Trash or Treasure? #3: Pandemic

Up until, say, the early 1990s, if you grew up in the United States, Canada, (maybe) Britain, and (possibly) Australia, you grew up with the popular board games, like Monopoly, Clue (or Cluedo), Scrabble, Stratego, Risk, Life, and so on. Indeed, the board game producers Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley seemed to monopolize (pun intended) our childhood board game culture. Interestingly, though, there was a surprising lack of cooperative strategic games. Sure, games like Pictionary and Taboo were cooperative party games, but there was little strategy involved, per se (note: I'm not going to argue about the tactics of Taboo, which involve knowing your teammates so that you can provide the best clues).

Pandemic was not the first cooperative strategy game; to my knowledge, Shadows over Camelot pre-dated it by three years, and dungeon crawl games existed long before that. Yet, Pandemic was certainly the most impactful in the golden age of Eurogames. Released in 2008, Pandemic is a 2-5 player game (though you could play 2-5 roles by yourself) in which each player assumes a role that grants them a unique ability. During each turn, the active player can perform up to four actions, such as moving from one city to another, or performing one or more special actions, such as removing one disease cube from an infected city per action. However, each role has abilities that bend these rules; for instance, the ever-useful Medic role can remove all of one type of disease cubes in a city with only one action.  

After the four actions are completed, the player draws two cards. Then, the player draws three City cards; the first City card drawn requires the players to put three disease cubes on the indicated city; the second City gets two cubes; and the third city gets one cube. Each city were infected with a specific disease cube depending on the region (e.g. Asia generally gets the red disease cubes). In this way, each player plays his turn, and then plays as the game's artificial intelligence (AI), so to speak. I would guess that playing as the game AI was not a novel concept, but that combined with cooperative play created a feeling that everyone was somehow creating their own problems despite themselves.

Gameplay ends when all four diseases are "cured," which results in victory for the players. If the players fail to do that before all of one particular disease's cubes (25 of them) have been deployed, the draw pile is completed depleted, or before there have been eight Outbreaks (when a city exceeds three of one disease's [color] cubes, which cases excess cubes to spread to neighboring cities), they lose. Everyone loses -- not one player... Everyone. Of course, I'm excluding several details because I want to avoid a rules explanation; the basic idea is that you win as a team, and you lose as a team, which was not a common concept, especially among the Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley games.

With an accessible theme, a one-hour play time, a low price point of around $30 USD in 2008, and a smaller box than a lot of the connoisseur games out at the time, Pandemic ascended to the throne of quintessential gateway co-op board game. The first release featured wooden cubes (which seemed just so en vogue at the time), sleek and simple art, and (later on) an expansion that added a "Bio-Terrorist" role and a purple-colored disease. The ascension of Pandemic was such that stores like Target and Barnes & Noble prominently displayed it in their game aisles. My first exposure to it was in 2010 when a few friends at work invited me to play with them during the lunch break. Instantly, I realized the family potential of it; even my young sons could play and enjoy it. When I purchased it and brought it home, my boys appreciated it, though my wife found the theme (and the rapid spread of disease cubes) disconcerting and unenjoyable. Nonetheless, I comprehended the impact of Pandemic in hobby gaming.

As of 2022, there are numerous co-op offerings, such as Gloomhaven, Battlestar Galactica, Robinson Crusoe, Saboteur, Forbidden Island/Desert, and the aforementioned Shadows over Camelot; there are team versus team co-op games like Captain Sonar and Specter Ops; and there are versions of Pandemic that involve making permanent changes to the cards and game board, such as Pandemic Legacy.

Should I trash or treasure Pandemic?

At a Game Weight of 2.47 on Board Game Geek, Pandemic is challenging enough for seasoned gamers to enjoy, yet easy enough to learn to attract casual gamers. It can be played in an hour, which may be a great transition game between two more complex games or the primer game before the multi-hour game starts. Whatever the case, Pandemic is often a suitable choice for any game night.

If I am really hankering to play a cooperative game, though, I prefer the deeper Robinson Crusoe, which has so much going for it: superlative art, lots of mechanics at work, and a weird sense of foreboding that reminds me of the television show Lost (minus the Smoke Monster). An amusing semi-cooperative game I also favor is Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, which compels you to cooperate with your neighbors, but not TOO much.

Because my copies of Pandemic and the expansion are vintage, first-edition versions, I will not be selling them. That iteration of Pandemic is a work of art and fun to unpack and set up. Occasionally, I bring it out to teach Gen Xers and Millennials how co-op games work. There is no shame in keeping this classic, and the box (even with the expansion) is still slimmer than many of my other games, so it doesn't take up much space.

Should you trash or treasure Pandemic?

For the first two games I discussed in this Trash or Treasure series, I could not convince myself to recommend trashing them... and I still cannot suggest trashing Pandemic. It is the archetypal cooperative game that serves as a fine gateway into a world of tying your success or failure with other players. There are some wonderful gateway games you could acquire, such as Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert, which just so happen to be designed by Matt Leacock, who designed Pandemic. Either one of those games boast more whimsical themes, adorable miniatures, and sweet tin boxes instead of cardboard boxes. Yet, I ended up selling my copy of Forbidden Desert because, well, I own Pandemic. Thus, I have little choice but to advise you to treasure it.

Despite that, if you own Pandemic, I would venture a guess and say that you may not miss it if you gave it away or donated it. There are many other cooperative games that are good gateway games, fine complex games, or even more cutthroat team versus team games. I am tempted to argue that Pandemic is a bit vanilla, but a game that revolves around disease is just a bit too topical nowadays. In any case, there are enough choices out there to find a co-op game that appeals to you thematically.

***

One more thing: due to the ubiquity of Pandemic, you would be hard-pressed to sell it for profit. Most people can purchase it locally at a big-box store, so paying shipping to buy a used copy may not make economic sense. Consider donating it at a thrift store to spread the hobby to others. You may have a friend who is new to the hobby; you could teach Pandemic to that friend and give him the copy. Regard Pandemic as a powerful way to open people up to hobby board gaming, so it would be worthwhile to give it away.

Is Chess Really the Best Board Game Ever?

(Note: in this article, I capitalized Chess, Go, and Shogi, even though they are not often capitalized in writing, to not only pay homage to these games, but also to have their names stylistically resemble the names of modern games.)
In the United States, as many of you know, most people who do not play board games as a passionate hobby have heard of such games as Monopoly, Sorry, Clue, Risk, Connect Four, Stratego, Candy Land, Chutes (or Snakes) and Ladders, Checkers, Backgammon, and, of course, Chess. Some of them are fine games even now, but some are outmoded and/or involve no sense of agency or decision-making whatsoever (I'm looking at you, Chutes and Ladders), yet Chess seems to retain that mystique as being a "classic" game. To be sure, Chess is so widely played and has such longevity that it has been venerated to "best game of all time" status by many folks, at least as far as I can tell. You could probably ask any person on the street about the best board game of all time, and I would not be surprised that Chess is mentioned more than once.

The funny thing about Chess, though, is that for all of its history and (clearly) international recognition as a game for really smart people who make a profession out of studying and playing it, finding people who really ENJOY Chess can be a very challenging task. Indeed, there are grandmasters, wannabe grandmasters, local tournament winners, and even faux-protegies who fancy Chess. These same folks plunge headfirst into study, memorizing openings and closings, dissecting past matches, and learning so much about the vagaries of the game that they come to see in-game patterns of play that are only visible to a true Chess enthusiast. I believe that it is because of this level of erudition and perceived difficulty that people somewhat begrudgingly acknowledge Chess as the best game of all time; some people even use Chess as a determiner of how intelligent or strategic a person is, which is incredible for a game to be vaunted to that status.

It is these same folks that underscore the greatest challenge presented to the would-be player of Chess: to be good at it, you have to study and study and practice and study. This may be true of many pastimes and even other board games, but Chess elevates this requirement to a very high level such that only staunch enthusiasts really enjoy Chess. I suppose that a degree of mastery of anything both dictates if one enjoys that thing and how much he or she enjoys that thing with other people. If you know how to play some tennis, you will enjoy tennis with people of similar skill level, practice habits, determination to improve, and play experience. However, if you are a casual weekend warrior who plays against a former Division I college tennis star, both you and the almost-pro would not have a fun time (unless the would-be pro is sadistic and relishes trouncing sad-sack casuals). In any case, practice and study (and even, dare I say, natural ability) are key to enjoying tennis, Chess, or whatever, but some pastimes require it more than others (such as Chess).

This leads me back to the question posed in the title of this post: is Chess the best board game of all time? Well, let's splay out its credentials: simple rules for movement and attack, elegant board and piece design, wide-ranging global availability and recognition, centuries of tried-and-true competitive play, and the accessibility of volumes of scholarly study of which any student of the game can avail himself or herself. Add to that the myriad of rebadged sets (Lord of the Rings Chess, Civil War Chess, Mario Chess, and so on!), levels of competition, and variations (Shogi!) and you have a venerable game that is appreciated and adored the world over... Yet I contend something that a few others have suggested...

Chess is outdated, abstract, inaccessible to the casual UNLESS he or she plays against another casual player, limited in gameplay, and so exclusive that you must commit serious study (or possess immense, natural, genius-level skill) to be remotely competitive.

So... let me unpack that recognizably controversial statement. First of all, Chess is a centuries-old game, which is fine except that, especially in the last, say, 30 years, there has been a wealth of deep, rich board games and card games that have been developed and published that are replete with theme and fluff (i.e. little theme nuggets that work within the rules to reinforce game play) that enliven such games. To find out more, simply navigate to www.boardgamegeek.com and browse the top 200 strategy games.

Secondly, as I pointed out earlier, you have to dedicate time and focus to compete in Chess, which makes it less out-of-the-box playable against semi-skilled players than a game like Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne. Sure, both of these games have randomness, and Chess does not, but I contend that it's only enough randomness to give the inexperienced player a little boost. Some have decried randomness as a "crutch" that can punish expert play, but there is a skill to mitigating randomness. For example, in the X-Wing Miniatures Game, your attack and defense dice rolls may stymy your good flying and firing-arc aiming, but you can improve your chances with well-chosen upgrades that allow for re-rolls or by selecting the right action to perform, such as getting that Focus token that increases your hit percentage per die from 50% to 75%. Dealing with randomness is a skill set that is necessary in life, and it is something absent in Chess (which is NOT an ironclad argument against Chess, per se, but it does reinforce my point that Chess does not really support the inexperienced player).

Thirdly, even though computers have calculated the millions of possible moves in Chess, in practice, as the game state progresses, your options are very limited. For instance, after six moves, the board is in a state in which there are more horrible moves that can lead to capture than excellent moves (or even harmless moves) that allow you to advance your pieces. Though some may contend that this is a GOOD thing which compels people to find the true value of any piece and weigh its sacrifice against better future position or (even better) baiting an opponent to expose a strong piece for capture, that feeling of agency is illusory. To me, Chess has always felt like it's "on rails," which is an inexorable path; eventually, there is going to be a bloodbath that manifests itself in a rapid cascade of sacrifices until one player ends up with more materiel. Funnily enough, this substantiates my point because, ultimately, there is only ONE victory condition in Chess: the capture of the king, which is in and of itself quite limiting.

Lastly, let's discuss the exclusive nature of Chess with more depth. Once again, if you do not study and practice, you are nothing more than a casual player who knows the rules, but little else. There's nothing wrong with that... until you encounter a friend or co-worker who is looking for an opponent and is found wanting when she realizes that she can utterly defeat you every time. Even worse than that, though, is the almost-fact that unless you are somewhat equal to your opponent, the game is not really fun for either of you. Now, some may point at competitive Chess and say that Magnus Carlsen must not be having fun when he's defeating other "lesser" grandmasters, but the difference between him and those players is (and this is my somewhat unresearched contention) miniscule. We're talking about minute differences in skill level; on a "bad day," Carlsen could lose to any of those players. That's why games between grandmasters involve multiple matches; on any given day, one grandmaster, at least in theory, can beat another one. Anyway, unless you're competing at a grandmaster level, any appreciable skill level difference can render Chess un-fun for the lesser player (unless the lesser player is learning actively through defeat). That, primarily, is why Chess is exclusive, but I can also point out that it always plays as a two-player game unless you have a wonky four-player version of Chess (which is super-fun, actually).

Now that I've stated all of this, I will venture to guess that you, the reader, are mentally shooting down each argument with these thoughts:

• Just because Chess is old doesn't mean that it's outdated or awful.
• I hate many games because of the randomness; card draws, dice rolls, and other randomizers have ruined game sessions for me.
• Randomness is indeed a crutch and you're a sad individual who needs crutches to beat better players.
• Of course you have to study and practice! Every sport and worthwhile game is like that!
• I don't play competitive Chess anyway. I just enjoy it.
• Chess is eminently accessible. It's played all over the world and is much cheaper than most of your fancy board games (particularly X-Wing!).

Here's my controversial response to all of these statements: you're absolutely right! I cannot refute any of these statements, which makes me think that much of what I've proffered is a personal position and NOT a statement of fact, so let me try this statement:

There are so many beautiful, strategically-deep, slightly random games out there that allow people to exercise creativity and guile without the "on rails" feeling of Chess and WON'T break your budget.

One example of this is Agricola. For $45 USD, you get a worker-placement game that is only as random as the stage cards that are revealed (if you play the Family Edition with no Occupation or Minor Improvement cards) and has a few paths to victory, though you ultimately win with a diverse farm. It also plays up to four players out of the box.

How about Great Western Trail? For about $40 USD (depending on the time of day), you can play a wonderfully-illustrated game that can have a different starting board state each game and a random set of cows in hand, but provides that feeling of agency as you build buildings along a path to help you and disrupt your opponent.

There is even a Chess variant that lets you deploy one of your opponent's captured pieces as your own piece during the next turn: Shogi. The pieces move somewhat similarly to Chess, except nothing beats the thrill of dropping your Gold attacking piece in a position that is very close to the opponent's king. In Japan, the pieces and the board were roughly $15 to $20 USD, and I cannot imagine they would be much more expensive elsewhere.

There may even be folks out there that prefer Go to Chess because of the fluid nature of the game and the even higher numbers of possible moves than Chess. I've never played Go, but I can state this: it took much longer for developers to create a computer program to beat top Go players than it did to create programs to beat top Chess players.

Let's return to the question: is Chess the best board game ever? Unequivocally, I'd say "No," not necessarily because of the panoply of arguments I've put there as the wide recognition that almost-equally-venerable Go is better than Chess as a game of creativity and organic play. Even if you don't agree with THAT statement, I would wager that I've cast a lot of doubt on the assertion that Chess could even be considered the best board game ever, which is what I feel I have achieved with this post. Of course, this is not to state that Chess is awful or a "bad game." Actually, it's IS one of the best for all of the reasons I've mentioned (even in my arguments against it), and it is a fine representative of abstract games in the hobby, but I feel we have come a long way in the board gaming hobby to where you can be a farmer, a cattle rancher, a vegetable trader, a trader in the Mediterranean, a car builder, or even a Space Lion AND have meaningful in-game decisions. Chess is no longer the best, but one of the best of the abstract games.

As I conclude, let me posit a somewhat tangential argument. The Beatles are publicly regarded as arguably the best rock band of all time with their blend of musicianship, songwriting, Top Ten hits, marketability, good looks (generally), and four decent-to-great lead singers who each had successful solo careers (Ringo did have the first solo hit song, by the way). One would be hard-pressed to argue otherwise because of the breadth of evidence. However, I put forth that The Police had three superior musicians, one superlative songwriter and singer (though I must admit that John Lennon's writing was as superlative as Sting's when it comes to depth and introspection) and were also marketable with good looks. In my mind, The Police were the better band, but they also benefited from the groundwork laid by The Beatles, whose diverse genre-bending catalog of songs expanded the rock landscape. Chess is similar: modern board games owe their existence to Chess. In this way, we should always elevate Chess, but also keep in mind that better creations were devised on its shoulders.

Spinners: 1HN Long-Lasting Randomizer

Currently, one of the oddly popular fads among children in the United States is the fidget spinner, which is a three-pronged plastic or metal item that spins on its central axis on ball bearings. Apparently, fidget spinners are simply mental distractions that seem to have been intended as a tool to help children focus their fidgety energies on something without shifting in their seats. However, it has had the opposite effect of distracting children by drawing their attention to whomever is using one. I can see the end of this, though: eventually, EVERY boy (and girl?) will have one, get bored of it, and then cast it into a drawer of other junk.

An ironic parallel I see to the predictable fate of the fidget spinner is the spinner in board games. Certain "classic" American games featured spinners, particularly Life and the decidedly non-board game, Twister. As other Americans do, I have both happy and angry memories of these games. As many of you know, spinners are simply decision randomizers that spin on a central axis until the pointing part of the spun arrow or wheel ends up aiming at a space that indicates a number or course of action. It's rudimentarily mechanical, requiring a deft turn of hand or finger to manipulate it, yet it is not necessarily a component of dexterity games. On the contrary, in the two games mentioned above, spinners are the mode of randomization. In this sense, spinners are similar to any randomizer, like dice. This difference is a simple one: there is a visceral element to both kinds of randomizers that are dissimilar enough to separate those experiences from each other, at least in my mind. By this, with a spinner, I could spin it as fast or as slowly as I wanted, affording me the illusion of agency. In any case, whether it's spinning and landing on the best space in the game, or spinning and having to contort my body into an impossible Escher pretzel, using a spinner evokes flashbacks of joy and rage that are markedly different from the joy and rage of rolling dice.

I noted that there is an ironic parallel between game spinners and fidget spinners; this irony is evident in the state of games today. Among the more widely-recognized connoisseur games, spinners are not found, as far as I can recall. Most of the time, decision randomization takes the form of cards, dice, or even the BINGO mechanic of drawing chits or pieces blindly, yet you do not see spinners. One reason might be because of the form factor of certain spinners, like the one in Life; it is a considerably-sized piece of molded plastic that fits fine in the large game box of Life, but may not fit well, say, in a Pandemic box. Another reason might be that shoddy spinners can lead to cheesy results; for example, if the spinner board in your set of Twister is warped, when you attempt to spin that chintzy arrow, you may barely spin it to the next wedge on the decision wheel, which is irritating and completely eliminates the visceral fun of watching an arrow careering around the wheel. The most likely reason, though, may be the most insidious one: spinners seem childish and out of place in a "serious" board game.

In yet another layer of irony, it is this "guardianship of all that is good in gaming" that has both protected current games from being infected with old, horrible ideas (e.g., the "roll-and-move" mindlessness of Chutes/Snakes and Ladders) and prevented game designers from exploring old, not-so-awful ideas, like a spinner. As I type this, I can imagine a game designer creating a game that involves a default spinner that can be customized as you purchase wedge pieces to fit in the outer rim, reconfiguring the options that are randomly available. Couple this customizable spinner with the youthful delight of spinning something with all your might and you may have a game that combines a deck/bag/hand-building mechanic with a bit of childish fun. (I'm patenting this idea, by the way.)

Sadly, though, we do not find spinners in a lot of games, and I think this is because board game enthusiasts seem to favor games that they can readily dissociate from those awful roll-and-move days of their childhoods. I certainly understand this because I used to have an aversion to dice (traumatic memories of Risk!), poppers (Trouble!), BINGO, and even the luck of the draw (I'm talking about you, War and Uno!). However, as I look at those older games from a perspective shaped by years of Euro gaming, I wonder if enthusiasts have forgotten about the primal joy of pressing a popper, rolling handfuls of dice against another dice-chucker, and even the sheer elation of drawing the high card. This leads me back to the comparison between the fidget spinner and the game spinner; one is an intriguing, somewhat distracting fad that will fade; the other is an often derided and disregarded game mechanic that has lasted a long time. Why not ride the wave of a fad and bring back the game spinner in an entirely different way? Rise of Augustus brought back BINGO in my mind, so I think a Euro game can incorporate a fidget... er, game spinner.

Rules Discussion: Dice Manipulation

As much as anyone, I love chucking dice and seeing what happens. The thrill, the anticipation, the excitement of a good result, and the disappointment of a terrible result: dice can engender all of these feelings, sometimes sequentially, but sometimes simultaneously. Yet, I didn't used to feel this way about dice. From my childhood, I have traumatic memories of losing battles to a vastly inferior defending force in Risk, and of never landing on the three or four properties I needed to complete sets in Monopoly. Unfavorable dice rolls even dogged me when I played RPGs, as if rolling poorly was a ravenous bloodhound intent on devouring any sense of fun I could derive from gaming. Dice rolls in games conspired to filch the joy out of my gaming sessions, but I have come to discover a mechanic that is more like a game design paradigm: dice manipulation.

Dice manipulation is actually a time-honored idea, and I'm not referring to loaded dice with weighting to favor certain sides. No, I'm talking about in-game elements that allow players to change dice roll results to favor them. One way this is done is allotted roll attempts, which Yahtzee, in all its underrated glory, manifests beautifully; in that game, you can choose to reroll as many dice as you want to try to achieve a desired result. King of Tokyo, a modern classic, appropriates this approach, and is a wonderful filler game because of it. Another way to manipulate dice rolls is through bonuses or items earned in the course of play; Alien Frontiers, for example, not only employs dice as "ships," but it provides Alien Tech cards that let players change their rolls when they choose to activate or discard those cards. Castles of Burgundy provides workers that afford players opportunities to change rolls, as well. Kingsburg has a similar mechanic in which earned +1 chits can be applied to rolls. A third way dice are manipulated is team resetting, which is endemic to the Escape series of games; in those games, when all of your masks are locked into their black sides, teammates can help you out by granting you their gold "masks" or "faces."

Yet another method by which dice are manipulated does not really involve changing dice rolls as much as changing the role dice play in a game (pun intended). A brilliant exemplar of this is the Dice Masters system created by Eric Lang and WizKids. In Dice Masters, each die is either a Sidekick, a character, or a basic action die. All dice can provide energy of some kind to purchase character or basic action dice or to deploy characters, but the nice twist is that character dice, when rolled on one of three possible sides, are actually played as "characters" on the field. For example, a Captain America die has a Level 1 side, a Level 2 side, and a Level 3 side; Level 3 sides are the strongest offensively and defensively, but considering all three character sides of a six-sided die, you have a 50% chance of deploying a character, a 16.7% chance of generating two energy points, and a 33.3% chance of even generating one energy of a particular type. In addition, Sidekick dice have five energy-generating sides, but also a sixth side that serves as a "sidekick" with an Attack strength of 1 and a Defense strength of 1. In other words, the dice are THE playing pieces, as well as the determiners of the amounts of energy generated, but Dice Masters also involves re-rolls, "spinning" dice up or down levels (i.e. changing the faces of dice to match a certain Level), drawing more dice, putting more dice in the draw bag, and even removing dice from play. If anything, Dice Masters encompasses many dice manipulation principles.

I'm sure that there are more ways in which dice are manipulated or employed, such as in Panamax in which dice determine what kind of cargo is being carried and are placed on the ships themselves. I do invite comments about other examples of dice manipulation. What are your favorite ways by which dice rolls can be altered in a game? Have you encountered any unique mechanics that use dice?

Rules Discussion: Rule-Breaking Pieces

There is something about the sanctioned breaking of rules in a game. Sure, cheating should be anathema to any board gamer worth his or her salt, and wanton disregard for rules should be the rationale for banishing any gamer to the outer reaches of society. I would even proffer that gamers who flaunt the rules in favor of "house rules" should be hung by their pinky toes in the town square (that's humor, by the way). Okay, that's a bit extreme (especially since I sometimes resort to house rules when I don't understand a game's mainstream rules AND I don't have time to research the rulings), but being given license to break the rules is an intriguing concept. What if someone told you to ignore your dice roll in Monopoly and just buy whatever property you wanted, but at double the price? What if you could attack a territory far from your own in Risk? What if you could decline the card exchange in Hearts? Such "rule-breaking" adds a spicy element to a game, confusing long-time adherents, but in a beneficial way. 

Sanctioned rule-breaking is often in the purview of house rules and game variants, though you also find it in game pieces that change the fundamental rules of a game. For example, i

n the Abbey & Mayor expansion of Carcassonne, there is a Wagon piece that not only allows a player to claim a feature, but to move the Wagon on to another attached feature upon completion of the feature the Wagon was occupying. For example, if your Wagon is on a city tile with an attached road and you complete the city, the Wagon moves onto the road after scoring. In Carcassonne, this is a hugely important rule-breaking piece for one reason: even though you complete a city, road, or cloister, if you have no more followers to place, you cannot claim any adjacent feature on the tile that finished that city, road, or cloister, even though the follower is returned to you because follower placement happens before scoring, not after scoring. If you have no followers, you cannot take advantage of the tile you just placed. With the Wagon, though, you can move it onto an attached feature, potentially scoring that feature, as well.

The Wagon is probably my favorite follower in Carcassonne (the Barn is not a follower, but it is also an awesomely powerful piece). I must admit that the Wagon is not necessarily a rule or mechanic in and of itself, but it is the only piece in Carcassonne that breaks the follower placement rule. Rule-breaking pieces or cards can be found in many other games. Another example (though a minor one) are the gates in Alhambra, which allow you to place a walled edge of one building tile against the wall edge of another building tile, yet preserve the "being able to walk to the fountain" rule of tile placement. Yet another instance is the station in Ticket to Ride: Europe, which lets you connect to a city when all other routes into that city are taken and thus blocked.

I have found that rule-breaking pieces are often found in expansions to games, as if breaking the rules of a base game is in the strict purview of expansions (though base game variants and the aforementioned house rules are also viable means by which a game's rules can be altered). In other words, we buy the base set to learn the rules of a game, and then we buy expansions when A) we are bored of the rules in the base set, and/or B) we feel oddly compelled to discover how it feels to break or tweak the rules of the base set. Both sentiments are similar, but there's a difference: while option A encapsulates that feeling we get after playing a game ten or more times (or less), option B speaks into that innate pioneering spirit to explore the unknown or test the waters. Or, it may just be the effect of our sinful natures to feel the compulsion to break rules. I hope that's not the case, though, because I really enjoy expansions...

In any case, rule-breaking pieces can enliven a once-moribund game experience and renew interest in a classic; this is how Settlers of Catan stays alive, in my opinion. Carcassonne is no different, which is why my interest in the game remains piqued after all these years; expansions have breathed life and vitality into the game. Yet, to be fair, Carcassonne's base set presents a strategic depth that people don't often realize unless it is played repeatedly; once you know the game's tile inventory, you know the frequency of certain tiles, and thus you know how to prevent your opponent from finishing key features in the game. Absent that, though, expansions do add spice to many games and are an undeniable means by which a one-hit-wonder designer (like Klaus Jurgen-Wrede, though he did create Pompeii) can stay gainfully paid with his or her one masterpiece.

Do you have any other base game or expansion pieces or cards in any game that break a base game rule or mechanic that you would like to discuss?

Advance to Boardwalk: 1HN High-Rise Unit Builder

Whenever I go to a retailer like Target or Wal-Mart, I am surprised at the board games I find and how they've stood the test of time. Some games, in my estimation, are worthy of their longevity: Monopoly (in which the outside-the-game-rules negotiations are more fun than the game itself), Stratego, Clue, and Scrabble come to mind. Conversely, there are some games that shouldn't have lasted this long, particularly Risk, which I loathe immensely; I can't count how many times my massive armies have been defeated by "lucky" defense die rolls. Also, games like Sorry! and Trouble seem to make new fans of children every generation because of their tactile in-game elements (like the dice popper in Trouble) and simple rules.

But, some games have come and gone, much to my chagrin. One of those games was Advance to Boardwalk, which Parker Brothers published in the 1980s. It was spun off from the Monopoly universe with Uncle Moneybags prominently included on the packaging and on the in-game cards. The premise of Advance to Boardwalk was deceptively simple: amass more wealth than your opponents by building up units (which are like floors in a skyscraper) that comprise high-priced hotels along a beachfront boardwalk. In the game, you roll a color-coded die to determine which area of properties on which you can build, and another two dice (I think) to determine the total dollar value of units you can build on that color. As gameplay progresses, you can build units on top of other players' units; if your units outnumber an opponent's units, you gain control of the property, which means you move up the boardwalk (which is marked with dollar amounts) and your opponent moves down the boardwalk. Each property has different inherent values, so some properties are more favorable yet more difficult on which to build because a higher rolled amount is required to be able to build on those properties. Along the way, there are "Fortune" cards that either allow a player to gain an advantage (such as "Windfall" cards that provide an infusion of capital for building) or create obstacles for opponents (such as "Hurricane" cards that can wipe the units off a property). Gameplay ends when one player has used up all of his or her units (you get 15-17 units with which to build at the start of gameplay).

As I write this blog entry, I am not aware of the publishing history of Advance to Boardwalk except of what I know personally, but I can safely say that the game was available in the 1980s, but then faded into obscurity. It was only during a recent clearing of my grandma's rafters that I found this game amidst a treasure trove of my old packed games (which included several Nintendo and Colecovision cartridges). I unearthed it, dusted it off, and played a round with my family, who were sadly unimpressed by the game. I suppose that equating units of building to money value isn't as direct or exciting as acquiring a group of properties and then building houses (a la Monopoly). However, I find Advance to Boardwalk to be more rewarding and less time-consuming than Monopoly. Unlike Monopoly, you can gain (and lose) properties each turn; and you can rise and fall so quickly in Advance to Boardwalk, while you tend to amass wealth slowly in Monopoly and then crush opponents quite suddenly until there are two people who own the entire board. Then, it's only a few turns before one player loses his shirt paying the other player an exorbitant amount of rent. While Monopoly games can seem interminable, Advance to Boardwalk can be played in 30-45 minutes and can result in numerous grudges and vows of vengeance, which may spur another game right after it. Okay, I'm joking about the vows of vengeance, but I can see that it would be hard to NOT have a grudge after you watch your opponent build two or three units on your property and usurp the $7 million of value, putting him or her seven spaces up and you seven spaces down -- a 14-space swing!

Anyway, Advance to Boardwalk should've gotten more of a chance at becoming a classic because it really is a fun, addictive game with a deeper layer of strategy than Monopoly, which relies much on dice rolls. In Advance to Boardwark, you do roll to determine how much "money" you have to build, as well as the color of properties on which you build, but you also have to decide (assuming you roll a "10," for instance) if you want to build two units on the $5-million-dollar property (which would move you up five spaces on the board) or two units on the $3-million-dollar one and one unit on the $4-million-dollar one (which would move you up seven spaces). There are many lead changes in the game and, often, it can take one play to reverse your fortunes and win the game, even if you spent most of the game in the back of the pack. If you can find it, I recommend Advance to Boardwalk; challenge even your hard-core gamer friends and let me know how much fun you have from a once-mainstream game.