Every Game is Broken

Recently I have mentioned A Few Acres of Snow more than once, using it both as an example of an innovative design, as well as a tragically flawed one. Indeed, a specific, flawlessly executed strategy will win the game for the British pretty much every time. There seems to be no doubt that the game is broken – so broken in fact, that it has been given as a single example of a design that is beyond repair. Is it however as lonely in its misery as we grew to think?

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The answer is simple: it is not. There are many games from less known designers that would also quickly turn out to be subpar, with either a single strategy being prevalent, or a specific swing of luck being the force that is most influential when tallying the final scores. Nobody seems really surprised when an unbalanced game published by a smaller company hits the shelves. We do seem to expect, however, that the biggest and brightest will always deliver a product we will not be able to break.

The truth is that deeming a game broken is a somewhat fuzzy process, dependant on a variety of different factors. Is Munchkin broken? Is Fluxx unplayable? Many people might say that they are, but what they are in fact expressing is their dislike of the genre those games represent. Those games were never meant to be balanced, the design goal was not to give all players equal chances, to provide them with a catch-up mechanism or to ensure there is more than one way to victory.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The problem gets even more complicated when we take a look at some of the German style games, especially those simpler, family oriented ones. Take Coal Baron for example – a rather light game with a simple and straightforward path to victory and a few interesting mechanisms, that can still be taken apart by a player able to optimize their every movement. How about Russian Railroads? It is a seemingly more complicated design that can still be played according to a very simple algorithm that, if used by one player, will make them the victor every time or, if executed by more than one person, will hand the victory to whoever made the first move.

The problem is that the same may be basically said about chess. It is a perfect example of a game that, when played by opponents perfectly executing the best strategies, will always end in white’s victory. Does it mean that chess is broken? Again, based on their dislikes, some people would probably say that it is, but it is not true.

Now, the problem with A Few Acres of Snow is a slightly different one. Due to its asymmetry, the design favours only one side of the conflict. It still requires perfect or near-perfect execution of the winning strategy, but with two equally skilled, experienced opponents, winning the game might as well be determined at the stage of randomly assigning who gets to play the British. This, again, is not a very unique problem.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

A similar one is easily found in the previous editions of Twilight Struggle, which seemed to favour the Soviets (and, by some accounts, still favours them, regardless of the fix offered in an early errata and then incorporated into the deluxe edition). Some wargame designers are even conscious enough to offer a simple balancing mechanism, with opponents bidding to play a specific side of the conflict. The last game I came upon this in was Red Winter – and nobody even suggests that it might be broken.

Again, A Few Acres of Snow seems to be further down the path of broken, as its structure makes the bidding pointless. The winning strategy is not based on victory points, so the players would just be buying a victory before the game starts, provided they know what to do exactly to win the game. But to know that means to either find out by visiting the game’s BGG profile or to be smart and determined enough to actually discover the strategy and perfect its execution, so that any semblance of game balance is irrevocably lost. Still, if you do not simply use other people’s experiences, there is usually a lot of game to be had before you are able to deem A Few Acres of Snow broken. And for most players that will mean playing the game about as many times as one plays any other game in their collection – especially if the collection is at least fifty to a hundred boxes strong.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The amusing conclusion here is that games are not broken by finding an outstanding design flaw – they are broken because people who are too smart or too determined play them. If not for the great following, A Few Acres of Snow would probably still be considered a flawless design. If not for a disturbingly inquisitive presence at my gaming table, I would probably still be able to enjoy Russian Railroads, oblivious of the way it can be played to win every time.

It may, thus, seem that the biggest plight of designer board games are the people who seem the best gamers: the smart, analytical minds, able to pull a design apart and utterly annihilate the illusion that there are many equally viable strategies to play and win. And it may also seem that there is no game that is not broken – and that it is more a matter of how broken any given design really is than if it is breakable at all.

From a design standpoint, however, the player that is much smarter than average is not as dangerous as the average player that, for whatever reason, decides to assume the mantle of the village idiot. This, however, I will analyze next time – for there is even more to consider here, as not all of us gamers can be exceptionally smart all the time, but we can sure act like half-wits whenever we damn please. And we do, more often than we would like to admit.

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Deckbuilding the Genre

I remember 2008 mainly for two things: the somewhat quirky apartment I was living in at the time and a new gaming craze that seemed to be taking over gaming space everywhere any was available. The craze was called Dominion, and it was spreading like a surprisingly fun virus with the sickness heralded not by sticky coughing and thunderous sneezing, but by silent rustle of a shuffled deck of cards.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

I did not stick with the strange apartment, but the base set of Dominion is still on my gaming shelf. The worn out money cards remind me of literally hundreds of games played and all the people around me that had fun with the game. Donald X. Vaccarino’s ingenious child left an impression on many gamers, grew with new expansions and, probably even more importantly, created a new genre of games, with many designers jumping on the opportunity to use this new and hip thing called deckbuilding.

The gaming world needed to wait less than a year to see other deck builders emerge, with AEG’s Thunderstone arriving with probably the biggest splash. The fantasy dungeon romp brought what many people missed in its predecessor: a stronger theme, a flavour and a slightly lower level of dissociation of game mechanisms with what they were supposed to represent; but it also lost some of Dominion's smoothness in the process. Now, six years after Dominion first conquered the gaming market, dozens of deckbuilders inhabit our gaming shelves and it is clear that the genre spawned by Vaccarino’s creation is here to stay – and evolve.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

Thematically wise, Dominion, Thunderstone and many others offered no explanation as to why the mechanism is there – nor did they need one, as building decks, shuffling and playing cards was so much fun, nobody would ask what the system is supposed to simulate. Over time however, designers started to either associate deckbuilding with a specific phenomenon it was supposed to depict in their games, or use it as only one of the elements of gameplay, re-implementing, re-mixing and crossing new boundaries to use all deckbuilding has to offer, succeeding or failing in the process.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

A great example of the above is the tragically flawed A Few Acres of Snow by Martin Wallace – a game, where the growing deck simulated the difficulties a French or English leader had to face while waging war and colonizing at the same time, having to whip their growing, unruly empire of towns and traders into battle-ready submission. The game succeeded almost flawlessly in employing deckbuilding as an abstraction of a specific process – and failed utterly in balancing the two sides of conflict, making it a broken, but nonetheless beautiful thing.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

Finally, we also have games that use deck building as just another element of the puzzle, which do not revolve solely around building a strong deck and make players focus on things other than what next will they buy and discard. Vlaada Chvatil’s Mage Knight serves a great example of how the mechanism can be both prevalent and yet not the centrepiece of an engaging, deeply thematic game. Ryan Laukat’s Cityof Iron proves that deckbuilding has its place in more traditional German style games. Mac Gerdts’ excellent Concordiawalks away from deckbuilding, becoming a fascinating exercise in area control and managing a deck-sized hand of cards.

With its popularity and incredible potential, deck building is something all “people of gaming” should keep an eye on, as there are still opportunities of putting it work in new and interesting ways – or to build upon the simple idea that became a great game, a craze, a genre and finally, a new cornerstone for the games to come.

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames