CHINATOWN

Left to my own devices, I may never have played Chinatown.

Luckily I have a weekly game group in which we have implemented what we call our Host system. It proceeds in a regular order allowing each member of the group in turn to act as Host, basically a Tyrant that selects that evening's venue and what game(s) we shall be playing. This has allowed everybody to get their games to the table while experiencing the varied tastes of the group.

So along comes a host's copy of Chinatown one evening, and the next day I would purchase a copy of my own at my FLGS. 

To my eye the the box art was well done but not striking. The board itself I found serviceable if a bit drab. The cards were, uh, cards. Thematically I found it mildly interesting from an American History perspective (the same sweet spot that games like Tammany Hall, Tesla vs Edison, & Academy Games Birth of America series hit) where you play as Chinese immigrants making a go of it in 1960s New York, developing small businesses in Chinatown. But these businesses are also not super compelling, laundromats, antiques shops, take-out joints, photography shops...

An overview of the phases of the game round also does not immediately reveal the magic of the game.

The first 2 phases are merely drawing Building cards (basically numbered cards acting as Deeds to matching property on the board) and then draw Shop cards. Numbers drawn depend on Player Count and what Round this is (there are 6 rounds in every game).

• FIRST ROUND(and 2nd and 3rd Rounds @ 5 players):  Draw X and keep Y Building cards, then draw X Shop tiles from the bag.
• SUBSEQUENT ROUNDS:  Draw (X-1) and keep (Y-1) Building cards, then draw (Y-1) Shop tiles from the bag.
• this looks like algebra, i hate myself, ignore this bullet point.
• Discarded Building cards go to common discard pile to be reshuffled into draw deck later.
• Once everyone has their Building cards, place your player tokens on the corresponding square on the board to denote ownership.

The Third Phase is TRADING.

In the Fourth Phase you may choose to place PLACE TILES, or not, whatever, I'm not the boss of you, but you're going to need to place tiles to make money, each Shop tile displaying a number showing how many Shop tiles of that kind need to be adjacent in order to complete the business. Once placed, shop tiles cannot be moved, although ownership is fluid*.

Phase 5 - EARN INCOME - is the most important really, because this is where you, uh, earn income. You get money for your completed businesses and also substantially less for your crappy little incomplete ones too. 

And whoever has the most money at the end of the 6th round wins. 

That is the game on the table and it basically shows how everyone is performing.

But the game above the table, between all the players, takes place in that 3rd Phase -TRADING - and it is absolutely NUTS because this is a game of negotiation, and you got the luck of the draw for both Building cards & Shop tiles, and now everything you need to win is scattered around the table in the possession of the various players, and anything goes. 

You can trade tile(s) for tile(s) between players, maybe throw in a cash bonus to sweeten the deal or offer to buy a tile outright. Maybe someone has ownership of a space on the board that you need to acquire to complete one of your businesses (or vice versa) so that's up for grabs. So are owned shop tiles already on the board - *it's as easy as an agreement and then swapping out the player tokens on the board denoting ownership. I've been in 3 and 4 way trade deals (although these usually fall apart before they can be completed) and I remember everyone's jaw-dropping the first time someone completed a trade with someone else proposing FUTURES on potential tiles being drawn. I've even read on BGG of players making loans. It's all up for grabs, and everyone is doing the math, calculating the benefit to themselves vs the benefit to their prospective trading partners over time. 

Emotions come into play frequently in my groups, where gratitude is earned or antipathy built between players (hopefully only lasting as long at the game). 

All these interactions and calculations are occurring simultaneously and chaotically, with frequently frantic babbling trying to get the best deal possible before you get edged out by a competitor. And you might get what you want but did you overpay, or give up too much? Did you hurt your long-term chances of success while boosting another player's? 

When no more agreements can be reaching, the Trading Phase ends and you're all dumped back into the regular game until the next Round's Trading.

It is beautiful. It makes you see the possibility of games. It is a great game.

QUICK HITS: 

Theme: Immigrant Small Business Owner
Gameplay: Tile placement & *heavy* Negotiation element.
Components: Drab art but thick, quality components
Replayability: This was extraordinarily easy to learn and fun to play, it's a classic for a reason.
Rulebook: I've only been using the tiny little reference cards provided for so long I don't remember if it's a good rulebook or not. Maybe that means it's a great rulebook.

Link to CHINATOWN on BGG

MODERN ART

My association with the game Modern Art resembles the 5 Stages of Acquisition according to Ferengi culture.

INFATUATION: This was on my radar for years. Something about the simplicity of its auction mechanics just fascinated me, and I began the long, slow dance of...
JUSTIFICATION: Earlier this year CMON released a beautiful new edition, but still I prevaricated until Shut Up & Sit Down gave it a glowing review and I knew that I must act while it was still in stock for a reasonable price on Amazon...
APPROPRIATION: I bought it on Amazon. Sorry FLGS.
OBSESSION: That SU&SD review went up on 9/29/2017, and I've got multiple plays under my belt since then, teaching it to several appreciative groups of both hardcore and not-so-hardcore gamers. I bought high quality over-sized sleeves for the Art cards. I'm thinking about buying a gavel. A GAVEL.
RESALE: Far into the future, if ever. Maybe someday if they announce a new edition...

Of all the games I wanted to write about when I started this blog, this is the one I've owned for the shortest amount of time, played the least (though I've played 3 different editions of it now), and wanted to gush about the most. But mine is not the excitement of Stage 4, mine is a loving appreciation for a beautifully executed game.

GAMEPLAY
There are painting cards from 5 different Artists and each Art card has 1 of 5 different type of auctions on it. Everyone starts with 100k.
Each player takes a turn by auctioning a card from their hand. Auctioneer gets the money (or pays the bank if they bought it themselves), and buyers place the purchased Art card in front of them.
When the 5th Art card comes out of any artist, it is not scored but rather ends the round.
The paintings by the 3 most popular Artists are valued 30k, 20k, or 10k on the scoring board. Players sell those cards for money from the bank. YOU GET NOTHING FOR PAINTINGS BY THE OTHER TWO.
You get new cards (variable for player count) on the 2nd & 3rd rounds, but none on the 4th and final round.
The person with the most money at the end of the 4th round wins.

The tricksey part is that the value builds from round to round, so say an Artist's work has been the 3rd most popular every round - at the end of the 4th it would be worth $40k for each painting you sold from that Artist.
But again, if an Artist wasn't popular that round, YOU GET NOTHING!
After the first quick round, you can actually witness the cognition of the players around the table, glancing at their hands, looking up at the scoring board, and the down at the table to see what's out there right now, calculating values, bidding, frequently over-bidding... jockeying for advantage in a entirely subjective market that they're creating as they go.
[oh please go watch the Adam Ruins Everything clip about the Fine Art Market on You Tube]

By far my favorite little moments in the game are the BBG-inspired house-ruled flourishes preceding every auction that we've implemented in the games I run, where the auctioneer pulls the Art card from their hand dramatically announcing the {Style of Auction} for, say, Ramon Martins' Skinny DTF Buddha, or Sigrid Thaler's Sad About You, or Manuel Carvalho's Finger-Blast-Superstar... it goes on and on, players interpreting the Art in hand and giving it a name, a wonderful window into your friends' psyches that everyone would have been better off without probably.

Quick Hits:
Theme: Art Gallery Auction Extravaganza!
Gameplay: Jump on the bandwagon buying/selling Art. Get Money.
Components: {version we played was dated and ugly} *UPDATE* CMON version is outstanding quality!
Replayability: Gameplay was excellent, and the mechanics are a wonderful commentary
Rulebook: *CMON* outstanding

Link to Modern Art on BGG

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW

I just wanted to write about some of the games I really enjoy and why I enjoy them.
It's not a review, and if I'm writing about it here then I already love it.

I am cross-posting some of these to the review forums on www.boardgamegeek.com and so perhaps sending mixed messages. Well, they've got to go somewhere. I do what I want.

THE GAME

Spiel... so lange du kannst!
You can be forgiven for dismissing THE GAME as theme-less little filler. Despite the ominous art depicting a skull on the box and the back of every card, it is literally just 98 cards numbered from 2 to 99 that you will take turns playing onto 4 card piles, two piles ascending from 1 and two piles descending from one hundred. 
But you need to know that it's more than a game, THE GAME is a compact which 1-5 players enter into, that they will play THE GAME start to finish and that when THE GAME ends when a player cannot legally play a card, however many cards remain unplayed are people somewhere out in the world who will drop dead. 
You're playing to save those people, but it was your decision to play that put their lives in the balance in the first place.

I love explaining that backstory to new players after I've already dealt out the cards. Obviously I don't believe in it - that would make me a monster since I've played it so many times and introduced many new players to THE GAME. Since I first purchased my copy, it's become my #1 filler game for those moments when we're sitting there waiting for another player to start a bigger game, or at the end of the night after a bigger game is done and people still want to play but don't have time to begin another longer game. THE GAME is a game that perfectly fills its niche.

A simple explanation doesn't do the gameplay justice. It features the same artificial constraints on player communication as Hanabi, a game I played first but enjoy much, much less.
You can't tell the other players in this coop game what you have, but you can make implications & cajole them - desperate pleas to not play on a certain pile of cards are very common. But you might have to play there anyway. Each player has their own hand of misery to deal with, and the optimal play for you is definitely going to be a sub-optimal outcome for one or more players, and thus the group as a whole. It's a game about mitigation.
I promise that is more fun than it sounds.

The rules of play, restrictions on communication, and a pile of cards that must be played that dwindles as your options to play them are slowly restricted by the players' previous actions - all this combines to give the whole experience a marvelously strained and almost subterranean feel.

To my way of thinking that many games are two games happening at the same time, the one one the table and the one above it between players, THE GAME is mostly on the table in front of you. But the audible groans, dropped jaws, accusatory stares... these are all excellent lubrication to an otherwise dry game.

THE GAME is a game of delightfully bitter recriminations.

QUICK HITS:
Theme: Vaguely threatening
Gameplay: Card playing, number counting - way more fun than that sounds.
Components: Solid quality cards
Replayability: Players looking for a quick challenge will play often as a filler. 
Rulebook: Basically a piece of paper that explains the very simple rules good enough.

Link to THE GAME on BGG.com

1775: Rebellion

1775 is often described as a "light" war game.

I know a little bit about war.
I'm not like, an expert or anything, but I know a little bit of history and I was in a war once. It sucked, but that doesn't mean I've lost the Human Ape's fascination with it in various media.
I remember this bit quite well: The mission of the Marine Corps rifle squad is to locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver, or repel the enemy assault by fire and close combat.

And one of the great things about 1775 is how it emphasizes that maneuver aspect of warfare. 

It's card-based with Movement cards & game changing Event cards. The Movement cards allow you to move a variable number of armies across a variable number of areas in the 13 Colonies (also a few movement cards for moving across water).
Entering an area with enemy cube(s) terminates the move and will initiate a battle when the movement phase is complete. Enter an area with a un-allied Native American cube(s) also terminates your move but adds to your forces.
You need to control colonies because that's how you bring reinforcements in areas with cities at the beginning of your turn, and how you ultimately win or lose the game. To control a colony, there can be no Enemy or un-allied Native American forces in any of it's areas.

So during play you're trying to seize territory, exploit openings, limit your opponents options for reinforcing, and setting up blocking positions for their movement/command decisions.

Your armies are various cubes rolling dice with different odds to kill, flee, or Command Decision. Dice-based Combined Arms... pretty neat, huh?
The battle might not go how you want it to but there are no bad dice rolls, no real misses. A kill takes out an enemy cube. A flee means one of your cubes at least lives to fight another day, actually returning in your reinforcements on the next turn of that faction.
And Command Decisions are subtly awesome - stay and fight(!) OR move into an adjacent territory as long as it's not solely enemy occupied. That means you could take up a blocking position for future enemy movements, pick up a Native American ally, or even reinforce an adjacent battle that hasn't been resolved yet.

And the timing of playing your cards to trigger end game conditions can make this an incredibly tense, close, swingy, nail-biter of a game. That might bother some people, but not me. It's all part of the experience of playing this game.

It can support 4 players in 2 teams, but this is really best as a 2 player game - General vs. General.

Elegance is a quality in games that I admire, and it's present in this system of rules.
It doesn't hurt that it's a beautiful board either. The care that publisher Academy Games puts into it's games has made it one of my favorite companies, and at this time I own their Mare Nostrum: Empires, 1754: Conquest – The French and Indian War, and 878: Vikings – Invasions of England (the last 2 being in the same game system as 1775).

QUICK HITS:
Theme: American Revolution
Gameplay: cube-pushing light wargame, elegant rules
Components: Gorgeous artwork, custom dice that make battles more exciting
Replayability: It's a keeper, you'll probably want to play again after your first play. A few different scenarios are available.
Rulebook: Pretty approachable
1775: Rebellion on BBG.com

SKULL

I can teach you this game in 2 minutes. One play of it will make you an expert, and you could probably then teach others in 2 minutes too.

It's a betting game, a quiet game or a raucous game, a mind game, and one of my favorite games in a tiny little square box.

Your SKULL coaster is your KILL-CARD (they're actually cardboard coasters, not cards). You can lay it down in front of you like a landmine, even boldly bidding yourself just to bait your trap. If other players suspect then they can avoid your coasters or worse leave you holding the skull, because you have to flip your own coasters first. But you all have to play to win, so you're going to have to bid sometime and flip roses, avoiding the skulls, taking your shot. You only have to pull it off twice to end the game victoriously.
The tension of the game is amazing - the hands reaching across the table hesitantly, the suspicious looks, the bitter recriminations. You can often feel that energy around the table building as someone is successfully flipping roses, and the eruption when a skull is revealed or deflation when they flip their final rose and they only need to do it once more to win.
Adding to all that is that somehow it seems like whenever the Skull is flipped it's the final coaster you needed to win the round- you've managed to flip all roses on say 3 coasters of a bid of 4 and you're suddenly denied on that 4th. If you'd went with your first choice maybe you'd have pulled it off, or maybe all your options were Skulls. You'll never know.

I often think of board games as a mechanism for interpersonal interaction. I also like to think of a lot of games as 2 in 1 - the game on the table in front of you, and the invisible game above it across the table between the players' minds. Skull is an amazingly elegant demonstration of those lines of thought.
WHAT DID PEOPLE DO?
... or maybe...
HOW CAN I MAKE THEM DO WHAT I WANT?
... and always...
WHAT SHOULD I DO NOW?

It is a simple enough game that you could play it with playing cards, but why would you want to when the 2013 edition is so beautiful?
The previous editions were biker art theme and the game was called "Skull & Roses" while this new edition has beautiful, colorful art inspired by different world cultures. I always reach for the Central American set, I don't know why.

Quick Hits:

Theme: skull, or roses?
Gameplay: Easy to teach & learn, outstanding player interaction
Components: Latest edition has gorgeous art & quality coasters (some print wear inevitable)
Replayability: There's no reason not to play a game of Skull any time you get together to play games.
Rulebook: Gets the job done, you really won't need it after your first few games.

SKULL on BoardGameGeek.com