Interviews by an Optimist # 13 - Shannon Applecline

Shannon has been involved in games since his dad got him his first D&D
box when he was ten.  During his youth he played many roleplaying
games, from RuneQuest and Stormbringer to Traveller and Top Secret. 
Board games were a bit less frequent, but early classics such as
Othello, Twixt, and Sirocco graced his shelves.  In college he started
to play many leading American strategy games.  Favorites included
Dune, Divine Right, Riddle of the Ring, Cosmic Encounter, and Mystic
War.  However, after college, as recreation time dwindled, interest in
strategy games began to fade too because, with a few exceptions,
American games just weren't that well designed.

Following computer science studies at UC Berkeley, Shannon went into
the computer field, but the gaming field was never too far away.  He
authored & edited a number of roleplaying books, including Tribunals
of Hermes: Rome for Ars Magica and Tales of Chivalry & Romance for
King Arthur Pendragon.  Eventually he made the fulltime jump into the
gaming field, working for roleplaying company Chaosium as an editor
and graphic designer.  Later he combined interests in computer science
& gaming by going to work for online gaming company Skotos Tech, which
produces online roleplaying & strategy games.  He is now Vice
President of Skotos.

Shannon's interest in the German boardgaming community, and renewed
interest in board games overall, came via way of Skotos.  In
considering the design for a new online strategy game called Galactic
Emperor: Merchant Kings, Shannon decided to try out a couple of
tabletop trading games.  The first was The Settlers of Catan.  Many
more followed.  As Shannon played the games he started to review them
for RPGnet, mainly as a way to help determine what was good and what
was bad about any particular game.  Somehow, these solely informative
gaming sessions and the reviews took on a life of their own.  Shannon
now posts 1-3 analytical & illustrated reviews of games to RPGnet each
week.

Shannon has dabbled in tabletop board game design, as he does in most
creative interests that he takes part in.  Oddly, these games have all
centered around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.  In late collegiate
days he designed a Cthulhu wargame called Doom of the Old Ones, which
was never offered up to a publisher due to the release of the somewhat
similar Cults Across America; it now looks too American to his eye. 
In the last year he brokered the republication of Arkham Horror, and
also contributed to its revision.  He's now working on codesigning a
new game based on similar themes.

Shannon never writes about himself in the third person, especially not
when writing biographies.

Tom:  Shannon, I consider your reviews at www.rpg.net some of the best
reviews of board games on the internet.  Can you tell us a little
about how you write a review, how much time goes into it, etc.?

Shannon:  First of all, thanks for the kind words.

For me, reviewing starts with the play of the game.  Thursday nights
are my regular review-game night where my group purposefully plays new
games & review copies I've received.  Besides having the games ready
for Thursday nights I also always have my gaming notebook and my
digital camera at the table.  During the game I write notes on things
I liked and didn't like about both the components and the gameplay, as
well as things that seemed to be bugging or enthusing other players. 
I also do my best to remember to snap a couple of pictures.  After
we're done with the game my group then talks for about 5 minutes about
everyone's experience with the game; that goes into my notebook, and
then we move on.  I usually try to then write my review within the
next week; if a review gets delayed too much, I sometimes need another
play session to make sure it's still fresh in my mind.

I've developed a really standard format for the reviews, so a lot of
the writing is really methodical at this point.  I usually write it
straight from top to bottom, though it sometimes takes me a couple of
sessions.  I'll often do a bit of research when I get to my
"Relationships with Other Games" section; if there are designer notes,
I'll usually read them over at this point, and sometimes I'll skim a
bunch of similar games to make sure I understand the new game's place
in the industry.

After I've got a complete first draft I'll usually edit my pictures. 
I've gotten really quick at this. Then, it's a final edit of the text,
and I queue it up for posting on the next Wednesday.

The amount of time it takes me to write a review is largely dependent
on the complexity of the game because I give thorough descriptions of
the mechanics. (I feel that otherwise a lot of my analysis is
context-free.)  For a short game that I'm really familiar with I can
knock out a full review in 30-45 minutes.  For more complex games, it
takes 1-2 hours.

Tom:  How do you choose what games to review?

Shannon:  Some games come in as review copies, and those innately get
reviewed, even if they're not the sorts of games I commonly play. 
However, which games I happen to get as review copies isn't entirely
random; because if I particularly like a company's games, I'll mention
to them that I'd be happy to regularly review what they put out.  I've
also sometimes said "no thanks" when offered a review copy of
something that was well beyond my expertise, such as counter-based
wargames.

Beyond that, I review what I think is deserving & will be of general
interest to readers. This means that I tend to review games that I
think: are classic or pivotal in the board game industry; are above
average and under appreciated; are new, particularly if they're
innovative or generating lots of interest; are by an author who's
either pivotal or one of my personal favorites; or extend games that
I've already reviewed.  So, lots of different reasons.  If you pointed
to 10 different reviews I could probably tell you 10 different reasons
that I decided to review those games.

What I don't tend to do is review games that I'm not very excited by
(except in the case of review copies); beyond the fact that I find
writing bad reviews a little nerve-wracking, I'd much rather tell
folks online about the new games that I'm excited about than the new
games that have already been tossed on the trade pile.  I do make an
occasional exception to this, such as when I reviewed St. Petersburg
last year.  It was getting so much positive feedback on the 'net,
which I largely disagreed with, that I felt like another voice was
needed.

Tom:  What do you do when you get a review copy, and it turns out that
you tremendously dislike the game?  Do you feel that it's better to
write a negative review, or none at all?  Or the hardest question -
just how much pressure does a review copy put on your writing a
review?

Shannon:  If I get a review copy and I play the game, I *will* write a
review.  I feel like that's a covenant that I've made with both the
publisher & with my readers.  For the publishers, it's why they've
sent me the game, and in almost all the cases I've either asked for
the game, or at least OKed it being sent to me.  For the readers, it's
a question of ethics, and my being clear that comped games will always
receive fair reviews, good or bad, and that a comped review is most
definitely not a puff piece.

I used to dilly-dally a bit before writing up a negative review.  For
example, I think Nautilus literally sat around for months, long enough
that I had to play it again before I finally wrote about my unhappy
experience with the game.  I've gotten much better as I've written
more negative reviews, and I almost always write them up within 1-2
weeks of the play experience now.

Professional companies are much easier to work with in this regard
than amateur or young companies.  I've gotten very polite & totally
professional letters back from Mayfair and Days of Wonder when I gave
notably less than full marks for one of their games.  On the other
hand I've gotten long or angry diatribes from certain amateur
companies that will remain nameless.  I even got one note describing
how my play experience was "wrong"--no, not my understanding of the
rules, but my personal experience of the game.  I haven't let those
couple of bad apples keep me from reviewing more amateur products,
however, because they can sometimes produce innovative designs.

Tom:  How many times do you think a reviewer should play a game before
reviewing the game?

Shannon:  Though I know this is heresy to some folks, I'm happy to
review with as low as one play of a game.  I can definitely tell when
a game is entirely broken after one play, and beyond that I can
usually make out the good and bad points of a game's design, and thus
figure out where it fits into the overall hierarchy of interesting
game designs.  I should actually revise that and say I'm happy to
review after one analytical play where I was thinking about the game
the whole time, writing notes, and then discussed it with the play
group.  If I play a game casually, I only have a general sense of it;
in fact, if I play an interesting game elsewhere I'll sometimes bring
it back to my review group to get a better idea of it so that I can
write a review.

I can also tell after one play if I don't know enough about a game to
review it, and in those cases I play again before I do.  Sometimes we
play a second game immediately, and sometimes it gets set to the side
for a future week.  Quo Vadis? is a good example of a game that I set
aside after the first play because I just didn't understand its
intricacies enough to really see how shallow or deep it was.  Usually
I'm very comfortable with a game after that second analytical play.

On occasion I've also gone to a computer version when I really wanted
to see how mechanics play out over repeated play.  Clearly a computer
version doesn't have the human interaction, nor does it have the same
variability of play as us crazy humans, but it's a great way to see if
certain flaws (usually false strategic play or required strategies) do
keep cropping up.  St. Petersburg and Verrater were two games in the
last six months where I turned to a computer version (after a
half-dozen plays in the case of St. Petersburg and after one in the
case of Verrater) and pushed through another half-dozen computer plays
before I wrote about them.

I also make one other exception; which is that when I play a
multiplayer game that also supports 2-player play, I try and play in
both configurations when it's possible; so those games tend to rack up
more plays before they're reviewed.  I think that's pretty important,
as 2-player play is very different for most games.

Anyway, your initial question was how many times do you think *a*
reviewer should play a game before reviewing, as opposed to just me. 
My general answer would be: until he's comfortable with his
conclusions.  I feel comfortable in 1-2 truly analytical plays
followed by group discussion, and history's born that out. 
Retroactively I've felt like 5-10% of my reviews weren't quite dead on
after further plays (and I've tended to revise those); however the
revisions were typically niggling things like "this was a little more
fun than I thought" (Mammoth Hunters) or "this worked much better in a
3-player configuration I hadn't tried" (San Marco) or "playing more
games I can see this one is actually really rudimentary for the genre"
(Res Publica) as opposed to something big like "this flaw I saw didn't
really exist".

Tom:  I know that occasionally, I'll play a game that I've reviewed a
few years ago, and realize that my opinion on the game has drastically
changed.  Are there any games that you've made a 360 degree turn on
over a lengthy period of time?

Shannon:  Well, I've certainly had a 360 on some of the American games
I used to play.  10+ years ago I found Illuminati or Hacker long but
playable, while today they're just impossible.  But as for games I've
actually reviewed, yes, occasionally.  As I said, there's that 5-10%
of my reviews that I inevitably go back and revise, though few of
those I'd
call a 360.

Res Publica, however, is a good example.  It was one of the earlier
German games I played; and when I first played it I thought, "Wow!
This is an absolutely unique and amazing trading game!"  Then I played
something else and I thought, "Huh, this is much more colorful than
Res Publica and has a more intricate game system".  Then I played
Bohnanza and I thought, "This one's even better."  When I originally
reviewed Res Publica I gave it a 5: top of its class.  After plays of
more games in the category it slowly moved down to a 3: pretty
average, with simple mechanics, and a little dry.

Tom:  What games are currently your favorites, and why?

Shannon:  My top game is definitely El Grande.  It's a superb
strategic game that has a lot of room for tough decisions, and I think
that its game length is just right for its variety of gameplay.  I
also like the fact that it's a little chaotic, because of the variety
implicit in the different cards.  El Grande also stays at the top of
my list because it's a bit long, and so I don't get to play it that
often, and thus I'm always eager for another game.  (Generally the
"new and exciting" factor influences my enjoyment of games a lot, and
so it's not unusual for those games that I don't get to play much to
be among my top.)

Ticket to Ride remains one of my favorites because it's such a simple
and elegant game design, yet allows for a fair amount of strategy. 
I'm afraid that I've now been spoiled for it a little bit by the
online play, because in-person players are *so* much slower, just due
to the physicalities of having to pick up and put down cards. 
Nonetheless, I'm really looking forward to Ticket to Ride Europe.

The new game I've played the most recently that really excites me is
Der Untergang von Pompeji.  I liked it enough that I'm going to go
ahead and pay the premium for a German copy of it, which I rarely do. 
This game's main good point is that it's colorful and fun, with all
those poor meeples fleeing for their lives from the encroaching lava. 
I don't have any illusion that it's a deep game, or that it's going to
be infinitely replayable (as El Grande and Ticket to Ride have been),
but it's just got a combination of good theming and fair mechanics
that you don't tend to see a lot.

That pretty much encompasses my favorite designers too: Kramer, Moon, and Wrede.

Tom:  It's interesting that you enjoy Der Untergang von Pompeji, as it
seems to have gotten a lot of negative press from other reviewers. 
Are there other games that you think have been unfairly maligned?

Shannon:  Definitely.

I think a lot of people, reviewers and gamers alike, go into games
with a raft of preconceptions, and that they then unjustly criticize a
game if it doesn't meet those preconceptions.  Anything by Alea fits
into this category as does anything produced by Reiner Knizia, and
anything produced by anyone who ever had a hit.  Subsequent games will
rarely live up to a company or an author's best of the best, but that
doesn't mean that they're not great games on their own.  I also think
it's quite unfair when a serious designer puts out a family game and
then gets criticized because it's so light.  Sometimes you're just not
the audience for a game, and as long as the manufacturer is upfront
about that, there shouldn't be much room for complaint.

Der Untergang von Pompeji was unfairly criticized because it didn't
have the replayability of Carcassonne.  Mammoth Hunters and Fifth
Avenue both got a bad rap because they're not Puerto Rico.  (I've
gotten a lot of enjoyment out of Mammoth Hunters despite its chaos,
though Fifth Avenue still needs more plays before I can understand it,
because the gameplay is a little fragile.)  I think the whole series
of Kosmos/Uberplay games was unfairly criticized, and I won't be
surprised if the Mayfair/daVinci games face a similar problem. 
They're almost all light or family games, and not necessarily the sort
of thing I'd play regularly, but some of them are pretty good in their
own right.  I also
continue to boggle at the disdain directed toward Tongiaki; yes, it
has a large random element, but I think it was one of the most
innovative and original games of 2004.  If I wanted to continue on
with Reiner Knizia games, I'm sure I could list a lot that are good
games, just not super-serious strategy.  I think Marco Polo Expedition
fits clearly on this list.

Tom:  Hmmm, I've been accused of liking too many games, and even I
dislike the last two games you've mentioned.  Let's talk about
companies now.  You mentioned that some companies, such as Alea, have
produced such lofty expectations that when they produce a game that
isn't quite as good, people tend to have a negative review of it. 
What companies, in your opinion, have constantly churned out winner
after winner?

Shannon:  That's funny, because my like of Marco Polo Expedition and
Tongiaki isn't even guarded, or of the sort where I say, "It's good
for its genre".  I think they're both good games that most people will
like.  I've played Tongiaki a half-dozen times, and it continues to be
fun even when I get totally left out of the migrations.  Granted, I've
only played Marco Polo Expedition once, and that casually, so my
opinion there could change if I did a deeper analysis.

Anyway, about game companies.  I've been pleased by every Alea game
I've played, with Puerto Rico, San Juan, and Ra being the cream of the
crop.  Hans im Gluck is another strong development house, with El
Grande, Carcassonne, and Tigris & Euphrates all being favorites. 
Those are the two companies from whom I'll buy just about sight
unseen, as their games tend to be pretty universally of high quality
and very strategic.

Days of Wonder is the only non-German company that I'd put into the
same category.  I've already listed Ticket to Ride as one of my
favorites, and I also think that Memoir '44, Gang of Four, and Mystery
of the Abbey are all quite good games, and of course entirely
beautifully produced.  Days of Wonder's games are a little lighter
than the average Alea or Hans im Gluck release, and so they don't all
have quite the same gamer's game appeal; but for their demographic,
which is a slightly more casual one, they're the best of the best.

Into a second tier, I'd put Amigo Spiele, primarily for their card
games like Bohnanza, 6 Nimmt!, and Geschenkt and Kosmos, who has
interesting big-square games like The Settlers of Catan and Through
the Desert as well as good small-square games like Lost Cities and
Blue Moon.  These companies' games don't tend to fly as high as the
first companies that I mentioned, and there tends to be more variety
among their releases, but still, pretty much anything they put out
catches my eye and deserves at least a second look.

Tom:  Are there any small, independent companies whose games you think
show promise?

Shannon:  I'm sure I won't be surprising anyone when I say that
2F-Spiele (Friedemann Friese), Bewitched Spiele (Andrea Meyer), and
R&D Games (Richard Breese) are all doing good work.  They're cases of
individuals who clearly have some great ideas and a proven track
record and are doing innovative things in the hobby--though I
personally wish they were getting some outside development by a Hans
im Gluck or Alea, since their games (at least those I've played) tend
to have rough edges.  That's no criticism of their work, I just feel
like an outside set of eyes without the same emotional investment can
often do a lot to improve a game.  I feel like Warfrog fits into that
same category, though I'm not sure I'd call them "small" in the same
manner.

I think the fact that two of the most lauded games from Essen (Ys and
Oltremare) came from indy companies says a lot for what they add to
the hobby.

On the pure publication side of things I'd single out Face2Face Games.
 Their decision to republish out-of-print Sid Sackson and Reiner
Knizia games earns them a lot of respect in my book.

Tom:  I play hundreds of different titles a year, yet still feel that
I'm missing a lot of games.  There seems to be an enormous glut of
titles out there.  Do you think that this huge amount of games being
released each year will last?  Or, otherwise, what do you foresee as
the future of the board gaming hobby?

Shannon:  My general experience is that the only way that a "glut" in
an industry comes to an end is due to a crash.  I've seen that in a
lot of related industries, including collectible card games, comic
books, and roleplaying games; but in each of those cases there was a
really obvious bubble which couldn't be supported by normal buying
patterns (respectively: the collectibility of CCGs; two different
collector-oriented pushes in comics; and the d20 license in RPGs). 
The only potential danger sign I see for strategy games is the
faltering American economy; if the German publishers are depending too
heavily on the co-productions by Rio Grande, Uberplay, Mayfair, and
others there could be a problem if the dollar keeps plunging. 
However, just on the economics of the industry itself--as opposed to
the international economics--I don't see any evidence of an obvious
bubble in the strategy game industry that would predict a crash, thus
I'd expect the current number of games to continue (and increase).

I do foresee two changes in the sort of games that are released.

First, I think we're going to see more American publishers publishing
well-designed games.  We're already seeing the start of this trend. 
Mayfair Games & Avalon Hill were two of the first publishers of
traditional American games to start publishing German games. Rio
Grande Games has, of course, made that their whole business. Now we've
got Fantasy Flight, Jolly Roger, Face2Face, Z-Man, Uberplay, and lots
of others that I'm missing, all jumping in to publish German designs. 
The natural extension of this trend is for American game designers to
start designing mechanic-solid German-style games for American
publishers rather than most of these games being imported from
Germany.

Second, I expect to see an increase in amateur publications.  You're
going to see more web releases, more print-on-demand releases, and
more self-publications.  But, I don't think this is going to change
the industry much.  The amateur publishers right now are some of the
most bright & inventive in the field, and lowering the barriers of
entry is just going to allow for an increase in mediocrity, and
perhaps even obscure the good amateur publications that are available
now.

Beyond that, I'm going to be really boring and predict that the
industry is not going to change a lot.  We've now seen the future of
networked strategy games, and I think it's obvious that they're not
going to replace their tabletop brethren; networked strategy games are
great, and a nice option if you're sitting at home at 10pm at night
with nothing to do, but they don't provide the human action and
interactivity that a lot of us crave from tabletop play.  Likewise, I
don't expect these games of ours to go much more mass-market.  I
definitely believe that companies like Days of Wonder and Uberplay can
grow this niche if they really push, but as far forward as I can
imagine the average family is still going to be playing Monopoly,
Cranium, and Scrabble, not Puerto Rico and Tigris & Euphrates.

So, if I were going to give you a prediction for 10 years from now,
I'd say that people will be preparing for Nurnberg '15, and they'll be
putting out traditional board games that look a lot like today's
traditional boardgames, and you'll see a lot of the same authors and a
lot of the same companies.

There will eventually be some technological advances that change our
sort of board games, but I don't think any of those technologies exist
today.

Tom:  You said that the average family won't play Tigris and Euphrates
and Puerto Rico, and I agree.  But why not Ticket to Ride,
Carcassonne, and Settlers of Catan?

Shannon:  I did indeed pick some of the more complex German games, so
I should be clear and say that I don't think they'll be playing Ticket
to Ride, Carcassonne, or Settlers of Catan either.

Here's some of my specific reasoning:

First, our games are too complex.  Ticket to Ride is the best of the
bunch with its clean & simple 4 pages of rules, and I could be wrong
on that one; Ticket to Ride might break out.  But, the rest are just
too fiddly by the standards of the American public.  If you can't
explain it in two minutes, I don't think it has a chance (and, again,
that's why Ticket to Ride might).  This is going to come off as
snobbery, but I don't think the average American is used to engaging
in entertainments that require thought.

This is partially due to my second point, which is that most Americans
are happy to indulge in entirely passive entertainments, like movies
and television.  The last (2003) Nielsen report I saw said that the
average American household watches 8 hours of television a day.  56
hours a week.  Germany and France run about 25% lower and not
surprisingly they have better acceptance of more complex games.

Thirdly, games are generally categorized as a juvenile entertainment
by the American public. Kids play games, and families play games when
they have kids; but after the children leave the nest, the games are
sold off at yard sales, and the adults return to "adult"
entertainments.  There are exceptions, of course.  Card games, some
abstracts, and word games are all seen as sufficiently "serious" that
adults are allowed to play them.  Party games are a definite breakout,
but I think that's because they piggy-back on another acceptable adult
entertainment (the party).  However, given that party games tend to
start at 4 or 5 players, the same numbers where most of our games
stop, I can't see that being a big help for pushing *our* games into
the mass-market.  Beyond these acceptable games, I'm sure you can find
some subcultures within America where all games are more accepted.  I
understand they're more welcomed in the Mormon communities, for
example, and I know they're accepted in the double-income-no-kids
demographic that I tend to hang out with (but, you see, that's because
we don't have to grow up, and so we can shrug our shoulders at the
juvenile label).

The second and third points in particular are *very* strong cultural
biases against serious games being played by adults for entertainment.
 These sorts of cultural biases can change, and in fact I think the
Internet has some possibility of encouraging more gameplaying in a
very non-confrontational way and also of encouraging less passive
entertainment, but still these changes can take generations.  In 10 or
25 years I might give a different answer about designer games really
penetrating the mass market, but right now I don't see the cultural
changes that would allow it.

Tom:  What about crossovers from other gaming groups?  You yourself
post your reviews exclusively at www.rpg.net, so I assume you act
almost as a "missionary" to RPG gamers.

Shannon:  Well, one of the reasons I post exclusively to RPGnet is
because I want to promote the site, and another is that I have total
editorial control there, so that I can go back and edit a review if
need be.  But, yes, I do also hope to tell roleplayers about games
that they wouldn't otherwise be aware of. (And, I think that's been
successful, because other roleplayers are now posting more reviews of
board games at RPGnet.)

Overall, I think that this type of gaming crossover is pretty natural.

We should see more roleplayers trying out German-style games,
especially as traditional roleplaying companies put out more of them. 
Fantasy Flight Games is really the leader in this area.  Mayfair used
to be, except they don't do RPGs any more.  I'm surprised that Wizards
of the Coast, Atlas Games, Steve Jackson Games, and some of the other
roleplaying companies that also put out board & card games haven't
looked more seriously at German design. (But, as I predicted earlier,
I think they will.)

I also think you'll see some traditional online game players try out
tabletop games, via the intermediary of online translations of board &
card games.  Over at Skotos, where we have tabletop strategy games,
online strategy games, and online roleplaying games, all under one
umbrella, this is the exact type of cross-pollination that we hope to
promote.  I know that we've brought in some new Days of Wonder gamers
from our roleplaying crowd.

However, those are niche markets too.  The roleplaying market is
probably even smaller than the German game market.  The
MMORPG/online-gaming market is conversely bigger, but by no more than
an order of magnitude--at least not for the "serious" gamers, as
opposed to casual players of Bingo and Bridge.

I entirely believe that the board game market will grow in the United
States.  Uberplay, Days of Wonder, and maybe Mayfair with their new
daVinci games all will be pushing our games out to new players.  Some
of these will be families and other totally new players, while others
will be roleplayers, online gamers, and other people from parallel
markets.  However, that's just not the same thing as mass-market
acceptance.  At best our niche might be a fair amount bigger through
this type of expansion and gaming crossover.

Of course the manufacturers should still shoot for the stars, but I
find most speculation about out hitting the mass-market any day now to
be vastly over-optimistic.

Tom:  Shannon, I've really appreciated your insights about the
industry.  Do you have any last words for our readers?

Shannon:  It's been a pleasure talking to you, Tom. Let me know any
time you want to chat more about board gaming, interview or not!

I do have a few closing things to say.

First, even though I said a couple of times that I don't expect the
industry to hit the mass market, I want to be clear and say that I'm
nonetheless really positive about the future of strategy gaming.  We
may be a niche market, but I think it's a healthy niche that'll
continue to grow.  A company like Days of Wonder coming in and doing
very well from just about day one, thanks to a good business plan,
shows that pretty clearly to me.

Second, and more self-servingly, I want to let people know that I
don't just write reviews.  I also do a lot of writing about strategic
game design.  My specific thrust is toward online games, but a lot of
the designs that I consider are universal.  My game design column is
called Trials, Triumphs, and Trivialities, and you can find the
complete index online at Skotos Tech (
http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT.shtml ).  Searching for the word
"strategy" will give you a listing of all of my strategy articles. 
They've included articles on the underpinnings of strategy games and
also intense looks at some specific sub-genres like auctions,
connection games, and card games.  There's also a more cohesive
listing of my earlier strategy articles at RPGnet
(http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/collists/virtually.html , articles
#56-70), but I've never gotten around to reprinting the more recent
strategy articles there.

Finally, as a reviewer I sometimes criticize and sometimes compliment,
but no matter how good or bad a game is, every one of them adds
something to the industry, so a big thanks to everyone who's ever
designed, developed, or published a strategy game!

-Tom Vasel
February, 2005
"Real men play board games."

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