Teaching Games

The first game I taught was Power Grid, I was planning on teaching this game since Christmas Break, so I made sure to brush up on the rules by playing a few times before class started. I also practiced teaching two new players before teaching the class, so I knew what explanations I could do quickly and which ones were more important to emphasize.

Teaching the group in class was fairly straightforward, especially because I was not playing, so I felt like I could offer strategy more freely. I already knew from practicing that I would need to make sure the end game conditions were clear before we got to that point, because it can happen quickly, but we did not even make it into Step 2 out of the 3 in the game that normally occur before the game reaches the end. Unfortunately we had two games scheduled for that day, so we had to wrap up only a few rounds in, when everyone was just starting to get the hang of the game. It seemed like everyone was having fun with the game, I noticed a bunch of them at the Power Grid table playing again this week.

The only feedback I got on what I might improve was to make sure I explain the different areas of the board in an order that makes sense as I go along, since there were a few places where I skipped around and eventually explained everything, but got them overwhelmed and confused at first. I also realized about 30 seconds too late to fix anything that I had forgotten to reorder the player order for the very first round, so the player who had gone first in the luck of the draw was actually at a disadvantage he shouldn't have been, but since I knew we were not going to be able to finish the game, I just let it go and didn't confuse them any more.

I also got to teach Shadows over Camelot, which I had only played three times previously. This game I probably did a worse job of teaching, as I tend to forget some of the little rules as I play, and I discovered that some of the first times I played, I "cheated" by mistake. This time the only thing we did wrong was failing to pick up white cards as rewards for playing black cards face down on the Black Knight, Lancelot and the Dragon, so we only hurt ourselves and still managed to win.

Next I will be teaching Kingdom Builder, which I have now played one time in total, and lost terribly, so hopefully it goes well. At least now I know some strategies that don't work.

Day Eight

The cooperative game that I played was Shadows over Camelot. I had already played several times before, so I was the one teaching it, but it was nice getting the chance to play along with the game I was teaching this time. We started out trying to capture the Holy Grail, but pretty soon there were other quests that needed attention and no Grail cards coming up for us to play, so our forces got spread out pretty far. With only four people playing out of the seven possible, we were struggling for a while, with an eventual 4/6 swords in favor of Evil, until enough knights pulled cards that we could capture the Grail at last, giving us the 3 swords needed to win, and suddenly the game was over. I still like this game, even after playing it more than any other game so far, and I am glad to have noticed two of the people who played with me sign up to teach it later on in the week.

Day Five

Shadows over Camelot

Before class I found enough people to play Shadows over Camelot after all. This game is interesting in that it pits players against the game as well as against a single traitor in their midst. (Although we played the Three Brave Knights variant where none of us were traitors as an introduction to the game, which works best with a larger number of players.) We were able to play cooperatively (but may have cooperated a little too well by telling each other what cards we had, which is against the rules) and barely defeated the forces of evil to win. The game hung in the balance for a few rounds with 5 black swords, but we eventually beat the Saxons back enough times to fill the Round Table and win.

Yut

This game is a traditional Korean game where wooden dowels are tossed like dice to determine how many spaces a player's "horses" move. Each of the dowels has a rounded side and a flat side, and one of them has "X" marks on the flat side. The number of dowels that land flat side up signifies the number of spaces to move with two exceptions: if all of the flat sides are down the roll is a "5" and if the "X" side is the only flat side up it means "Go Back 1." The idea is to get all of the horses around the track and back past the start position. If your pieces land on your own pieces, you can move them together from the point on, if you land on someone else's piece it is removed from the board and you get to throw the sticks again (rolls of 4s or 5s also give another roll and those rolls can be performed before deciding which rolls to use in which order, they also stack so you can roll unlimited times in a row if the board is set up correctly).

This game was finished very quickly compared to the other games people were playing today and so we tried to play with more pieces and more teams to see if that would make the game last any longer. It was very interesting to see how different strategies work out, since part of the game is deciding what moves to make with each roll and part of it was just the luck of what roll came up. It seemed a lot like Sorry, and makes me wonder if that game was designed with this one in mind, or if it just happened to be successful because such an idea works so well.

1812: The Invasion of Canada

This game is a strategic, conquering game, like Risk. It took more than half of the time we had to learn all the rules of the game and feel comfortable starting. Even once we started, it felt like we had little chance of making it through even a single round of everyone getting a chance to play (although we made it halfway through a second round). The American side was another girl and I, both of whom have had no experience with conquest games before, against two guys playing the British side, who quickly captured one of our spawn points, at which time we called the game and declared them the winners. I am not sure whether I would play this game again, I feel like would need to become more comfortable with a conquest style game, or partner with someone who knew what they were doing to be able to understand good and bad strategies better before I would enjoy this style of game very much, but it was entertaining to see how quickly we "lost."

Shadows over Camelot

After the brief and rushed introduction to the game in the morning, I thought it would be a good idea to try the game out again with more people. I was hoping that I would be getting a lot more people together, but it ended up being only four of us playing. We shuffled in the Traitor card this time, but in the end we revealed that we were all Loyal. We did end up beating the game again, but if there had even a Traitor among us there was no way we would have ended up even close to winning. I still think it has something to do with how many players there were in the game, but we will see on Monday when I teach the game to the class as part of Cooperative Games Day.