An interesting session this week...
We played two new games, and they both shared a common theme: Making it look like you are cooperating while in fact pursuing your own goals.
First up, the "blockbuster" release of the summer: Shadows over Camelot by Days of Wonder. For a guy who started off unimpressed by Days of Wonder (after Ticket to Ride and Mystery of the Abbey), I've gone on to purchasing and enjoying quite a few titles! (Ticket to Ride: Europe, Memoir '44, Pirate's Cove and Shadows over Camelot). does this one live up to the hype? I say yes.
Shadows over Camelot belongs in a very small niche: cooperative boardgames. After you remove hack and slash type miniature games (Doom, Betrayal at House on the Hill, etc), the only other game of this type that I know of is Lord of the Rings by Reiner Knizia. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the game is held up against it's famous cousin as it gets reviewed. In fact, as we sat down to play Shemp commented on how he was looking forward to playing this one particularly to see if it was cooperative games he hated, or just Lord of the Rings (I don't share his opinion on LotR, as you'll see below).
The production values for the game are quite high. The boards are nicely illustrated and lots of little plastic miniatures are included. A few minor issues: The boards are unecessarily different sizes, making their layout on a table a little messy. Also, the grail quest board doesn't actually fit in the box... an odd oversight; The way the main board folds has already caused creases at the inside corners; The rules could have been better organized, making it difficult to locate certain pieces of information. In addition, certain design decisions are questionable, like listing all but one abilities of Merlin cards on the card... making it extremely likely to miss.
Game play takes a bit of explaining, but once it starts it's fairly straightforward. I'm undecided about the types of groups I'd be looking to introduce this one to... It would likely take an enthusiastic group of non-gamers to want to take this on, but it shouldn't be too difficult if they wanted to learn.
The basics are simple: Do something bad (draw and play an evil card, add a seige engine to the attack against Camelot or lose a life point) and follow it with something good (Go to a quest, play a good card, etc). That's pretty much it. What makes this game hard to win (really hard, as it turns out), is that the sheer number of quests, and the speed at which the odds stack against the players, is quite difficult to manage. To top it off, one of the players MIGHT be a traitor, purposely making bad moves and wasting resources to make it even less likely that good will triumph. The inclusion of the POSSIBILITY of a traitor in any individual session seems to be the game's defining characteristic (along with the cooperative play), and it truly does add an interesting dimension to the game.
Most quests revolve around playing "fight" cards in the requested order or combination (a straight for the saxons and picts, two pairs for the Jousting tournament, etc), with the hopes of completing the required set in time. The quests themselves are an interesting mix of solo and group quests, quests which happen once and then dissapear and those to reoccur endlessly until the game ends. A few quests lead to items which can aid the characters (such as excalibur, which makes a knights attacks more powerful). There are many difficult decisions here: The grail quest is very difficult once evil starts making progress, so initially it seemed that completing these typess of quests early made sense. However, a completed quest increases the danger of the seige assault on Camelot dramatically since any evil cards drawn which would have added to a completed quest turns into a new seige engine instead! It will take a few more games to figure out a winning strategy...
For the curious, Shemp's final analysis was that he quite enjoyed this game (as did the whole group, I think). Therefore, it was Lord of the Rings he hated, not cooperative games! Me... as much as I like Shadows over Camelot, I still prefer Lord of the Rings. The corruption track from that game remains one of the most elegant, thematic and clever mechanics in any of my games (standing a few steps away from Sauron near the end of the game creates a wonderful tension and sense of impending doom). Also, the episodic nature of the system, with various scenarios and much needed reinforcements which need to be aquired along the way make the quet truly feel epic and daunting (and fosters a unique sense of camaraderie and cooperation along the way).
As good as Shadows over Camelot is, I find it less exciting to accumulate white swords at the round table... despite the fact that it is the most important quest on the board, it is the least memorable and quite disjointed from the action going on. The quests themselves are a little underwhelming since they boil down to playing a poker hand over a series of turns (an odd mechanic which doesn't tie in very well with the theme of the game, in my opinion). Also, the fact that all hell breaks loose on all fronts at the same time means that there is no "progression" to the game... it's all one long episode. Luckily, the mix of perpetual quests vs one offs changes the feeling of the game as it goes (mostly in the sense that as the one time quests are finished, the seige engines start coming fast and furious). Also, the Traitor throws a very interesting psychological twist to the game (maybe at the expense of the group camraderie, but that's okay)
The group didn't fare too well in our first two attempts... Although I was the traitor in the first game I can't claim any responsibility for the win... the knights ran from quest to quest in a fruitless attempt to stem the tide of evil. Ultimetely, the dragon did us in. In the second game, we agreed to focus more and finish of quests early. We complete Excalibur right away, and got quite far on the grail quest... but then we realized that the price of completing a quest early is quite high: seige engines began overunning the kingdom and we could not keep up. Had a great time trying, though!
The second game of the night was a "new to us" game called Pueblo. I picked this up because two of my favorite games are by Wolfgang Kramer, and Blokus has been a big hit with just about everyone I've introduced it to. Obviously, I was hoping that the two would mesh well in this game and produce another hit. Pueblo is a much simpler game than SoC, where players are supposedly working toghether to build a Pueblo under the watchful eye of the tribe's chief. Everyone has a number of blocks of their colour, and one less neutral blocks. Each turn a block is played from the players supply. The chief is looking for signs of the builders pride (blocks of the player's colour) and will punish that player every time he sees it! the strategy, therefore, is to hide your coloured blocks behind neutral ones or other player's blocks. Pretty straightforward, and quite fun. It can be a bit of a mind bender to figure out how to place the blocks, but it's not exactly a brain burner either. Shemp demonstrated his superior grasp of spatial logic and soundly trounced us (although Luch was in the running until the Chief's final walkaround...). I played this with my mom when I first bought it and she thought is was very good as well, so I think it will have a wide appeal.
Shadows over Camelot: 8
Pueblo: 7
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Egypt, We Hardly Knew Ye...
After a somewhat prolonged hiatus (due in no small part to the birth of my new son), we made it back for the final(?) chapter of our Beyond the Supernatural RPG campaign. So, of course, the big question is: Did we prevent the destruction of Egypt? Of the world? Did the supernatural evils cross through the portal and enslave all of humanity?!!!
Can't rightly say, actually.
What I CAN say, is that the horrible die rolling which plagued our characters last session was replaced this time with VERY good luck. When Stan tried to do something, it often actually worked (Highlight: He was trying to hack off a vampire's head with a hunting knife, it turned into a bat and tried to fly away, Stan bit it's head off before it could, and then spit it out at a startled nearby vampire). When Helmut rolled initiative, he often went first (to put this in context, I don't think he had EVER gone first before this night). When Sam fired his gun, he rolled a hell of a lot of 20s.
The session started out with the characters in dire straights. All three were terribly wounded. The vampires were corralling them in a side tunnel while deKoonig, the head vampire, went off to complete the ritual which would open the portal to the big demons from beyond. In a bold, risky and (most of all) desperate attempt Helmut and Sam attacked the vampire guards in order to create a distraction so that Stan could escape with Professor Aziz. Stan and the professor rushed to the site of the ritual in order for Aziz to conduct his own counter-ritual, presumably to either shut down the gate or capture the demon (we didn't know which). Stan did his best to keep the vampires away, but he was quite outmatched (and outwitted. Note to Stan: if you have only a small amount of holy water, don't risk it by holding your hand out and saying "I have holy water here"). Luckily, Sam and a surprisingly quick Helmut came to help as things were getting sticky. Helmut's fire bombs were proving very effective, and Stan was having some luck sawing heads of of the vampires. In a bit of awful luck, when Stan managed to drop the container of holy water directly into deKoonig's mouth, hoping to burn him up from within, deKoonig managed to swallow it completely unharmed!!! (he rolled a 20 on his poison save). Eventually, the creatures did get to the professor and killed him before he could finish the ritual. Helmut, using his genius ability in Lore, managed to complete the ritual on his own, just as the evil ritual was completing and the gate was opening.The heros were surrounded by a circle of white light as a result of Helmut's incantation, and they moved forward and collided this aura with the evil darkness which was spreading.
There was a blast. Then there was darkness.
Then there was a field, mushrooms, a strange man... and no Egypt.
Stan could sense that wherever he was, it was a place with far more magical energy than the Earth he knew. Whatever the outcome of the incident in Egypt, Stan, Sam and Helmut were no longer around to see it. This was a different place, and quite possibly a new beginning.
With a campaign 10 years in the making now at a close, we called it a night for the RPGing. I had a great time playing it, and I want to thank Shemp again for being the GM. Stan McCormick, Auto Mechanic and Ghost Hunter, will always be one of my favorite characters.
We still had about an hour before we had to go, so Luch pulled out his new copy of Bohnanza and we gave it a whirl.
Bohnanza is a card game about planting beans. Players have to plant the most profitable crops possible, and must trade with other players in order to maximize their opportunities. Once the deck of cards is run through three times, the game ends and the richest player wins. The game system is quite clever in a few ways:
1) Players can only plant two varieties of beans at one time (three later in the game). The goal is to collect as many of that card as possible since the payout increases the more cards are in the set. The problem is that the mechanic of the game forces players to plant the first card in their hand every round... if there's no room for the card in an existing patch, one of the them has to be uprooted and thrown away (whether it's worth money yet or not). The only way to get rid of a card from your hand that you don't want to plant is to trade it away. This mechanism leads to constant trade from all players and is very effective at keeping all players involved and interested at all times (no matter who's turn it is).
2) When crops are cashed in, a number of cards from that set are kept as money. This effectively reduces the number of cards of that variety as the game progresses. There are so many varieties that it's hard to keep track of them all, but knowing what's out there and what isn't is a big advantage when planning the crops to pursue.
Although the theme is quite silly, there is a certain level of skill needed to understand what to trade, how to plan ahead and when to negotiate. I thought it was quite a good game, but I don't think I'd ask my sister to play it. As it turns out, beginners luck was on my side and I managed a win, but the game was pretty close and it felt tight right to the end!
Rating:
Bohnanza: 7.5
Can't rightly say, actually.
What I CAN say, is that the horrible die rolling which plagued our characters last session was replaced this time with VERY good luck. When Stan tried to do something, it often actually worked (Highlight: He was trying to hack off a vampire's head with a hunting knife, it turned into a bat and tried to fly away, Stan bit it's head off before it could, and then spit it out at a startled nearby vampire). When Helmut rolled initiative, he often went first (to put this in context, I don't think he had EVER gone first before this night). When Sam fired his gun, he rolled a hell of a lot of 20s.
The session started out with the characters in dire straights. All three were terribly wounded. The vampires were corralling them in a side tunnel while deKoonig, the head vampire, went off to complete the ritual which would open the portal to the big demons from beyond. In a bold, risky and (most of all) desperate attempt Helmut and Sam attacked the vampire guards in order to create a distraction so that Stan could escape with Professor Aziz. Stan and the professor rushed to the site of the ritual in order for Aziz to conduct his own counter-ritual, presumably to either shut down the gate or capture the demon (we didn't know which). Stan did his best to keep the vampires away, but he was quite outmatched (and outwitted. Note to Stan: if you have only a small amount of holy water, don't risk it by holding your hand out and saying "I have holy water here"). Luckily, Sam and a surprisingly quick Helmut came to help as things were getting sticky. Helmut's fire bombs were proving very effective, and Stan was having some luck sawing heads of of the vampires. In a bit of awful luck, when Stan managed to drop the container of holy water directly into deKoonig's mouth, hoping to burn him up from within, deKoonig managed to swallow it completely unharmed!!! (he rolled a 20 on his poison save). Eventually, the creatures did get to the professor and killed him before he could finish the ritual. Helmut, using his genius ability in Lore, managed to complete the ritual on his own, just as the evil ritual was completing and the gate was opening.The heros were surrounded by a circle of white light as a result of Helmut's incantation, and they moved forward and collided this aura with the evil darkness which was spreading.
There was a blast. Then there was darkness.
Then there was a field, mushrooms, a strange man... and no Egypt.
Stan could sense that wherever he was, it was a place with far more magical energy than the Earth he knew. Whatever the outcome of the incident in Egypt, Stan, Sam and Helmut were no longer around to see it. This was a different place, and quite possibly a new beginning.
With a campaign 10 years in the making now at a close, we called it a night for the RPGing. I had a great time playing it, and I want to thank Shemp again for being the GM. Stan McCormick, Auto Mechanic and Ghost Hunter, will always be one of my favorite characters.
We still had about an hour before we had to go, so Luch pulled out his new copy of Bohnanza and we gave it a whirl.
Bohnanza is a card game about planting beans. Players have to plant the most profitable crops possible, and must trade with other players in order to maximize their opportunities. Once the deck of cards is run through three times, the game ends and the richest player wins. The game system is quite clever in a few ways:
1) Players can only plant two varieties of beans at one time (three later in the game). The goal is to collect as many of that card as possible since the payout increases the more cards are in the set. The problem is that the mechanic of the game forces players to plant the first card in their hand every round... if there's no room for the card in an existing patch, one of the them has to be uprooted and thrown away (whether it's worth money yet or not). The only way to get rid of a card from your hand that you don't want to plant is to trade it away. This mechanism leads to constant trade from all players and is very effective at keeping all players involved and interested at all times (no matter who's turn it is).
2) When crops are cashed in, a number of cards from that set are kept as money. This effectively reduces the number of cards of that variety as the game progresses. There are so many varieties that it's hard to keep track of them all, but knowing what's out there and what isn't is a big advantage when planning the crops to pursue.
Although the theme is quite silly, there is a certain level of skill needed to understand what to trade, how to plan ahead and when to negotiate. I thought it was quite a good game, but I don't think I'd ask my sister to play it. As it turns out, beginners luck was on my side and I managed a win, but the game was pretty close and it felt tight right to the end!
Rating:
Bohnanza: 7.5
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