The Wise Count of Sensible Castle

I was recently reminded about Sensible Castle, a Cards Against Humanity event where thousands of surprised celebrants took turns being the Leader of the Castle and issuing a series of three decrees, each the length of a regular Tweet. Even though I was only the Count for three minutes, I took this as a unique opportunity to create the shortest logic puzzle I could.

Sensible Castle had a few rules about these decrees. Everyone knew each could only be 140 characters, but would-be leaders could only edit their decrees a single time. Which means many rulers rushed through their remarks without realizing they couldn’t go back and change them! Having benefited from their lesson, I spent far too long poring over a Google Doc and solution grid. Of my 420 character allotment, I used all but 35.

This puzzle takes its characters from a poem by e.e. cummings, called “maggie and milly and molly and mae,” which has been stuck in my head since high school. Miraculously, the puzzle is solvable and only has a single solution! I half expected that there would be many possible results with so short a puzzle, but I made it work.

While Sensible Castle had a dedicated webcam and a Hall of Kings with the decrees of all the past rulers of the Castle, it looks like the server has been taken down sometime this year. But I’ve saved a picture of my final decrees!

If you feel like taking a crack at the riddle of the Four Sisters, send me an email with the final solution!

Ascension and the Game of Chicken

This week has been the introduction to Ascension in my Games and Game Theory class. I love teaching this game for many reasons, and among them is how it easily shows one of the greatest game theory dilemmas: Chicken.

Ascension is easily my favorite gateway to Deckbuilding games. In a deckbuilder, you use a deck of starting cards to purchase new cards, which then get added into your deck. As the game progresses, your deck allows you to do better and better things. Dominion is the classic standard, but Ascension shows off the deckbuilding method in a great way. My students who have played Magic: the Gathering before were able to instantly pick up this game and run with it.

In particular, Ascension has two types of cards available for “purchase.” Heroes and Constructs get added to your deck and can be purchased with Runes. Monsters can be “purchased” with Power, but are not added to your deck, instead granting you victory points.

This means that you have two currencies which allow you to purchases two different types of cards. Generally, players focus on one or the other. Which is the perfect setup for conflict.

What happens when every player chooses to focus on one currency and have to compete for the best cards? What happens when the board is filled with the wrong type of cards and no one can buy them?

As soon as someone changes their strategy to focus on the other currency, their deck becomes weaker overall. But if no one changes their strategy, the game is objectively worse for every player.

This is what we call the game of Chicken. While it often uses the example of James Dean and his rival driving cars towards certain doom to see which driver takes the coward’s path and swerves first, Chicken can also be found in places as diverse as Ascension and global nuclear disarmament.

In the Chicken matrix, both players would prefer to be at the bottom right, but they find themselves locked in eternal struggle at the top left. No player is motivated to change their strategies, because they would immediately get trampled by the other player. Since no one is willing to put themselves in a weaker position, the eternal struggle continues.

In Ascension, this means that players will make suboptimal choices, waiting for another player to change the state of the game. In terms of global nuclear disarmament, no one wants to be the first to get rid of their arsenal. And for James Dean, it should lead to therapy sessions about the dangers of bravado.

Solving This Dilemma

How would you change Ascension to solve this dilemma? You could create a house rule that allows players to spend, say five points of a currency to remove a card from the board which does not cost that type of currency. Or allow a player to remove a card from the board if they don’t purchase any cards on their turn. Both of these allow the game to change states, but both penalize the player who decides to make the change. Plus, won’t the other players benefit from your sacrifice? Now we’re dealing with the Volunteer’s Dilemma and that’s an entirely different can of worms.

Ascension is a fantastic game to get new players into the world of Deckbuilders. Plus, with a ton of expansions and new versions, there’s always new cards and concepts to be tried and tested.

Dragoon: A Test of Aggressive Play

I had the opportunity to finally play Dragoon by Lay Waste Games, a game I happily backed on Kickstarter ages ago! Dragoon is a game about rival dragons, who subjugate local towns and villages while burning their opponents’ holdings to the ground. I was excited about the theory behind game play back then, and absolutely satisfied with how everything came together in the final product

Here’s the thing. You get to play a Dragon. A DRAGON. You want to hoard gold in any way you can. So every action you can take has the goal of gathering gold, whether it’s as tribute from human towns, stealing your opponents, or from the adventurous thief who is likewise trying to steal from all of you. And dragons don’t sit at home hoping gold shows up. They get out there and fight.

So an important question for me is whether this is a game that rewards Aggressive play.

Aggressive play can be a huge problem in a gaming group. In war games like Diplomacy, aggression often leads to player elimination, and the winner is simply the last one left standing. But other times, aggression leads to putting a player into a losing state without actually removing them from play. In Lords of Waterdeep, you can be so far behind in victory points that winning is absolutely improbable. And that’s just demoralizing.

Good news. Dragoon makes it work!

In Dragoon, play feels very temporary. Laying claim to a village is just as easy as destroying it. So building up an epic empire of subject towns isn’t hard, but you always know that it could crumble at any moment. You might lose towns through random chance! So your goals become very short term and utilitarian. How do I get the most gold right now. How do I stop someone else from hurting me this round?

And that’s perfect. Because another player’s aggression can’t remove you from the game. They can give you a setback, but scores can be very volatile. I was losing one round, winning the next, and losing again just as suddenly. And at none of those points did I feel stuck. It also meant I felt no guilt at all at those moments when I was aggressive. Because everyone can bounce back.

Which means Dragoon really allows you to be a Dragon. Aggressive, defensive, building, plotting, destroying. All of that and more.

I highly recommend you try out Dragoon! Try different playstyles, because this is a safe kind of environment to try a lot of strategies. Solid game theory opportunities, and I’m sure I’ll be talking about it more in the future!

7 Kingmaking & Munchkin

You know that feeling when you win a game because everyone else lets you win? That’s because they all Made you a King. Kingmaking is an interesting game theory problem and Munchkin is the best example there is!

6 What is This?

Before trick-or-treating on Halloween, I decided to answer some of the basic questions about what Atomic Game Theory is all about. This is the origin story, folks! Enjoy!

Roll for the Galaxy: Ambition Expansion

An expansion to Roll for the Galaxy?! I am IN.

How could you make this incredible game even better? Well, the designers have taken a page from an expansion to the earlier Race for the Galaxy, adding minor goals in the form of short races for objectives. Are you the first player to get a 6-point Development? Or the first to gain a planet of every color? Gain some extra bonus points. This certainly mixes up the game and adds a little more direction to play.

Ambition also adds new homeworlds and new types of dice representing your leaders and entrepreneurs. These special dice have two icons on each face, allowing you to more strategic options, especially in the early game.

If you’re a fan of Roll for the Galaxy, pick this up! I’m itching to test out all of the new probabilities in this vastly expanded game.

5 Probability & Roll for the Galaxy

Roll for the Galaxy is an outstanding combination of an all-time favorite, Race for the Galaxy, and the ridiculous fun of dice games. We dig deep into probability theory in this excellent game!