Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The (Board) Gamer’s Guide to Supply Management Part XXI: Dark Minions

In Part V and Part IX, we introduced you to Small World, a delightful game from Days of Wonder (also on iOS) that, in the words of Wil Wheaton, combines the military strategy of Risk with the delightful art and fantasy races of Cosmic Encounters. Except it’s more dynamic than Risk, more variable than Cosmic Encounters, and a good introduction to how your suppliers’ sales and marketing forces are going to try and counter, and undermine, your every effort to procure and manage supply at a fair and sustainable price (as profit is the name of their game, not cost control).

Small World, with its 14 races and 20 powers, leading to 280 different possible pairings of race and special ability, did a great job of capturing the many different types of sales professionals that will ascend upon you in the course of your day job, but it lacks a mechanism that accurately captures the hoard mentality of larger vendors with seemingly endless and disposable sales forces. Larger vendors, when they lack the ability to win on saleability alone, resort to trying to overwhelm a potential customer with a large sales team that will descend upon the potential customer on every front in an effort to overwhelm the potential customer and wear them down until they just give in and sign on the dotted line.

On the other hand, Dark Minions not only captures that hoard mentality to a tee, but effectively lets you take on the role of a Sales Director of a large vendor with undifferentiated commodity products who’s only sure method of success is to strategically send his hoard of disposable snake-oil salesmen against the most susceptible targets. In the mindset of Dark Minions, differentiated capability doesn’t matter, as the organization doesn’t have anything unique to sell, only strength in numbers. More on this later. For now, let’s introduce the game.

In Dark Minions, hordes of dark minions have descended upon the countryside, eager to secure their reputation as a scourge on mankind. The despicable evil marauders attack everywhere in search of conquest. The citizens are helpless and will soon be overwhelmed. Death and destruction awaits all those in the path of the evil ones …”

In Dark Minions, you are a great evil one and your goal is to vanquish the medieval towns in your domain. Every time you vanquish a town you gain vanquish points, and the first great evil one to a fixed number of vanquish points (which varies according to the number of great evil ones playing) wins the game.

In Dark Minions, you control an evil hoard, equal to 50 minions to start, and on each turn you can either use part of that hoard to attack a town or capture a defense tower, or you can choose to re-spawn some of your evil minions from the graveyard. When you send part of your hoard against a town or a tower, you knowingly send them to their doom. (But you are a great evil one, and minions exist to be sacrificed! Plus, since you have the power to re-animate them at a later time, their deaths have no impact on your overall power.)

Unlike most of the games we have covered in our series, Dark Minions is a dice-based game, which adds a considerable element of randomness to your strategy (which mimics nicely the apparent strategy of some sales forces), as each roll dictates what you can, and cannot, do on your turn. (This is a good analogy to the real-world where a sales organization is often limited by the number of sales resources currently available for deployment, the financial resources free to deploy them, and the organizational resources to acquire more sales resources.) At the start of the game, each player rolls three six-sided black dice (as you are evil, remember) on their turn, numbered +1, 2, … 6. If a 4, 5, or 6 (or higher) is rolled on a die, and one is available, the player may choose to commit that many minions to attack, and capture, a white, grey, or black tower (on a 4+, 5+, or 6+ respectively). When you have captured one of each tower, you can trade them in to gain a level. If a 2 or higher is rolled on a die, the player may choose to attack a town with the number of minions allowed by the die (and if the total number of minions attacking the town exceeds the strength of the town, the town falls), and if a 1+ is rolled, that is added to another die. Alternatively, you can choose on a roll of 2 to 6 to re-spawn that many minions from the graveyard. (Minions go to the graveyard when a tower or town falls.) [Each die in the 2 … 6 range is a separate hoard and cannot be combined in the conquest of an individual town or tower. Only +1, or +2 rolls can be added to another die to increase the size of a hoard.]

Gaining levels is important because, at each successive level, you get to replace 1 black dice with 1 (blood) red dice, which allows you to roll 2 to 7 instead of +1, 2 … 6. Then, once all of your black dice have been replaced with (blood) red dice, at the fifth and final level, you get to roll a bonus white die (which has +1, +2, and re-spawn 10 minion squares) every roll. So if you were to roll a 4, 5, and 6 on your first turn, and if they were available, you would likely want to attack and capture a set of (white, grey, and black) towers, and turn them in for a level. But if you rolled a 3, 5, and +1, you would likely add the +1 to the 5 to attack and capture a black tower (which is the hardest to capture) and attack a town with 3 minions. Towns will take, on average, between 15 and 25 minions to vanquish (as the game progresses), and will typically take multiple turns to collectively vanquish.

The strategy is figuring out when to attack towns versus towers and which town to attack when. The evil one who sent the most minions against the town gets the vanquish points associated with the town (which will generally be between 3 and 9 points, as the game progresses) when the town is finally overrun, the evil one with the second most minions gets 2 Vanquish Points, and the evil one who triggered the vanquish of the town (by committing the minions necessary to bring it to its tipping point) gets 1 Vanquish Point.

Additional variability is added by the fact that on any turn, you can choose to roll the white die in place of any other die. Generally speaking, you will take this gamble when you need to re-spawn minions since using this die (at levels 1 through 4) means that you will only be able to attack 2 towns and/or towers. The advantage is that a successful roll allows you to respawn 10 minions (instead of 2-7) but the disadvantage is that an unsuccessful roll simply gives you a +1 or +2 on another die (which will increase your chance of capturing a tower, assuming you have enough minions left to commit to the tower). A good roll will allow for a more effective re-spawn, a bad roll (which is twice as likely as a good roll) will dictate a weaker round. But, if you still have your two starting tokens (worth 1 and 2 VP, respectively), you can use these as re-spawn tokens (which are equivalent to a white die re-spawn roll) and if you use both of these in conjunction with a successful white die re-spawn roll, you can re-spawn all of your minions. Properly timed, you can get all 50 minions back in one turn, which can be a great boon early game (especially if you just went up a couple of levels, getting a red die edge on your competition). (The sales analogy is that instead of sending a hoard of average, run of the mill, salesman, you can send specialists, represented by the +1 and +2, who often have the ability to tip a worn down customer into a sale a little bit faster, or, in the case of the re-spawn roll, better apply your financial resources to hire even more salesmen to send towards the next unsuspecting target.)

While it won’t teach you the strategic planning skills you need to design supply strategies that will deliver value in the long term as well as the short term, as Rosenberg’s games tend to do (and, so far, we’ve covered Agricola [Parts I, II-A, and II-B], All Creatures Big and Small [I], Le Havre [Parts I and II], and The Inland Port [I]), it’s a fun distraction that will help you relax at the end of a tough day because, just once, you get to play the evil black knight salesmen instead of the white knight of procurement — and possibly learn to identify hoard mentality sales organizations fast enough to put defenses in place before your organization gets overrun.

All The World’s A Stage … and 115 Years Ago Today, the First Hague Conference Tried to Set the Rules of Performance.

One hundred and fifteen years ago today, the First International Peace Conference was held at The Hague in the Netherlands. The goal of the peace conference was to negotiate disarmament, the laws of war, and war crimes and, if possible, to create a binding international court for compulsory arbitration to settle international disputes — an establishment considered necessary to replace the institution of war. While most of the countries present favoured the process for binding international arbitration — including the United States, Britain, Russia, and China, a few countries — including Germany — vetoed it.

However, in addition to the creation of three primary treaties, ratified by all major powers, namely:

  • Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes
  • Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land
  • Convention for the Adaptation to Maritime Warfare of the Principles of the Geneva Convention

and three declarations, ratified by all major powers except the United States (and Great Britain with respect to the first declaration):

  • Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Discharge of Projectiles and Explosive from Balloons or by Other New Analogous Methods
  • Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Use of Projectiles with the Sole Object to Spread Asphyxiating Poisonous Gases
  • Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Use of Bullets which can Easily Expand or Change their Form inside the Human Body

it did manage to establish a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which is typically overshadowed by the International Court of Justice that replaced its sister court, the Permanent Court of International Justice that was formed in 1922.

The PCA is important, even though you’ve probably never heard of it, because it is the court that administers cases that arise out of international treaties (including bilateral and multilateral investment treaties) that span a wide range of legal issues, including maritime boundaries, international investment, and matters concerning international and regional trade. While your company will likely never end up in the courtroom, your government likely will, and the decisions might change what your country is, and thus what you are, allowed to do — and might be the entire reason laws change overnight (which will happen if a maritime boundary is rezoned and you are fishery, for example).

Of course, if you are a big multinational, the PCA might be the registry for your government arbitration that is being conducted under UNCITRAL arbitration rules.

(For example, the PCA recently held a hearing between Bilcon of Delaware et al v. Government of Canada on an arbitration claim about the need for Canada and its subnational governments to fairly administer and follow their environmental and investment laws and regulations to ensure a high standard of environmental protection that arose out of unfair, arbitrary, and discriminatory application of certain government measures relating to the permitting of a basalt quarry and marine terminal at Whites Points in Digby County, Nova Scotia because the type of environmental assessment that the Investors were required to carry out were more burdensome, unfair, and arbitrary than the types of environmental assessments other Canadian investors with similar projects have had to undergo.)

While it was not the preferred outcome of the Peace Conference, the court does give nation states a viable alternative to war and corporations and investors a way to hold nation states accountable to the global agreements they signed up for. And it is a fairly busy court. Right now, the PCA is the registry in eight inter-state arbitrations, fifty-two investor-state arbitrations, and thirty-three arbitrations under contracts or other agreements to which one party is a state, state-controlled entity, or intergovernmental organization. If you’re working for a big multi-national, the PCA is an entity you should be aware of.

The Board Gamers Guide to Supply Management Part XX: Le Havre, The Inland Port

You like being the harbour master, but getting in a rousing game of Le Havre is difficult because of the average playtime of one and a half to three hours and you want to get in a rousing game over lunch. Plus, sometimes only one person will dare to take you on. If only there was a more streamlined two-person variant, just like the All Creatures Big and Small variant of Agricola, things would be great.

Good news, there is! Based on the original Le Havre, Le Havre: The Inland Port is a streamlined variant of Le Havre that can be played by two people in thirty to forty-five minutes, allowing you to get a rousing game, or two, in over your lunch break as you both vie for the title of Habour Master — an important title given the importance of ocean logistics, cross-dock, and warehouse management in your supply chain.

As with All Creatures Big and Small, The Inland Port is simpler to learn than the full game, but is just as hard to master, especially since there are 31 building tiles and you will be able to play at most 12 each during the course of the game, and the order of play can change each game (as can the order of availability if you play a full random game).

As in regular Le Havre, the game consists of a fixed number of rounds (12 to be precise) and each round consists of a fixed number of turns (equal to 3 in the first 3 rounds, 5 in the next 3 rounds, 7 in the following 3 rounds, and 9 in the final 3 rounds for a total of 72 turns in all). As in regular Le Havre, one player has more turns than the other in each round, but each player still gets the same number of turns by the end of the game. However, the variable number of turns dictates that, in each round, one player will have one less chance to use available buildings, including two buildings that will become unavailable for use by the end of the round.

Le Havre, The Inland Port reduces the time and complexity required in the game by cleaning up the 3-biggest time crunches in Le Havre

  • Replenishment and Upkeep
    In Le Havre, at the end of every turn, available supplies are replenished and a lot of time is spent updating available inventory (and unlocking buildings now available for use). In The Inland Port, there is no replenishment phase as all supplies are increased (and decreased) through the utilization of available buildings (or the purchase thereof)
  • Feeding
    Although this is an important mechanic, as it represents the real-world need to maintain enough cash-flow to pay your workers, it is a time consuming one. In Le Havre, the feeding requirement is eliminated, but the net effect (of decreasing your cash reserves and/or food supply) is compensated for with the forced-sale mechanism. Any building that is built must be sold within 5 rounds at a loss equal to half of its value.
  • Resource Collection and Usage
    In regular Le Havre, when you use a building to take an action, you are often increasing or decreasing your available resources and moving a lot of resource markers around. In The Inland Port, you keep track of your resources using a resource board which only requires you to move a single resource marker to a different board location when a resource is acquired or disposed of (to buy a building, for example).

These three modifications, combined with the fact that a player has only two action choices on his turn — use an available building or build (or buy) one (along with the ability to sell an existing building at any time) — make gameplay fairly rapid once the basics of the game are understood by both players (and both players are familiar with what each building fundamentally does). The difficulty in this game is not in playing it, it’s figuring out what to do when to maximize your wealth. Proper building acquisition, utilization, and resource disposal sequences can generate tons of wealth (and a player can easily accumulate 200 Francs by the end of the game if she knows what she is doing and is not impeded by her opponent). On the other hand, poor choices will leave the player relatively cash poor throughout most of the game.

In order to maintain some complexity and keep the game challenging, The Inland Port maintains the unit concept, and extends it to all base goods. So, just like you’d waste one unit of energy using coal to power a building that took two units of energy (if you did not have two wood available), if you only have a 3-block of resources, and only need 1 or 2 units, you will have to over-utilize. This dictates the need to balance the utilization of buildings that give you 3-blocks of resources with the utilization of buildings that give you multiple units so as to maximize your resource utilization.)

Each building in The Inland Port:

  • moves one or more good counters a multiple of one unit or three units,
  • generates Francs,
  • exchanges Francs and/or resources for other resources,
  • sells one or more resources for Francs (at the end of the game), and/or
  • increases your wealth.

The amount of goods and/or Francs generated, exchanged, and/or sold varies according to the building type and each building available for use can be used 2 to 4 times by a player on his turn, depending on how long it has been available. (A building, which can only be in play for five rounds, can only be used in at most four rounds as it can not be used the round it is played. It can be used up to 2 times in the following, round, up to 3 times in the round following that, and up to 4 times in the final two rounds it is available for use. Finally, if used in the last round it is available, it also generates 1 Franc.)

It’s a complex little game, and one that will force you to balance your strategic planning and resource utilization skills, as your plans might not always come to fruition — just like wrenches get thrown into your supply chain at the most unexpected of times.

The Board Gamers Guide to Supply Management Part XIX: The Gnomes of Zavandor

You’ve been working your way through the series and honing your strategic planning, negotiation, and even payment skills, but you still haven’t found the right game because you are in the raw material supply chain and work for a jewellery buyer and distributor. You’ve searched and searched but firmly believe you’re not important enough to get your own game.

Great news! You are. In The Gnomes of Zavandor, you are a gnome with two great passions: sparkling gems and wondrous machines (and are thus likely displaced from Warcraft where gnomes are a short, intelligent, and inquisitive race with aptitudes in both the arcane and mechanical crafts or from Dragonlance where they are the ancestral race of dwarves who are constantly thinking of new inventions and defined by their life quest). Your goal is to become the most successful gem trading mogul in your community and the first to achieve the wealth that gives you this status (which is measured in victory points).

In The Gnomes of Zavandor you gain victory points by acquiring mining rights, jewelry made of precious gems, and inventions. You acquire mining rights, jewelry, and inventions if you can afford the cost, which is paid in precious gems. You acquire gems by buying them on the market for gold or by mining them with mining rights that you have managed to acquire. You start the game with 23 gold, come into a small inheritance of more gold at the start of the second round, but then have to trade and mine your way to success to survive, and win, the game.

The game consists of a sequence of alternating action rounds and mining rounds and continues until one gnome achieves victory. In an action round, each gnome has 3 actions, taken sequentially, where he or she can:

  • buy up to 4 gems of a single gem type on the market
  • sell up to 4 gems of a single gem type on the market
  • draw 2 cards from the face down jewelry or artifact pile and keep one (which only that gnome can buy or build)
  • buy a mining rights tile
  • buy a face-up jewelry or artifact from the market
  • take (or exchange) a trader (that allows you to trade one gem for another one-to-one regardless of market price)
  • use a trader card
  • earn 4 gold

Sounds simple right? Not really. First of all:

  • market prices go up when you buy gems, buy mining rights with gems, or buy jewelry with gems (as demand for the gems has increased) and go down when you sell gems for gold or mine gems (as supply has increased)
  • you can only maintain exclusive buying rights for one item (which is a piece of jewelry or useful artifact) at a time (as the market won’t allow you to have more than one call at a time)
  • you can only buy mining rights in certain regions in a given round, and unless you pay for a a “soil sample” you have no idea what type of gem you are going to be able to mine
  • while every artifact gives you an advantage, some advantages are only temporary and they don’t always outweigh the opportunity costs of doing something else
  • you can only have one trader in your employ at any one time, which means you can only trade one of the six possible pairings of gems one-to-one at any one time
  • if prices are low, earning more gold to buy more gems looks like a good idea, but the prices can skyrocket before you get a chance to buy

And then, just to make things a little more complicated:

  • while market prices for gems only go up 1 gold when you buy, when you embed gems in jewelry (or artifacts) or buy mining rights, they go up by the number of gems used (as they are removed from the market) or paid (in expectation or surging demand)
  • while market prices for gems only go down 1 gold when you sell, they go down by the number of gems mined (as the market has just been flooded)
  • while you only mine 1 gem of a given type for a single mine that produces gems of that type, each additional mine for gems of that type produces 2 gems of the type (as you get efficiency gains)
  • if you acquire the rights to a mine in gem-rich Diamantina (which is one of six mining regions), and are lucky enough to secure the rights to one of the gem-rich mines, you produce one gem of your choice in addition to one diamond every time you mine
  • only 3 of the 6 artifact types are available at any one time, you might buy one only to miss out on something better
  • if you don’t scoop up a trader that you know you will need later when you have the chance, the trader might be scooped up into someone else’s employ

And, finally, you can only buy mining rights in the district currently occupied by the wandering gnome, who wanders around looking for new mines to sell the rights to, or Diamantina. (He’s like the travelling gnome, but prefers mines to tourist destinations and transfers deeds instead of sending postcards.)

It sounds simple and silly, but it’s actually quite involved and smart. If you try to take advantage of a down market and buy too many units of a cheap gem, but no one increases demand, you become cash poor and unable to do anything but sit on what is essentially a declining stock portfolio until the market swings again. If, on the other hand, your opponents trade their gems en-masse for artifacts, mining rights, or valuable jewelry and their value sky-rockets, you can sell en-masse while prices are high, buy multiples of other gems, trade them for mining rights and jewelry that generate victory points, and take a clear lead. It models the real world conundrum of supply vs. demand in mineral, rare-earth, and gem supply chains — mine too little, and you don’t have enough to sell to pay for your costs, but mine too much, and you can’t sell at a high enough price to recover your costs.

The Gnomes of Zavandor is a great game for sharpening your mineral, rare-earth, and gem market making — and breaking — skills — simple to learn, but hard to master, just like the base market skills. The rules are simple to learn, but the real world timing and execution is very hard to master.