Atlanteon: A Game of Undersea Conquest

Natus and I played Atlanteon: A Game of Undersea Conquest tonight. It's a pretty basic game and easy to learn. The object of the game is to try to take control of key locations on the board. The first player to take control of 11 locations wins. The other way to win is to capture all three towers or your opponent's king tile.

Atlanteon is a Reiner Knizia game. For those of you who don't speak German, Reiner Knizia is German for "prolific game designer." Knizia is a big time game designer, one of the founding fathers of the Eurogame tradition as I understand it. We have a ton of games that he's designed, and by far my favorite is Battle Line (more about that in a future post).

My biggest complaint about Knizia is that in his zeal to churn out new games, he tends to layer on themes to his games that just don't feel organic to the game. Atlanteon is case in point. The back of the box reads:

"The undersea city of Atlanteon is under attack! Take command of an army of acquatic warriors, powerful wizards, and fantastic water beasts as you battle to control Atlanteon's vital locations."

The blurb goes on to describe something that sounds like a fantasy-lover's dream game. But when you are playing the game, there is no sense of being in an undersea city or being attacked by acquatic warriors or fantastic water beasts.

The theme of Atlanteon is a distraction to me, and it bugs me that the theme and game visuals add no intrinsic value to the game play. Although I am told Knizia designs some of the best Eurogames around, the few I've played where he layers on a theme are such clunkers that it feels like he is phoning it in.

Natus argues that theme doesn't matter if the underlying game design is good. But this phony theme issue in games is a real pet peeve of mine - I feel it is a terribly lazy approach to game design and can never mask a boring game.

And boring Atlanteon is. There is no momentum to game play, no sense of surprise or rhythm or real creativity. It is a game where you go through the motions, dutifully placing your tiles and calculating control: methodical, passionless, boring.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being a near-perfect game and one being "I'd rather bathe my cat than play this again," I gave it a 4, the ever-more forgiving Natus gave it a 7.

I married a gamer

By certain standards (i.e., standards of people who think gaming is a monthly Taboo night with friends), I could be considered a "gamer." I play board games with other couples who play board games. I know what Eurogames are and Ameritrash is. My favorite board game is Puerto Rico - definitely not a mainstream Monopoly-style board game.

But I'm not a gamer in the sense that my husband is a gamer. He has a regular weekly game night which he supplements with game days on the weekends and PC games at night. He reads about games, posts about games, IMs with other gamers and buys and trades games. He has taught our 22-month old son to punch out counters for new games. My husband plays all types of games - war games, strategy games, Eurogames, card games, abstract games, party games, word games, mind games - oops, that's a different blog.

Even though we've been married for eight years, and been together a lot longer, I've never really tapped into his passion for gaming. What's the big deal about gaming? Why do we need to own so many games (I think we own hundreds)? Why can't we just play the old favorites over and over again? What is there to say about games - why read about them, blog about them, think about them, argue about them? Because argue about them we have.

So for 2009 I have a resolution - if you can't beat them, beat them at their own game. For all of you spouses, significant others, kids, parents, friends, family and coworkers of gamers who wonder what it's all about (and for all of you gamers who wonder why the rest of us don't get it), I will dip into the world of gaming and tell you what I think.

Playing games for me has always been about good company, good food and good drinks. Not only will I tell you what I think of the games I'm learning, I'll also recommend, and provide recipes for, good food and drink pairings to go with the game when possible.

If you are interested in board game reviews by a non-gamer (with some editorializing by her gamer husband), and have always wondered what to serve when playing, then read on...