Tobold's Blog
Saturday, August 10, 2024
 
Git Gud in board games

Imagine a modern board game, one of those innumerable games in which players compete for victory points, while not attacking each other directly. If you played that board game a hundred times, recorded and graphed your achieved victory points over time, how would the graph look? While there would obviously be some variation from game to game, the overall shape of the curve is predictable: It would start low, go up relatively quickly at first, and then flatten out. Depending on the complexity of the game and how quickly the player can grasp it, the flat section would be reached earlier or later. But it is unlikely that somebody understands the optimal game strategy completely in his first, or first few games. It takes some time to "git gud" at a specific board game, even if you are already skilled at playing board games in general.

The practical problem for me is that by playing a lot of different games with a lot of different people, players are frequently at different points on their own curve. I recently played a game of Ark Nova with a guy who said that he had already played the game around 200 times in a digital format online. A second player had played the game several times, a third player once, and me never before. Kudos to the devs of Ark Nova for including easier boards for beginners, but that didn't stop the expert from crushing the less experienced players. I liked learning the game, but as a contest of skill the exercise was futile.

In a board game that is widely played competitively, like chess, you can assume that at least in a tournament environment everybody already played a sufficient number of games to be at the flatter end of the curve. It isn't that players don't learn anymore after a hundred games, but the difference between the 100th and the 101st game is obviously smaller than the difference between the first and the second game you ever play.

This week I played my very first game of Dune: Imperium. Again not doing very well against players who had already played the games over ten times. Because I liked the game, I then started playing the digital version a bit. Theoretically I could practice the game there against an AI, or even online, and then do a lot better the next time I play it face-to-face. But while some board games exist as digital versions on Steam or mobile, that tends to be games that are a few years old and have been rather successful. Newer or smaller games don't get their own standalone software; they might make it to a virtual tabletop platform like Board Game Arena or Tabletop Simulator, but I am not a big fan of those. They tend to be fiddly, and they don't have an AI to play against for learning purposes, thus just moving the problem of being too early on the curve elsewhere.

Getting good at a board game also requires to play the same game repeatedly and without too long breaks. When I haven't played a particular board game for over a year, I have trouble remembering the rules, not to mention any advanced strategies. Board Game Geek is said to have over 125,000 board games. If I go to a weekly board game night 50 times a year, I think I'll have more fun playing 50 different games badly than playing 1 game very well. And the enjoyment of playing one game very well would depend on a number of other players also wanting to play this one game repeatedly. It might depend on your personality, but I wouldn't enjoy crushing somebody in a board game, just because I played it much more often than him.

So, yes, you can "git gud" at a board game. But playing a board game to find out who the better player is makes only sense when everybody has played the game already often enough to approach a more or less stable skill level. That is why I personally prefer cooperative board games.

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- posted by Tobold @ 11:28 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
The only "competitive" board game I play regularly is Talisman. There I have been playing different editions of it since I was a kid, so I can almost always win if I want to. Despite the randomness, kind of like Monopoly, simply knowing what areas of the board to focus on and when can skew things heavily in your favor.

However, I almost never play to win these days. I putter around the board trying new things just to see what happens. If something interesting happens (even if its me somehow ending up a toad for six straight turns), I am having a good time. I also give everyone new to the game good advice, so that they will be less likely to completely flail. I have moved well beyond caring whether I win or not.

I will say that more generally I don't like playing board games with people who are bad sports about winning or losing. It ruins the experience for me. I'm pretty picky about who I will play with.
# posted by Blogger Yeebo : 10/8/24 19:57
 
I play boardgames with friends and family two or three times a year when we meet up for Christmas or other celebrations and the learning curve you describe is is a huge problem. We can either fall back on the old reliable (Settlers, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride) or else play a new game that everyone is equally clueless about. New games almost never work out because we spend our limited playtime learning the rules and getting confused. In recent years the only new game I remember having had decent success with is Seven Wonders and at least they were honest about it and made everyone watch a short video before playing. It is somewhat frustrating that the games we play are regularly dismissed as "Gateway Games" suggesting we should be moving on to more advanced titles but for us and I am sure for millions like us they are actually "Plateau Games" that we will never advance beyond.
# posted by Blogger mbp : 12/8/24 19:51
 
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