Jon Gautier  - Apr 3, 2005 12:11 am (#9432 Total: 9517)  
www.alisonwines.com in the beautiful Hudson Valley 	 

GMT’s new Manifest Destiny on the table today. We played a complete four
player game in about four hours, two of us had played it before in
playtest versions and two of us (including me) were new to it. I’m
fairly new to Euros and Euro-type games and am only familiar with a
handful of them, but I have enjoyed what I have seen and would not call
myself anti-Euro. 

OK, so now you can tell I wasn’t too crazy about MD and the question is
“Why not?” 

I’m still not sure (and would be prepared to try the game again a few
more times to see if my mind changes), but my problem is that the game
seems to be neither fish nor fowl—neither wargame nor Euro. And that
bugs me. With a Euro you (hopefully) have a game that is fairly easy to
learn and play, but that has subtlety and variation enough in the play
that makes it fun, absorbing, challenging. A Euro will have some kind of
theme on which the game hangs with enough color (or flavor, or whatever)
to at least let you pretend that the game relates to the theme in some
way. At best, the theme might relate enough to the game play to actually
inform game strategy or tactics. 

So is MD a Euro? GMT seems to be selling it that way, but for my money
it has a shitload of complicated rules for a Euro. I sat with the rules
for about 30 minutes before our game started and didn’t have a friggin
clue what the game was about. A quick perusal of the MD folder shows
many, many rules questions and clarifications (of the type you see in
some of the heavy CDGs—there’s a lot of variables in this game folks, so
I see a long shakeout period). The experienced players then spent an
hour explaining the game and I still had no clue. Fortunately, just
diving in and playing the damn thing was possible, but not because I
quickly understood the mechanics; rather, the we just sat there asking
the veterans what we could do or could not do. After a four hour game, I
think I would still have to read the rules a couple of more times before
I could teach someone else. 

OK, so MD isn’t ASL or OCS, but neither is easy to learn or play. As a
contrast, I got a good handle on Age of Mythology (to name a sort of
resource management/conquest game) very quickly. And there is no
comparison between the MD rules and the rules to Euro games like
Carcassone, Settlers, or Condottiere (to name some that I have played).
I would actually put MD on more of a complexity level with Sword of
Rome; so, not complex for a wargame, but complex for a Euro (and SoR is
way more coherent and less diffuse). 

So is the theme of MD evocative? Does the gameplay follow from the
theme? Not for me. First, this isn’t really “Manifest Destiny” if
“Manifest Destiny” means the US conquest of North America. The game goes
into the 20th Century, for one thing. National borders mean nothing, for
another. I’m not really sure what it is. The designer says it’s about
mercantile competition, but that leaves me wondering who is doing the
competing. The sides are named after territories (Canada, Northeast US,
Southeast US, Mexico, etc.), but nationalities and territory mean little
or nothing, although the sides do compete for territory. Are the sides
just generic corporations? That’s OK, I guess, but it makes the play of
the many political and personality cards seem out of place (Abraham
Lincoln, Civil War, Remember the Maine, Cold War), especially since
there is only the loosest connection between the event cards and any
kind of chronology or storyboard. 

The competition between the sides involves a fairly complex combination
of resource and money management, expansion (by combat or just getting
someplace first) and cardplay that I found pretty opaque and also not
related to anything in the real world as far as I could tell. There’s a
fairly disparate set of civilization advances and breakthroughs, which
themselves range across the social, political and scientific. Each of
them gives you various play advantages as well as victory points (the
advances are purchased with cash, you get cash through a combination of
territorial expansion and cardplay). Telegraph and railroad allow you to
expand faster and further and so are useful early. Fair enough.
Professional Sports makes it easier to take over a rival city. OK, so
I’m Time Warner taking Madison Square Garden from Cablevision? Who
knows? 

There is a lot going on here, and I’m sure it’s all very subtle and
difficult to master. But it is also hard to learn because it just
doesn’t relate to any reality that I know. GMT’s Downtown is a complex
game, but it is playable because it relates—in a very concrete way—to a
reality that we can all visualize, understand, and process. MD just
seems to be all this random stuff thrown together without evoking a
coherent whole. 

OK, I admit I got my ass kicked, and it was clear that the experienced
guys knew what they were doing. But the real question here is why do you
want to get to the point in this game where you know what you are doing?
It isn’t easy to learn because the rules are convoluted and there just
isn’t any real-world reference that helps you process the game. The game
does not give (nor, I think, does it claim to give) any insight into US
history, mercantile history, or any other history. So it’s too complex
for a Euro, and not historical enough for a wargame. The question
remains for me: “Why play it?” 

Tom Wilde - Apr 3, 2005 1:21 am (#9433 Total: 9517)  
He died a hero's death, giving his life that his friends might live...
And that his enemies might have something to go with their potatoes. 

>OK, I admit I got my ass kicked. 

A-ha... I was waiting for the punchline!

Seriously, a very interesting response to an unusual game. It's not one
I'm particularly interested in but I enjoyed reading your comments. The
point about 'player perspective' is an important one - not knowing
whether you're representing Davy Crockett, Abraham Lincoln or HBO does
seem to be a bit of a problem.