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The mulling mechanics segment returns! This time we examine "What Makes a Euro?" The lines seem to be blurring these days. Can Craig, Raef, and Russ clear things up? Or will they just make it even more confusing?

But up first, we're excited to get a chance to interview Teras Cassidy of Geek Nation Tours to learn how he started a niche business helping geeks get where they want to go.

All that and our other not-too-horrible segments including:

- The Hollywood Minute
- Total Fan Girl
- Do You Ever Notice
- & More

Episode: http://www.thed6generation.com/d6g-ep-81-geek-nation-tours-interview-what-makes-a-euro-

Please let us know what you think of the show!

That Geek Nation Tours segment really made me want to do some traveling. Hopefully one day when the kids are older and the money's there GNT will still be doing these awesome tours.

great episode as always guys . when my kids get a little older im definately going to have to take a geek nation trip . sounds like a blast ! also Raef great job on my shout out , sounded great . keep up the great work guys .

I live in the Seattle area and am bummed that PAX sold out several months ahead of time. Interesting that this is starting to be an issue with cons. Both BGGcon and PAX Prime? Kudos to Geek Nation Tours for providing a service that is pretty much untapped.

Plug for the PAX tour events...
The Science Fiction museum is great. There is not only a full sized classic viper on display but there is also a newer Mk. 7 viper on display as well and a Cylon Raider. These are all full-sized. In addition, the Sci Fi museum has many other things going for it including costumes, props, and just about anything else you can imagine that would be generated from Sci Fi television/movies. It's not a huge museum, but they have packed in a lot of stuff into the building. It is also next door to the Experience Music Project. A huge museum dedictated to rock and roll in general with a lot of special attention paid to the local Seattle music scene with emphasis on Ray Charles and Jimi Hendrix among others. There are a lot of interactive exhibits where you can try your hand at various instruments. Kind of the next step beyond Guitar hero because you are using real instruments, but with an audio guide to show you what to do. My favorite is the guitar exhibit that displays the growth of the electric guitar from the very beginning to today. It sounds like Geek Nation has put together a great package that showcases our area, although if anyone is looking for more I can make recommendations. One thing Geek Nation might want to do (if they haven't already) is put together an address list/flyer that shows the locations of all of the local game stores. We have a bunch and they are all pretty good. I saw that they mentioned Golden Age Collectibles. Great comic store...probably the best in Seattle. It's deep in the heart of Pike's Place Market which is a huge, sprawling market with everything from food vendors to arts and crafts, antiques...you name it. It is also home to the "Flying Fish" retailer. You could get in a lot of touring just by going to just the market. The Boeing Flight Museum is incredible. They have recently added on a warbirds wing that has two large areas for WWI and WWII airplanes and exhibits. There are full-sized replicas and restored aircraft such as the Japanese Zero, German ME-109, and British Spitfire. The WWI wing has a Fokker Triplane and Sopwith Camel (I think) among others. August is a great time to visit Seattle because it's the one month out of the year that you don't see a whole lot of the classic Seattle rainfall. Temperatures are typically in the high 70's and low 80's. Anyway, if you are at all interested in this package it looks like a good one. I even considered it even though I live here just so I can get into PAX.

The rest of your show was great as always.

I really liked the think tank on Eurogame classification. I'm not sure if Eurogame is still a valid differentation. It was great when we first started importing games from Germany because it helped the buyer know they were getting a game that wasn't a wargame, but it was something better than the crap Milton Bradley and Hasbro were spewing onto the shelves (Don't Wake Daddy, Monopoly, etc.) Today, Euros and American games seem to be better defined by who makes them rather than where they come from. Days of Wonder produces Euro-like games that typically have a more direct competitive element (Small World, Memoir 44, etc.) but they don't usually have wood components. FFG produces games that are typically high in direct competiton with lots of plastic, tons of cards. Look at Game of Thrones, though, and you see a game that has many Euro-like elements (wood pieces and simple rules with many choices) yet it is more of a wargame. Z-Man is all over the place but there aren't many of their games that sits solidily in either camp (Euro or American). GMT's Dominant Species is a great Euro-like game though it has a lot of non-Euro qualities about it. I think a better term for the games you have been discussing is "Designer Games." Common elements are...fairly high cost, quality components with wooden pieces, thick card stock counters, linen finish on all printed material except rules, high use of iconography (to cut down on language barriers), no player elimination or improbable player elimination, innovative mechanics, and established victory point accumulation. This leaves players in a quandry, though, because how are they supposed to settle on a type of game they won't play? Good question...how about keeping an open mind and witholding judgement until the game has been played to decide if you don't like it. Craig has an obvious aversion to tacked-on themes but it's clear he has some exceptions to the rule. Ultimately, I think Euro is becoming an archaic term and does not provide the useful pigeonhole that it used to.

Excellent episode as usual. I really liked the Geek Nation tours segment. Someday I hope to go on one of those.

Thanks for the Mulling Mechanics section. I was having a pretty bad day, and the whole "Carcasonne Issue" helped to brighten my day.

Armandloft wrote:Thanks for the Mulling Mechanics section. I was having a pretty bad day, and the whole "Carcasonne Issue" helped to brighten my day.

Hehe, I'm still trying to figure out how, to Raef, a 'card game' is a euro (like Innovation or 7 Wonders) yet a tile laying game like Carcasonne is not!!

Thanks for the great feedback everyone!

And Sturmkraehe: Now you're REALLY got me wanting to go to Seattle!! Plus it's near Privateer Press AND Microsoft.

I'll twist the knife a bit, and mention that it's also where Lock and Load is this weekend. Who has Cygnar and is going to be attending...this guy. <Sorry, Craig, I couldn't resist adding my own fish/monkey.>

Armandloft wrote:I'll twist the knife a bit, and mention that it's also where Lock and Load is this weekend. Who has Cygnar and is going to be attending...this guy. <Sorry, Craig, I couldn't resist adding my own fish/monkey.>

I'm totally jealous. Really want to attend Lock 'n Load.

It's also where Magic:the Gathering got its start and Wizards of the Coast grew up. I'll forever kick myself for laughing at the garage-based WOTC guy that came around looking for investors in the early 90's because they wanted to make a card game that you could collect like bubble gum cards. $1000.00 for that? You gotta be kidding me!

Thanks for the kind words, guys. And I'm a convert, Armandloft! Crank out those fish monkeys! Besides, I've got more of an affection for the verbal memes . . . like two thumb jokes, and 'that's what she said' jokes . . . so I'm a hypocrite . . . something I just had to learn to live with

~Craig

Just had a random question. What ever happened to The Wargamers Radio Network? I know Podhammer and 40k radio were having issues at different times, but they're all active right now aren't they? It just popped into my head so I figured I'd ask.

Really good episode like always. The Geek Tours sound really awesome and I would love to one day go on one.

In your "Mulling Mechanics" segment about what defines a Eurogame, one thing that I thought of, which none of you mentioned is that most American games have a high "toy factor" to them, while most eurogames have abstract pieces. That's not to say that American games are for little kids or anything, but instead of saying that most Eurogames have an abstract theme, or use wooden pieces, I would say that most Eurogames have abstract pieces (cubes for people, animals, circles for crops, etc) while in most American games, you have little plastic men. Maybe that's why Craig hates Euros so much? (just kidding!)

Even Euro games with strong themes like Space Alert, Dungeon Lords, or Stronghold all use abstract pieces to represent things. By that definition, Shogun is a Euro because you're using little cubes instead of men (plus having minis would make the whole tower mechanic much harder).

But, like you said in the podcast, a lot of games are hybrids. FFG's Civilization is the perfect example of this, plus, once again, abstract pieces for the most part. Even Carcassone, the father of the Meeple, is pretty abstract compared to the detailed plastic pieces of most American games. Smallworld is another great example of a hybrid game combining both Euro and American mechanics but, once again, abstract pieces.

Chaos in the Old World, I'd probably qualify as an American game, even though it has many Euro aspects, because it's farther along on the "toy" scale than most games.

Oh, and I don't understand how Raif can think that the different roles in Pandemic (abstract pieces) make it NOT a Eurogame, but Puerto Rico, probably one of the most Euro of Euro games has different roles as well, as does Citadels.

jabrams007 wrote:In your "Mulling Mechanics" segment about what defines a Eurogame, one thing that I thought of, which none of you mentioned is that most American games have a high "toy factor" to them, while most eurogames have abstract pieces. That's not to say that American games are for little kids or anything, but instead of saying that most Eurogames have an abstract theme, or use wooden pieces, I would say that most Eurogames have abstract pieces (cubes for people, animals, circles for crops, etc) while in most American games, you have little plastic men. Maybe that's why Craig hates Euros so much? (just kidding!)

Nice! I like the idea that abstracted components help bring the Euro feel. That might be why Stronghold also feels so Euro. It seems like in Euros the boards look kinda realistic while the pieces are abstract.

Of course, that would then imply that Ticket to Ride is NOT Euro, nor is Small World. The other issues is that games like Dungeon Lords (Plastic cute minions) and Galaxy Trucker (Plastic Cute space men and glowing batteries) break this rule in the opposite direction.

So it's still fuzzy, but definitely a good determiner.

Wargamer Radio Network: Nothing ever officially happened to it. Spencer, of 40k Radio, and Jeff, of Podhammer, were kind enough to ask us to join back when we started up. Jeff did most of the leg work with hosting. At some point Jeff didn't have time to maintain the site, and it died at about the time Spencer left 40k Radio. So it quietly faded away.

RussWakelin wrote:

jabrams007 wrote:In your "Mulling Mechanics" segment about what defines a Eurogame, one thing that I thought of, which none of you mentioned is that most American games have a high "toy factor" to them, while most eurogames have abstract pieces. That's not to say that American games are for little kids or anything, but instead of saying that most Eurogames have an abstract theme, or use wooden pieces, I would say that most Eurogames have abstract pieces (cubes for people, animals, circles for crops, etc) while in most American games, you have little plastic men. Maybe that's why Craig hates Euros so much? (just kidding!)

Of course, that would then imply that Ticket to Ride is NOT Euro, nor is Small World. The other issues is that games like Dungeon Lords (Plastic cute minions) and Galaxy Trucker (Plastic Cute space men and glowing batteries) break this rule in the opposite direction.

Hmm, you raise some good points, Russ.

I honestly don't know how to classify Ticket to Ride. Small World, which is basically Risk with some added rules tacked on, while not having abstract components, still uses cardboard, instead of plastic figures, so I wouldn't qualify it as an American game, but it's definitely not a Euro either.

Dungeon Lords and Galaxy Trucker though, are hard to fit into my definition. I know it's probably a cop-out, but even though both those games use plastic figures, they're still somewhat abstract, just like Carcassonne and meeples, instead of having detailed figures. If you compare the little plastic pieces in Dungeon Lords and Galaxy Trucker to Axis and Allies, most of the FFG games, and a lot of other American games, they're still on the abstract side of the divider.

Great Episode guys

Here are my thoughts on rules for categorizing a game as a Euro (at least they sounded good in my head):

No player elimination.

No direct conflict (and by this I mean total destruction of anothers pieces by direct action, bumping pieces would be ok.)

Not a Co-op or team game, and can only have one winner.

Multiple but limited resources that players compete over.

Multiple options or choices per turn that have an effect (either direct or indirect) on all players.

Win by Victory Points of some kind, with multiple ways or paths to earning them.

fe2mike wrote:Great Episode guys

Here are my thoughts on rules for categorizing a game as a Euro (at least they sounded good in my head):

No player elimination.

No direct conflict (and by this I mean total destruction of anothers pieces by direct action, bumping pieces would be ok.)

Not a Co-op or team game, and can only have one winner.

Multiple but limited resources that players compete over.

Multiple options or choices per turn that have an effect (either direct or indirect) on all players.

Win by Victory Points of some kind, with multiple ways or paths to earning them.

Nice, this is pretty solid. Not sure about "Not a co-op" for me. Pandemic feels like a Euro to me.

RussWakelin wrote:

Nice, this is pretty solid. Not sure about "Not a co-op" for me. Pandemic feels like a Euro to me.

Yeah, I kinda thought that too, but after thinking about it I decided that I would call Pandemic a hybrid, as so many newer games are, because when I think Euro it begins with some of the classics, and none of those had a co-op theme.

I also thought about components and visuals but decided that these things vary to much from game to game, and that it would just make the matter too messy.

The same went with time and down time, many Euros are quick for very experienced players, but time also depends on Analysis Paralysis, which is a "common" occurrence in many Euro games.

what about the haiku poems? i already entered mine

There's still some time left for the haiku contest, so you'll hear a reminder in ep 82, but nothing more until the contest is over and we've had a chance to review all the entries.

But thanks for entering, we're looking forward to reviewing all the entries!