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?

Rules Discussion: Varied Currency in Board Games

The concept of money and "currency" in board gaming is not a new trend. In fact, some of our classic (or, I should say, time-worn) board games are predicated on money, such as Monopoly and Life. Money is something to which people can relate readily, since we use it in our daily lives. As board games have become more varied in their themes and sophisticated in their designs, not many games employ game money, as if money was too jejune an idea to incorporate into (what some cynics may consider to be) "hoity-toity" connoisseur games (I'm being facetious, of course... if not needlessly verbose). Of course, games like Alhambra, Puerto Rico, and Power Grid use money outright, but you get what I mean...

Anyway, there are a vast majority of games that use many other countable items or points as currency to execute actions or even "buy" items. Case in point: Village (by Markus and Inka Brand) not only employs gold coins as currency, but also colored cubes, time (one unit of time can be used to perform an action), and even family members, who can (in a way) be swapped for goods and/or placement in the town Chronicle. Another fine example of varied currency is Five Tribes, which uses victory points to bid for turn order and purchase cards from the Marketplace, as well as white meeples and/or Fakir cards to purchase djinns. A third example of varied currency is Core Worlds, which uses "energy" and actions as currency.

Varied currency may include resources, as well, though I tried to avoid that inclusion for the purposes of this discussion because trading resources for in-game actions (though very much like a currency) crosses over into the realm of... well, "resource conversion." Village does straddle that dividing line in its use of colored cubes, but those cubes are odd concrete representations of abstract concepts like "knowledge" and "commerce," so I don't think of those cubes as resources. Nonetheless, the incorporation of victory points, time, actions, energy, and other abstractions as currency is a fascinating mechanic in and of itself because it's an attempt to quantify that which we don't often quantify as spendable, though we should... I mean, we do "spend" time performing actions; we do "spend" energy to exercise or perform daily functions; and, we do "spend" life points to fight evil (as in Shadows over Camelot).

Rules Discussion: The BINGO Mechanic

Thinking about mechanics as I drove to work this morning (though my car could use a healthy dose of mechanical attention), I pondered Rise of Augustus, which is basically a BINGO game, but with some agency over what you do. In Rise of Augustus, you draw four (or five?) objective cards; each card has three to six symbols on them, such as a chariot, a catapult, short swords, and so on. One person reaches into a bag and put out a pog (a large round chit) with a symbol on it and then declares what he or she drew. If you have that symbol on one of your objectives, you can deploy one of seven legions to that card by placing a meeple on the corresponding space. If the symbol is one more than one objective card, you have to choose to which card you deploy your meeple. This process repeats until the herald (the one who is pulling pogs out of the bag) pulls a wild card symbol. Then, he or she places all drawn pogs back in the bag. However, at any time when a person completes an objective by deploying enough meeples to cover all symbols space, that person shouts, "Ave, Caesar!" and removes all meeples from it, having completed the objective. Gameplay ends when one person finishes seven (I think) objectives.

Okay, I haven't played this game in a while, but the BINGO mechanic of drawing a tile or chit from a bag and declaring the number or symbol on the item is a mechanic that has a bad rap... How many of us have attended BINGO game nights and realized that there is NO strategy involved and you have NO choices to make? How many of us have played some kind of BINGO-inspired educational game and found that the game was more about, say, recognizing words or colors than actually "playing a game?" Yet, this bad rap is a bit unfair because BINGO is not a game, but a social activity that does involve letter or number recognition, tactile manipulation of cards and stamps (or pieces to cover the called spots), and you can even win prizes, depending on the event. If seen with the right perspective, BINGO does very well what it sets out to do: it engenders a fun atmosphere where people can relax, listen to an enthusiastic caller yell out numbers and letters on Ping-Pong balls pulled from a spinning wire-mesh ball, and get a little excited about winning an alarm clock... or it's an excuse to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa (which is extremely important).

The BINGO mechanic is difficult to implement in a board game because there is no inherent free will to it; you just pull tiles and hope for the best. Rise of Augustus, though, uses the BINGO mechanic, but does provide some room for players to choose to which card they deploy their legions. Also, when an objective card is completed, players can draft the objective they want from the central area (the time-honored drafting mechanic). Moreover, you only have seven legions at the start of the game, so if you have already placed your legions, you face the difficult decision of whether to shift a legion to another card or not. Admittedly, Rise of Augustus is a lightweight filler game, but it's one of the few games that adopts and adapts the BINGO mechanic and then provides players with decisions after each pog pull. If anything, the BINGO mechanic is a good randomizer besides dice and cards.