After reading about Vassal a game engine for building and playing online adaptations of board games and card games on your computer on RPS, me and my friend Nils, who literally lives on the other side of the planet making it hard to play board games together, decided to give it a go. Here is our first impressions with the software.
Modules
Each game you can play is represented by a module, and there is literally hundreds of modules, and hence games you can play. But there is an honor system in place you should not download and play a module/game unless you own the game. And since the rules does not seem to be available in the module it is really hard to start playing something.Carcassonne
We wanted to start with something we both knew so we decided on Carcassonne, a board game classic. We downloaded and installed the engine and then we downloaded and opened the module.
http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:CarcassonneGetting started
It was a bit tricky to get started, but after we figured out how to log in, create a game and start a game we were rolling. Slowly, slowly rolling, not sure where. It took us a while to figure out that the tiles were updated and synchronized between us, but the meeples were not. So Nils placed a tile with a city and placed a mayor in the city, after clicking Finish I could see his tile, but Nils had to tell me that he placed a mayor there and I had to place one there myself also, one of his. And the reverse when I placed a meeple on the board, I had to tell Nils and he had to move a meeple of mine to his board. Confusing at first and very much configuration needed. But after a while it actually worked really well and we got pretty far into the game.
Fun but deceitful
But it was tricky, since usually when you are playing digital version of games you are used to that the game tells you when you have an illegal move, but since the rules are not implemented in the modules, only the board layout and tiles, you can do incorrect moves and get away with it.
After about 30 moves each we had good speed in the game and it worked really well. But we realized that we had a bit different view of the rules, as I had mostly been playing the Android version and Nils the board game version. And also I had been doing a couple of illegal placements, as you can see in the screenshots. And we forgot to start with the center tile. So we decided to call it a draw, read up on the rules and points and try again another night.
But I'd still call it a success, we had great fun and will definitely do it for real next time, may the best meeple commander win!
Game play Images
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| It looked like a lot of the expansions also were available. |
Trying another module, Small World Underground
Small World and Small World Underground are games that we have placed a couple of times and really enjoyed so we thought we would give it a try, but the amount of tokens, races, expansions got us off to a confused start. We didn't really got to play anything, we spent a quarter of an hour trying to figure out how it worked, and the we realized that we didn't know the rules well enough. But I absolutely think we can make it work and have fun playing it.
And Another, Citadels
Citadels is a game I have a played a lot so I check it out. All the cards where in there so it looked pretty nice. But as the other it took a while to get orientated.
Summary
VASSAL looks great and I think that Nils and I will pick it up again soon and place a couple of game. I think it'll be good to make sure that the first session of a new game, or at least the first 30 - 60 minutes are set aside to learn how that particular modules is played.
Focus on game that we already know well and have played several times in real life will things much easier. And make sure to have the rules close by since do not come with the module.
Check it out at http://www.vassalengine.org/
And read the great RPS article here http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/20/vassal-a-virtual-army-of-conflict-sims-in-one-client/
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