic spells that can help the player characters, and then there are cards the represent the individual characters.

Anyone familiar with role-playing games might start to recognize some of what is going on here. Yes, Dungeoneer is a dungeon crawl game, loosely based on the general concepts of games like Dungeons & Dragons. However, rather than each player actually creating a character and acting them out, you draw a player from the character deck and then use that character's listed abilities to not get killed as you try to complete three different quests.

The genius in this game is the way that you play your cards. Each player will have both cards that can help characters (special items, spells, boons, allies, etc.), as well as monsters, traps, and hazards to hinder other players. As characters move around the board, they collect Peril and Glory points. You spend your Glory points to play cards that help you, but you play another character's Peril points to play cards that hinder him. Of course, you have to move around the board to complete your quests, which always require you to go to at least one specific location, if not two. With just two players, you don't have to worry about rationing your peril cards, but with more players, you have to decide how you will play your cards: focus on just one player, or try to focus on whoever has completed more quests, or some other strategy. It can get tense.

The one thing about the game that just doesn't seem to work so good is the experience system. Every character starts the game at 1st level, with low ability scores. As you complete quests, you go up levels (usually), which improves your ability scores. Thus, as you complete quests, it becomes easier to complete more quests. Because of this, the first person to complete a quest has an advantage that can be difficult to overcome for the other players. There are some optional rules that you can download from the Atlas Games website that provide some ways to mitigate this, but it is still a game balance problem.

The specific set that I played this time was Realm of the Ice Witch, which focuses on adventure in an arctic setting. It has some special rules that don't appear in other sets, specifically the fact that the Ice Witch is covering the world in ice. Each turn you roll a die. On a 4 or higher you place an ice token on a space of the player's choice. This means that certain hazards and enemies become stronger on that space, so this adds to the strategy of the game. I actually played it solitaire, using the rules from the optional rules sheet I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. This requires some different set-up, because there is no opponent to play monsters and hazards on you. You might think that this would make the solitaire game easy, but in reality solitaire games usually consist of having terrible monsters chase your character around the board until he/she dies. Seriously, it can get pretty brutal. In the specific game I just played, my character was beat on by a yeti, a pair of dragons, a pair of evil spirits, and then she was killed in an avalanche. She did succeed in killing a rat, but it was pretty ignominous. There is another optional rule, where you "stack" the encounter deck with easier stuff on top, and then harder stuff on the bottom, which I think I will try next time.

In addition, you can combine different sets together to make a bigger game. For example, I could combine the Realm of the Ice Witch set with the Vault of the Fiends set. This means that the Vault is set within the Ice Witch's realm, and you can move between the two areas through specific entry points. I've played that way before, and it works pretty well, definitely changing some of the play strategies.

Bottom line, this is a fun game that doesn't cost very much money and doesn't take too much time to play. Other games, like Runebound or Warhammer Quest, might do the theme of swords-and-sorcery fantasy adventure better, but when you travel a lot like I do, having a small package to take with you can be quite handy. You do have to add some of your own components though, like dice and play tokens. Still, everyone's got six-sided dice and pennies hanging around, so it's nothing that should trouble you.

Trimming the Hedges

Being a bit of a finance geek, I got a LOT of enjoyment from reading about how Porsche AG, the company that makes those fancy sports cars that many men drool over, suckered dozens of hedge funds into losing about 40 billion dollars. Being a person moderately knowledgeable about financial instruments, I can understand how short-selling of a stock can be part of a common sense investment strategy, and a way to "hedge your bets" and minimize losses. When people use 'shorts' solely as a short-term money making opportunity, however, it makes me want to go with the "Garfield strategy," named after what Garfield the Cat would often say in his animated specials, "The people responsible for this should be drug out into the street and shot." (On a side note, how were they able to get away with saying that in what was considered Children's entertainment? Not that I mind, of course.)

So, a tip of the hat to the financial managers at Porsche for doing a number on the barbarians, sending them scurrying off into the wastelands, licking their wounds. Or crawling off to die, as may be the case for a few of the more poorly-managed hedge funds. Whether this ends up being a long-term good thing for Porsche AG, or the first light of a spectacular flame-out, I can't say. It'll be fun to watch it all burn, though!

Busy Saturday

This past Saturday I went hiking for the first time in quite a while. I went to Forest 44 Conservation Area, which turns out to be only a few miles from my house, next to a large horse ranch. That being the case, most of the people I passed by on the trails were riding horses. This was both good and bad. Good, because the trails were wide. Bad, because horses tear up trails pretty badly, especially after significant rains. So, yeah, lots of mud. It was good to get outside and do some hiking though. Then I went and watched the Blues manhandle the Florida Panthers in a 4 - 0 shutout. A fine way to cap the day.

Ben Hurt

Ben Hurt is a game of chariot racing, printed in the mid '90s by Cheapass Games. It was a gift from my brother, Mark, on either a birthday or Christmas many years ago. As with all games by Cheapass, it comes with only the unique components to the game: the board (in six pieces that you have to assemble yourself), the rules, and 80 playing cards. You have to add money, player tokens, and dice, of a unique color or style for each player.

Each player represents a rich layabout trying to become richer by funding chariots in the chariot races in ancient Rome. Each player starts with 100 ducats, which seems like a lot, but they disappear quickly. To enter reach race, you have to ante 2 ducats per lap in the race into the "pot." Then, you also spend money on various cards to either improve your chariot prior to the race (by either improving the chariot itself or getting a special driver), or to use during the race to break the rules in various ways.

This is handled in a pretty cool way. You get a few cards for free each race, but more cards are given up for auction. Each player will have cards that they can either pay for up front (each card has a "quick sale" cost that allows the auctioneer to simply buy it), or it goes around the table. The first time around, anyone who wants it has to put 1 ducat into the pot. If more than one person put into the pot for it, it goes around again, but particpants have to put in 2 ducats, and so on. Each time round it gets more expensive, and this helps make for a richer pot.

Once the race begins, player move their chariots around the track. Each chariot is represented by a die. The reason for this is that your movement points is both a combination of your chariot's speed (usually the number you rolled in the previous round, but not always) and what you rolled. For example, chariots start out at a low speed (duh), usually 1 or 2. Thus, if I start with a speed of 1, and then roll a 6, I move 7 spaces. However, then my speed becomes 6. In the next turn, if I roll a 4, I move 10 spaces, and then my speed becomes 4. So there is some momentum. This would make you think that the entire game is random and based on speed die rolls. This is partly true, but there are many cards that let you mess with other players. Maybe they have to re-roll, maybe you throw a cat or an orangutan at their chariot (yes, this can happen) to slow them down, maybe you drop grease behind your chariot as you pass someone making everyone else to slower, etc. The game would be hopelessly lame without the use of the cards.

However, even with the cards, the game still feels a bit too random. Maybe it takes a number of plays to really figure out the best cards to get, and therefore the best ones to bid one before the race. The game is helped by the "tournament" structure that it has. See, there isn't just one race. The game consists of a series of races. The number of races, and their length in laps, is decided by the players. The standard series is 3 races of lengths of 1, 2, and 4 laps. You can have much more involved races, though. The length of a race really impacts the way cards are played. In a short race, you will probably play your cards as soon as possible, because the race can be very short if some bursts ahead. In a longer race, though, you will likely see more saving of cards to use until late in the race, if it stays tight.

When a race is over, the pot is paid out to first, second, and third place finishers. The pot is divided into 6 equal shares. First place gets three shares, second place gets two, and third place gets one. It only takes a couple races without winning to really put a player in a bind, with little cash left to invest in new cards. Thus, there can be some momentum in the game, with a player getting an early lead in the series and it being hard to knock them out. Because of this, even though the game is rated for 4 to 8 players, I'm not sure I would play it with more than 6. The game can also get long with many players, though it also gets pretty crazy.

In the end, this game is pretty average, as tends to be the case with games by Cheapass. It is pretty simple and easy to pick up and play, but it has some depth in knowing how to properly play the cards and handle the auctions for more cards. However, the game just didn't really grab me, and throwing cats at opposing chariots, or attacking them with hoes (like you use in your garden), just seems silly. It's good for a laugh, but it gets old, and there are better games to play.

That Was Easy... But This Won't Be

An interesting article has just been posted at the Books & Culture website. It's worth checking out. Here's the part that hooked me:

Well, our culture is pretty afflicted right now. Which is why I am more hopeful than I've been in a long time.

I am not hopeful because I envision an easy way out of the current economic mess. We are entering into the Great Deleveraging, where an entire country of consumers will have to pare back their reliance on cheap mortgages and abundant credit cards. (Remember when your mailbox was stuffed with credit card offers? Seen any lately?) The national savings rate might even rise above 0%—yes, that is zero percent, the proportion Americans have been collectively saving for several years now. But that means that consumption, a major engine of our economy, will have to decline dramatically.
I am not hopeful because I have confidence in whoever will be elected president in 15 days. I have grave concerns, as a Christian and as a citizen, about both candidates and will in all likelihood vote for neither. (Not for the first time—in 2004 I wrote in Colin Powell.)

I am not hopeful because I think we are well prepared for what is ahead of us. We are not. We are a terrifyingly unserious people, our heads buzzing with trivia and noise. This is more true, if anything, of American Christians than the rest of our country. The stark contrast between what I experience among Christians anywhere else in the world—and not just the "Third World," because Canada and Germany and Britain and Singapore come to mind as quickly as Uganda and India—and American Christians is astonishing. We are preoccupied with fads intellectual, theological, technological, and sartorial. Vanishingly few of us have any serious discipline of silence, solitude, study, and fasting. We have, in the short run, very little to offer our culture, because we live in the short run.

I am not hopeful because I think life is going to get easier in America. I am hopeful because I think it is going to get harder, and in a very good way. And I am hopeful because I think this means my children and grandchildren will live in a deeply and truly better world than I would have thought possible a few years ago.