First we were Henchmen, now we are Luddites

Despite Sam's double feature of gaming over the weekend, the fact that this week's games night has been put back by one day clearly left a gaping hole in his game-diary. As such he texted me this afternoon for a quick evening of games.

I arrived after a disastrous attempt at life-drawing to find his kitchen table resplendent with his own creation: Luddites! It was a game of Sam's own making, using a tower to send players' dice scattering across the game board at random, either supplying bountiful crops, or knocking down any signs of technological advance (hence the title Luddites).

At first we played with commentary from Arsenal vs. Newcastle on Radio 5 in the background. But when we realised that one of the players seemed to be called Santa we decided the comedy possibilities would distract us from the game on the table, so we turned it off (actually he was called Santon but we didn;t know that at the time).

Luddites uses a rondel to limit player choices to the next three options around the circle. You have to build up resources for selling on the market and building factories that bring in extra goods, while at the same time trying to trigger a tax round to hurt your opponent*. The factories are actual wooden silhouettes of buildings that can be knocked down by the rolling dice. These buildings then need to be repaired which cost money, and so it goes on.

It was pretty interesting, with rules being changed on the fly, as we realised that triggering a tax collection should get people more victory points to make it more appealing, since nobody likes taxes. And also that the market didn't quite work. Either the market was too generous, or too stingy. This needs a little work, but it can be fixed. Also the tower needs a smaller gap to put your dice into. Since Sam and I are both honest gentlemen who equate cheating with murder, we dropped our dice in dead centre to optimize random results, but the opportunity for cheating is too great for other less upright members of society who may drop their dice in towards one side to favour a particular outcome.

With these issues faced as we go, it was an occasionally tense and strategic game with certain possibilities. The market is the major thing to be addressed and we discussed various options during the game. We ended the game with:

Sam 51
Andrew 43

Or something like that. Possibly 53 to 41. Not sure.

Then we played Stone Age. I thought it'd be quick with only two players, but it comfortably took us towards eleven o'clock. I didn't take a note of the scores, but both of us were in the two-hundreds and Sam won by thirty points. Points that I'd have gained if I'd got a 3x hut multiplier instead of Sam. He picked it up in a typical "Hillman" move, just to spite me even though it didn't help him. And it worked.

But Stone Age is a great game. Putting all your men on gold still raises goosebumps on player and opponents alike, and that's what this game is all about. Gambling, but with opportunities to change the odds. Roulette could learn a thing or two from Stone Age.



* And possibly yourself. Hey, that's taxes, man.