In addition to including the expansions, the components are of higher quality – all of the cardboard is thicker stock, the doubloons are actually metal coins, and the wooden bits are a little nicer and easier to handle.  The artwork has also been redesigned and illustrations added to the building tiles, which are all very nice touches.

I’m pretty impressed with the component quality, although the price was somewhat steep.  I know I’ll enjoy playing this edition though, as I always found the cardboard bits and the wooden colonist markers a little fiddly to handle in the original edition.  Plus, it’s Puerto Rico, which is still an absolute classic after 10 years.

One of the more interesting aspects of this map are the mountain routes which require you to sacrifice additional rail cars from your supply for some additional points.  Assuming you don’t get too ambitious with your route planning, I would now consider this to be very advantageous in almost every way.  It’s not obvious at first until you consider some of the details.

First, each car you sacrifice in this manner is worth 2 points.  The “break-even” point is a route of length 5 (where each car is worth 2 points).  Shorter routes all give you less bang for your buck, and this map only has a very small number of routes that are 5 or longer.  The other, more important effect is that it brings on the end of the game faster, and gives you a better chance to catch your opponents short.

To give a specific example, there are some routes of length 2 which require a 2 car sacrifice.  You only need to play 2 cards to claim the route, and you will get 6 points as well as be 4 cars closer to triggering the end of the game.

Now that I understand this aspect of the map better, I’ll definitely not make some of the same mistakes next time.  As for the luck, well, let’s just say I had better draw locomotives a little more often if I want to claim a few ferry routes…

Flash Point: Fire Rescure is the “new hotness” as Jason puts it (pun intended), and he got me a copy for my birthday.  To date, I think this one is only available to people who backed it on Kickstarter, which is a shame because it’s a fantastic cooperative game.  The mechanics fit the theme really well, and the game moves along with relatively little downtime.  The difficulty is adjustable but so far it feels about right at the regular difficulty level. You’re not going to win every game (it’s been close every game so far, either winning or losing), but it doesn’t grind you into the dust like Ghost Stories always seems to.  I’ve only tried the two maps that come with the base game, and haven’t yet attempted the expansion maps which appear more difficult.

As for older games, I played all three of the following with various members of my family over the break:

1. 6 Nimmt (Category 5 in English)
2. Carcassonne: The City
3. The Settlers of Catan

I have played all of them before, but I was the only one at the table who had played them.  6 Nimmt went over predictably well, and we got pretty goofy by the end of the game (a couple of glasses of red wine may have contributed).  Everyone had fun, and we all agreed the light tactics were just the right level for what we wanted that evening.

Mom and I played a couple of games of Carcassonne, and though it took her a little bit to see the strategies, she enjoyed playing the game and came pretty close to beating me both games.  This is still my favorite incarnation of Carcassonne to play, and the chance to play it with mom reminded me of why.

Finally, Settlers of Catan hit the table.  My sister wound up winning quite handily, and although it’s still far from my favorite game, I enjoyed this play of it more than previous plays.  The dice still hated me as they always do, but I started to at least get a bit of momentum in the mid-game.  It proved to be too little, too late as mom was challenging me for the longest army while my sister had somehow managed to get 4 of the VP cards in the development card deck.  I ended up in second place, but there was a lot of back and forth to get there (I was in last for the majority of the game).  I’d be willing to give this one another try, although I will stick to my vow to never play it with the 5/6 player expansion ever again.

What was interesting about last night was watching Rafael, who had never played before, play the game.  He got into it in a way that made me think, “yes, this is IT!”

He took crazy risks (let’s dig for 4 weeks, drawing 3 discs) and they paid off.  He drew the discs out of the bag and slapped them down on the table, counting them as he went.  He watched with interest as Jason draw from the bag and found nothing but rubble.  He managed to get second place in his very first game.

For me, it was a lesson in why we play board games in the first place.  Everyone had a good time, and I got to witness a first-time player totally get into the game and play it the way it’s meant to be played – on the edge of a razor, tensely drawing discs from a dig site in hopes of striking it rich.  Although I wouldn’t classify Thebes as a push your luck game in terms of the core mechanic, when you go on a dig and you have to decide how long to spend a the site, there is a definite push your luck element to it, and it never fails to draw people into the game completely.

Although I eventually won the game, watching Rafael play was my reward.  This is what board games are all about.

Even though I have seldom won Acquire in the past, everything went my way this game, and I won very handily, with a nearly $20,000 differential with Craig who took second place.  The group generally seemed to be preferring to hold stock rather than liquidate, which worked in my favor (I think Tower got acquired 4 times, with a nice payout to me each time).  I also managed to maneuver things such that Continental was re-founded well out of harms way in the corner of the board, giving me time to focus on my long-term buy and hold hotel (Festival).  I got a lot of dirty looks when I founded Continental where I did, but it’s probably the one move I made that most directly led to me emerging victorious.

I didn’t win at Rheinlander, but did manage a second-place finish, by far the best I’ve ever done in that game.  I feel like I’m finally beginning to understand the strategy in that game, something I never really felt I had a grip on at all previously.  My score was about double my previous personal best score (41 points this game, I think my previous best was 22 or 23 points).  We don’t play this one that often, but it’s nice to finally feel like I can play it competitively.

In the game, each player has a unique monument that grants them a slight special power.  There’s nothing truly devastating, and they all seem pretty balanced, but they add a nice variety to the game and help to ensure that no two games play alike.

The interesting options and many paths to victory also make it a game that has some good replayability, and the simple, straightforward rules and quick play time make it a lot more accessible to casual gamers than a lot of games.

While it doesn’t have the depth of other multi-player solitaire games like Agricola, it’s one I can see hitting the table a lot more often, and it’s also a game I could see busting out with my family.

I don’t own a copy, but will likely track one down in the near future.

Craig and I won handily vs. our opponents, and I could tell during the game that Jason wasn’t enjoying it at all.  I found that I sort of enjoyed playing a ladder climbing game with partners, although if we want to play a card game there is quite a list I’d reach for before Tichu personally.  Apparently Jason felt this even more strongly; I suspect he’ll never again play Tichu.

This isn’t to say that Tichu isn’t a good game.  Of all the ladder climbing games I’ve played, it and Gang of Four are easily my favorites and better than the majority of the rest; that said, not everyone wants to play a ladder-climbing game.

Fortunately, Airlines Europe was recently released.  Airlines Europe is designed by Alan Moon, who also designed Union Pacific.  It’s a re-implementation of the same basic mechanics, although there are some minor differences that change it up just a bit.  I eagerly snapped up a copy within a week of it arriving at my Friendly Local Gaming Store, and it hit the table in my games group this past Monday.

I truly enjoyed the game, and also appreciated the way in which the rules changes from Union Pacific made the game move much, much faster.  There was a lot less downtime in Airlines Europe, and scoring was faster to resolve.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason the tension didn’t ratchet up quite as high as it does for me in Union Pacific, but that’s a minor quibble.  The game was truly fun and everyone at the table agreed it would have to come out again sometime.

Like Union Pacific, the most scarce resource in the game is turns.  Since you can only do 1 action per turn, you have to make the most of it.  The addition of money as another resource to the game  means there’s a second resource to manage, in addition to turns, but it turns out there’s one simple rule that will likely keep it under control:  always have enough money on hand for your next turn.  If a stock appears in the market that you absolutely must have, there’s nothing worse than not being able to get it because you couldn’t afford to buy a route license.  In the 5-player game we played, this was a large factor in whether or not you got a critical share in a stock or not.

Airlines Europe fills a nice gap in my personal collection, although I’m still itching to play Union Pacific again sometime.

It was a very different game than our group’s previous goes at Caylus.  Three of us (myself included) listened to Ryan Sturm‘s How to Play podcast episode, “How to win Caylus” prior to the game, and it definitely changed things.

The podcast made me realize the true importance of money and liquidity in Caylus, and although I made a couple of mistakes, I came out (barely) on top.

What I found interesting in relation to my previous post is that the game literally came down to the final turn.  If it had ended a turn earlier, I would have lost.  And if it had ended a turn later, I probably would have lost to a different player.  Timing turned out to be my saviour in the end, although I didn’t really manipulate the ending.  I merely got lucky.

I also made a couple of very good plays in hindsight, and came out reasonably well despite the very tight fight for resource cubes throughout the game.  Given how resource-scarce the game was, the small advantage of using fewer resources to build via the royal favours definitely made a difference.

I’m really glad I listened to the podcast and played Caylus again.  To be honest I wasn’t overly enthused with Caylus from previous plays, but now I have a much better appreciation for the game.

Thanks, Ryan.

1. You run out of colonists to fill the ship during the mayor phase
2. A player completely fills his city during the builder phase
3. The victory point chips are exhausted during the captain phase

Another example is Hansa Teutonica where the game can end when one of several conditions is met.  I would even consider Power Grid to be in this category, because the way in which I play these games is similar in many cases.

In all of these examples, an important component of my strategy is to be the player who forces the end of the game to happen, and to force the end game when my strategy has reached its optimum point relative to the strategies of other players.

In Puerto Rico, pursuing a building strategy makes this easy – when your city fills you’re almost certainly right at the peak of your victory points, and conveniently the game is also over.

In Power Grid, there’s always a point in the mid-game where I make the following decisions: On which of the following turns do I need to buy my final 2 power plants?  And in what turn do I want the game to end?  I then focus solely on getting enough power plants on the turns I’ve decided, buying enough resources on the penultimate turn to require that I purchase nothing except cities on the final turn, and having enough cash in the final turn to purchase enough cities to trigger the game end.

The downside to this approach is that if the game ends a turn earlier or later than I want it to, I’ll likely lose since I’m not at the peak of my own personal strategy.  The upside is that, for games where I am the player who triggers the end, I’ve won probably 80% or more of them.

The same general idea applies to Hansa Teutonica, although I find that player strategies are more fluid which makes predicting the optimal point to end the game more difficult.

Games in which there is a pre-defined end-point like Risk 2210 A.D. or Power Grid: Factory Manager remove the need to trigger the end game, but also really force you to focus your strategy on the outcome of the final turn.

Perhaps one of the most tense mechanics in a game for me is the semi-random end point, like Union Pacific.  The final scoring card can be almost anywhere in the deck, although it’s guaranteed to not be in the first 30 or so cards.  There are ways to try and stall the next scoring card, but other players can push the other direction.  Likewise, if you’re ahead, it makes sense to burn towards the final scoring card as fast as you can, although you don’t know how far down the deck it is.  And this applies throughout the game as well, as what you’re really doing is pushing your luck until the next scoring card appears, whether it’s the final one or not.

And tonight, the plan is to play Arkham Horror, a game in which the endgame is more likely to control you than you are to control it.  But being a cooperative game, it’s a topic for another article.

Once I realized that Steam with the Basic rules wasn’t going to work given how the map was balanced, we quickly respun into a set of rules that worked for everyone.  We played Steam with the Standard rules, with 2 exceptions:

1. You could borrow money at will during the turn, and so there weren’t severe penalties for running out of money.
2. During the Maintenance phase, you had to pay if you were in the negative on the income track, and got money if you were positive.

The America map has a special rule where you don’t pay maintenance on your locomotive, so basically we just “imported” these two rules from the Basic game, and otherwise played the Standard rules.

This actually worked out quite well, I think. None of us really had a sense of how much money we should bid in the auctions or borrow for the turn, so allowing players to borrow at will worked out OK, and the interest penalties kept the borrowing in check.  It was a nice stepping stone game in that sense, from basic rules to standard rules.  I don’t think we’re quite ready for the brutal standard rules yet, but I think we’ll try the same thing at least once more.

I really thought the auctions worked well, and I think we underestimated the importance of the “first player” action in Steam (which morphs into “1 free pass in the auction next turn” in the Standard rules.  I was allowed to choose it in the penultimate turn, which I think clinched my victory.  I liked the fact that the urbanization action was free (after the auction), since it’s not always worth the $6 that the basic rules assume.  Sometimes it’s worth $10, and sometimes more like $2, and the auctions help to sort that out.  I also liked that players didn’t always jump on the “build more track” or “ship first” actions.  If you were paying $10 in the auction you wanted something pretty badly and so didn’t screw around when it came time for action selection.  I’m sure the map’s rules had a role in this too, but overall I really liked the dynamic.

I also finally understand why the Standard rules and Age of Steam are preferred by some gamers to the Basic rules of Steam. It’s definitely a “level up”, and one I really enjoy, but I get the sense that it’s kind of like Puerto Rico in that playing with mixed skill levels is a recipe for failure.

I emerged victorious in the end, but America was a tough map, and we all wound up fighting over the last few precious goods in the final turn.  It was a slim victory, to say the least.

Puerto Rico was thoroughly enjoyable.  For my first attempt at the game, I focused on generating points through buildings, although I made a few mistakes along the way and didn’t generate as much money as I could have at a couple of times.  It was the first game for all at the table, which meant nobody had a huge advantage (and nobody got frustrated with anyone else).

Twilight Struggle was a very intense game, more intense than I expected.  Jason and I gave this a go on a Saturday evening, and it took a lot of mental energy from both of us.  In the end, I managed to eke out a razor-thin victory for the USA, although I nearly blew it on the very final card play of the game.

Having now played both of them, I can say they’re both excellent games, and one thing they have in common is that they are probably best when the players have roughly the same experience / skill level with the game.  I can see them becoming very unbalanced with differing experience levels.

If you haven’t tried Puerto Rico and you enjoy Eurogames, just stop what you’re doing right now and track down a copy at your local game store.  Really.  It’s that good.  If you’re looking for a 2-player game with a lot of tension and depth, and enjoy area-control type mechanics, then Twilight Struggle is well worth the investment.

As for the rest of the top ten on BoardGameGeek, there are a few I haven’t tried yet.  Perhaps I should track them down.

The one line summary: This is Dominion with the settings changed from Euro to Ameritrash.

Puzzle Strike is a game where you:

1. Draw 5 or so chips every turn, at random, from your own personal draw bag.
2. Use those chips to attack the other players, defend against attacks, and buy more chips to add to your draw bag.
3. Talk lots of smack (maybe even call the fashion police).
4. Win by being the last player standing (knocking out your opponents, or possibly just hanging on longer than they do).

I’m curious to see how this fares in actual gaming (so far I’ve just done dry-runs).  It appears to be a good option for people who like the premise behind Dominon but who would rather have more direct conflict than Dominion generally offers.  The components are of fantastic quality, and justify the purchase price, although the choice of chips over cards may prove to be too much for some people to digest.  Additionally, the last-man-standing mechanic is far more Ameritrash than even I usually would enjoy, but the game moves so fast that I doubt you’ll have much downtime after you’re eliminated and the next game begins.  For me, it fills a gap in my collection and I’m sure it will get a fair bit of playtime.

Perhaps one of the really interesting things is that Puzzle Strike is loosely based on an arcade game called Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and was in fact designed by David Sirlin who was responsible for balancing a more recent re-release of that game and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo poked light-hearted fun at Super Street Fighter II Turbo (both were published by Capcom) in several ways, including the name of the game.  And hence, the title of this post.

The parts of the game all fit well together, but overall I found the game to be somewhat fiddly, similarly to how Steam is fiddly.  The problem is that First Train to Nuremburg doesn’t have the same rewarding depth of strategy that Steam has.  As a result, I’d much rather play Steam if I want to play a Martin Wallace train game.  First Train isn’t a bad game, but it’s just not as good as Stream given the “fiddly” cost.

I spent a bit of time getting some ringtones on my phone.  Let’s see if any of my coworkers watched Electric Circus when they were growing up.

Aside: the song is from the 90s.  People born in the 90s can legally buy alcohol in Alberta.  Why do I suddenly feel old?

I was playing the insects, destined to lose all ties, and I didn’t take proper advantage of my speciation ability.  I also over-speciated and nearly ran out of species the final turn (of all of the players, I had far and away the most extinct species at the end too).

I won’t make the over-speciation mistake next time, and I’ll pay more attention to board position for final scoring and also try to figure out a way to mitigate the food chain disadvantage (which will be a problem any game where I don’t play the mammals).

I guess we’ll see how things go the next time around.  I really don’t have a good grip on the strategy at this point, although I did notice that Adaptation was more important than I gave it credit for, and Glaciation can ruin your day if you aren’t careful.

My only regret is that I haven’t played the game for real yet.

If you haven’t heard of this game, do yourself a favor and check it out.  Better yet, read Mateo Jurasic’s review of Twilight Struggle.

My favorite line from the review:

“Even as I type this review, I want to play again in order to beat the tar out of all those dirty red bastards on wargameroom and teach them to play real freedom loving games like [...] Monopoly, which teaches about the virtues of capitalism and beauty pageants while warning against giving money to the poor.”

Classic.

I think I figured out how to teach the game, but one thing really stood out as I played a mock three-player game.  This game is a lot like Caylus, but with fangs.  Sharp fangs; the kind that actually cause you to wind up in the hospital cursing your attacker.

There’s a lot going on in Dominant Species.  It’s almost certainly too much to take in the first time you play, but I think I’ve found a reasonable way of teaching the game, given that my group has played Caylus numerous times before.

Here’s the strategy I think I’ll try:

1. Explain that the game is like Caylus, in that everyone places their action pawns, then they are resolved in a specific order.  Explain that also like Caylus, action selection is important, and that players have to make the best of limited actions each turn.
2. Set up the board with a very fake setup, but as though we’re on turn 3 instead of turn 1.  Meanwhile, go through some of the critical terminology (animal, species, element, element type, dominant species, etc.).  Be sure to seed all of the actions with elements such as they might appear in turn 3 (put some tokens in Regression, Wasteland, and Depletion).
3. Place the action pawns more or less randomly, ensuring there is at least one in each row, and at least 2 in Glaciation.  Try to place them in a way such that you can demonstrate the actions meaningfully, which may also require some fiddling with elements on the board and dropping a few on player sheets, etc.  Explain to the players that this is the part of the turn where the action pawns are placed, and explain the initiative track.  Make sure to actually put 5 Dominance cards out, 3 Migration tiles, etc.
4. Refer the players to their reference sheets, and have them follow along while you resolve the actions in turn.
5. Resolve every action, explaining what is happening and why.  Connect each action with the theme.  For example, “Adaptation allows you to improve your ability to survive in various habitats on Earth.”
6. When Glaciation happens, explain what the term “bonus scoring” means, and why it’s so important.
7. When speciation happens, explain that this is the usual way of putting new species on the board, but also that it’s important to not run out of species since you have a limited supply.
8. When Dominance happens, take a pause.  Explain that Dominance is a very central part of the game and that it’s one of the primary scoring engines in the game.  Explain carefully the related concepts (majority of species, scoring a tile, the food chain, dominant species, the dominance cards).  Explain that it’s important to keep an eye on the Dominance cards.
9. Go through extinction.  Ensure at least one species goes extinct.  Reiterate the permanence of death in this game, and the need to manage species carefully.
10. Explain survival, and reiterate the bonus scoring mechanic.
11. Show what happens during Reseed, and reiterate how actions on turn x affect turn x+1 and x+2.
12. Explain the end-game.  Do an extra Dominance as though the Ice Age card was selected.  Resolve that card, and go through final scoring.  Explain how the Ice Age card is the 26th card in the pile, and that the game generally lasts 6 to 7 turns.  Again reiterate the importance of the Dominance action.
13. Reset the game for the start of the game.  Remind each player of their special ability.
14. Begin.
15. If turn 1 goes really sour for one or more players, start over.

There are also a few things that I think are key to success during the first game:

1. At the start of each turn, read all 5 Dominance cards aloud, even the ones that may have carried forward from the previous turns.  Explain fully each card, giving an example where applicable.
2. For the first few turns, take a look at the actions that have elements which move forward.  Remind the other players of how that mechanic works, to help them plan.
3. Be liberal with rules clarifications and advice.  If you see a player making an obvious blunder, speak up.  Otherwise, offer suggestions and clarifications only when asked.
4. Pause after the third turn, and ask the players if anyone has questions or wants clarifications.  Remind players of the final scoring mechanic and the Ice Age card.

While it’s true that Dominant Species might favour players who know the Dominance cards better than others, I honestly believe that can be mitigated by explaining the dominance cards at the beginning of each turn.  Players will see pretty quickly the value of the cards, and will understand the choice that needs to be made between choosing a card that benefits them the most, and choosing a card that may not benefit them much but which prevents an opponent from using the same card.

It’s worth noting that I’ve tailored this advice to my group in several important ways:

1. They have all played Caylus enough to understand the worker-placement mechanic with little explanation.
2. My group probably won’t be happy with “let’s just play the first turn” without discussion of the carry-over into future turns and understanding the end game which are both pretty key in Dominant Species.  Otherwise, I’d go for a more “explain as you go” approach.
3. My group is comfortable with rules complexity.  I fully expect to be able to run through the sample turn in about 15 minutes before we start.  And I know they’re OK with an explanation that takes that long.

As another observation while I write this: if my group wasn’t familiar with Caylus, I would teach them that game first.  Dominant Species really is like Caylus with fangs.

Hansa Teutonica is an interesting game that reminds me partly of Maharaja, partly of Blue Moon City, and partly of Yspahan although it’s quite unique on its own.  The game centers on a fight for control over cities on the board, but there’s also a strong incentive to upgrade your abilities and pursue other secondary goals as well.  It’s quite interesting in that there is a fairly wide variety of ways to score points in the endgame.  Although I’ve only played it a few times, it seems to me that the way to win this game is to focus on gaining points in a way different from the other players.  Less contention for the goals you’re pursuing would seem to lead to more points, although this is something I have to test out over a number of plays.  There are a lot of options that could work well as strategies, although the short game length means some strategies will be more difficult to pull off than others (if they take longer).  I’m curious how the game plays with more than 3 players, and looking forward to trying it a few more times.

Dominant Species is a very unusual (and unfortunately somewhat expensive) game.  It’s a Eurogame in terms of basic mechanics, but it’s published by a wargame company (GMT) and so it has a decided mean streak in it.  Each round of dominant species is somewhat similar to Caylus in that first the players all place their action pawns, and then the actions are all resolved in a pre-defined sequence.  But the game plays out very differently.  Your figures represent a single type of animal (for instance, lizards) and you have to evolve, adapt, and yes even kill off other species in order to survive.  There are two types of area control that you’re working for simultaneously: majority of species in an area, and dominant species in an area.  You score points based on the majority of species (with second, third, etc. place scoring less points in turn), but to gain access to a potentially powerful dominance card, you also have to be the dominant (most well-adapted) species.  I have yet to play a game of this, but from a few practice rounds I know I’m going to thoroughly enjoy the game.  The mechanics are complex and the strategy is rich and nuanced.  I think what I like most about the game is that the mechanics fit the theme well for the most part. But remember: nobody said evolution was a friendly affair.  Your species have to fight to survive, and some will almost certainly be lost along the way.

Metropolys is a deceptively simple game with a lot of depth lurking just beneath the covers.  Now that I’ve played with the full compliment of 4 players and tried the expansion from the Ystari Box, I can say that I’m a bit surprised at how much game is there.  I was expecting more of a light filler, but it’s actually a medium-weight game with a lot going on.  The curious combination of secret goals, area control, and bidding means that deciding to pass during your turn is seldom an easy decision.

In the future, I hope to get one or more of the Steam expansion maps to the table, maybe some RoboRally, and I’m definitely due for another go at Power Grid…

I’ve managed to get a few hikes in so far this summer, more than last summer anyways.  They’ve all been great hikes, and I took a number of photos (as usual).  I’ve started to upload some of them here.  The photo on the right is from a hike I did with Brian, Pam, and Arman to Elbow Lake. Click on the photo to see the rest of the photos rom the hikes.

• A guy on a motorcycle wearing a full gorilla suit.
• A guy on a motorcycle with a chocolate lab in the side car (not the same guy).
• An entire wedding party (bride, groom, and all the rest) in Tubby Dog.

I’m curious to see what my Monday night group thinks of the games when they come up in our queue.

]]> http://jeremiah.wittevrongel.ca/2010/05/10/alphabetical-gaming/feed 0 http://jeremiah.wittevrongel.ca/2010/04/24/on-the-eve-of-twilight http://jeremiah.wittevrongel.ca/2010/04/24/on-the-eve-of-twilight#comments Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:34:49 +0000 Jeremiah Wittevrongel http://jeremiah.wittevrongel.ca/?p=328 No I’m not talking about angsty teenage girls fawning over vampires that have cranked their bedazzlers up to 11.  I’m talking about a more imperial kind of twilight.

One of my game groups and I are going to give Twilight Imperium a try for the first time.  I’ve been studying the rules in some vain hope it will help me win.  The good news is that of the five of us, exactly zero have played before.  So we’re all be fumbling around the galaxy together.

It all goes down tomorrow at 11am.  Here’s hoping I do well, or at least have a ton of fun losing.

One of the most stressful games for me, like Tom, is Diplomacy.  And I agree it’s too stressful to the point where I don’t enjoy it.

Battlestar Galactica came up as one of the games people find stressful, as did Ghost Stories, but for me I find pretty much all cooperative games stressful.  I’d say the most stressful for me is Lord of the Rings, followed by Arkham Horror, and then Battlestar Galactica and Ghost Stories.  The rich themes in Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror always make me feel small, insignificant, and like there’s absolutely no hope of victory.

One other game stands out for me as one that I find very stressful.  Power Grid.

Don’t get me wrong, I love power grid and will never turn down a game.  Maybe it’s just the group I usually play with, but I feel constant pressure during the game, and some maps (like Brazil) up the ante quite a bit.  I think a lot of the stress in the game for me comes from the hidden money aspect of the game.  My group uses poker chips instead of the paper money that comes with the game, partly because it’s easier to hide poker chips.  I usually keep general track of everyone’s finances, but it’s hard to keep the exact numbers in my head and that lack of knowledge is really stressful for me.  If I could only know for sure how much money someone had, I could probably figure out what resources they want and what cities they want and then bid them just a little too high in the power plant auction.

Another thing about my group is that we’ve all played the game a number of times, and we all play to win (read: viciously).   Which again adds to the stress.  And makes me enjoy the game that much more.