I have noticed a malaise afflicting certain gamers that is called Gaming Jadeditis, or commonly known as gamer burn-out. Gamers at one point or another can find systems repeating itself over different games, or find the patterns even in games considered ‘complicated’ by the general public.
As the task of finding the strategies to these games becomes less of a challenge and more of a systematic application of similiar strategies found in games with similiar mechanics, gaming actually becomes a bore. Hence jadedness.
As I pointed out on Hiew’s blog, I have some solutions to this conundrum (no, none of them involved taking a break 
):
1) Super complex euros - Like Le Harve. The interactions are quite numerous to the point where it is difficult to ’solve’ the game with an optimum strategy. Shipping strategy? Building strategy? That’s so Puerto Rico. Have wood, cloth, food, stone and gold as resources? That’s so Caylus. Let’s throw in wood, charcoal, fish, smoked fish, coal, coke, cattle, beef, hide, leather, iron, steel, grain, bread, clay and brick just to mix it up. Oh, and give them their own building and shipping strategies to go with it. Not enough? let’s add numerous buildings with numerous way to combine the numerous resources and oh, have 4 different types of ships. CCCOOLLLL….
2) Wargames - More complexity means more complicated interactions and as a bonus, there’s a theme in there with historical references. Wargames have lots of armies and pieces moving around and a podcaster once described a certain wargame as a 500-pieces, 3hr puzzle considered as ‘easy’, and another as a 5000-pieces, 6hr puzzle ’hard’ wargame (I).
I have tried ASLSK#2 and even after having someone taught me the basics, I am still floundering. In this case, the puzzle is not in the number of pieces but the number of rules and the complicated interactions between them.
Next I tried Target Arnhem by MMP and find it easier to understand. The rules are managable and there are only 30 or so pieces.
As a move upwards, I bought one of the simpler ones from Victory Point Games . I haven’t played it yet but the rules read simple enough.
3) Games with metagaming - Sometimes simple games can have complex social interactions and it is interesting to ‘game’ people and their social tendencies. I’m refering to games like Bang! in this context where player interactions and mannerisms are subtle hints to their purposes.
I consider games like Imperial to fall into this category as well, as the alliances and negotiations are as much a part of the game as optimising finances and manuvering armies.
4) There is also the 18XX series which I consider a sort of cross between the thematic-focused wargames and the optimisation-heavy eurogames. I was surprised to find prominent gamers like Scott Nicholson who is hooked on this genre of games. I find the interactions to be suitably complicated and I find myself fudging my decisions more often than not.
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In conclusion, I guess my advise to boardgamers suffering from gaming jadeditis is not to take a break, but to move up and play more complicated games! It will be a break from the application of the same old strategy to the same old games. Unless of course, the cause of the burn-out is something different entirely like having a family and less time for gaming. That is another article with its own solutions.
Note: (I) Point 2 Point Podcast, by Jason and Scott.
A boardgame friend proposed a campervan trip to New Zealand a few weeks back and I like the idea.
Spending most of the time away from civilisation and sleeping under the stars was one of the best experience I had in Australia, albeit in a river boat then.
So I did some research and came up with some itinery and budgeting.
The details are put permanently here:http://aikyong.com/new-zealand-campervan-trip-proposal/, as there might be others who will be interested to join/organise on their own.
My own plans are not firmed yet as other than my friend and our spouses, we had no other confirmation. Also the trip is estimated to take 2 weeks and even then it is still considered a bit of a rush because of the number of places on the list. Two weeks leave is rather hard to take even if planned early. One option is to wait for Hari Raya, but that will only yield two off days.
So feel free to have a look at the New Zealand planning page for the planning so far.
Session started with some Race for the Galaxy with Phuah and rhyen.
Lim watched while rhyen tried explaining the game mechanics to him. Lim joined in the second game but still found it difficult to grasp the concept. Li li meanwhile gave up on ever understanding the game properly and took the pictures above.
After RftG, jack208 arrived with Battlestar Galactica and took this pic of li li. Li li was two times lucky as the undercover cylon.
This is me and Lim. Lim had the misfortune of getting the cylon card in his first game and understandably spend some time in the brig appealling meekly to the others to rescue him before realising that the game is up and revealed himself.
This was Phuah’s second game. Aanemesis made a surprise appearance and proceeded to read the rule book while the rest of the players debated among themselves on how to survive the waves of crisis.
The beginning of the end. The centurions were unleashed by li li’s super crisis card. Even though the humans made every priority to deal with the threat, the dice rolls were not with them.
Admiral Adama is twice the villain now.
The end. With two cylons moving the centurions, the humans were on a short clock.
While I sent li li home after the Galactica game, jack208 brought out Le Harve and gave aanemesis a brain burning treat.
aanemesis really likes this game!
Phuah and aanemesis burning their brains on Le Harve
aanemesis got such a brain burn that he finished last, after his previous record of finishing first.
While I returned for 18EU, aanemesis decided to go home and rest, leaving Phuah, rhyen, Lim and jack208 to play with me.
rhyen’s 18EU, my first play, but the second for rhyen and jack208.
There are 15 minor companies in this game and the initial brain burning started with the question of how much each was worth.
The public companies are started by consolidating the minors and the earlier one starts the minors, the further ahead it is on the share track. Unfortunately our game hit a snag as there weren’t any change to be had for the dividends declaration. This was weird to rhyen and jack208 as they had no such issues in their first game. Perhaps the delay of the minor consolidation meant that money was stuck in the minors with no way to spend it.
This problem was compounded by the fact that the train rush was oh so slow and totally non-existent. From comments on BGG, this was clearly not the case it was supposed to be.
There’s a key decision on how early one starts the minors in this game. On one hand, the returns are definitely higher in the short term by running the minors by itself. On the other hand, the minors have no mechanism to increase their share value and this will in turn impair the future returns. Furthermore, the minors are prohibited from upgrading their tracks to the more lucrative and versatile green tiles and this will greatly impact the minors’ growth.
The key issue here therefore is to balance between getting enough money from the minors and then to merge them into public companies to start reaping the rewards from the growth and share price movement.
I’m willing to try this again but hopefully the money shortage problem will be solved by then.
Session started with Pandemic, with li li, myself, rhyen and wolfx starring as researchers from Atlanta’s CDC (Centre of Disease Control)
The yellow fever was especially viral in this game which we jokingly refered to as Mexican flu, since the epicentre of the outbreak was there.
We played with 4 epidemic cases as i had experienced severe hopelessness in my previous game. However, this game seems a little too easy as we managed to get everything under control and beat the game with one turn to spare. Maybe in this game we had one less epidemic or maybe we had the dispatcher, only with more plays can we tell.
Meanwhile cmun, shrapnel, a little girl and waiyan played Halli Galli,
Jungle Speed,
and Transformer Chess. Yes, no kidding, Autobots versus Deceptacons.
Next we played Battlestar Galactica, this time with jack208, phuah and lim joining in.
This is the board setup. In this game the vipers were being wiped out left right and centre.
rhyen looking at someone making a move. he doesn’t like this game, i think it’s because it’s so random.
jack208 and li li was the traitor in this game. but they didn’t have to do much, the humans was doomed.
after myself and li li left, the others continued with Le Harve.
Love this game. The multitudes of victory paths means it’s not easy to optimise your moves. Better to just wing it.
Nail biting moment?
Attendance was down for this meetup, but with experienced players, the heavy Power Grid was brought out. Players were myself, waiyan (pictured here), rhyen and jack208.
China sports a good map with an open initial placement with a rapidly crowding effect.
resource market is a pain as the popularity of coals and oils resulted in complete clear out of these resources. as in the real world, commodity prices skyrocketed.
rhyen, as he did in the previous game, cornered the coal market, that’s where all the coal went!
me teaching the game of Race for the Galaxy to waiyan. I’m beginning to feel the pain of teaching this game and then watch people flounder with the variety of cards that comes with the game. The variety is good but it turns off beginners playing with veterans.
rhyen, a vet, enjoying the Race, especially as I had the expansion added for this game (another beginner-unfriendly option!)
rhyen and myself playing 18TN with jack208 as waiyan skips the game.
jack208 tried pursuing an anti-L&N strategy as he tries to break the L&N early starting advantage.
It was almost successful as he finished just a few dollars short of overhauling myself, who was playing the normal L&N game flawlessly. This game was notable also for rhyen overbidding for L&N without reason as it was his first game. I took over L&N’s presidency while jack208 stand by and watch while pursuing his alternate strategy.
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