A bronze Medal for WAGS!

We received an honorable mention at the Gone Gaming awards!

Thanks to Gone Gaming for the consideration. We were surprised at the nomination, even moreso to place...

I hope that our session reports/ capsule reviews and opinions continue to be of some interest to the interweb, it's fun to know that there are people reading.

Choo-choo-choosing (Settlers of Catan, Railroad Tycoon)

Not only did JayWowzer, our occasional visitor from California, join us on this cold Toronto evening but so did Shamus… a brand new player! It's always great to meet new people, and I hope he enjoyed it enough to come back (he'll always be welcome, but WAGS can be an oppressive* and intimidating* place, so he may not want to!)

* WAGS is neither oppressive or intimidating, but we ARE geeky. Oppressive and intimidating sounds cooler, though.

Being new to the group (and german games in general), we started him off with the "mandatory german intro game"… Settlers of Catan. Kozure, JayWowzer and I set up the board and explained the rules. We used the suggested starting layout from the rules to level the playing field and ensure a balanced game for everyone. We also used the "tournament rules" I read about at BGG, starting everyone with a city and a village. Shamus seemed to catch on pretty quick, so we dove right in

One awkward aspect of introducing new players to eurogames is that you want them to have fun, so there is sometimes a sense that you might have to play "sub-optimally" so they don't get trashed. I shouldn't have worried... In his very first game, not only did Shamus play a very tight game BUT HE WON.

Impressive…. Most impressive.

Shamus won by building on his lucrative patches of land, connecting a few ports and establishing the largest army. JayWowzer built up the coast of Catan, running away with longest road and founding quite a few villages and cities along the way. Kozure was building his own little empire on the opposite side of the board (he made a run for longest road near the end but never made it). I started in the center and eventually was blocked from any paths for expansion. Still, I had 3 cities and 2 VP cards in hand, so I was hardly out of contention. I spent the endgame buying development cards in the hopes of surpassing Shamus' largest army or gaining a few more VP cards. When he won, it was close. All scores within 1-2 of winning.

Next up was Railroad Tycoon. By now Luch had arrived and Tili wanted to join us (baby Kozure had gone to sleep). I was initially concerned that a 6 player game would take too long, but the whole thing wrapped up in 3 hours including rules explanations!

Many of us had played at least once before. Shamus, of course, hadn't and JayWowzer only had experience with Age of Steam.

Last game I kept getting beaten to the punch by Kozure when attempting to get the operation card bonuses, so I resolved to be very aggressive on those this game. I started by bidding enough to go first and quickly grabbed the card which gave me two actions. With those two actions I built a link to (?) and made a delivery… netting me a bonus for making the first delivery AND for claiming the "Service Bounty" card (first delivery to that town). It was a very lucrative first turn which put me in the lead and I worked the rest of the game to stay there! (unfortunately, the other 5 didn't feel like letting that happen).

I next set my sights on the first delivery to Mobile and grabbed that soon enough. I was getting worried, though. The folks building up the East Coast were upgrading their engines and starting to make longer deliveries. At this rate, my lead would evaporate quickly and I wouldn't have much in the way to catch up.

As an aside: I may have been more effective than last game with the operations cards, but I was having some serious lapses with my track building. On a few occasions, I built less efficiently than I could (placing 2 tiles where I could have placed 1, etc). Lucky for me, on one particularly terrible mistake (I was laying 4 tracks where I only needed 2), JayWowzer "suggested" I should reconsider... Thanks!

While I spent the entire game connecting the mid to lower half of the board, Kozure, Shamus and JayWowzer continued to battle for control of the East Coast (Luch was also involved, but he started south and moved north as opposed to the rest of the group). Tili spent her time in disparate areas, focusing on the Detroit/ Toronto area and the South East. Some of the action eventually moved over to the Chicago area, but the big dollars never really made it there (and no one built a Western Link).

Hotels played a big part in the game. My Baltimore and Atlanta netted me quite a few points, and Shamus had a goldmine one in New York. Luch has the distinction of holding the record for most shares issued, ever (22). Kozure has the similarly dubious distinction of "most shafted this game", for having his attempt at completing the "Major Line" from Atlanta to (?) blocked by Luch. A double blow, as it also prevented him from potential long deliveries after the fact.

In the end, it was a race between myself and Shamus for the win. Clearly, this guy has a knack for these games! I did win, as I had fewer shares and a good setup for a large number of 5 link deliveries for the end run, but he was not far behind. Most of us didn't fulfill our Tycoon cards… I think the only exception was Tili (most money).

I enjoyed myself quite a bit. This is a great game to accommodate new and experienced players alike. The cards available and goods cube distribution really shape the game, making it develop differently each time so far. I was also pleasantly surprised that it works just as well with 6 as it did with 4. If they had only thought a bit more about the board (design and production values), and the functionality of some of the bits, this game could go from great to truly exceptional.

Since JayWowzer is the only WAGSter to have tried both this and Age of Steam, I hope he can chime in with some comments on his experience.

2005 was a good year

The WAGS group enjoyed a great gaming year in 2005. We managed to keep it up just about every week, and finally amassed quite a good total of games played.

126 games played.
58 different games.

Our role playing sessions tied with "High Society" for first place in games played (6 ea.) We were playing the RPG once a month for a while, so it's not surprising that it ranks high on the list. High Society, being a quick filler often played multiple times in a row, is also not a surprise (though I expect to see "For Sale!" in this spot next year).

Carcassonne (in various combinations of base game and expansions), comes next with 5.

(So far, pretty predictable)

The next games are a little surprising... Pueblo, Blokus, Colossal Arena and Puerto Rico are tied with 4 plays.

A good number of WAGS favorites make up the next list: For Sale!, Intrige, Pirate's Cove, Power Grid, Ra, Robo-Rally, Shadows over Camelot, Tower of Babel, Traders of Genoa, Unexploded Cow, Way Out West and Zero! have each been played 3 times.

39 other games have only been played once or twice.

Special Honours (According to me):

Standout game of the Year: Railroad Tycoon
Standout "new to me" game of the Year: Tikal, Intrige
Standout reprint of the Year: Ra, Robo-Rally

Game I really wish would see more table time: El Grande
Game which grew in my esteem in 2005: Domaine
Biggest Dissapointments: Arkham Horror, Shadows over Camelot (neither are BAD, but they both could have been GREAT)

I'm very curious to see what this list will look like a year from now... I'd say that myself and Kozure went on a game buying binge in 2005 that is unlikely to get repeated in 2006. My personal collection has nearly hit it's upper limit (hey you back there, stop laughing).

What games will continue to have the WAGS seal of approval?
Which will be relegated to "games we pull out once in a while for variety"?
What titles will dwindle in obscurity?

Let's see next year!

A GigaWak of Games (Carcassonne - The City, China x2, Pueblo, Formula Motor Racing x3, )

Something OLD: Pueblo
Something NEW: China
Something BORROWED: Formula Motor Racing
Something BLUE: Carcassonne - The City (ok, I'm cheating here... the original is in a blue box!)

I think we've set a new record for number of games played in a single WAGS evening... 7!

It was my pick this week. I really enjoyed our "Invasion of the Middleweight Euros!" evening in December, so I thought I'd try it again.

We started the evening with my new copy of Carcassonne - The City.

First off, it's a beautiful package (the box, in particular is very nice). The set comes with a promo pamphlet encouraging people to visit the town in France! I wonder... are they making the assumption that anyone who has enough cash to buy this deluxe set might be good targets for travel ads? (If so, it's really a shame that there's no real Catan!). It was a Christmas gift, and the obvious question was "is a Carc variant different enough from the original to be worth owning?"

I own the basic set and just about all the expansions. I quite like it for the simplicity of the original and the way the expansions each increase the complexity/strategy as desired (most of them are well conceived). Still, it has problems (and I don't mean the randomness): Roads are not well balanced, the farmers are fiddly and the endgame scoring can be tedious. On top of that, it's really much better with 2 than with 3-6.

At one point, I tried playing Hunters and Gatherers online to see if it improved on the original. There's a lot to like, particularly the way the "farmers" are scored (the hunters get points for every deer and mammoth in the field, minus one animal for each tiger which has been placed in the field). "Roads" (rivers) are better balanced with "cities" (forests). Finally, incentive to finish other player's forests is included in the base set through a "bonus tile" mechanic. It's a good game, and it does a good job of being a more interesting and better balanced game out of the box, with new mechanics which substantially change the "spirit" of the game (the deer vs tiger mechanic is overtly confrontational, and the bonus tiles can swing the fortunes on the board faster than the incremental nature of the original ever did). I hate to say it, but I thought the art was so bad that I honestly felt I'd never want to pull it out (the fact that a few of the bonus tiles seemed overly powerful and the added complication for newbies didn't help)

Carcassonne - The City seems closer to the base game in spirit. As always, the game mechanics continue to be basically the same (draw a tile, place it on the table and decide if you want to place a meeple on one of the features). In the beginning of the game, the three locations are quite familiar: 1) Roads 2) Markets (forests in the original) 3) Residential areas (Farms in the original). Effort has been made to make each strategy viable: Roads continue to score only 1 point per tile, but if it ever stretches to 4 tiles or more each tile is worth double. Markets can potentially show 3 different types of goods for sale, and the value of the market equals the number of tiles x the number of different goods in it. The residential districts are worth 2 points per market which surrounds it.

The most obvious change, in the beginning, is that tiles only need to match at the roads (a mechanic lifted from Carcassonne - The Castle, yet another previously released standalone version of the game). As the game progresses, subtler things begin to reveal themselves. The nature of the scoring mechanism for the roads and markets encourages players to end their opponent's scoring opportunities early before they are worth much. The distribution of the tiles & flexible placement rules seem to encourage smaller "fields", which are both easier to visualize and simpler to score.

The big twist are the city walls. The game is split into 3 rounds, and a few very different element are introduced once the 2nd round begins: City walls, towers and guards.

The tiles are split into 3 nearly equal piles. Once the first pile runs out, the first player to score points must place the first segment of the city wall. Every other player follows suit by placing a piece of wall, attached to the first one, along the perimeter of the tiles already placed on the table. The walls effectively limit expansion of the city and "finish" features on the board. Therefore, they can be used offensively to end a large market or road (or kill it before it's worth more than just a couple of points). In additon, meeples can be placed on a just placed wall as "knights". Knights score points for "seeing" certain types of buildings in the residential districts in a straight line from where they stand. The towers are an additonal oportuntiy for the the player who initiated the wall building to score a few points.

Round 3 is the same as round 2, except that the number of walls placed everytime a player causes points to be scored is doubled.

The game ends once the tiles run out, or once the city wall comes within 4 pieces of surrounding the city.

The end result is interesting. I appreciate that the game is better balanced, I enjoy that the rythm of the game changes as the rounds progress (indeed, at each step a new layer of things to consider is introduced), and I like that the scoring happens much more quickly at the endgame. For whatever reason, the whole thing works just as well as a multiplayer game as it does with 2 (not something I feel about the base game... I think it's the way the walls work, but I'm not sure).

Also, the whole things looks quite nice once completed. A lot of my coworkers were very interested in the game on the strength of the appearance alone! This, combined with the fact that the rules ramp up as the game progresses (rather than being more complex from the start as in Hunters and Gatherers) means the game can be quite approachable despite the added depth. One coworker bit immediately and wanted to play at lunch. He loved it.

So, is it worth owning if you've already got the original and lots of expansions? I'd say yes. Not a must buy unless you are really taken by the appearance (as I was), but solid nonetheless. I'd probably pick this as the better game to introduce to new players, so long as they are not really afraid of a little complexity. In the context of our WAGS group, I think that I still slightly prefer the base set (when played with King and Scout, Inns and Cathedrals and Traders and Builders).

Hmmm. That was a lot longer than I expected it to be!

I won the game. An unlikely tile placement wound up connecting me to Kozure's lucrative residential district. Also, I tried fairly hard to shut down my opponent's scoring oportunities before they became too valuable (my previous experience with the game gave me an advantage there). Still, it was close... I doubt I'll have any advantage next time.

We followed with 2 games of China, joined by Tili. I won't spend too much time here, but this play solidified my opinion that this is a very good (if unspectacular) strategy game with a surprisingly short play time. It was nice to see that Shemp managed a win while totally ignoring the advisors, as it proves there is more than one way to succeed.

Pueblo was played with all four sacred sites, using the advanced rules. Our Pueblo quickly became difficult to manage and "good" moves were few and far between. The location of the sacred sites effectively neutralized two corners of the board! I overbid for starting position and never quite recovered. Shemp and I were losing pretty badly through the game and it was a race between Luch and Kozure for "least proud" master builder. Luch seems to have a knack for the game... he was well protected through to the end and won.

We finished with 3 rounds of Formula Motor Racing... the silly (but very quick) Knizia racing game. Yet again, us humans were hopelessly outmatched by the non player cars (this keeps happening because we beat each other up and leave those cars alone). Luch had the lead in the first round (amongst human players), lost most of it in the 2nd, and had the choice to hand it to me or Shemp in the last round. He chose me, but that's a hollow victory. I say we call it a tie!

It's a stretch to call this an evening of middleweights, but we sure played a lot of games!

Blogging awards?

I accidentally found out that, somehow, we've been nominated for an award. It's at Gone Gaming, and it's for "Best Game Club Site".

I'm really happy to discover that someone actually reads our ramblings... Until I saw that, I pretty much thought it was just me reading, and occasionaly Kozure and the rest. Now, we've put a counter on the site out of curiosity!

Anyway, thanks for the nomination, but I have to ask: Who nominated us? I asked the rest of the group, and it wasn't them.

so...

Who?

(As I write this, it occurs to me it might be JayWowzer. Am I right?)

Cheap Game Alert! Cheap Game Alert!

Empire Games' Railroad Tycoon is being sold at the "Calendar Club" chain in the GTA area for $55 CDN. On top of this, the outlet I went to in the Eaton Centre had a 25% off all games sale - making the purchase a wallet-friendly $47.43 after taxes. That's Canadian dollars, folks!

This is a steal at $55, and highway (railway?) robbery at $47. If you like this game, or you think you might, grab it at your local "Calendar Club" outlet.

There are outlets in Yorkdale Mall, Eaton Centre, Cumberland Terrace, Scarborough Town Centre and elsewhere (including the Oakville Mall, whatever that's called). Ordinarily, I'm a big proponent of not buying from chain stores, but this is a great deal for a very good game.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.

Vinci. Vinki. Winky. Bananas. (Vinci, Santiago)

Sonja joined us again, and brought 2 new (to us) games in tow... Vinci and Santiago. These are two of her favorite games, so I was quite curious to try them (For Sale!, though a very different game, was a favorite of hers which has gone over extremely well).

We started with Vinci (pronounced "Vinky" or "Winky", depending on who you ask). It means "to be conquered", and the name is fitting! The gameboard shows Europe as unamed territories defined by their major resource (mountains, fields, etc). In addition, a few other descriptors, "ports" and "mines", are identified. A series of "characteristics" are randomly drawn and layed out in pairs along the top of the board. In turn, players must choose a pair of characteristics which will define their emerging civilization and then begin to spread their influence across the board (a focus on military and farming, for ex.). Points are earned acording to the size of the civ, and for how well the civ matches up with some of the characteristics the player chose for it (a nation of farmers gets bonus points for controlling fields, for example). As the game progresses, players must decide when their civilization has reached it's zenith, and then decide to put it into "decline". This allows the player to pick a new pair of characteristics and start a new nation. The old nation continues to provide points until it is wiped of the board. This keeps going until the game ends. The whole thing is pretty abstracted, as the capacity for a nation to expand is the only thing which is described, and that is represented solely by a supply of little wooden discs. Seeing a game of Vinci is very similar to watching a number of coloured ameoba rather rapidly growing and contracting across the board.

The game was definitely interesting. Sonja, having played several times before, was much better at choosing her nation's characteristics, and cycling them for maximum VPs. She took over the center of the board and held it for quite a while. Kozure was last in turn order, and had a difficult start since the board was already pretty congested by his turn. I played my timing pretty badly, and at one point I was completely eliminated from the board! (I took solace in the fact that I was still in 3rd place, but with no source of points that was pretty short lived). Lucky for me, this is not a player elimination game... On my turn, I just selected another pair of characteristics and started a new civilization (I beleive my last one was defined by "Barbarians" and "Espionage"... an advantage in numbers and the ability to take out a large army with few soldiers). Luch got a good run out of some "Port" territories and came very close to catching up to Sonja, but ultimately Kozure had a very lucrative last turn and came in second. I was dead last.

I thought that Vinci was a very good game. The twin characteristics encourage players to look at the board differently for each combination they play. The expansion mechanics are simple enough that things move quickly for a game of such "scope". "Kill the Leader" tactics dominate the second half of the game, but the fact that players start new civs whenever they want and score their points immediately ensures that the game can't help but move forward. A minor issue I have is that things are SO abstracted and simplified that I never really felt I had time to identify with any of my nations. For a game with such a compelling topic, that's a bit of a shame. Still, the game was fun, so I can't fault it too badly!

I'm pretty sure it was well liked by the group. Kozure said he preferred it to El Grande! I don't see the connection, myself (and I definitely prefer El Grande)...

Santiago was next.

This is a game where players auction for goods to plant in a field (banana plants, potato seeds, etc), and ultimately win for producing the most valuable crops. A valuable crop is defined by it's size (a continuous set of 7 banana plants is worth more than 7 plants spread out across the board). The twist is that every turn, the player who bid the LEAST is in charge of determining which plants will get watered (termed "the overseer"). Predictably, plants without water eventually dry up and die. The game, therefore, revolves around evaluating the opportunities for various crops on the board, bidding accordingly to pick the right crops at the right time, and then bribing the "overseer" enough to make sure your efforts don't go to waste.

It's a simple enough system, and the bribing aspect makes the play interesting (it provides cash to the cash poor, and keeps runaway leaders in check... unless they are very persuasive!). Nothing groundbreaking, but player interaction was good and things moved along well (and any game with a built in screwage factor is always fun). For whatever reason, I lump this game with "China"... a modest game , but one that does what it's trying to do simply, cleanly and effectively (I'm not saying they are similar games, just that I associate them in this way). Not the kind of thing that would ever be in my top 10, but I could see them getting lots of play.

Unfortunately, my game was cut short (had to leave early). I wasn't able to finish the game, but what I played seemed promising enough. The next day, I was told I managed to virtually tie Shemp despite my absence for the second half of the game! Not sure what went so horribly wrong for him, and he's not offering to tell me....

Vinci: 8
Santiago: 7.5 (though not based on a full game)

I'm gonna build my track annoying! (Railroad Tycoon, Diamant)

Happy New Years!

Not surprisingly, our first WAGS session of the year saw new games received and/ or purchased for the holidays. Railroad Tycoon was a present I received from my wife, and I was REALLY looking forward to trying it out. It was Shemp's pick, and he had envisioned a train themed evening including RT and Ticket to Ride (with a call for snacks that were "easy to transport, like trail mix").

We layed the whole thing out. I had been told that the board was big, but Kozure's table isn't exactly small... Unfortunately, it still didn't fit! The width of the board hung over by about 2 inches. I had also heard about the difficulty in distinguishing blue and purple cities. Oddly, we didn't have too much trouble, the problem seemed to be that Eagle used a dark purple for blue and a magenta for purple. What confused us was that the purple cubes were virtually identical in colour to the blue cities! I don't think it really led to any errors, but we were certainly checking things twice as we played.

No matter, the game was FUN. The theme of railroad empire building is very succesfully realized in the game... Decisions regarding where to lay track, how to assess the state of supply and demand on the board, when to upgrade engines, whether to issue shares or wait, etc results in a very engaging game. The cards and "tycoon" roles seem to successfully create variety and tension in the game. All this, and the result is still extremely approachable. I think Kozure summed it up best: The game is simple without being simplistic.

As the rules warned us not to let the North East be controlled by a single player, all of us but Luch jumped to that corner to start. I snagged a New York - Albany - Boston - New Haven route early on (with the Boston Hotel), and felt very comfortable in my position. However, Kozure made very shrewd bids and kept stealing bonus cards from under my nose, giving him an early and comfortable lead. Meanwhile, Shemp picked up the New York hotel (dramatically impacting my prospects for deliveries in that corner) and built a terribly expensive link across the mountains towards Toronto. Luch set up in the South-East and expanded without much opposition, picking up a good number of bonus cards very cheaply because of it. Before long, I was last and so I tried to make up for it by trying out the "Western Link" feature (encouraged by the fact that my "tycoon" card required one for bonus points). I didn't plan ahead very well, however, and built a rather direct 2 link path from Chicago to Desmoines. I therefore only had a steady stream of 2 point deliveries to show for my $30 000... not enough to catch up (and made worse by the fact that Shemp had crossed over to Chicago as well, and was benefitting far more from the generated Western Link cubes than I was). Shemp aslo managed to accomplish the long route from New York to Kansas City, giving him 20 points! Luch continued his domination of the south, grabbing many points along the way. Ultimately, though, Kozure had the biggest trains and the longest routes. He pulled in a lot of points on very few shares.

He won by quite a margin.

It was a great game, and I'm definitely looking forward to a rematch! (fun fact: Kozure had only 3 shares at the end of the game, Luch had 4, I had 5, and Shemp had 16!!!! Still, he did something right because he came in 2nd...)

The game didn't take too long considering it was our first (a little over 2 hours), but between our late start and eating it was already 10:15pm. We didn't have time for Ticket to Ride, so I pulled out Diamant. I had purchased this in anticipation of our New Year's Eve party, where lighter games for large groups would be very useful. It turned out to be a hit, and the short playing time makes it easy to slip in when it's getting late.

Diamant is a "push your luck" type game where players take on the role of intrepid miners on the search for gems in a dangerous set of 5 caves. The trick of the game is that for every card which is turned up, all players must secretely and individually decide if they will get out or keep going. Getting out means that all gems aquired are permanently kept, but staying in means potentially getting quite a bit more. If the same disaster card turns up twice, any players still in the cave lose everything they've accumulated so far!

I quite like this game. It does what it sets out to do perfectly... Be fun and fast. It's all about managing luck, and outguessing your opponents. There are a couple of mechanics which come toghether to make this really work:
1) The simultaneous "in" or "out" decision keeps the game fast even with 8 players.
2) The gems left behind acts as incentive for people to go back, adding another level of things to think about when deciding whether to leave or push on.
3) The fact that gems are shared equally means that there is the real potential for a huge score if everyone pulls out but 1 and a large gem tile is pulled up. This "carrot" led many unfortunate adventurers to their doom.

It all add up to a simple, chaotic 15 minute game which feels a little like gambling, where reading the intentions of your opponents and pushing your luck can make you win big or totally blow it. Highly enjoyable for what it is... We played 4 times!

Railroad Tycoon: 9
Diamant: 8