The comments from my fellow playtester, Ben Bentley, are below. I know we've already picked our three, but I thought y'all would like to hear more about these games. His preferences quite match my own, and the differences are minor. Bryan, how are you handling the votes for people who aren't attending Origins? ---Ryan -----Original Message----- From: "Benjamin Bentley" [comassion@xxxxxxxxx] Date: 06/18/2010 11:46 AM To: "Ryan Hackel" <deeplogic@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Fwd: Re: Ice game contest All right, here are my thoughts and rankings, from worst to best: 9. Behind enemy lines I didnt enjoy this one much. What little strategy is involved is painfully obvious (place enemy soldiers in inconvenient locations - specifically, the far side of the board), and the only possible way to interfere with an opponent - through blocking - is made nearly impossible by the fact that helicopters move diagonally, and thus blocking a single piece in a corner requires at least three other pieces. What I do like is the theme. And the theme provides much greater potential for a more interesting game. I see two options: a. Make Behind enemy lines a cooperative game, where the players each take control of either downed pilots or rescue helicopters and try to get picked up while avoiding enemy patrols that search randomly for the downed pilots and actively threaten the rescuing helicopters. b. Make it a team game along the lines above, but have one side play the enemy patrols and the other side play the downed pilots / helicopters. Either way, I think the introduction of an active enemy would go a long way to both better encapsulating the games theme, and make it more than a game of simple luck. All that said, I noted that our young compatriot expressed great enjoyment of the game previously, so from a fun perspective kids do apparently enjoy it, and theres certainly nothing wrong with that. 8. Apophis The best part about this game also happens to be the theme. As the game now stands, I feel theres a clear best strategy: Spend your early turns drawing the entire deck, build an optimal rocket (I havent worked the numbers, but it wouldnt be too difficult to figure out what set of pyramids gives you the best overall chance of success with a launch, and then launch that over and over again). There are some potential rules fixes that would alter that basic formula - like a hand limit, or having each player build their own rocket from the limited set of pieces. It might even be a good time to add a slightly competitive element to a co-op game - it costs pip count in cards to build a rocket section, but only one card to "requisition" a rocket section from another player. In any case, the optimum strategy in this game appears to be to simply move quickly and avoid obvious mistakes, like putting too much fuel in the rocket. In general thats going to be too simple for seasoned players to make mistakes with, even with the pressure of a time limit. 7. Ziggurat I very much enjoyed this, but as it stands the rules could do with some clarification and consistency, and the game time desperately needs to be shortened (either through more advantageous actions, like hopping upward, or just making the board smaller). The interaction of pieces and moves gives you a nice amount of decisions to make on your turn. The main reason this isnt ranked higher is because the rules still need reworking, and while theres great potential here, it has the makings of a great board game that needs to be finished. 6. 3 High A much better cooperative game than Apophis, it felt most like solving a puzzle cooperatively. I like the random setup and gameplay, but I actually think that as it stands, the game may well be too easy. We were doing quite well when I believed that the pyramids needed to be stacked up with their own colors, and thats a hell of a constraint to impose. I think the game might benefit from being made more difficult (like imposing such constraints, or even random ones, like drawing a goal card at the start of the game that says "assemble black pyramid first"). While it may engender the conversations of Pandemic, I didnt get the impression that it supplied the same sort of tension - possibly because we used our cards to such good effect in our two games, I never got the impression that the game was getting down to the wire and I had to start being really careful about my move choices. I think it might actually work better with more people, because having fewer cards (and thus fewer options) in hand will probably make the game more challenging. 5. Stack Control A good strategic game, lots of options and moves, and very simple rules. I wouldnt mind playing it again to explore it more, as I dont think one game is enough to truly discern its merits. I think the setup would have probably taken some time had we done it right, and in the early moves of the game theres too much to deal with. Only when the board clears up some can you sort of mentally comprehend the field and start making more strategic moves. Of course, early on you can mainly focus on killing opponents pieces as a more general strategy. I can definitely see the game taking awhile if analysis paralysis sets in to one or more of the players - I mean really, I suspect that Stack Control has significantly more potential variations than Chess. 4. Infiltrate I really like infiltrate, and might make it my Go to game of choice for quick Pyramid games. It has the benefits of simple rules, but the tactics are deep enough to warrant extensive planning, and the army building system goes a long way towards improving replayability. Best of all, it plays fast, and gleefully invites players to give it just one more shot. My only fear is that there may be an unbeatable strategy that one could find, especially with the potential power in going first, but to this games credit that hasnt surfaced yet. 3. Dectana Dectana is a wonderful game that is aesthetically appealing, fun to play, and possesses great strategic depth. The plans and designs of players unfold with delicate slowness, and yet the cards possessed by the players make it difficult to entirely predict what your opponent is going to do, and someone you considered yourself safe from can deliver you a nasty surprise with the right card. Dectanas does have rather extensive and not always intuitive rules (each of the six card symbols combines with two positions of a pyramid to do 12 different potential things with any given pyramid on a given turn). At this time even with a few games under my belt I wouldnt feel comfortable playing without a reference card. That said, its a fine game with a lot to offer, and it scales up well. Id be interested to see how it handles very large numbers of players - like 8 - if we could find sufficient pyramids in sufficient colors. 2. Crosswalk As Ive been thinking about Crosswalk, Ive come to like it even more. The choices you make in setting up the board for your opponents turn involve calculated risk, the die rolling keeps things interesting, the rules are simple and fast, and the only con about it is how deceptively simplistic the game appears to be. Ive come to believe that this is Backgammon reborn, and even though the endgame can come down to who rolls better, theres a lot of elegance in this simple design. Moreover, it exudes an indefinable quality of fun that isnt immediately apparent on reading the rules. Id definitely play it again, and again, and again.... 1. Quicksand If Crosswalk is Backgammon reborn, then Crosswalk is checkers designed by a chess player. Extremely simple rules produce a game with immense tension and strategic depth. Its easy to miss a devastating move or sneak something by your opponent, but its equally possible to see your unbeatable threat knocked handily away by a combination of elegant piece placement and board rotation. Other than the fact that the game can easily take as long as chess as both players try to outwit the other, this is a fantastic game worthy of many sessions to come. On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 9:48 AM, Ryan Hackel <deeplogic@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Ben, You can find links to the rules for all nine semifinalists here: http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=New_in_2009 When you can, please send me your ranking preference of the nine games, and any comments you might have on them. Consider yourself a deputized panelist. ---Ryan -- Cell: 703-389-7380