2024 Q1 Report: Paved with Good Intentions

 

  

I think I’m done. I am ready to withdraw from my stated commitment to complete my stated target last year of playing six preselected games six times each against a face-to-face opponent. I managed to complete just three last year, and another in these last three months, but the ask is too great. The killer is the face-to-face opponent aspect of the equation. It seems impossible to keep to any kind of schedule when you involve a second person.

So, I’m rewriting the rules. In a recent interview, game designer Volko Ruhnke said something to the effect that, “When you buy a game, you own it. If there’s a rule that you don’t think works, take a pencil, cross it out and change it.” I’ve never done that in a war game (I may have done it a time or two in RPGs) but, when it comes down to it, this is my game, and as such I’m entitled to tinker with the rules a little.

Apropos of nothing, Volko has a new game design on GMT's P500
 list on a subject that is really interesting and, as an Australian, is
close to my heart. You can pre-order your copy here.
Now we'll return to your regular transmission. 

After my last (December 2023) quarterly report, Wednesday night game host B told me it was stupid to commit to playing the same game six times, or words to that effect. At the time I disagreed, but in the intervening months, I’ve come around to thinking that it might have been too big of an ask. It came about from a misunderstanding in the first place. I noticed people talking about their 10x10 Challenge games, and in my ignorance thought they were planning on playing ten games ten times each, when in fact “10x10” meant playing ten games (often from their respective “shelves of shame”) once each within the first ten months of the year (i.e., by the end of October), then proving it by (more often than not) making a YouTube video about it.

Dates highlighted in green are from this year.

I’ve talked before about how the end goal for me was to stop being a “game collector” and to rediscover the joy of being a “game player”, and how that worked out, so I won’t rehash it here. What I did discover over the course of the project was I enjoyed writing about games and reviewing games, and some people seemed to enjoy reading what I thought about different games.

Part of the challenge was that after – and only after – the sixth play of a given game I’d write up a considered review of it. I’ve always thought that a single run at a game is never enough to make a true evaluation of how it works and whether it achieves what it sets out to do (I can understand the pressure some content creators are under to regularly churn out new material, so I suppose being less popular/non-monetised has its perks). But I now think that sometimes playing a game too often in a short amount of time can obscure some of the elements of that makes it a worthwhile game or a special experience. I’ve found the sweet spot for me is to begin writing a review after the second or third play and to play the game once or twice more while I’m writing it up. This is the pattern I’m going to stick to in future reviews.

 So, where to from here?

Well, thanks for asking. I played my sixth game Napoléon 1806 (Shakos, 2017 near the start of the year, and wrote my review a little while after that. Since January, I’ve managed to get a couple of games played form the remaining candidate games. What I propose it to play another game or two of each and write up my reviews of these remaining three. In February, I mentioned in another self-indulgent screed I was intending to scale down my ambitions to a 5x3 game target. These remaining three games will make up the beginnings of that, but if all goes well, I’ll expand it to a 7x or 8x3 target. Also, I’m lifting the moratorium on counting solo play of two player games. I nearly always play the first “learning” run at a new game two-handed solo, unless I’m getting a tutorial from an experienced player (as I did with Great War Commander (Hexasim, 2018). I used to think that two-handing a game solo was kind of missing the point; I would only do it to “learn” a game well enough to introduce it to somebody else, but in discussions on Facebook with dedicated solo players and through my own experience doing this, I’ve found it can be a rewarding pursuit in its own right. Even some games with a dedicated solitaire function, like Pacific Tide (Compass Games, 2019), I’ve found I prefer to play the game two-handed. When I’m playing a game on my own – against myself – I also have a little more latitude to try things I might not get to against another player. I can reverse a couple of plays or a turn, if my opponent agrees, and replay it differently to test a rule or try a different action. So, from now on, solo runs get counted, but I’ll stil play two player games against another human at least once or twice before writing them up.

I also mentioned in the same screed that I’d aim for twenty game reviews in 2024. Thre months in, and I’ve posted two; the Napoléon 1806 review from the beginning of the year, and another for 1944: Battle of the Bulge (Worthington Publishing, 2020 – the review can be found here). The slow rate thus far is partly because for a while I was putting a lot of time into playtesting and proofing a game called The Great Northern War (Conflict Simulations Limited, 2024), about the Russo-Swedish War of 1700-1723. When I nab a copy I'll post a review about it.

What it says on the cover.

Another reason for the tardy progress is - Reviews are really hard to do right. I put a lot of thought and effort into my game reviews. I try to present what I think makes a game worth your time and tease out some of the things that make it special or different. So, I’m not going to waste my time on a game I don’t think is worth that kind of effort, which makes me work harder on the ones I do like, and that think are worth the time and sweat.

I do have some more reviews in the pipeline. I have a couple outlined, and I’m thinking about a couple more. You should see three reviews – maybe four - before the end of the month.

Review coming soon (spoiler alert: I really like this game).

I’m also putting more effort into producing unboxings (the Stripped Down for Parts photo-essays). These have been outstripping the reviews in popularity. I try hard to bring a little more to the table than just pulling stuff out, saying, “Isn’t this neat?!” At the same time, I’m not trying to do a review. I’ll just spend some tie over the components, the artwork, sometimes the people involved, and maybe a little history or background to the game. This year I’ll also be looking at upgrading my camera equipment to warrant the popularity of the posts.

Because I’m putting so much effort into the other parts of the blog, I’ve started winding back the State of Play AARs. I was writing up pretty much every game I played when I started A Fast Game, and kept that up for nearly the whole year in 2023. From hereon in I’ll post a game report when I have the time or if it’s something special.

So, there’s a snapshot of what got me here and A Fast Game here, and where we’re going. It feels a little like the blog has taken on a life of its own, and I just feed it and clean out its cage. But It’s s lot of fun, and I occasionally get some positive feedback. If people are interested, I’ll put a post together breaking down the metrics of A Fast Game. But I’ll have to see some interest. (that’s why I kept it ‘til the end. I’m pretty sure nearly nobody reads this far.)