Thursday, September 17, 2020

Old Rule Books and Rooks

I bought a Rook deck, and upon reading its enclosed booklet and this nice online collection of rulebooks, it would be a shame not to put these games not included, such as an older form of the main Rook game that is unlike Tournament Rook.

Every rule here is from the linked rulebook collection, any repeats will be sorted out later in case of possible irregularities.

Friday, September 11, 2020

Game review: Margin of Error

The presidential elections of the United States of America might seem a bit complicated, but it's simply a majority vote, although the final tally is through votes in the electoral college as determined by what the state votes for. Election cycles are wild rides where every eye is looking at the future of the country.

Here's a question few ask: Man, I really want to reenact the election, how can I do it? And if you want a simulation of the American elections without the bloodshed, here's Margin of Error by Jack Neal.

Margin of Error is the American presidential elections boiled down to numbers and swinging electorates. The board represents a bunch of states up for grabs, and one section for your resources and the timeline. Extra equipment include tokens, dice and a maybe a calculator.

A Very Long Rundown

You start the game with a bunch of states practically up for grabs, and you take the role of either the campaign of the GOP or the Dems and you have nine weeks to get at least 270 electoral votes. Each party has their sure states and therefore start with some electoral votes, obviously that's not enough. The swing states for the taking have a poll scale and start with a token indicated by a mark, and these tokens will move depending on campaign moves with the starting point being a deciding factor in case of the state finishing in the middle.

You start with seven itinerary tokens and some funding, ten moneys to be exact. To get things going you have to set the week's itinerary to raising funds, media presence, campaigning and advertising, putting as much as three tokens to each action per week. Also included are some political capital actions you can use once per game, one a week. After scheduling the week you start rolling dice to see how well it goes. We'll now look at every aspect of the week of the campaign. 

First off is fundraising, where for every token you roll a die and get the amount rolled for one token spent, the amount plus three for two tokens and six added to the roll for three.

For campaigns, roll a die a token spent for every state you campaigned in, factoring the amount of media presence you spent. How much the state swings to your favor depends on how much you rolled and whether you rolled a double or a triple, which can set you back unless you exchange the ability to use a political capital action to ignore one of the dice. Each campaign costs $1. 

The vice presidential candidate can also campaign on one state for free but doesn't get much media attention and your roll will always be reduced by one. If your presidential candidate campaigns on a state worth less than ten points for the first time that isn't in your favor, place a token next to that state. A state is safe if the poll token is within a dark-colored zone and will always move one space toward the opponent until it's in the light zone.

Advertising affects a region and costs $5 a token. All states within that region will be affected by the rolls made for each advertising move, which work like campaign rolls without the extra caveats of small states. You have to campaign in at least one state within that region before you advertise.

After that, it's your opponent's turn to do some swinging, with dice rolls determining any changes of mind in some states and sometimes a whole region, adding another uncertainty to your campaign team.

This goes on for nine weeks, with a gradually increasingly aggressive opponent and after a last-minute campaign based on your small state tokens, your sure votes are added with the votes from the states you've won. 270 to win.

Review proper

For an election game, this game does make what seems to be a sordid affair simple. What a better way to simplify elections than going straight to how the whole affair works, disregarding the chaos that surrounds it?

The upside is that players that aren't familiar with how the United States elections work need not worry, as any road bumps of the campaign trail are ironed out. Any successes and failures are covered by the dice, and the electoral college votes as willed by the people.

Half the game is planning out the week and the other half is letting your campaign be at the mercy of the dice. This is a game that involves a high degree of chance, then again, you can't wholly convince a voter base that easily.

The strategy here is mostly using your resources and skills to maximize the voters' swing to your favor and being able to handle the results of such actions. The chance aspects of the game makes any strategy worth using, as the dice will ultimately decide if what you did was a good idea or not.

Political actions give you more power when you'd otherwise be stirred by the winds of chance and adds extra decision-making. While on the basic set the actions are general, variations can be made depending on historical context, something the creator of the 2016 version missed out, then again you might as well add an option to set the board on fire.


Other past elections are yet to be created, but if you want a quick rundown of how the US elections work without the dumpster fire, Margin of Error is the game for you.

Any board game based on elections are way better than actual elections, but we must still vote.

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Game Review: Game of the Generals

Designer board games in the Philippines seem to evoke an air of fanciness, a sense of being well-off to afford a board game that you can't buy at a local Toy Kingdom, Toys 'R' Us or National Book Store. Any of these games that get the bootleg treatment tend to be party games that can be pulled out at any time and don't take forever to explain.

That's not to say that Filipinos haven't had a try at creating a board game the nation can love, and indeed, there is one game that has become part of the nation's idea of a good game: The Game of the Generals.

Created by Sofronio H. Pasola Jr. in 1970, this game is the result of giving chess a more military setting and adding a bit of hidden information. Some might see parallels with Stratego, but it's a different game in many regards including price in the Philippines (Also, I am yet to play Stratego). Although a two-player game, an arbiter is adviced to assess matters.

The set is a square 8x9 board and each player getting 21 pieces ranking as follows:

Officers, from highest to lowest:

1 Five-star General
1 Four-star General
1 Three-star General
1 Two-star General
1 One-star General
1 Colonel
1 Lieutenant Colonel
1 Major
1 Captain
1 First Lieutenant
1 Second Lieutenant
1 Sergeant

A higher-ranking official always captures a lower-ranking official. Along with the higher-ups are

2 Spies, who can eliminate any officer from Sergeant up to the Five-star but are no match against Privates
6 Privates, who can eliminate spies but are always defeated by any official

Finally, the most valuable piece for both sides is their Flag, whose elimination means the loss for the army. Any piece can capture the Flag, even a Flag taking the offense.

Two soldiers of equal rank eliminate each other, the Flag being the only exception.

Players set their army up on their back three rows in any way they see fit, leaving six empty spaces on this 27-cell zone. 

After the plans have been laid out, the skirmish begins. A turn consists of moving any one piece to an orthogonally adjacent piece that is either empty or occupied by an enemy piece. If two opposing pieces meet at a square, the arbiter looks at the pieces and removes the lower ranking piece, whether it be the attacker or not, or both if ranks are equal.

The goal is to capture the opposing Flag, even if it would take the opposing Flag to do the job. Another goal is for a player to bring their Flag to their furthest rank unharmed.

If there's no arbiter around, the players announce the ranks of the pieces during an attack, though this is regarded as a last-ditch effort.


Strategy and tactics in this game involve not only piece placement but each and every form of bluffing, deduction, guessing and other forms of psychological gaming. Table talk is not only encouraged, it might even get you some info.

That's not to say that gameplay isn't important; it already begins in the setup. Every possible formation is legal with its strengths and weaknesses, though with both sides not knowing the other's formation, anything can still go; if you want to counter the opposing formation you have to know your enemy well.

Playing style in this game is an easy thing to acquire, with many ways to guard fronts and infiltrate. Experimentation is also easy to do, and each game is never the same; any tactic you had last time might stop working this time.

The Game of the Generals differs from Stratego in that the former uses a featureless board, uniform piece movement, and a different piece distribution. With the Flag that is able to move, tactical approaches to attacking and defending have to be dynamic as the Flag might have fled. Besides, who needs a chokepoint when you have skirmishes that may be bluffs?  A heavy guard is nothing if it's distracted by what seems to be an entourage when the Flag is doing a home run.

Piece balance is not too shabby, as each piece has its defeater. There being only one of each official is not an issue as officials usually make up much of the heavy fire, Spies generally taking the role of confuser (as only two pieces can fully identify it) and Privates take on versatile work such as scouting for spies, decoying or even play key Flag-related roles.


With gameplay that always keeps you on your toes, it's no wonder this game has practically become the first modern game that can be considered a Filipino classic. Putting the intricacies of war into a game is not an easy task, but The Game of the Generals has done it beautifully with its mix of abstract simplicity that needs little context and imperfect information without the dice.

Monday, September 7, 2020



Pyacide: The photographer was like "I can totally alleviate this situation, but let's just see how many likes I can get" - 4 pts, 2 vts
Monarch309: Marking each week of social distancing / working at home with a cake seemed like such a good idea when there was one candle . . . - 8 pts
idk anything: "Dad, stop watching porn on the couch, we're blowing out the candles." - 12 pts
Rather Dashing: Buy a Mac if you want to be as happy as us! - 4 pts, 3 vts
Lmao Boomer: when everyone doesnt even care about you :( - 2 pts
Kjvkw: "We celebrated the cat's birthday yesterday, boy. It don't change that he's still dead." - 6 pts, 4 vts
WonkerBonker: Soviet birthday to you! - 6 pts, 3 vts

224
3238
333312
2114
112
21126
2316






 


SCRAGGYSCROO: The Epic story of mon... i mean ep.. yeah thats just a monster - 0 pts
Joker: queen of hearts got me again - 5 pts, 3 vts
Marge: Looks like I left my head in my other pants. Dang, I also left my pants in my other pants. - 8 pts
Brocktoon: Grak the Destroyer couldn't help but feel like he'd left something back at camp before the battle. - 12 pts
tallinnislit: "Little did the Highlander know that my head was literally up my ass." - 10 pts
Nikkia: "When you lose your head in the heat of battle but feel you can continue." - 6 pts
blockhead77: I'm glad I'm ahead of those other guys, they were going to head the wrong way. - 5 pts, 2 vts
aEniMUs: "I never lose my head over a battle." - 2 pts

0
1135
23128
3133212
2221310
3216
325
112

(Scanned from Inuyasha 432, Edited by Zach)