As I was exploring cyberspace today, I came upon this blog post about Settlers of Catan. One of the first things I noticed is that it's by a baseball writer for ESPN.com, Kieth Law. Ooh, I thought, board game news from ESPN! Unfortunately, the article has no drawn out comparison between sports and board games besides a short economic comparison at the top of the article. Law does, however, go into a nice history of Settlers, including it's relationship with games America had to play before Eurogaming worked its way to the US. Indeed, The Settlers of Catan was the first German-style board game to become popular in the US.
Law mentions in his article two aspects of the Euro-genre of games that I believe are too important to pass up. First, the games are competitive and fun from start to finish, although they rely WAY less on luck than anything that had been popular in the US before. Second, and related, there is no elimination from a game as there would be, for example, in a game of Risk. Allow me to make a quick note of my own on each subject.
First, I'll address the competitive nature of the games. Klaus Teuber, the designer of Settlers, hit this nail on the head, finding a perfect mechanic to keep everyone interested in the game. In Monopoly, once someone has landed (by a roll of the dice) on the correct spaces and made enough money, his victory is eventual, almost all the time. In Risk, once someone has a big enough army (and rolls 5's and 6's), there's little stopping her. In Settlers, however, the roll of the dice is far from the final say. Trading is an integral part of the game, and I've played plenty of games where a player is in position for the victory and the other players then boycott all trades with this person. The best player and the robber often become well acquainted by game's end, oftentimes only to see someone else pass him up for the victory. In other words, the game is designed to let players who fall behind make the ground and even snatch up a victory. Many (though not all) of the Eurogames do this, which make each game interesting from start to finish.
The other subject of note is the lack of elimination. As I said, it is related to the discourse above. It's importance is this: previous to 1995, when American board gamers wanted something of more heft than Monopoly, they had to resort to war games. War games take hours to play, and often a person will be on the brink of elimination and lose interest, else they will be fully eliminated and have to wait hours until they can get involved with the group again. Eurogames are not only played in a significantly shorter time span, but there is, as I mentioned above, involvement from start to finish.
In conclusion, that is why Eurogames are way better than American games. Just kidding; that's not what this post was about. But I do hope you found my rant in favor of Settlers of Catan to be helpful.
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I have always disliked the elimination aspect of games like Monopoly and Risk. A game session meant to be an opportunity for several friends to share some fun immediately ceases to do so when one person is removed from the game play. When we do play Monopoly, we have a house rule that as soon as one player is bankrupt, the game ends, and the winner is the person with the greatest wealth.
ReplyDeleteNow, an American counter-example is Clue, in which it is never clear who is winning until someone solves the murder and wins the game. Everyone is always in contention until the very end. It stays fun and suspenseful throughout. That game and a number of its variations have been family favorites for three generations.
But you are right that it seems the Europeans have been careful to design - or at the very least, to export - games that engage everyone and stay fun from start to finish.
I do feel that it's worth pointing out that the subtitle of Monopoly is "The Property Trading Game" (my emphasis.) But a lot of people don't understand this. Then again, a surprisingly large number of people think they know the rules of Monopoly but they have never actually read them, or they would discover a lot of features they never knew.
ReplyDeleteNot that I'm defending Monopoly particularly - it has so many other flaws that make it less than ideal. But the game is not solely determined by dice rolls.
(Oh, and to Paul D. Owen - Cluedo was a British game first! Heaven knows we in the UK have little enough to boast about these days, but please don't deny us our few credits...)
Oh, right you are, Scurra. An apology and a tip of the hat to our British brethren for Cluedo, which I have now learned was the brainchild of Anthony E. Pratt, a fire warden in Leeds during the war. (I was afraid you were going to tell me that Clue was originally German, in which case I would have just thrown in the towel altogether.)
ReplyDeleteAnd I absolutely agree that the most interesting part of Monopoly is the trading aspect. The great challenge is property valuation - crafting the right deal so that your opponent thinks he or she is making out when in fact you end up with the upper hand. Of course, in the end, luck has its own role, as it always does with risk and opportunity. But if you can stack the odds in your favor with the right trade, that's really what the game is about. It's just too bad that it takes so long to resolve.
You might be interested to know (or not) that I have a copy of the London edition of Monopoly, a souvenir of my visit there in 1983.
Another Eurogame with the same ideals is the Ticket to Ride series. Simple to learn, but later strategies begin to emerge. Anyone can win. No card trading, but card based - no dice.
ReplyDeleteWe have the full line of Settlers games - even the treasure chest set. and now are collecting the Ticket series.
On the American side, the Cit Edition of Monopoly is a vast improvement to the original game. Adding an offensive and defensive aspect, and changing up the way to control areas and value properties. It's a little tougher to learn, but way more fun.
Our children and grandchildren love to play these games as a family.
Roll-and-move is so pre-WWII. I can't tell you how thankful I am that Euro-style board games have saved me from roll-and-move and spin-and-move.
ReplyDeleteUnimproved properties can be sold among players in Monopoly but there is very little incentive to do so. 2-player Catan has the same issue for the same reason: players can usually acquire enough resources on their own that it is of equal or better value for them to wait and get what they need on their own, rather than give another player an advantage in exchange for bettering your own position. So, typically, transactions only take the form of trades, for properties allowing each player to complete a color. This gives the illusion of strategy but really has a large degree of predictability.
Plus, relying on player negotiation isn't really a strategic element within the game itself, but intrigue added by the players themselves to varying degrees. You also see this in multi-player war-style games like Risk or even modern games of intrigue like A Game of Thrones. Diplomacy is like 90% player negotiation.
The best analogy between the two games is that the undeveloped properties are like the resources in Catan. But this shows how Catan is the superior game, because you can only acquire these resources by landing on them and buying them, and can only use them to develop your territory after collecting matched sets. Catan relies on die rolls but smart players will develop across a broad range of numbers to produce resources on as many die results as possible. Also, players get resources on every player's turn, and not only when they buy properties or someone else happens to land on their property.
There are other games that teach other aspects of economics in a much better way as well. Power Grid is an amazing game that has a lot of the same auctioning and territory-building elements as Monopoly, but with almost all the chance removed, and with a great supply-and-demand feature on the resources to power their plants. Wealth of Nations has no chance at all, and in addition to employing trading, territory management and supply/demand, also has a clever implementation of economies of scale.
I'm sorry, but for all its virtues, Monopoly is an old dog missing out on a lot of great new tricks.
Ha, I just recently wrote a detailed blogpost about how Catan balances itself out despite the randomness of dice rolls. Check it out here...
ReplyDeletehttp://islaythedragon.blogspot.com/2010/12/anybody-got-wheat-i-got-two-logs.html
Thought I would share a link to a Washington Post article that compares Monopoly and Catan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/24/AR2010112404140.html
ReplyDeleteAnother great article about Catan comes from Wired magazine. Here's the link:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers
I think Monopoly is the best board game ever invented.
ReplyDelete