Archive for Stephen Tassie
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Stephen Tassie
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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I have now been working at Snakes & Lattes as a "game guru." The position is much like the sommelier at a restaurant, only instead of telling you which wine to have with your meal, I suggest games that will appeal to your party's tastes and interests.
Aside from the low pay, it's a pretty awesome job. The downside to it is now I'm teaching far more games than I'm playing. I barely play anything anymore. I do my best to never teach a bad game, but some customers just don't want to learn something that's actually worth playing. There are some customers who are just write-offs. If you come to a board game cafe that can provide 2000 titles and you ask for kerplunk, Monopoly or the Game of Life and you don't have a child with you, you are wasting everybody's time - your own included. A few of the people like this can be upgraded to a good game, but I will usually wash my hands of such people. How would you react if someone came into your five-star restaurant and ordered a turd sandwhich?
As I say, some can be guided to games that actually entertain and engage. Here of some of the games that I teach most often in an effort to introduce patrons to something good:
If they ask for Connect Four I teach them Quarto. Still not an awesome game, but a definite upgrade.
If they ask for Monopoly, I teach them either Manhattanor I'm The Boss, depending on what it is about Monotony that they think they enjoy.
Anyone asking for a word game usually gets Word on the Street.
If someone starts to set up Zombies!!!, I'll teach them Last Night on Earth... or if I happen to have it with me, my personal copy of Mall of Horror.
Quite often the customers leave the decision making entirely in our hands. If it's because they are adventurous and trust our expertise, that's great. I get to introduce people to something awesome and they get to find a new awesome game. Other times, the customer is simply overwhelmed by choice and cannot pick. They will often say something like "Can you recommend a game that's fun?" Which is, of course, one of the dumbest things you could ask at Snakes & Lattes. Why would we recommend someone play a boring game? That's like asking the waiter to recommend something edible from the menu. If you hadn't said "edible" would he recommend the gravy boat?
I think my favourite request from customers (and by "favourite" I mean "request that most makes me want to insert Jenga logs up their nose till they are full") is "Can you recommend a game that's fun, doesn't have a lot of rules and won't make us think?" The answer to that is "No." You have to pick two. If you want fun, it'll either have a lot of rules or it'll make you think (sometimes both). I can recommend a game that doesn't have a lot of rules and won't make you think, but it sure as hell won't be fun (LCR, I'm looking at you)!
Whatever the reason, when they do leave it up to me, the game I will recommend depends on them. How many people are in the party and what they play at home. Every once in a while, I make a recommendation and it falls flat... but I am good at my job and can usually find something that will, if not blow the customer's mind, at the very least open it a little bit to the possibilities that board games can offer.
Some of my most common recommendations for two: Ubongo: Duel, Mr. Jack Pocket, Hive, Spot It!, Elk Fest. These aren't my favourite games, but the ones I've had the most success teaching to the clueless. If it's two people looking for something deeper, with more meat on it, then I go to: Memoir '44, Dominion, Carcassonne, or 1955: The War of Espionage.
My next entry will be what I recommend for larger groups.
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Stephen Tassie
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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I was sitting in Snakes & Lattés today. For those of you who don't know about it, it's a board game café in Toronto. I`ve been a regular since they opened last August and I have come to the realization that Snakes draws three basic types of customers: Hobby gamers like me (and probably you, since youère reading a gamer's blog on BGG), Mainstreamers (those people who only play Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Clue, Trivial Pursuit and that ilk) and Nostalgia gamers (those who come in to play the games they played as kids - Sorry, Mousetrap, Operation, Candyland, etc). There would appear to be a lot of cross over between the last two categories, but I consider them to be distinct because the Mainstreamers still play games, while the Nostalgia gamers are returning to a childhood activity, even if the game choices are sometimes similar.
As a Hobby gamer sitting in the most amazing café in the world, it always bugs me to see adults in there playing games I wouldn't touch unless I was playing with my 6 year old nephew or 9 year old neice. Does this make me a snob? Probably. Not the refusal to play "lame" games, but the fact that I view the Mainstreamers & Nostalgia gamers as wasting their time and table space in MY café.
But today I saw something wonderful. While my friend and I were playing Lost Cities and Jambo, an adult couple sat next to us and started playing Guess Who. Guess Who gets an absolutely ridiculous amount of play time at Snakes - usually by adults, so once again I thought "come on, play a REAL game!" Then I actually heard how the guy was playing. He was asking his opponent questions like "Do you trust your person?" and "Do you think your person has dome drugs?"
I was flabbergasted. I was astounded. I was suddenly interested in playing Guess Who. Is it likely to replace Last Night on Earth or Powergrid? Of course not, but it has taken a mindless kids game and turned it into an interesting social experiment.
Tue Apr 26, 2011 12:53 am
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Stephen Tassie
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
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Earlier this week I had the opportunity to play some Titan. Years ago I acquired the old Avalon Hill version at an auction and have had very few opportunities to play it. I used to play a friend's copy a fair bit when I was in high school and the running joke in my group was "Who wants a quick game of Titan?" We didn't think that such a thing existed. We were wrong.
This weekend, I was running the open gaming lounge at a Toronto sci-fi convention (Ad Astra) and a fellow there was dting to play Titan, so we broke it out an began a five player game. Due to lack of attention spans and hypoglycemic issues, the game did not last longer than it took for th efirst palyer to be eliminated. So the game was abandoned, but it filled me with the urge to play again.
The next day I met my friend, Scott, at Snakes & Lattés and we decided to have a go at Titan. Something magical occured that day. We began setting up to play at 5pm (give or take a few minutes), and including rules review (Scott had played before, but not in years) and tear down time, we had finished not one, not two, but THREE games by 6:11pm. Not only did we play one "quick game of Titan," but we managed to play three.
All three matches were ended in a single combat. We rolled for starting towers, and all three times we occupied neighbouring towers (which increased the odds of early combat). Each of our three first battles had Titan legions in them - our first game, the battle was Titan vs. Titan - and in each one, the Titan died.
The first match was a foregone conclusion that one of us would lose the game, but in the subsequent games, angel legions fought Titans and won in both cases.
Scott thoroughly trounced my Titan in the first game, with a Titan legion that managed to have recruited a Warlock and a Guardian. In the second game his Titan fell to my Angel. In the final, tie breaking match, his Titan killed my angel, but not before taking a few hits of damage itself and then it fell to an incredibly successful roll from a simple Gargoyle. A Gargoyle who immediately received a field promotion!
In the third match, I had not intended to attack his Titan legion. My angel legion was parked on a tower and he had a 7 unit legion adjacent to it. On his turn, he split legions and moved one of the legions off the square, but moving the other (smaller) legion would have forced him into combat, so he left it stationed in the brush outside my tower. On my turn, the roll did not lead to any good recruiting options for my Angel legion, so I decided that I could take on a newly split, small legion and score some quick points. Little did I realise that he had left his Titan in the smaller of the two legions.
So through a combination of neighbouring start towers, a bit of poor planning and some lucky die rolls, I managed to play three games of Titan in just over an hour. Somebody call Guinness!
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