Saboteur is a fun little card game. In Saboteur players take on the role of a group of mining dwarves. The players are dealt a role card face down. Either they are a friendly miner or a Saboteur. Like The Resistance, players try to convince others they are friendly miners working toward a common goal: discovering a huge chunk of gold. Players take turns laying down cards that represent tunnels to get to the gold. Saboteurs attempt to stop the plight of the miners. They can be overt and build dead ends, but the real trick is to create suspicion within the group. This can be done with map cards that let players peek at the potential gold location, and then tell the others lies to throw them off the trail. Players can also destroy each others' equipment to halt digging.
The students found Saboteur very easy to learn, and they really enjoyed it...to a point. It's a great game for a short term session, but maybe not the best way to spend two hours after school. After a while, students were disappointed if they weren't a Saboteur. Eventually, the game gave way to Coup and Star Fluxx, but Saboteur is a great little filler.Graham (TED) Talks:
It was in this week that our school engaged in a rather interesting experiment in professional development. Rather than have a standard staff meeting, our principal, inspired by the TED Talk movement, encouraged our staff to give presentations to our colleagues about topics of interest. They're called "Graham Talks", named after of school (Marion M Graham Collegiate). I gave a 25 minute presentation I called "The Board Game Renaissance: Bring your Hobbies to School". I gave a power-point presentation about the history of table top games, the renaissance of table top gaming, and my experiences running an after school game club. It was tremendously satisfying.
Week 30: Abyss and International Table Top Day!
Week 30 saw the return of a favourite from last year, Abyss. The game generated a great deal of attention for its art-direction. Abyss is a gorgeous game, but I found it to have some substance as well as style. At its heart, Abyss is an auction game with an interesting combination of set collecting and press-your-luck mechanics. Each player spends pearls (money) in an attempt to auction and bid for the control of undersea allies (squids, crabs, jellyfish, mollusks, and seahorses). These allies are used to buy the influence of undersea lords, powerful politicians, merchants, soldiers, and other assorted individuals. These lords grant additional powers and provide influence points, which each player is attempting accumulate in order to win.
Part of the appeal of Abyss is the components. Players collect tokens, earn keys, unlock territory, and collect pearls. The tokens and keys are high quality card-stock, and the territories are beautifully illustrated. The lord portraits a stunning, but the most appealing aspect seems to be the pearls. Pearls are and excellent thematic way to capture the concept of currency. The game comes with little plastic dishes shaped like clam shells which are used to hold the pearls. This is the only problematic aspect of Abyss; every player loves to swirl the pearls in the shell cup like ice cubes in a tumbler of gin (at least as they appear in movies). This swirling usually causes a pearl to fly out and roll across the table/floor. The temptation to play with the pearls is akin to not breaking bubble-wrap; it's virtually impossible to ignore.
Students really enjoyed Abyss. It's an easy game to play once you get into the pattern of the auctioning, and everyone quickly picked up on the strategies. In spite of the multiple components, everyone had a clear vision of what was important. They enjoyed both sessions of the week.
The deep sea strategy of Abyss carried into the weekend for International Table Top Day. I brought the game to Dragon's Den, our friendly local game shop, which was running open gaming tables all day. I taught Abyss to some new players, but I made sure to replace the pearls with little poker chips. This prevented the swirling loss of any pearls. It was fun to just open up the game and draw complete strangers in to a session. I hope they had fun. International Table Top Day continued as a number of us teachers got together for an evening of gaming, including games of Concept, Saboteur, Pandemic, and Code Names!
Week 31: Dead of Winter
Arguably, this is my favourite game in our collection, and I included this in my post about the best board games for the holidays (which you can read here). The sessions aren't always stellar, but when they're good, they are awesome. Unless you've been hiding under a snowdrift (and we get plenty here in Saskatchewan), you've heard of Dead of Winter. For the uninitiated, Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game of survival during the perfect storm of a blizzard and a zombie apocalypse. Players each take on the role of a group of survivors, and these groups of survivors form The Colony. Every round players take turns fighting zombies, searching for important items, exploring the neighborhood, feeding the survivors, meeting requirements of the round, and contributing to the goals of the game's win condition. Each turn players are also confronted with moral dilemmas in the form of Crossroads Cards that require a crucial decision or a vote from the players. The reason may people refer to Dead of Winter as a semi-cooperative game is due to hidden agenda cards. Each player has a secret goal they are trying to reach in order to score a "true win". This secret goal could could also mean a player is a traitor, secretly working to lose the game for everyone else. This is where the true genius of the game begins to shine. The paranoia and potential for exiling players begins to mount, and the challenge and immersion begins to build...if you're lucky enough to have a traitor.
Both sessions we played this week had no one draw the traitor. Teaching the game was a touch time consuming, but once students got into the rhythm of playing, it was quite fun. Perhaps it was best that no one was the traitor, because in order to be an effective traitor, you first have to know how to play well with others. I was a player in the first session, but I ran the second session so more students had a turn. Everyone enjoyed the game, and I think its only drawback is the time it takes to set up. Dead of Winter has a ton of components, from multiple tokens, huge stacks of cards, cardboard standees, and scores of dice. Clean up is quicker, but the initial set up takes time. That said, it made for two great sessions this week.
Next week...more backstabbing and skulduggery... time to play Shadows over Camelot!
Thanks for reading.
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