4 ms·
Settlers isn't very good. The game is largely all due to luck after the initial placement of pieces; get that part wrong and you'll be spending 45 to 90 minutes
by misuba 17y ago
Settlers isn't very good. The game is largely all due to luck after the initial placement of pieces; get that part wrong and you'll be spending 45 to 90 minutes repeatedly asking anyone if they can trade you that one resource nobody can get, and repeatedly hearing "no." (The 45-to-90 is conservative; if your game contains one of those knobs who drags trading out into elaborate haggling over resources-to-be-named-later, God help you.)
Of course, the luck in Settlers is actually why it appeals to people. Nobody likes feeling like they lost because they played poorly or because somebody else is better than they are. That said, there are games like Carcassonne and Ticket To Ride that actually balance luck and skill, and so help to provide that social insurance against feeling pathetic while still making the time spent making decisions actually feel like it was worth something.
- nas 17y agoYeah, I find the article humorous because of that. It's not a great game (well, maybe great compared to traditional North American board games). I get the impression that these guys are trying to be cool by playing and the WSJ thinks they are hip by covering it. Maybe that's too harsh but that's the vibe I get. There are lots of great board games out there, check out http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/boardgame. I like Puerto Rico myself although I would say it's too tactical to be a good simulation of running a business. Update: I haven't played it yet but "Power Grid" is on my purchase list and probably would be good for the entrepreneurial types. There is a "Board games with Scott" video on it (with the designer, cool).
- eggoa 17y agoPower Grid is good. Less random chance, less trying to trick your friends into making bad trades.
- timdorr 17y agoEver tried Puerto Rico?
- misuba 17y agoYes. Massively better, but time-consuming and certainly not a gateway game.
- pwnstigator 17y agoPuerto Rico's biggest flaw, in my mind, is the poor scaling. It plays extremely well with exactly 4 players. With 3 players, there's too little competition for scarce resources (esp. buildings, market access) and it can feel like multiplayer solitaire. With 5, there's so much competition that turn order/table position can be brutal on noise alone.
- nearestneighbor 17y agoOff-topic: why is HN ignoring my votes? E.g. I upmod misuba, and it looks like (s)he has 1 more point, but if reload the page (s)he doesn't have it any more. I've seen this many times before. What's going on?
- cellis 17y agoSomeone downvoted it?
- nearestneighbor 17y agoNo, this happens every time now. Too unlikely.
- samstokes 17y agoMy experience differs. I find the game offers plenty of ways to recover from an early bad placement, and that while a bad run of luck can hurt you, your choices over the course of the game have a bigger impact. (It's true that if you get the initial placement wrong enough you're pretty much screwed for the rest of the game, but I don't often observe that happening except to first-time players, so I try to help newbies set up. One exception is when a couple of players deliberately box you into a corner at the start so you can't expand, but I don't see that happen much.) What I find interesting about Settlers is that while every player is susceptible to chance, you can control how much so. You can choose to bet strongly on certain resources or strategies, or try and spread yourself around so that most rolls of the dice get you something and you can gain points in multiple ways. I hear good poker players sometimes lose hands purely due to a run of bad luck, but if you think poker is "largely all due to luck", you're probably doing it wrong.