The new thing in boardgaming

[undyingking]

Wired is that prestigious magazine of the technological elites, its finger firmly on the cutting edge of all things geeky and zeitgeisty, right?

Apparently there's a new boardgame called Settlers of Catan, which is "poised" to become popular in the US. "Along the way, it's teaching Americans that board games don't have to be either predictable fluff aimed at kids or competitive, hyperintellectual pastimes for eggheads. Through the complex, artful dance of algorithms and probabilities lurking at its core, Settlers manages to be effortlessly fun, intuitively enjoyable, and still intellectually rewarding, a potent combination that's changing the American idea of what a board game can be."

Who'd have thought it? Why have none of us ever heard of this game before -- why have the Germans been keeping it secret for the fourteen years since its launch? What will those fiendish foreigners come up with next?

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

It's a playable game: http://www.geocities.com/tonymittonagain/prevolver.html

It comes loaded with an experience base of playing 5 player games. You can wipe that, and tell it to play a few thousand 4 player games, if you like.

It's big drawback is that it's heavily into group thinking. So player 1 learns to expect certain responses from player 2, and player 2 in turn has expectations over player 3. If you play outside those expectations, the other players don't adapt well. So you either get utterly thrashed (which is what happens to me, and I may well deserve), or you throw them into total confusion, and they have to wander off into untested techniques in an attempt to recover.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

*bookmarks* Thanks!
Now I finally know what TM actually does day in day out. ;oP