→ September 19, 2014
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Spyrium.

Spyrium is a highly-rated (#288 on Boardgamegeek) but as yet not that well-known strategy game from the designer of the award-winning Caylus, but employs different mechanics for a game of moderate to high complexity that works best with three to four players but does play with two. Spyrium is a fictional crystal that unleashes tremendous energy when players use it in factories, but the crystal itself is hard to come by, as is the money the players will need to buy buildings and to use the workers they’ve placed in the game’s central market. The game thrives on scarcity and rewards players who pursue a tight strategy and don’t deviate from it, but you’ll need some luck to do that, especially if other players are after the same cards that you want. The game is currently $18 on amazon, through that link above.

In Spyrium, players represent industrialists who seek to gain victory points by processing spyrium to gain victory points, generally in factories that the player buys and buildings, in which a combination of spyrium and workers (meeples) yield victory points in each turn when they’re used. Each player starts the game with three worker meeples and places them in the 3×3 “market” of cards, which includes buildings to be purchased; technologies for purchase that provide recurring benefits (such as discounts on building purchases); and one-time bonuses of spyrium, money, victory points, or progress on the residence track.

The catch, and the game’s most distinguishing characteristic, is that players place meeples in the spaces between the cards in the market, rather than on the cards directly. The price of a card is equal to its face value plus another £1 for each meeple (yours or others’) adjacent to that card. (You have to have a meeple adjacent to a card to buy it.) Players place workers into the market one at a time, rotating through all players, but at any point a player can choose to switch to his/her “activation phase” and begin taking meeples off the market, even if s/he still has meeples to place.

When removing a meeple, the player may purchase any of the adjacent cards OR receive money equal to the number of other meeples adjacent to the same cards. Therefore, placement and removal introduce a significant strategic element to the game. You may place meeples just to try to gain money, but if you wait too long to remove one, you may get nothing – no cash, and no card because the adjacent cards are gone or unaffordable. Money and spyrium are always in short supply, so you’ll rarely be able to do everything you want, especially early in the game, which runs six rounds in total.

The basic strategy involves getting at least one building that generates spyrium, and at least one that lets you convert it into victory points. The “technology” cards can provide discounts or other bonuses that make concentrating on certain cards or assets more valuable, while the residence track, where all players start at 2 and can advance to 7, can provide frequent bonuses if the player concentrates on advancing there early enough and nabs one of the associated technology cards. (In short, you get your token up to 7, and then try to invoke that track repeatedly for a 7-point bonus each time.) By the game’s final rounds, the cards become more expensive while spyrium is almost impossible to come by.

With two players, the market is much less competitive – it’s easier to grab the cards you want, unless you and your opponent are pursuing the same cards, something you can avoid by switching your strategy very slightly. The order in which you withdraw your workers from the market matters regardless of the number of players With more players, you need more focus on getting the right combinations of cards and grabbing resources when you can, and you’ll have to adjust at some point because an opponent took the card you wanted, or because opponents priced you out (deliberately or as collateral damage) of a card you intended to buy. That means the game also requires a fair amount of foresight, but knowledge of the cards isn’t required or very tricky, as the technology cards appear early and the buildings all follow a simple formula of increasing rewards.

The game promises a steampunk theme that doesn’t materialize. Game themes are tricky things to begin with – most German-style games involve a theme that sits awkwardly on a game mechanic, with only a tenuous connection between the two, and Spyrium’s connection is among the weakest I’ve seen. You’re placing workers, gathering two resources, and converting all of that into points. At the end of the game, you can earn additional points for your buildings, including some special points-only buildings similar to the prestige buildings available at the end of Caylus and the luxury ships at the end of Le Havre.

A typical two-player game takes 45 minutes in person, about a half hour online at Boardgame Arena, mostly because of decision-making time rather than time to resolve the effects of moves. That decision-making time is one of my two complaints about Spyrium, along with the fact that the tight resource constraints introduce what I think of as game-stress, best encapsulated by the difficulty in keeping your people fed in Agricola: I don’t play games to worry about whether my imaginary family has enough to eat. Granted, Spyrium has no direct penalties for running out of money or its namesake crystal, but if you don’t manage the first two rounds correctly, you are well and screwed in rounds five and six, meaning the pressure to make good moves early on is enormous. (I don’t think it’s possible to fully recover from a bad opening, but I haven’t played enough to say that with any certainty.) That, I believe, is why the game hasn’t caught on despite a good combination of simple mechanics and complex decision-making, with attractive elements and a famous designer to draw you in. It’s a smart, balanced game, but it’s more challenging than it is fun, and as such I think it’s for serious or hardcore gamers only.

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→ September 16, 2014
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Seasons boardgame.

I have a new Insider column on ESPN.com naming Kris Bryant the minor league prospect of the year, with a dozen other guys earning mentions.

The boardgame Seasons is a hybrid of two of the most popular subgenres in gaming right now – deckbuilding and complex strategy games – but adds a high degree of interactivity to the game that makes it feel less complicated to play. As in most games in those two subgenres, there’s a significant benefit to knowing the cards in the deck, so first-timers are at a huge disadvantage and the learning curve is fairly steep. However, the cards themselves are seldom complicated, with each individual card’s actions playing out quite simply; it’s the interactions between cards that define the game’s strategy and thus how complex you want the game to become.

In Seasons, each player starts the game with nine cards, which s/he divides into three triplets that become that player’s hand for each of the three rounds of the game. Each round comprises specific turns where a token moves somewhat randomly around a board of 12 spaces covering four seasons, with each change season shifting the values of the four “energy tokens” (the game’s primary currency) to reflect each element’s scarcity in that season. To begin each round, players roll a number of special dice equal to one more than the number of players, then each player chooses a die that grants benefits like energy tokens, crystals (victory points), or the ability to play more cards (summoning power) or exchange energy tokens for crystals (transmuting). After dice selection, players can take several actions, most importantly playing cards, which involves spending energy tokens and occasionally crystals to place the cards on the table in front of him/her, some with immediate benefits, others with recurring effects, and still more with one-time gains later in the game.

A typical turn in Seasons starts with dice selection, after which each player receives the benefits shown on the die s/he chose and then may take any number of actions:

* Spending energy tokens and/or crystals to “summon” (place on the table) a power card from his hand.

* Activating certain effects of cards on the table in front of him. Some of those effects can be used once per turn; others require “sacrificing” (trashing) the card.

* Taking a penalty of five or more points (to be assessed at game-end) to use a bonus action, such as increasing the player’s summoning power – that is, how many cards s/he may have on the table in front of him/her at one time. The maximum is 15.

* Transmuting energy tokens into crystals (points). The value of each energy type varies by season; in each season, one of the four types is worth three crystals per token when transmuted, one is worth two points, and two types are worth one. These change so that each energy type has one season where its value is at the maximum of three points.

The effects of the cards are easy to follow, thanks to the text on the cards and the relatively small number of symbols you need to know to understand the game. Some examples of cards are the Hourglass of Time, which gives you a bonus energy token every time the season changes; the Dice of Malice, which costs nothing to play and lets you reroll your die once each round while giving you a two-point bonus; and Kairn the Destroyer, which allows you to pay (trash, in essence) one energy token each turn to make each of your opponents lose four crystals. There are also one-time use cards like the Amulet of Fire, which increases your summoning power by two, and there are cards that must be sacrificed to be used, like the Potion of Power, which lets you draw and immediately place a new power card while increasing your summoning power by one.

The strategic element comes into play at the beginning of the game, when you get to select which nine cards go into your starting deck, a process during which you need to pay attention to certain card combinations that bring exponential benefits. For example, if you have the Wondrous Chest card, which gives you a bonus every time the season changes if you have four or more energy tokens in your hand, you’ll want to look for cards that help you rack up more energy tokens (e.g., Hourglass of Time), or a card like Bespelled Grimoire, which allows you to keep ten tokens rather than seven in your hand – so it’s easier to spend tokens on cards without depleting your supply. Executing these strategies involves knowing the cards reasonably well, including cards that you might draw as the game progresses; understanding or being able to work out how they interact over the course of the game; and keeping track of everything you have and are supposed to do (e.g., activating Kairn every turn) while the game goes on. And if you happen to choose incorrectly at the start of the game, either picking the wrong cards or organizing them suboptimally into your three three-card decks, you may be sunk before the ship has even launched.

Perhaps that’s what prevents me from giving Seasons my highest recommendation – it’s a very good game, with an incredibly thoughtful design that maintains its balance despite all of the possible permutations of cards and die rolls, but it’s nearly impossible to explain its mechanics in a succinct fashion. Our first play through the game was a rarity in that we got the rules right, but saw none of the game’s “point” of how to rack up bigger point totals, in part because there was no guidance anywhere on how to sort your initial nine cards (we used the suggested starter sets) into three piles. A typical winning score in a two-player game can run into the 200s, and in a three-player game in the 150-200 range, but in our first game neither of us cracked 100 because we didn’t grasp any of the strategic aspects – and until I tried a few games online Boardgame Arena I didn’t get a feel for how the game was supposed to be played.

Once you have the gist, however, Seasons is addictive, and posseses a great blend of individual achievement (trying to reach higher scores, or just to know you played a better game) and competitive play through cards that allow you to play off your opponents or even screw with them. You just have to wear it for a bout or two while you figure it out and learn the deck and the back-and-forth flow of energy tokens and crystals that powers the game.

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→ July 28, 2014
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Targi.

Andreas Steiger’s two-person game Targi, published in 2012 as part of Kosmos’ two-player series, combines several simple, familiar mechanics for a new, easy-to-learn game that still requires moderately difficult strategic decisions, with more interaction than most two-player games offer because of the nature of the board. Games took us 30-45 minutes, and I had no problem teaching the game to my eight-year-old daughter, especially since most of the scoring is clear and immediately visible on the game’s cards. The game was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres (Connoisseur’s Game of the Year) in 2012, but lost to Village, which I own but haven’t opened yet.

Each player represents a tribe of Tuareg nomads competing to acquire goods (salt, pepper, and dates) as well as gold to allow them to acquire “tribe cards” that award both victory points and special abilities. Players purchase tribe cards and arrange them in their own camp, a 3×4 array where each row of four can earn bonuses based on the symbols on the cards placed there – four of a kind or four unique symbols in a row. The game has two end conditions, so its there’s a cap on how long a game can go, and also creates a little tension if neither player has filled his/her array before the final turn arrives.targibox

Targi’s board is created by placing cards on the table in a 5×5 grid, with the sixteen cards around the border fixed in every game. These “noble cards” include twelve cards that award free goods or special abilities that may be used only on that turn, as well as four “raid” cards that require all players to surrender goods, gold, or victory points to the robber. The central nine cards (3×3) change every game, and vary over the course of the game; they begin with five goods cards, from which a player may get salt, pepper, dates, a combination of two of those, gold, or a victory point; and four tribe cards, described above, awarding one to three victory points, bearing one of five card symbols, and possibly granting some special abilities. When a player purchases a tribe card from the central square, a goods card replaces it, and vice versa.

Each player has three Targi tokens and two marker tokens, and players alternate placement of the Targi, with the first player changing on each turn. A player places his/her Targi on the noble cards around the outside of the board, creating two points of intersection on cards in the central 3×3 grid, on which the player places her two marker tokens for a total of five affected cards for each player. One noble card is out of play on each turn because the robber occupies it, and a player may not share a noble card or place his own Targi on a noble card directly across from one of his opponent’s Targi. On his turn, a player may resolve his five tokens in any order he wishes. If a player has the opportunity to purchase a tribe card but lacks the necessary goods and/or gold, she may hold one tribe card in her hand for purchase on a later turn. After each player has taken a turn, the robber moves forward one space on the noble card track and all cards in the central grid that were used or purchased are replaced with a card of the opposite type.

The Targi "board."

The Targi “board.”

There are several ways to score points in Targi, starting with the most straightforward method – scoring one to three points for each tribe card purchased. There are a few opportunities to take a victory point directly from the supply, such as a goods card that awards one point rather than awarding salt or pepper. The key to maximizing your score, however, is to get the right cards into your 3×4 camp array in the right order. Each row can earn a four point bonus if all four cards in the row have the same symbol (there are five symbols in total), or can earn a two point bonus if all four cards have different symbols. Many tribe cards award other bonuses, such as granting an extra point for every two cards of a specific symbol in the camp – for example, one extra point for every two “oasis” cards the player holds – or doubling the two point bonus for a row of cards with unique symbols. Other tribe cards award goods rather than points, reduce the costs to buy tribe cards with specific symbols, or offer protection from or bonuses during raids, while tribe cards that bring three victory points carry no bonuses at all.

The main constraint in the game is gold. Of the 45 tribe cards in the deck, 26 require a gold token as all or part of the purchase price. Each player begins the game with a single gold token, but acquiring more is harder than acquiring more goods is. Three of the 19 goods cards reward the player with a gold token, but the exterior noble cards track has no direct way to get a gold token, as opposed to two noble cards each for salt, pepper, and dates. Players may use the Trader card to swap three goods of a single type for a gold token, a function available once per turn to whichever player places a Targi token on that noble card, and unavailable when the robber occupies it during the game’s fourth turn. There’s also one tribe card that grants a one-time bonus of a gold token, and that’s it. Therefore acquiring gold is key for players, as is using it wisely and avoiding a commitment to a strategy that requires more gold than the player can get.

The game’s main interaction comes in the competition to place tokens around the noble track. It can be easy to guess what your opponent wants or needs, and because the game includes just three goods it’s also likely you’ll be going for the same thing(s) and can line up your move with one that blocks your opponent or at least reduces her options. There’s one end-run around this, the “fata morgana” noble card, which allows the player whose targi is on it to move a token from one central card to any unoccupied one, but at the cost of using two tokens (one Targi, one marker) to accomplish one goal.

Winning scores tend to be in the upper 30s and low 40s, and we’ve had games end due to both conditions – one player buying his 12th tribe card or the robber making it all the way around the noble track to the fourth and final raid card. Even our first game, where we only botched one rule (a record of sorts for us), took maybe an hour. Because the options for moves are few and there’s a constant back-and-forth, the game feels quick and players rarely have long to wait before they’re asked to do something. I’d still slot it behind Jaipur for pure two-player games, but Targi is among the best of its breed, a two-player game that doesn’t feel like it was dumbed down in any way.

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→ July 26, 2014
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Saturday five, 7/26/14.

My content at ESPN.com over the last seven days…

* My analysis of the Huston Street trade
* My analysis of the Chase Headley trade
* My (very brief) analysis of the Kendrys Morales trade
* This week’s Klawchat

I reviewed the outstanding new boardgame Splendor for Paste, giving the Spiel des Jahres nominee a grade of 9/10. It’s also back in stock at amazon for $35, after some insane pricing earlier in the week when the award was announced. My daughter loves this game and grasped the basic strategy very quickly.

And now, this week’s links – a few more than five, as I came across too many things worth passing along…

  • Nobody had a better take this week on the joke of a punishment wife-beater Ray Rice received from the NFL than Keith Olbermann did.
  • The little girl who may hold the secret to aging. She’s five years old with the body of an infant, but is her whole life just to be a test subject for scientists?
  • On the nascent baseball culture in Iran. I love the idea of sport as diplomacy, although I fear it makes for better headlines than understanding.
  • Nestlé is bottling huge quantities of water from the California desert. Not that anyone’s inclined to stop them.
  • John McPhee on writing, part of The New Yorker‘s now-free archives. Warning: There’s a fair amount of rambling here for a piece on writing.
  • How to spend the first ten minutes of your day, from Harvard Business Review. I use several of these tips, from a morning to-do list to tackling some more daunting tasks earlier in the day – but I also try to knock off a few quick items in the first hour, because there’s a quick psychological payoff from crossing off a few things on the list.
  • R.J. Anderson with a good piece on Big Data coming to baseball. His piece is ostensibly about defense, but the real message here is how critical data management, from building and maintaining a data warehouse to developing tools to access and query it quickly, has become to baseball operations – which supports David Murphy’s excellent column for philly.com on how the Phillies need to revamp their organization.
  • And finally, an audio clip from the BBC: This week’s World Have Your Say discusses balance and media bias in the coverage of the Israel/Gaza conflict, which is great until they invite three guests who claim the media are biased, all three of whom sound like tin-foil hat lunatics and/or teenagers who just read Howard Zinn for the first time and think they have the world figured out. The one guest who claimed there’s an anti-Israel bias was the worst, however, with frequent invocations of the guilt by association fallacy when discussing al-Jazeera.
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→ April 19, 2014
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Saturday five, 4/19/14.

My ESPN content from the past week:

* Scouting reports on prep RHP Tyler Kolek and JC righty Heath Fillmyer.
* My report on this week’s Sally League matchup between Hunter Harvey (Baltimore) and Lucas Giolito (Washington).
* Scouting notes from my Georgia trip last week, including a rant on NC State overusing Carlos Rodon.

There was no Klawchat this week because my flight to Houston didn’t have wifi, and the “Top 25 under 25” ranking has been pushed back to April 24th. Also, as I mentioned here last week, if you want new Behind the Dish episodes any time soon, let ESPN know.

* If you missed my review of Thinking, Fast and Slow, it’s worth checking it out – the book is popular among the more analytically-minded front offices in MLB.

* The wonderful Agricola iOS app is on sale right now, $4 (down from $7), and the two IAPs are on sale as well. I own the whole set, and it’s the best complex boardgame app available.

And now, to the Saturday links….

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→ February 17, 2014
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Takenoko.

Takenoko is our new favorite family game, easy enough for my 7-year-old to understand (and, after two plays, completely memorize) the rules, just complex enough to require some serious decision-making, with beautiful components and a kid-friendly theme. Aside from one small hiccup in the rules, it’s about as perfect as any adult/kid boardgame out there.

In Takenoko, the emperor of Japan has been given a panda as a gift, and the panda does what pandas do – he starts running around the emperor’s garden eating bamboo, frustrating the royal gardener. The board changes each game as players lay hex tiles in three different colors on the table, starting with the central pond tile, then irrigating each tile so they can add bamboo stacks to it – although the panda will move around the board and eat bamboo when the players need to collect some.

On a turn, a player takes two actions and may not perform the same type of action twice. Action choices include adding a hex tile (draw three, choose one to place, return the other two to the bottom of the stack); add an irrigation canal; move the gardener to an irrigated tile, adding bamboo to that one and any adjacent, irrigated tiles of the same color; move the panda, eating one bamboo section from the tile where he lands; or take another objective card to try to score more points. After round one, each player rolls a “weather” die before his/her turn, allowing him/her to take a third action, perform the same action twice, or do specific tasks like moving the panda for free.

Players all work to build up the royal gardens, earning points by completing “objectives” on three types of cards. The first kind involves creating patterns of hex tiles on the board, with the player scoring points once the tiles are placed in the right pattern and are all irrigated. The second requires the player to collect bamboo sections, scoring once he’s obtained the whole set shown on the card. The third and most difficult kind, the gardener cards, require constructing specific bamboo stacks – four sections of a single color on a specific tile type, or sets of three or four stacks of exactly three sections, all of the same color. Task rewards range from 2 points up to 7, and the game ends when a player reaches a specific threshold based on the number of players in the game (equal to 11 minus the number of players, if you don’t mind a little arithmetic). The player to reach that threshold first gets the Emperor card, worth an additional 2 points.

The tile types I mentioned above involve improvement tokens, some of which are printed on the hex tiles already, with 9 more miniature tiles available for players to add to tiles as they see fit. One type prohibits the panda from eating bamboo sections on that tile (which means the stack can never shrink); another makes the tile particularly fertile, so it adds two bamboo sections instead of one each time the gardener drops by; and the third, the watershed token, adds irrigation to a tile regardless of its access to the central network of canals. These can make reaching certain objectives easier, but the gardener cards that call for building a bamboo stack of four sections specify what improvements are required to earn points – some cards call for a specific token, and the others can only be scored if the stack is on a hex tile with no improvement tokens at all.

The lone hiccup in the game comes from the existence of multiple objective cards with the same pattern or requirement within each deck. In the gardener and tile-pattern decks, that means a player could draw the same card twice and, in theory, score twice for fulfilling its requirements just once. The rulebook points out this possibility and suggests a house rule to cover it; we’ve played with the simplest solution, that no player can score the same objective card from these decks twice. The panda objective cards don’t present this problem, because to score such a card you have to return the bamboo sections you’ve collected to the central repository; if you draw the same panda objective card again, you have to start collecting from scratch anyway.

Takenoko has a high interactive element with a low screw-your-opponent factor; you can sometimes infer what your opponent is trying to do, but you probably won’t be certain, and making a move to stop him/her just sets you back from achieving your own objectives. You can, however, benefit from what someone else does, or find an opponent has inadvertently blocked you, so choosing what steps to take when is a big part of Takenoko strategy. The time required to run irrigation lines out to hex tiles placed two or three spaces away from the central pond is also a big factor in deciding when or whether to go for a hex-pattern objective, and because the panda and gardener can only move in straight lines, you may also find yourself trying to position them in your current turn so you’ll have a fighting chance to get them ready to strike in your next one.

Games run very quickly, maybe a half hour for the three of us to complete a game, in large part because the rules are straightforward enough for my daughter to make reasonably fast decisions and to decide before her turn arrives what she wants to do. (This also involved her making vague threats to my wife and myself about what might happen if we screwed up what she was trying to accomplish on her next turn.) The components are well-made and attractive, with a sensible box for storage and the right number of small bags to keep the bamboo stacks and other pieces separated.

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→ January 6, 2014
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Top 30 iOS boardgame apps.

There’s been a small explosion in adaptations of quality boardgames to the iOS platform since the last time I wrote up this ranking in September of 2011, enough that I could double the size of the rankings and still dump a few titles that no longer belonged. For these rankings I consider both the quality of the underlying game and the strength of the app, including graphics, stability, tutorials, online multiplayer mode, and quality of AI opponents.

Linked app titles go to my reviews here on the dish; linked prices go directly to iTunes for you to purchase the apps (and yes, I get a tiny commission on those sales). I’ve taken out some apps that appear to be abandoned or broken or that don’t work for iPad. None of those was really worth the money anyway.

1. Carcassonne. ($9.99) Still best of breed, featuring great graphics, a range of AI opponents (including good “hard” opponents, and “evil” ones too), online multiplayer, and three of the game’s real-world expansions available as in-app purchases.

2. Samurai. ($4.99) The best port of a Reiner Knizia game, which says something since you’re going to see his name quite a bit on this list. The AI players are very tough and there’s a thriving community of online players that has been active for years.

3. Agricola. ($6.99) The best example of an app where the developers chose to rethink the game for the tablet platform, taking advantage of the format to make a good but complex game work better on the iPad than it does on the tabletop. Two additional card decks just became available as IAPs, and the only complaint I’ve heard is that the toughest AI opponents aren’t tough enough – but they’re not easy unless you’re already a solid Agricola player.

4. Ticket to Ride. ($6.99) Days of Wonder has done its app development in-house, which doesn’t always work for publishers, but in DoW’s case it’s been a boon for players, as their apps look great, work extremely well, and are actively supported with in-app purchases (IAPs) and expansions, including Europe, Switzerland, Asia, and the 1910 card set. The family of Ticket to Ride games also Pocket versions of the US ($1.99) and Europe (also $1.99) games for the iPhone/iPod Touch. There’s a big online player base as well, and this is our favorite game for pass-and-play with my daughter, who also likes Carcassonne and Battle Line.

5. Caylus. ($4.99) Like Agricola, Caylus fares better on the iPad than it does on the tabletop, and the Caylus app would still get my award for the best graphics – their use of bright colors and clear icons makes it much easier to stare at the screen for the ten minutes or so it takes to play this complex strategy game. The AI opponents could be a little stronger.

6. Tigris and Euphrates. ($4.99) Always a favorite of mine, this adaptation of a Knizia classic improved substantially with a graphics update about two years ago, and works well with online multiplayer or with local AI opponents (they’re good, but could also be tougher).

7. Stone Age. ($6.99) One of the best family strategy games on the market came a little later to the iOS platform, but the developers did a great job of reimagining the game, which relies on a big board with a lot of elements, for the small screen, coming first to the iPhone and maintaining the same format for the iPad. The AI players are solid and there’s a large online community, including an organized league with rankings.

8. Small World. ($9.99) Days of Wonder boosted this last summer with the 2.0 update, which included online multiplayer and support for 3-5 players. It’s gorgeous and one of the best apps for two players to play face to face with the iPad between them.

9. Pandemic. ($6.99) The challenge in making a cooperative game for iOS is lower than that of any other game, since coop apps don’t need AI players and online multiplayer is not a critical feature. That aside, the Pandemic app is superb across the board – the graphics are great, gameplay is easy to follow, and it’s easy to customize the game however you’d like, just as you would with the physical version. The On the Brink expansion is now available as an IAP if you want to raise the stakes a little.

10. Battle Line. ($2.99) One of the best two-player games out there, Battle Line’s app has a simple, clean implementation, with basic and full modes (basic doesn’t use the ten event cards) and good enough AI opponents to keep the game interesting. I’ve noticed some minor bugginess here, especially on older iOS devices. It’s one of the best games for the smaller screens, since most of the top 7 either require an iPad or just play better on one. This is also a Reiner Knizia game.

11. Puerto Rico. ($4.99)Much, much improved after an update a few months ago to step up the graphics – it’s easier to follow what’s going on (not perfect, but better) and the screen isn’t as tough on the eyes now. The AI players are some of the best I’ve come across, as Puerto Rico has one very strong strategy (produce and ship) and the AI players will try it. I don’t like the representation of buildings by shapes on each island, without labels, so it’s hard to know at a glance who has built what.

12. Ingenious. ($2.99) Yet another Knizia game, this abstract two-player game is a natural for iOS because the scoring is a little tricky – and I think abstract games, which are often heavily math-based, translate very well to app versions with AI opponents. (All of Knizia’s games are math-based at heart anyway.) The app can be frustrating in a fun way, because the hard AI opponent is very good and because you need to look or think a few moves ahead to avoid getting trapped. The $1.99 iPhone version is a separate app.

13. Through the Desert. ($2.99) Oh, hey, more Knizia, this one a territory-claiming game where players compete to cordon off sections of the board and to reach specific landmarks. The AI players are fair, and it’s a little tough to play on the smaller screen because the board is shrunk to a level that even good eyes may have a hard time seeing (and even little fingers may have a hard time pressing accurately).

14. Le Havre. ($4.99) Like Caylus and Agricola, Le Havre is so complex that moving it to iOS makes it easier to play because you lose all the setup and cleanup time involved with playing the physical game. This implementation is very faithful to the board game, with pretty good AI players – they’ll make good use of the special point-accumulating buildings available late in the game – but there’s so much information crammed on the screen that it becomes hard to find what you need, and some players may find the smaller text hard to read even on the iPad, let alone on the iPhone.

15. Hey, That’s My Fish! ($2.99) The one game on this list that’s more aimed at kids than at adults, Hey, That’s My Fish! is one of my daughter’s favorite apps and also one of her favorites to play with me, even though she’s had it for about two years. The board is bright and colorful, and the penguins (your tokens) look great, with some animation twists that make the game more fun to play (such as when a penguin falls into the sea). Completing achievements unlocks a number of different boards, but since about half of those achievements are simple I’m not as bothered by the requirement.

16. San Juan. ($4.99) The card-game version of Puerto Rico got a better app treatment right out of the chute than the master game did, and still looks really good, with strong AI opponents and clear graphics and text, even on the iPhone.

17. Lost Cities. ($3.99) More Knizia, and another two-player game, this one a very simple card-collecting/arranging game that looks great on smaller devices with big, bright graphics, since it was designed specifically for the iPhone 5. The AI players aren’t very good, but I’ve played this a number of times online and gameplay through GameCenter is as smooth as it gets.

18. Scotland Yard. ($4.99) An old-school title gets the app treatment, benefiting from the translation because of how intricate the board is (unless you’re intimately familiar with streets and bus routes in London). The developers even accounted for the fact that, in pass-and-play mode, one player’s actions have to be hidden from the others. The soundtrack is a nice touch. The AI could be a lot stronger, however.

19. Rebuild. ($2.99) I’m bending my own rules here, as Rebuild is the one title on the list that isn’t based on an actual board game. It’s a solo title, but it’s a board game from start to finish, just one that takes advantage of what you can do on a tablet (or computer) that you can’t do, or can’t do as easily, on a tabletop. Build up your community to recapture City Hall before the zombie hordes take you out, but don’t let that fundamentalist group get too powerful.

20. Settlers of Catan. ($4.99) Just called “Catan” in the App Store, this adaptation has always disappointed me in several ways. The underlying game is the same as the classic that spawned the boom in better (German-style) boardgames, such as the Cones of Dunshire. The app is very limited, however – the AI players aren’t good, trading is very awkward, the graphics are bright but too ornate, and all you get is the very basic board. Everything else is an IAP, including Seafarers and Cities & Knights ($4.99 each), which also unlocks some campaign scenarios. The $4.99 iPhone version is a separate app.

21. Elder Sign. ($6.99) A cooperative title based in the Cthulu universe, this app would rate higher if you got the full game. Instead, you get the game without the end battle against the big foozle (if you don’t defeat him before that, in the app you just lose), and you only get four opponents, with each additional one costing another $2.99. A few other rules are cut out as well. It does look slick and it helped us understand a few of the rules in the physical game we didn’t grasp the first time.

22. Qin. ($4.99) This Knizia title came out in 2012 as a board game and as an app, the first simultaneous release by a major designer that I’d heard about. It’s an abstract tile-laying game where players try to claim control of several landmarks on the board while also building up their tile chains so they can’t be taken over by other players. I’ve seen it described as Acquire meets Tigris & Euphrates, which is pretty apt, but I think both of those are better games than Qin.

23. Hacienda. ($0.99) A solid implementation of a good-not-great tile-laying, territory-claiming game. I wish the maps were a little clearer – sometimes adapting the precise graphics of the board game works to the app’s disadvantage – and the AI players were easy to beat after a few plays. Through the Desert does the same kind of thing, but better.

24. The Battle for Hill 218. ($2.99) A simple-to-learn, hard-to-win two-player card game where you are fighting to take over your opponent’s home space on his side of the titular Hill. The game is currently out of print, so pick up the app while you wait for it to come back around, and, if you’re like me, prepare to get your clock cleaned.

25. Medici. ($1.99) Another Knizia game, one I’m probably a little light on because the mechanics didn’t grab me – you bid against other players for shipments of goods coming into a Renaissance Italian port, and try to get the most of certain good types to rack up points, with bonuses available for having the most valuable ship in each shipping round and for shipping certain numbers of goods over the course of each game. It’s a good implementation; I just don’t think the game is that exciting.

26. Lords of Waterdeep. ($6.99) A D&D-themed game where the theme seemed patched on to a poor adaptation of the physical version. The board is overdesigned for the iPad – in thise case, I think it’s just the physical game itself, with no adjustments – and it doesn’t do the resource-constraint mechanic as well as Agricola or Caylus. A UI overhaul would go a long way.

27. Suburbia. ($4.99) Great UI, bright graphics, awful AI players, and bugs. It just came out on December 12th, 2013, so I’ll give them some time to improve the app. I haven’t used the save game feature without a crash yet, either.

28. Tikal. ($2.99) Much better in an app than in a physical game – it’s the only game I’ve bought and later sold – and even in app form it can take a while because each player gets 10 action points per turn. A software upgrade about two or three years ago made this much more stable and easier to play.

29. Ra. ($2.99) The last Knizia app on the list, this is another auction-based game that never grabbed me, but remains a favorite over at boardgamegeek. The app looks clean and easy to use but the tutorial (when I first tried it in 2010) was terrible.

30. Dominant Species. ($4.99) I just reviewed this last week and was not impressed. The underlying game might be great, but it’s very complex and the app’s UI is terrible, as is the tutorial. The AI players are also kind of dumb; I shouldn’t be beating them by wide margins when I don’t even understand all of the rules. I recommend this only if you want to try the game out before spending $60-plus on the physical version.

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→ January 4, 2014
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Dominant Species app.

The complex board game Dominant Species has moved up into the top 20 on boardgamegeek’s global rankings despite its high cost (over $60) and one of the most intricate decision trees I’ve come across. Players represent different classes of creatures, exploring and populating the planet by placing hex tiles on the board, receiving points primarily for “dominating” specific tiles. Players have a large number of potential actions but are competing for space on the board and for priority in each type of action. You have a lot to weigh each time you choose which action to take, and the cleanup and scoring in each round also takes a lot of time and effort.

There is an app implementation of Dominant Species for iPad that gives you a fair introduction to the game for $4.99, but still leaves much to be desired. I’ll review it here for completeness, but I don’t recommend it unless you want to try the game out before shelling out for the pricey boxed game.


Evolutionary status: It’s complicated.

In Dominant Species, players will build out the game board as they go, placing different land/water tiles and also putting “element” tokens on the vertices of the hexes, then populating those tiles with their own species. The bottom line is that you want your species tokens on tiles, especially water tiles, that are surrounded by several of the element tokens you also have on your card. Each player starts with two of these element tokens, depending on which botanical class he draws, but can add more as the game goes on.

The board can change in several ways as the game evolves, with tiles changing to tundra (where most species are removed, and eventually all might be wiped out) and elements added and removed frequently. Each player has a specific element type that gives him the potential to “dominate” any tiles where that element appears and he has species, but players can also acquire new element tokens for themselves and adapt to allow them to dominate new tiles on the board. The key to the game, at least in my limited experience, is the Domination phase at the end of each round: There are five Domination spaces for action pawns, and each player who places a pawn there can choose a tile on the board to dominate, where the player who has the right elements (matching those around the tile) and has species there gets a point bonus, and may get a Domination card that gives him more points or the ability to add or remove items from the board. There’s a lot more involved – players have several action pawns to place each turn, and can acquire more as the game goes on – but those are the key points. Players can undertake less significant actions like turning a tile to tundra, claiming points and potentially removing another players’ species; migrating species from one tile to another to avoid extinction; and knocking out a single opposing species token from any tile under “competition.”

The publisher of the physical version of Dominant Species, GMT Games, chose to develop the app in-house, and unfortunately they half-assed the initial release and may have abandoned the project entirely. The AI players are poor, and a promised introduction of a harder AI player remains undone after a year. The UI is also weak, mimicking the physical game rather than taking advantage of what the tablet can offer in different graphics, animation, even stuff like replacing colored wooden cubes with, I don’t know, maybe actual animal shapes? Trying to squeeze everything on to one screen – both the game board and the action selection board – means nothing is clear, and there’s still a lot of info hidden on drop-down screens. It feels rushed and uncreative, rather than an attempt to approach the game from an entirely new perspective. And it lacks online multiplayer.

I’m guessing that playing the physical game with people who’ve played before would be fun, maybe not top 20 overall fun but with enough interaction between players to keep it interesting and social. It is probably a touch too involved for my personal tastes, and I’m still not sure I understand all of the rules regarding some of the less-used phases in each round. A better tutorial, a hard AI opponent, and improved graphics would go a long way to making the app better, and with the boxed game selling for over $60 they could use the promotional boost.

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→ December 31, 2013
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Suburbia iPad app.

Unrelated to Suburbia – the death yesterday of School of Seven Bells founder Ben Curtis at age 35 (of lymphoma) spurred me to look back at my rankings of the top songs of 2012 and create a fresh Spotify playlist with a few extra tracks. Their haunting song “The Night” is on the list.

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The boardgame Suburbia ranks in the top 100 on Boardgamegeek, with a combination of city-building mechanics and economic planning where what you do early in the game impacts how many points you can rack up late in the game. It’s reminiscent of more complex games like Agricola and Caylus in that respect, but with simpler gameplay and less direct interaction because players have more ways to change their plans on the fly. I’ve been playing the Suburbia iPad app for the last two weeks, and I enjoy the game itself but have found the app’s AI options way too weak to make the app replayable.

In Suburbia, between two and four players compete to build the most populated suburb around a central city by placing building tiles that are available for purchase in a common market. Each hex tile has specific costs and benefits. The benefits can include increases in income, population, or reputation; one-time cash infusions; or long-term effects that depend on what other tiles are adjacent to the hex, or in the same suburb, or in all suburbs combined. The costs include money but can also include a loss of income, population, or reputation, which may depend on what else is around. Place an industrial tile next to a residential one and you’ll lose reputation points because of pollution. Place tiles around a lake (free to add) and you’ll get extra cash.

The tile interactions are one of two keys to racking up large populations. You can’t do everything in your suburb, so it pays to concentrate early on one or two specific areas or tile types and try to build your income or population more quickly through synergies between tiles. You can add a farm or two, and then if you add restaurant tiles later they will be even more valuable. There are also tiles that include penalties for laying other tile types – if you add a high-end restaurant, adding a fast food restaurant afterwards will cost you an income point. The game’s tutorial suggests concentrating on income early and population later, as there are income and reputation hits built into the system when your population crosses certain thresholds.

The other scoring key lies in the various goals set out each game, 10 to 20 point bonuses for reaching specific milestones such as having the fewest office buildings or earning the highest income per turn. Four of these goals are visible and available to all players. Each player also receives one goal specific to him/her, not visible to other players, but that still requires beating all other players in that category to win it. Some goals even work against the main objective of maximizing your population, such as having the fewest residential tiles of any suburb. Without these goals, the game would be kind of boring because it would be so simple and too reliant on the central tile market, which uses the common mechanic of making two tiles available for free and all others in the queue more expensive, shifting them to the right as tiles are removed.

The app itself looks slick, with bright, clear graphics that allow you to read the costs and effects of each card easily. I only had one issue with stability, which occurred when I tried to use the game’s save feature – I couldn’t resume the game and had to kill the app process entirely to start a fresh one, which I guess is a pretty significant bug but wasn’t my main issue with the app. The AI players are terrible: you have your choice of five, and can use up to three of them (but can’t reuse any), and they’re all a little dim. They don’t plan well, which I imagine is a difficult issue for coding AI players, but they also miss obvious short-term moves or take actions that clearly reduce their chances to gain points. If I go first, I can beat the AI players just about every time. Going fourth of four reduces my chances a little, but I’m also a novice player and should get more of a challenge than this. I’m hoping that the expansion, Suburbia Inc., becomes available as an in-app purchase, and that the developers use that as an opportunity to introduce some harder computer players.

I’m due for an update to my top iOS boardgame apps rankings, but will review the Dominant Species app later in the week before I do the final list.

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→ December 20, 2013
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iOS games on sale.

There are a number of iOS boardgame apps on sale right now through Christmas (and sometimes beyond), so rather than tweet a bunch of links I figured I’d list the ones I recommend here. If you’re looking for recent content, my Top Chef recap went up Thursday night and contains links to everything I’ve written this week.

  • Small World 2, on sale for $4.99 right now. I love this game and app and gave the pre-update version a very positive review.
  • Reiner Knizia’s Tigris & Euphrates, just $0.99 right now, as are all Codito titles except Puerto Rico. I liked this one from the start, but the update to the graphics earlier this year made it much easier on the eyes.
  • Le Havre, also $0.99 as it’s another Codito title. It’s from the designer of Agricola but brings in elements of Caylus; I think it’s the most complex boardgame I’ve ever played, and it works way better in an app version than it did tabletop because of all of the pieces involved. My review from June 2012 is from the original release.
  • Agricola, down to $4.99 from $6.99, but now with the I and K card decks available as in-app purchases. If you haven’t played the physical game, those decks come standard and offer a lot more occupations and opportunities for interaction with other players. You can read my review of the base game from July.
  • Caylus – Big Daddy’s Creations, down to $2.99 from $4.99. My original app review came before some minor bug fixes, and this probably still has the best, brightest graphics of any game app in the field.
  • Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition – Beamdog, down to $6.99. It’s not a board game, but a classic RPG that has been adapted to iOS. I’ve played and reviewed it; it’s very good, especially after a recent update included many of the features that originally appeared in the Throne of Bhaal sequel to BG2.
  • Sid Meier’s Pirates!, down to $0.99. Also not a boardgame, just another PC classic ported to iOS. My original review is from September of 2011; I liked it, but didn’t love it, because it becomes monotonous after an hour or two – but you’ll get your 99 cents’ worth.
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