Re: [piecepack] Design Contest Winner Announcement

["Karol" <karol@...>]

Congratulations to all the authors and especially to Rob Logwood
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Schoessow" <mschoessow@...>
To: <piecepack@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2003 12:29 PM
Subject: [piecepack] Design Contest Winner Announcement


| The winner of the Third Piecepack Game Design Competition is,....
| 
|                NEW CITY  by Rob LeGood
| 
| Congratulations Rob!
| 
| 
| Runner up was ICEFLOE by Tim Schutz, and the game that most elegantly fit
| the Changing Landscapes theme was clearly SAN ANDREAS by James Kyle.
| 
| Choosing the winner was not too difficult and all the play-testers who tried
| New City agreed that it should probably win. This is not to say that there
| weren't other excellent games; there were, and choosing the runner up took a
| bit more thought. 
| 
| Of the sixteen games submitted, two were purely abstract (although one had
| an attached theme), five involved the memory of hidden information, three
| were German-style family strategy games, two were racing games, and three
| involved auction/voting type elements. One game was strictly 2-player, while
| the others were variously either 2-4, 3-4 or 4-player. Most of the games
| included some sort of luck element, either via a die or through blind tile
| selection. Interestingly, three games had themes involving icebergs or
| frozen lakes. Five games had themes dealing with kingdoms or royalty. Only
| one game was clearly themeless. All in all, it was a nice selection. In
| terms of play-quality there was also a fairly wide spread, with some games
| feeling thoroughly dialed in while others would benefit from further
| play-testing and tweaking. 
| 
| New City is German-style game of city building. As with many German games,
| it is played in "rounds", with various actions (including an auction, a
| district-building phase, an improvement-building phase, an income collection
| phase, etc.) taking place in order each round. It displays the typical
| elements of an excellent game; there are difficult decisions almost every
| turn and there is a lot of player interaction on a couple of different
| levels. The game also has good depth and excellent clarity, as well as the
| right sort of randomizing element to insure good re-playability. As with
| many excellent games of this genre, thoughtful play is well rewarded, and in
| my opinion the balance between luck and skill is just where it should be
| with enough luck to keep things interesting but not so much that a skilled
| player will be unjustly robbed of a deserved victory. Rob lists the game as
| strictly 4-player, but we happily discovered at one point (when there were
| only two of us present and we wanted to play New City again) that it plays
| very well with two players if each player takes two oppositely positioned
| city quarters and then at the end of the game scores only the income of his
| or her lower scoring quarter. The rules to New City are also well written,
| with a nice dose of wry humor. I do have one very minor criticism. The
| scoring track, although workable, is inconvenient compared to just using
| some coins to keep track of income, and after the first game we always used
| coins for money.
| 
| IceFloe is another game that displayed balance and polish, and was also
| surprisingly fun to play considering that it's pretty abstract in nature. I
| don't mean to imply anything against abstract games (which I'm a big fan of)
| but usually I think of them as providing "satisfaction" rather than "fun".
| The heart of this game is a clever secret voting mechanism for elimination
| of part of the board each round of turns. Two critical rules really make
| this work well;  firstly, there is always one player (called the
| torch-bearer) who oversees the vote and in the case of a tie the
| torch-bearer gets to decide the outcome. This leads to some very interesting
| bluffing, temporary alliances, etc. It all feels rather Knizian in some
| ways. Secondly, table-talk is regulated. Talking is allowed but only in
| generalities, with the utterance of names, numbers, colors, etc. being
| sharply proscribed, with violators losing voting rights for one round.
| Altogether it's a highly enjoyable game. Thanks Tim! One last thing; the
| rules suggest that the torch-bearer be identified by an actual burning item
| such as a candle that can be passed to the next player between rounds. This
| is essential for proper enjoyment of the game. We used one of those giant
| stand-alone candles (3" dia. by 8" high) and it was very satisfying to have
| the torch passed to you at the beginning of a round.
| 
| San Andreas is a fairly quick game that probably falls into the category of
| "filler", perfect at the beginning or end of a game evening. It's a great
| little game (and extra-interesting for those of us living on the California
| coast) using tiles arrayed to form a map of California, with pieces tilting
| or shifting in response to earthquakes during the game. Players are scored
| on towns they place, with the ones near the coast being more lucrative, IF
| they make it to the end of the game without being buried (literally) or
| falling into the ocean. Good fun.
| 
| In addition to New City, IceFloe, and San Andreas, there were a number of
| other games that I particularly liked for various reasons. Decay was the
| only purely abstract game and it is based on a tile placement/array system
| different from anything I've seen before. If you like abstracts and want to
| try something different, give it a try. Froggy Bottom is an unassuming
| little game that is quite enjoyable. It's the only 2-player game in the
| group and is a racing game (in the game theory sense) with a memory element.
| It's also a quick play so it's another nice filler. King's Cottage is clever
| game with a number of unique ideas. It also has a major memory aspect, and
| this makes it feel like a lot of work to play for people like me (my memory
| isn't so hot), but I found it to be fun just the same. The theme (competing
| craft houses and builders constructing and furnishing a cottage for the
| king) is particularly well done. The game works well for 2-4 players but it
| is a game with a fairly high luck element so mileage may vary on that
| account.
| 
| 
| Let me describe how the timing worked with the game judging and author
| identities, just to answer some questions that would otherwise come in over
| the next few days. FIRST I sent my choice for winner, runner-up, etc. to
| Karol in her capacity as contest administrator, and THEN she sent me a
| cross-listing of authors names and game titles so I could include author
| names in this posting. Thus I did not know author identities until after I
| had decided the winners.
| 
| I want to give special thanks to Karol at Mesomorph Games for the huge
| amount of work she has done, including organization, proof-reading, and
| tracking down answers to my questions to the authors. I think that for
| future contests we should probably re-think how these aspects of the contest
| work because it's an unreasonable amount of effort to ask of one person.
| Thanks Karol for making everything work smoothly!
| 
| I also want to thank Lisa, Reinhard, Gabi, Shay, Wei-Hwa, Arik, Barry, and
| Santiago for playing the games with me and contributing their opinions and
| insights. 
| 
| I will be contacting Rob concerning the prize etc., and if any other of the
| game authors are interested in the play-testers' opinions and comments about
| their games, feel free to e-mail me privately (mschoessow@...).
| 
| The rules for all sixteen games are posted at the piecepack.org site. Karol
| asked me to pass on to the authors that if they have any questions about the
| rules for their games as posted on the piecepack.org site they should send
| e-mails to submissions@.... and put the game name as the subject.
| Authors will now also have an opportunity to make changes to their rules
| sets before they are added to the rules CD.  
| 
| Once again, congratulations to the winning authors and thanks to all who
| participated. I encourage you, and all piecepack enthusiasts, to participate
| in the next competition!
| 
| -Mike 
| 
| 
| 
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