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viktor_haagYesterday at the Old Huron Redoubt there was a solitary guest. Accordingly, we tried out the new 1960 - The Making of the President by Jason Matthews and Christian Leonhard.
Matthews was the co-designer on Twilight Struggle and it shows as 1960 borrows a whole host of mechanisms from that game.
Interestingly, it also borrows the unique tempo-in-a-bag concept that I first saw in End Of The Triumvirate, which I think is an more usable and even-handed abstraction of the tempo-in-a-tower concept found in Im Zeichen des Kreuzes, Wallenstein, and Shogun.
Both players seed the bag with their cubes. During the game, you pull out cubes to see which player has the initiative, which player wins struggles, and so on. The interesting effect of this is that while you may win the battle by pulling your cubes out of the bag, this leaves your opponents cubes in the bag, which increases his or her chances of winning on subsequent contests.
Very elegant.
1960 is not really a wargame (and neither was Twilight Struggle, really); what it is, however, is a historically themed card-driven two-player strategy game based on majority control principles (phew). Therefore, if you like games with deep themes (especially historical ones) and you like majority control games (say, El Grande, for example), then you should run don't walk to pick up Twilight Struggle and 1960. 1960 is, I think, a bit more accessible and a bit less war-game-ish and a bit more even in pacing.
Because the theme is pinned into the game and it is card driven you will find that your play of this game improves dramatically with extended playing because (a) you will begin to learn what's in the event card deck and thus you'll have a better feel for timing vis a vis the card plays, and (b) you'll get a better feel for the wildly variable values of the various States in the union.
I don't know if the American electoral system works in precisely the way modelled in the game, but the number of votes a President can receive from some states' electoral colleges is vastly different in size to other states. Thus, it's far more important for you to get ahold of (for example) New York state than it is Wyoming: ten times more important.
As such, 1960 provides you with a gut-wrenching conflict in your planning: do you concentrate on swinging key states (with lots of vote value), or do you spread out your resources and snap up a whole bunch of states with low vote value.
My first game was very fun, and I lost by a very narrow margin indeed. My opponent didn't quite have to resort to strong-arming Floridian justices, but he almost did (I finished with 258 points and my opponent won with 269 points, I believe). In the latter part of the game while I focussed on taking over NY, he was able to kick me almost completely out of the mid-west, and that was a telling decision.
I'm going to be playing this game again tomorrow night, and will hopefully furnish an extended review after one or two more plays.
Matthews was the co-designer on Twilight Struggle and it shows as 1960 borrows a whole host of mechanisms from that game.
Interestingly, it also borrows the unique tempo-in-a-bag concept that I first saw in End Of The Triumvirate, which I think is an more usable and even-handed abstraction of the tempo-in-a-tower concept found in Im Zeichen des Kreuzes, Wallenstein, and Shogun.
Both players seed the bag with their cubes. During the game, you pull out cubes to see which player has the initiative, which player wins struggles, and so on. The interesting effect of this is that while you may win the battle by pulling your cubes out of the bag, this leaves your opponents cubes in the bag, which increases his or her chances of winning on subsequent contests.
Very elegant.
1960 is not really a wargame (and neither was Twilight Struggle, really); what it is, however, is a historically themed card-driven two-player strategy game based on majority control principles (phew). Therefore, if you like games with deep themes (especially historical ones) and you like majority control games (say, El Grande, for example), then you should run don't walk to pick up Twilight Struggle and 1960. 1960 is, I think, a bit more accessible and a bit less war-game-ish and a bit more even in pacing.
Because the theme is pinned into the game and it is card driven you will find that your play of this game improves dramatically with extended playing because (a) you will begin to learn what's in the event card deck and thus you'll have a better feel for timing vis a vis the card plays, and (b) you'll get a better feel for the wildly variable values of the various States in the union.
I don't know if the American electoral system works in precisely the way modelled in the game, but the number of votes a President can receive from some states' electoral colleges is vastly different in size to other states. Thus, it's far more important for you to get ahold of (for example) New York state than it is Wyoming: ten times more important.
As such, 1960 provides you with a gut-wrenching conflict in your planning: do you concentrate on swinging key states (with lots of vote value), or do you spread out your resources and snap up a whole bunch of states with low vote value.
My first game was very fun, and I lost by a very narrow margin indeed. My opponent didn't quite have to resort to strong-arming Floridian justices, but he almost did (I finished with 258 points and my opponent won with 269 points, I believe). In the latter part of the game while I focussed on taking over NY, he was able to kick me almost completely out of the mid-west, and that was a telling decision.
I'm going to be playing this game again tomorrow night, and will hopefully furnish an extended review after one or two more plays.
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 15:14 (UTC)I wouldn't mind trying that sometime.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-29 16:53 (UTC)