Games concerning the absence of food (Corn - The Civgame, In the Year of the Dragon)

This week the group indulged me by agreeing to play my prototype, "Corn - The Civgame". I constantly dabble in creating games, but rarely get anywhere with them. My last attempt, Corn-22, was not particularly good. I had high hopes that this one would be better...

Well, first of all, this one isn't supposed to be goofy. It's a fairly rules-heavy civilization builder. I wanted to make a game that combined exploration, technological advancement, war and politics that didn't need a huge board, 8 hour playing time or millions of little bits. Also, setup time bothers me, so I made quick setup a goal.

I'll get this out of the way up front: It wasn't very well received. Despite this, I was happy with the experiment. Beyond the problems which came up due to unresolved rules, unpredicted combinations, etc, a few things were working against a pleasant first run-through:

- It's got lots of rules, and I didn't explain them particularly well.
- The playing pieces were very poor. To small, too light, not particularly user-friendly.
- Critical play-aids were missing. This is probably the biggest mistake I made. The missing list of buildings was the worst offender.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the turn order/ action selection mechanism (it's not perfect, though: earlier versions restricted the the number of cards players were dealt, and I added to that substantially for the playtest. In retrospect, it was too many). I felt that the exploration was working and the development was working reasonably well. We didn't play long enough for the different player's civilizations to butt heads, or for the political aspect of the game to really take off, but at the very least I was able to get a sense of certain things that need to be worked out. Though no one will know this but me, the balance of resource production vs. building costs has improved substantially over previous solo playtests.

I hope that the group will be willing to try it again, and I'm really hoping that we can have a conversation here about thoughts on what worked and what didn't.

A few changes I need to make before it gets played again:
- It used to be a requirement that a port be built in order to embark onto water (at a lake or river). When I eliminated it, I didn't realize it made bridges obsolete (since it is quicker and cheaper to gain the water transportation technology and cross wherever you want). I will be reintroducing ports. Also, I was counting on certain landscape features (lakes, rivers and mountains) to provide natural boundaries that would define the regions in the game. However, under those rules Wonders found in water exist in BETWEEN regions, and therefore couldn't belong to anyone. I think the only solution in this case is to remove the ability to discover Wonders in water hexes. Also, I will have to require that Wonders not be discovered on river hexes, just to overcome a placement issue (placing the wonders obscures the rivers, and there's no simple way to eliminate that). It's not an unreasonable limitation, so I'll just choose the simple route. Lastly, I will be requiring the presence of cubes on resources to have them produce. This will eliminate ownership questions and, conversely, allow others to come and use them if they are crafty.

When Kozure arrived, we put away the prototype and played In the Year of the Dragon. I tried to see if the war parades could be put to good use (get ahead in the people track by putting on parades and then choose the powerful older workers without being forced to fall back in the turn order). It seemed to be working pretty well, and then THE BAD MOVE happened.

In the month the droughts was upon us, I had the first move. In a fit of idiocy, I forgot I had no rice and instead chose to BUILD A THIRD PALACE. The drought happened, I lost 3 people and the palace I had just built. Ugggh.

I figure I bounced back pretty well. I had a good lead until then, and ended tied for second with Kozure. Bharmer cruised past us to victory on the strength of 5 palaces and many people working in them.

I'm still quite happy with this one. It feels rather malleable in the sense that there always seems to be several ways you COULD go. While planning for the upcoming disaster is the main driver for the game, building a good monthly points engine, staying ahead in the person track and going for straight points are all viable and important at different parts of the game. Good stuff.

Your face is in the way (Taj Mahal, Ra, Phoenicia)

Hmmm.

Taj Mahal

It was just me, Luch and Bharmer playing the first game. In this session, I tried to see if I could win Taj Mahal by focusing mainly on connecting provinces. The short answer is No.

It may be possible to do well at Taj with this strategy, but it would take a specific board layout. In this game, the numbers were very disconnected, so despite the fact I was very successfully placing the palaces I needed, the province chains just weren't that long. Sadly, the 3-4 points I was getting couldn't keep up with the points both Luch and Bharmer were getting from goods. When I finally connected the provinces in the middle, I had two successive turns netting me 10-14 points, but it was too little, too late. Bharmer and Luch were way ahead, and Bharmer won it.

Ra

Kozure and Kozure's Kuz (ahem) showed up just as we were putting away the board. We decided to play Ra, because, well, it's a great game. Not so much with 5, but still good. Anyway, as usual I spent the 2nd and 3rd round with very low suns (note to self: why does that always happen?). I therefore was an auction calling machine. It worked for me, and I managed a huge haul of pharaohs and rivers which won the game for me. Anyway, the Kuz seemed unimpressed for most of the game, but I think he was starting to like it near the end. We'll see if chooses to come back!

Phoenicia

It was do or die for Phoenicia tonight. It died.

Kozure once again managed a small lead by the second or third round and held it until the end. Obviously, he understands something about the game that eludes the rest of us, because as much as I believe seating order is important it can't be a coincidence that he keeps killing us. He always has the lead early, and never lets it go long.

Anyway, despite the fact that there is obviously skill involved, the whole thing feels scripted and boring. It's a short game, yet the winner seems obvious far too early. I don't know, it's just not that much fun for me.

To the trade pile!

Beauty and the Beast (Shogun x 1 and Phoenicia x1)

Clever Production Design vs. Poor Production Design in Games

Phoenicia and Shogun were the games of choice this week. We've tentatively adopted a new format where we play one game from the previous week each week, so as to allow a better exploration of the strategic depth and other subtleties of the game.

Phoenicia on second playing has improved in terms of speed and smoothness of play, but, for me at least, some of the initial interest has worn off. Although it seemed intriguing at first, this system seems to suffer from a marked runaway-leader aspect, a sameness of play and a inevitability of a certain winner which I can't really see any remedy to without major rules changes.

As mentioned in the previous review, the person who leads each auction is the VP leader from the previous round; in case of tied high scores the first player marker (in this case called the Overseer) is passed to the closest tied player to the left of the current Overseer. The benefits of being the auctioneer are that if you have the money, (which you often will, if you are leading in production) you can buy what you need right away without much interference from the other players. Since you control the auction until you give it up, you can conceivable buy a number of low cost items all in your turn if one or two of the other players already have bought an item or are otherwise out of cards or coins.

If you are the last player, you can often buy the one (or choose from the cards remaining) and buy it at cost. However, at that point, your selection is usually so limited as to severely limit your tech path options.

If you get the right combination early and grab the VP lead, you can more or less race to the end and leave the other players wallowing in the 18-24 point range.

Then again, maybe my two wins were a fluke… I'm not certain. I recently read a criticism of Agricola (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/307192 )which, although I cannot comment on the accuracy of it in relation to Agricola, I can apply some of the same criticism of specific feelings about the game to Phoenicia here.

To quote the review:

"There is a whole class of games where the opening setup determines the likely winner. Card games. They have a few other characteristics (at least for good ones): 1) they are short, 2) you play many hands to reduce the luck (or determine the better player). Good players will win more than their ‘fair’ share of games, but won’t win every hand.

Agricola is a single deal card game that takes 90+ minutes to resolve."

…

A good game should take as long as required to determine the winner, and no longer. Bridge (a great game) would be farcical if you spent 30 minutes playing a hand. Agricola is chess between even players where you may be randomly up a knight or down a queen, but don’t know until halfway through the game."

In Phoenicia's case, although you aren't dealt a secret hand of cards for asymmetrical player ability purposes, once one player pulls away, it seems to have a definite snowball effect. The winner seems to be determined early. Add to this the fact that attempting to block another player's strategy by purchasing the card he/she most likely wants is often either impossible or not viable as a strategy. If you did, you'd most likely torpedo your own strategic path, so the prospect of blocking another player by spending your own much-needed resources to stop her/him from getting it is the gaming equivalent of suicide bombing: you may (or may not) stop your intended target, but you'll almost certain kill yourself in the process.

Given that the only direct player interaction is the auction and everything else is player mat optimization, you're left with a game where everyone is left doing their own thing. If you buy the right card combo (often by virtue of where you're sitting for the first auction) early on, you win by snowball effect and the outcome seems pretty fixed. Though I do think I made some savvy choices early on, and shifted production strategy (from improved hunting to improved mining) at the right time to maximize my returns, it really didn't feel tense after the third or fourth round. Once I had money coming in, it wasn't much of a stretch to get more.

Specifically, getting the tracker allows improved hunting, which is a pretty cheap production path for points and production, (tools 2 vs. farming 5) and also affords reduction on the caravan, which is a great boost for points and production. I then gunned for the shipyards (and bid high), which gave me increased hand size, VPs, production and discounts on future improvements. Moving from there to Fort, Smelter, Shipping Fleet and City Walls just sealed the deal.

Easy's observation that the second and third seat players seem to have a definite disadvantage in the auction set-up also seems quite accurate.

Combined with the well-documented graphic design problems (shared VP/production track, poor iconography, low visibility for some critical icons and values) and poor rules-as-written ruleset, this makes for some very difficult obstacles for the enjoyment of the game. However, and this is a big however, it still seems worth playing again for some reason, at least one more time. Faint praise, but one feels like playing Phoenicia because it's a simple, relatively quick playing civilization game with some modicum of theme and tech development - not overlong like the sprawling Civilization or Through the Ages games, but not overly abstracted like Vinci or Tempus. At the same time, it's not a very good quick medium-lightweight civ game, it's just that there's not many successful ones out there. Even Antike, which is in my mind one of the more successful medium-weight civ games, is quite long by comparison.

Does Phoenicia just boil down to a straightforward auction game with tech tree and resource optimization? Pretty much, but it's quick. It lacks other components which (to me) are important to a successful-feeling civ game - exploration/discovery and direct competition. Plus, the art and iconography are mediocre at best, and confusing at worst.

Compared with Phoenicia's graphic layout, Shogun seems positively sparkling. Cleverly thought out balancing factors and a number of very interesting mechanics - cube tower, turn planning, bluff, hidden auction, etc. - remind one what a well thought through system can feel like by comparison to one which feels both graphically and mechanically unpolished. In Phoenicia's defence, Shogun has had one previous incarnation (as Wallenstein) to work out kinks, so it's like comparing a concept car to the fifth or sixth year version/model of a proven car design. The polish of Shogun's art and design definitely makes this the "beauty" of this pairing of beauty and beast.

Shogun balances powerbase-type strategies by awarding points for building types spread across several regions, allowing for players with scattered region cards to benefit. The cube tower also mitigates randomness in attacks and defense that might otherwise result from dice or table-based combat. Overall it is a nicely balanced game, but it still fails to engage me on some level - there isn't much "movement", if you know what I mean.

Last night's game has also underscored for me the concept that it's often better to focus taxation/rice unrest markers in one well garrisoned province rather than trying to spread your forces thin to quell potential unrest across your holdings (the old "You can't make all of the people happy all of the time," maxim). It also reminded me of the possible combination punches of getting reinforce, move and attack orders during a turn.

This game was much closer, and it was near to impossible to predict the winner. It feels like you're more in control, but there is much less movement. One minor criticism I have of this game is that it seems to end just as you're getting going - despite the fact that "getting going" has required 90 minutes already.

I like Shogun, but it remains a game that I don't really look forward to playing when it's selected. I don't dread it, or groan when it's mentioned, but it's still not something that I look forward to playing, like Railroad Tycoon or many of my other highly rated games. I did enjoy this game, as it was pretty close and required attention and careful strategy, but perhaps for the lack of dynamic movement that I previously mentioned, it's never quite as exciting as some other of my favourite games - it lacks as many highs and lows.

One day we'll find a civ game and a waro (weuro) that I like. For now, the search continues.

Diggin' a hole (Thebes, Phoenicia)

We played two new games this week, Thebes and Phoenicia.

Thebes

JayWowzer brought along his copy of Thebes for us to try. Despite the fact that most games that I hear about don't interest me much anymore, Thebes had picked my interest. Having played it, I'd say the design has a lot going for it, but the luck is a little more than I can handle.

The game is quite attractive, with a nice board, thick cardboard chits and very nice discs which are used to determine a player's ability at digging for artifacts. My favorite components were the very nice bags used for drawing the artifacts... a nice touch. I had heard a lot about the time mechanism used in the game, and it does work quite well. It's very much like turn order in golf: Whoever is in last plays until they are not last anymore. In Thebes, players have 52 x2 turns which represents 52 x2 weeks. Every action requires a number of weeks to perform. Some actions are worth quite a bit but take several weeks to perform. In the meantime, another player could choose to do a series of shorter actions instead. It's not a mindblowing mechanic, but it works well and (other than in golf) I don't think I've seen it used before.

I found the tension in trying to figure out how long to do research vs actually going to the dig to be very entertaining. Going first likely means you have fewer draws (unless you were particularly effective at specializing your knowledge), but players that come later get worse odds at drawing anything good. So far, so good. I was really enjoying the game.

Problem is, in the game we played the player who won (me) did it by being lucky at artifact draws. It seemed to make all the stuff which happened before sort of irrelevant. I thought about it afterwards, and I think I decided that the problem I have with the scoring isn't the random draws or the sand mechanic. It's the value of the artifacts.

I wonder how the game would play if the value of all artifacts was 1. The luck of the draw would still be present, but that luck wouldn't be compounded by the fact that a 7 is seven times more than a 1. The rest of the game stays the same, but I suspect exhibitions would become more popular. Another possible variant would be to allow the 3 most valuable artifact drawn (between all players) to be worth it's value at the end of the game, but the others are worth 1. If we did this, I would suggest that exhibitions consume the relics displayed (exhibitions would have to be worth twice as much as they currently are to offset the lost artifacts). This way, the advantage of drawing a high tile would be counterbalanced by the fact that a player is unlikely to use it on an exhibitions (where it would be lost).

So, I did like it. If I can ever find a copy cheap or for trade, I'm all over it.

(a note for posterity: Bharmer drew 20 sand tiles in a row over 3-4 different expeditions. Not one artifact. He didn't stand a chance. As for me, I had 45 points worth at the end of the game. I suspect that's a big haul.

Phoenicia

On paper, Phoenicia seems like a Puerto Rico clone with a bonus auction mechanic. It plays 2, which is good, and it plays in about an hour normally. Very positive. However, I found the rules confusing (although the Nova rules from BGG helped immensely). To make matters worse, there graphic presentation leads to errors and confusion. Critical icons are placed on the scoring track, which invariably end up beneath player tokens and therefore illegible. The symbols are thin, small and difficult to interpret. There's probably a good game in there, but even the game setup made me wish I was playing something else.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll try it again, but it's a definite addition to the trade pile for now.

I wanted to talk a little about an error we made. We are supposed to start with a worker in the first space of hunting and farming! This is why the scoring track starts the way it does (3 production, 2 vps) . Now my mind can rest.

Kozure was running away as the leader for most of the game until the final few turns where I made a valiant attempt to catch up with him. It almost worked, I was 1 point behind him!

Man is the dumbest animal (Wildlife, Race for the Galaxy, Ra)

Only three tonight. Myself, Kozure and Bharmer.

Wildlife

Wildlife is one of Kozure's favorite games and since we hadn't played it in quite a while he picked it as the main course for the evening. It's odd that this game, designed by Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Princes of Florence, Tikal), seems to have flown completely under the radar on BGG.

Kozure was Man, I was the Eagles and Bharmer was the Bears.

In the beginning, the bears came across the forest and climbed up the mountains.
The eagles soared across all earthbound terrain.
Man dominated the plains.

It was then that Eagle learnt how to thrive in the water. There, it fought with Bear over the fluvial realm. Man could not be bothered with such trivialities as evolution, food or advanced intelligence. It spread out to the desert and the forest.

It was then that the Bear and Eagle were dethroned. Man cut the vast kingdom of the Eagle in half and learned much about aggression, defense and the importance of foodgathering. When all was said and done, man stood victorious.

It was a good game. It seems that Wildlife plays pretty well at three (though picking the wrong starting races could change that). We spent a good amount of actions simply exchanging the advancement cards, particularly the defense ones. If I had one complaint about the game is that those cards don't quite feel right in the game (too powerful?). Anyway, it's a small complaint. Wildlife is a good game.

Race for the Galaxy

This is a shoe-in for most played game this year. I once again tried a military strategy after being dealt New Sparta as my starting planet. I managed to place quite a few military planets down, but since my production was zero and I didn't manage to get the related "6" development out I came in a distant third.

Two funny stories:

1) I had a hand of 5 cards, and they were all planets. I was sure Kozure or Bharmer would pick development that round, so I chose Explore +5. Guess what, I drew 7 more planets.
2) In the final round, I skipped drawing cards in the explore phase since I knew I wanted to play a "6" development from my hand (capitalizing on the small amount of ALIEN technology I had). Just for fun, afterwards I looked at the cards I wold have drawn... the military "6" card I needed was the second one! Counting the difference it would have made in points, I would have tied for second instead of coming in 15 points behind second place! Bharmer won, but he made a mistake in his interpretation of one of his cards and made repeated "production" errors. I therefore declare his win null and void (Ha!).

Ra

Ahhhh, Ra. Nice to see you again.

Civilization tiles came hot and heavy in the first era (15 of 25 tiles, in fact). Bharmer ended the 1st with a huge stash of points (including 15 points for 5 civs). Despite the fact that Kozure and I had 2-3 suns left and 6-7 RA tiles left to draw before the era ended, we essentially wound up with nothing as RA after RA were drawn.

The 2nd era was kind to no one.

In the third, Bharmer sealed his victory with 30 points from buildings. Scores were closer than I expected, but he still won comfortably.

Ketchup (Perikles, For Sale!, Jungle Speed)

I'm behind, so I'm just going to write briefly about our game session nearly two weeks ago.

Jaywowzer joined us. We let him pick this time, and he asked to play Perikles... we were happy to acknowledge.

This was our first five player game. The impact wasn't major, other than seeing the persians used more regularly. On the other hand, the experience felt more watered down than our first few games. Not sure if the bloom is coming off the rose, or if I just prefer it with fewer players. Actually, now that I think about it, it's probably the number of players. In any game where players are all playing in the same sandbox, more players means more things change before your turn comes up (which means less control/ more chaos). In Perikles, having less control didn't feel right.

I tried to see what would happen if I simply stuffed the board with cubes and left them there (since they are worth a point each at the end of the game, it seemed like it might work... it takes a lot of 3-5 point battles to make 30 points!) However, I was too single minded: I won only two statues, and one of those was worthless. I won very few battles with the persian armies. All in all, I think I came in 3rd or 4th.

Not sure what Jawowzer thought of it, but I think he liked it.

We then played a hand of For Sale! Not much to say. Fun. Light.

We capped the evening with the return of Jungle Speed. I was at the top of my game, and won (though I jockeyed for first with Luch for several turns before winning).

Die Marathon - The War and Peace of Euros Continued (Die Macher)

Chapter I: Wherein Anna Pavlovna Greets Vasili Kuragin

"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news."

It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.

*cough cough*

Sorry, wrong tome.

Die Macher. Aside from the 18xx games, there is no other Euro that I know of (remember, I state emphatically Euro) which takes as long or as much brainpower as this monster. What do I think of it? It's long. It's involved. It's actually pretty engaging - you generally don't have your attention wander. But it is long.

That said, there is a lot of elegance to many mechanics, especially with regard to play balance and scoring. On the other hand, the Valley Games edition suffers from a number of iconic and graphic issues - to borrow a term from computing, the user interface is sometimes quite poor.

For example, two major issue icons (Nuclear Power and Economic Development) are very similar at first glance, and a third, the Global War on Terrorism, can appear similar when viewed from across a table. The coalition icon is somewhat vague, the State chits and State cards might have been consolidated better as a single item, and so on.

I could go on but it's late and there are better things to try to document.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Going First
Since bidding for first player is a distinct phase and can cost one a lot of money, I thought it best to try to remember why you would want to go first rather than last.

If you go first: You can place media markers first. This could score you the critical plurality in a State.

If you go last: You can often pick up opinion polls in upcoming states for cheap. You can see what your opponents do in terms of altering their party platform and placing party meetings. You also win ties if you get 50 votes if two or more players score 50.

Generally, unless you really, really want media dominance, you want to go last.

Don't Fall Behind in Party Membership
Party membership both gains you income and scores points at the end of the game. Do not fall behind. In both games we've played, I've lost by a fair margin, to a great degree due to not keeping up with national opinion . Party membership = important.

Key Issues (Issue Coincidence Doubling)
These are only removed by the use of the shadow cabinet. Do not try to think otherwise. I think this game this ability was used much more often than in previous games. Also, do not place Key Issue markers on a card more than a turn in advance, where they can be removed easily. I made that error, placing a key issue on a state effectively two turns in advance, the final result of which was that it was not only turned into a standard issue, but removed entirely by the time we got around to scoring it. Do not do that again!

Typical Starting Player Bid
This game, the typical winning bid for starting player was between 3,000 and 5,000 Euros. I have no idea whether this is typical or not. The highest bid, which was something like 11,000 over the next competing bid, was my bid of $18,000. It did end up netting me a 48 seat state and the resultant media marker placement, so that probably got me a lot of points.

General Game Design Note
Try not to have more than seven phases in a turn. Die Macher has 10, with several of those steps effectively having between one and three sub-steps. Yes, politics is a complex subject, but the sheer number of steps in the game cause it to seem more complex than it is. This game design might have been edited more rigorously to condense and amalgamate some of these steps, perhaps.

Opinion Polls
Poll bidding ranged from an average of 5-10,000 euros in the earlier rounds up to 20,000 in the mid-game and all the way up to 48,000 and 69,000 in the endgame. As a humorous side-note, the 48k bid was useless for the bidder (Me) and netted a one point (!) party membership increase. This exorbitant expenditure was only exceeded by Ouch's bid of 69k which resulted in a 0 point membership increase.

First Round Bidding
One of my many errors in play this time around was overbidding for pretty much everything on the first state. Although it was a high seat state (42, I think?) I bid too much on first player, I bid too much on opinion polls and a few other aspects which escape me at this hour. When you don't know what the national issues will be, it's just not worth it.

Chapter II: Wherein Kozure Questions His Own Deep Strategy Skills

Playing this game again has reminded me that I tend to do poorly at games which require deep strategy and branching path computational skills. Tigris and Euphates, El Grande, Chess, Taj Mahal, Maharaja and a number of others fall into this category. These games also happen to be ones I tend to not like much. Notable exceptions are Tikal (which I tend to do fairly well with) and Power Grid (which I usually score in the middle to high end, but not win), so I'm not sure what distinguishes the play of these games from the others.

All in all, though, I am just poor at strategy. This weakness extends to strategic-level wargames as well, so it's not a Euro thing - it's strategy in general.

This confuses me somewhat, as I don't do badly at tactical wargames, and there are many Euros which I'm pretty good at. I have noticed a definite trend in that I do well at games which are introduced for the first time and then slip in the scores with additional plays as the other players become familiar with the game. It seems that my own particular dash for gaming is dealing with the unexpected or the unfamiliar. Most of the time.

Anyhow - at some point in the future I'll have to try to piece together what it is about these specific games which make me a poor opponent vs. other games where I hold my own. It'll probably give me some insight into my own personality.

For the moment, though, I'll just buck up and adopt a fatalistically optimistic approach to deep strategy games - yeah, I may have a poor track record, but this time, I'll do better.

Attitude is everything, right?

(But good opinion polls don't hurt, either)

The Life Aquatic (Entdecker, Race for the Galaxy)

Five months ago, I went to a local math trade and played an oldie called Entdecker by Klaus Teuber. I liked it, but thought it was too long. Still, the mechanics stuck with me and so I figured I'd try to trade for it. And now, here it is...

Entdecker

Many comparisons to Carcassonne were made by the group throughout the explanation. I had the same feeling myself before I played the first time, but unlike the WAGSters, I didn't feel that way by the end.

Why?

There is a physical disconnect in Carcassonne. You draw a tile, and place it anywhere. Carcassonne is essentially an abstract, after all. In Entdecker, tile laying represents the exploration of the sea. You pick a spot to start, invest in your voyage and set sail. The tiles are placed as a representation of bringing your boat into uncharted waters. The tile matching mechanic may be the same as Carc, but being able to place it is not guaranteed. It's meant to complement the question mark tiles as a way to simulate the uncertainties of sea exploration. For me, the risks and rewards of exploration are well represented and it provides a distinctly different experience despite the tile laying similarities.

Also, it looks pretty cool as the board fills up.

The whole "discovery of the native tribes" aspect to the game helps to give the game another dimension which once again separates it from the lighter Carcassonne. (Don't get me wrong, I really like Carcassonne. In fact, I'd pick it over Entdecker given if I had to pick only one. I'm just saying that they are fairly different games)

In the first half of the game, we discovered a gigantic island which Bharmer dominated, launching him into the lead. As is often
the case in this type of game, his lead was attacked by the rest of us. His scouts exploring the native tribes were quickly outnumbered, stripping him of the endgame points. I won the game, mostly because my scouts gave me points.

I AM still concerned that those endgame points make the rest of the game unimportant. Otherwise, it's a good game and I'm glad I got it!

Also, with our group the game played in a very reasonable 1.5 hours. That made me happy.

Race for the Galaxy

We finished with another game of Race for the Galaxy. Not much to say except I had a hard time getting things going again. Kozure, on the other hand, seemed to be far more in control. Luch was just learning, but seemed to be doing well. It appeared that Kozure was way ahead, and Bharmer was firmly in second. That's how it ended, too, but I at least managed to come in third by playing a couple of 6 cards just as the game ended. Despite the fact I suck at it, I'm really enjoying this one.

Over the course of the game, it did occur to me that I do still miss some of the interaction of Puerto Rico. While I still feel that Race is much better in this regard than San Juan, I still miss the jockeying for limited real estate on the ships and trading house. Maybe an expansion will feature cards played to the centre of the table which multiple players can play to? I think that would be very interesting.

Drivin' the 5 (The Kaiser's Pirates, Railroad Tycoon: Rails of Europe)

Luch finally made it back. For at least one session, it was a party of five.

Drivin' the 5 (5 Wagsters?, Mazda 5? Swedish Betrayal?)

The Kaiser's Pirates

Since we didn't get a chance to play a full game last time, we tried again this week. It's supposed to be a 2-4 player game, but we couldn't see any reason why it wouldn't scale to 5. Having played, I don't think it made much of a difference.

So, how does it stack up after a second play? I'd say my feelings haven't really changed from the first attempt. The nature of most "Take that!" style games is that the results are mostly random. You play the game for the fun of playing, not because there is a deep layer of strategy involved. Most of these games rely on humour to get them by (ex: Munchkin, Killer Bunnies), The Kaiser's Pirates relies on a wargame veneer. As I said last week, the fact that every card has multiple uses helps to avoid the stretches of frustrating "waiting for the right card" that often happens in card games... in this case, no matter what the card text actually says you can usually at least use the card to make an attack as the English navy. Still, there are a number of factors which keep it from being a great game for me:

1) Drawing one card per turn isn't enough. It takes a couple of cards in tandem to get anything interesting going on, yet you can only draw a single card no matter what. This leads to either a lot of waiting or completely random "play the last card you drew" style play. Neither one of them feel like they work within the intentions of the game.

2) It's way too long for what it is. There is nothing that happens in the second half of the game which makes me feel like it's any different from the first. Without any sort of "arc", the long play time just felt repetitive.

(Although these two issues are by far the most serious problem of the game, they also seem rather easy to solve. When we play this next time, I suggested we simply draw two cards at the end of each turn instead of one, and drawing three cards if a player skips their turn. The game will play in half the time and fun stuff will be easier to accomplish)

3) Losing pirates isn't that hard, yet it can be devastating to your ability to succeed. I happened to get targeted a fair bit throughout the game, and therefore lost a fair number of ships. I realized that once your pirates are gone, they are very difficult to replace. Problem is, the only way to score points is to sink merchants and once your pirates are gone, so is your ability to score points. This seems wrong. (I know that shooting down pirates also scores points, but unless you have merchant ships, they don't count. Therefore, once you lose your pirates, you end up in a vicious cycle where you can only attack merchants for points but can't attack merchants because you have no pirates). The odds of this happening to a player are made worse by the fact that the easiest move, to attack using the english navy, can only be directed vs pirates AND pirates are worth 3-4 times the value of merchants. I'm not sure that my situation would happen in many games, but if it does it would feel kind of broken.

Anyway, despite my comments I would look forward to playing again with the modified drawing rules. As a shorter game with more cards in hand, I'm sure it would be fun.

Railroad Tycoon: Rails of Europe

Boy, as I wrote up my rant last week about how good of a year it was turing out to be for new games, I didn't expect I'd be writing here again with yet another hit. Rails of Europe is an expansion board for Railroad Tycoon and from our initial play I'd say it takes everything I enjoyed about RRT and strips away most of what annoyed me. I really liked the game before, but I love it with the expansion.

The board is now much more reasonably sized. There are no sections that you look at and wonder why anyone would go there. In fact, with five players the opposite is true... the whole play area felt like the north-east in the original board. Players are constantly bumping into each other and fighting for resources and stations into each city. It was an intense experience which felt superior in every way to the original. I imagine I'd only choose to play the original board again if playing with 6 players, or for variety I suppose.

Other minor changes also had a positive impact:

- The major lines are all available from the beginning, which takes that particular element of chance out of the game. Ultimately, I liked the change. It prevents a person from making an accidental winfall when the right card comes at the right time. Still, the downside is that there was the POTENTIAL in the earlier major line card mechanic to force players to look at the board in a new light, not to mention giving a player who's options were exhausted a new goal to pursue. With all the major lines known and static, a "best strategy" might emerge (although the random cube distribution does help prevent that). To keep things lively, it might be fun to randomly remove a few of them at the start of the game, just to see it's impact on strategy.

- The victory point track starts reducing income earlier. This means that the balancing mechanism kicks in at a time that it can actually have an impact. I know during our game, I was actually forced to time some cube deliveries so that they wouldn't cost me too much income. It was an added challenge which I enjoyed.

- Getting two barons at the start of the game, and picking one, is obviously a better way to handle them. I'll also suggest we do this on either map.

Anyway, I built a north-south network which went from Coppenhagen through Berlin to Rome and Naples. I upgraded my engine all the way to 7 and spent the game delivering 5-7 point deliveries due to fortuitous initial distribution and very lucky draws on new industry cards/ actions. Shemp was leading through most of the game, but his east-west tracks put him at odds with Bharmer and Luch, so I guess that slowed him down some. I overcame his lead on the last few turns and won the game.

It's worth mentioning that a couple of random moves by Luch wound up mattering quite a bit to Kozure. For lack of anything better to do with his last few turns, Luch kept building tracks to nowhere. Kozure, who had the baron looking to build the most links, ended up losing his bonus because of it.

Ah Luch, it's good to have you back.

Déja vu (In the Year of the Dragon, Race for the Galaxy, The Kaiser's Pirates)

Last week, we liked the new games so much, we wanted to play them again! (remember, we have game attention deficit disorder. This is big for us).

As an aside, this year is turning out to be very different for me for new games. 2007 was a year that brought a series of very good "niche" games into my collection. Last Night on Earth, Jungle Speed, Dungeon Twister, Nexus Ops, Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage, etc, are all games that I really enjoyed for what they are. They're fun, they have a place in my collection for the variety that they bring, but in the end my true love is heavier strategy games (i.e. El Grande, Taj Mahal, Princes of Florence, etc). I didn't play a single game of that type in 2007 that really did it for me. Even Blue Moon City, which is a very good strategy game by all accounts, is at most a middleweight. In contrast, we aren't even in the third month of 2008 and we've already played Perikles, In the Year of the Dragon and Race for the Galaxy... three games that I consider to be excellent gamer's games. I couldn't be happier.

Shemp joined us, so we were able to see how In the Year of the Dragon and Race for the Galaxy played with four.

In the Year of the Dragon

This is turning out to be a great game. I can't really say whether it's harder or easier with more players, but so far I'd say it's a bit of a wash. On one hand, there are fewer actions in each group so in some ways it can actually be easier to get what you want even if you aren't first in turn order. On the other hand, if you are LAST in turn order, you have a choice between paying 3 yuan or picking the single action left over by the other players. So, going from three to four has made it easier to be in 2nd place, and harder to be in 4th. With five, I bet being 3rd, 4th and 5th will be a little miserable.

Although the game doesn't change dramatically because of the order of the disasters, it changes just enough to shake things up. Sure, you can't allow yourself to fall behind on the VP engine if you hope to win so you probably can't totally ignore palaces/ courtisans and dragons but the rest will have to be considered on a game by game basis.

I noticed a similarity to Maharaja in the sense that on a given turn, there's a good chance all players are eyeing the same one or two actions (due to the order of upcoming disasters). Just like that game, the player with turn order advantage can take the easy route and prepare for the events as they come. Players who are going later on in the turn will lose if they spend the whole game chasing the leader... they have to prepare for the events in a different order or look for an alternate approach to getting VPs.

Anyway, I picked up a dragon, a courtisan and a third palace early and managed to keep turn order advantage throughout much of the game. Scores were mostly tight, but near the end the spread got a bit wider. Unlike last game, I didn't forget about the endgame points so I managed to keep the win. Bharmer fell back on the turn order track and paid a heavy price for it (he became a fireworks specialist as, turn after turn, fireworks were the single left over action he was forced to pick). Shemp did very well for his first game... he came in a rather close second if my memory serves.

Race for the Galaxy

What a nice surprise this is turning out to be. Race manages to be virtually identical to San Juan on the surface and yet be a very different game experience. With four, San Juan was a bit dry for me (because just about all the actions are chosen every round... making most rounds pretty samey). In Race, many rounds a few of the players pick the same action so phases definitely do get skipped frequently. Also, the wide variety of cards available in the base set allows even further variety between games. There's enough going on that the simple game engine it's based on becomes a fast yet meaty game that manage to avoid most of the things I typically dislike about themed card games.

I can't remember the name of my starting planet this time (epsilon?), but there was a dose of military and consumption in the opening hand. I became fixated on building a particularly cool 6 building and therefore fell behind on the cards I was playing. Kozure, on the other hand, was a machine. When he ended the game (with twelve cards played) I was still at eight.

The Kaiser's Pirates

This was a new game purchased recently by Kozure. It's a card game about pirates and the merchant ships they raided. Players look after three pirate ships and three merchants, and try to make as many points as possible by having their pirates attack and sink other player's merchants. The actual gameplay is fairly reminiscent of others we've played. It's essentially a "take that" style game, with the good and the bad which comes with the territory. A bad hand can probably screw you over, and the free for all nature of attacks could probably make it hard for a player who gets picked on to compete. The game has a couple of good ideas which try to overcome the inherent randomness of card games... the most important of which is that each card has multiple functions ensuring that there is typically at least one useful way to use each card. I thought it was cool that each ship has it's strength represented by a mix of die types (1d6, 1d8 and 1d10, for ex.), highest single roll determines the value, so you can get an idea of the odds but you'll never really know until the bones are rolled. A variety of attack types and special abilities are represented by a similar system.

We only got through a partial hand, so I can't really say too much about it. On the surface, I'd say I liked it about as much as Zero!, Airwar: Pacific or Naval War... similar war themed card games we've played in the past.