I Build, I Bleed, I Barter (Carcassonne - The City, Jyhad CCG and Santiago)

Well, it finally happened. The strike which was keeping my wife off course for nearly a month has finally ended. Good news for her, but bad news for gaming! The month off from WAGS I spoke of earlier will finally happen.

Lucky for me, it was my pick.

While waiting for Kozure, four of us played Carcassonne the City (Luch, Shemp, Sonja and I). Sonja hadn't played, but she was familiar with Carc Hunters and Gatherers, so she caught on pretty quick. The abstraction of the game defies session reporting... but let's just say that Shemp showed a knack for picking the right walls to guard. He won.

With Kozure ready and willing, I broke out the Jyhad CCG (now known as "Vampire: The Eternal Struggle" CCG).

*Edit*
To those not familiar with the game, it is a collectible card game (CCG) where each player takes the role of a Methuselah (an ancient and powerful Vampire) vying for ultimate control by destroying the influence of his opponents (measured in "blood pool"). Everyone has two decks: the first holds the cast of vampires which the Methuselah will use as pawns and the second holds cards representing the various actions those vampires may take. As the game was designed for multiplayer from the ground up, a number of design decisions help to keep the game from devolving into a slugfest where the least involved player inevitably wins. First is a "Predator - Prey" mechanic which forces a player to focus most of his atention to the player on his/her left. This means that your forces must be balanced to be offensive enough towards your prey while being defensive enough towards your predator at all times. It also means that any player more than one seat away from you is potentially your ally, since the pressure they place on your predator or prey makes life easier on you. Of course, things can't get too friendly, because as players are eliminated that player who used to be 2 seats away might now be your new predator or prey! Finally, a well implemented political system allows certain referendums to take place which can effect the whole table at once (and this is one of the key places where short term alliances across a table can really pay off).

The basic turn order works as follows:

1. Untap

2. The Methuselah can play a MASTER card, if he/she has any. This represents the Methuselah taking DIRECT action in the world, rather than through a minion.

3. The Methuselah can direct his minions to take action:
A damaged vampire can hunt to replenish him/herself
It can attempt to bleed his Methuselah's Prey
It can call a political action
It can equip itself with equipment or a retainer
It can engage an ally (non-vampire minion, like a werewolf or street gang)
An "ACTION" card can be played and the vampire does what the card says

4. The Methuselah transfers up to 4 points from his/ her blood pool (the "life" total of the player) to uncontrolled vampires he has waiting to enter the game. For this reason, a player must constantly balance his/ her well being with the need to employ minions in order to survive and thrive. (side note: blood pool is extremely hard to replenish, and is also the currency for playing MASTER cards, equiping minions, etc. Since being reduced to 0 blood pool eliminates a player from the game, these expenses must be carefully considered... it's not uncommon for a player to spend a good portion of the game teetering on oblivion)

ACTION MODIFIER cards can be played by the acting player to alter the action, and REACTION cards can be played by another player to counter the action (to be specific, the player's minions are playing those cards).

ACTIONS can be blocked. Actions have an associated STEALTH rating, and if the target METHUSELAH can muster enough INTERCEPT to match they can stop the action from happening. For this reason, STEALTH and INTERCEPT are the most fundamental ACTION MODIFIERS and REACTION CARDS.

If an action is succesfully blocked, the acting vampire and the blocking vampire enter combat. Combat has it's own subsystem, but all cards played are COMBAT cards. Vampires first determine range, then exchange strikes, and then determine if the combat will go to another round. Combat doesn't necessarily end with a defeated vampire.

* end of edit to add game description *

This game holds a special place in my heart because back in university I started playing it as soon as it came out. It quickly replaced Magic as my CCG of choice (I had also played Magic CCG, Illuminati CCG, Shadowrun CCG, Star Wars CCG and Dr. Who CCG). I lived with Luch at the time and we played it pretty much every chance we had. I wound up amassing a pretty large collection of cards and making quite a number of very good decks. At the time, Kozure and Shemp also played on occasion, but never got into it as much as we did.

Now, 10 years later, the introduction of Vampire: Prince of the City rekindled my interest to make decks and play again. I still counted it as one of my favorite games, despite it's long moratorium... I was very curious to see how it would go.

The answer is: Like a lead ballon.

Jyhad is a wonderful game on many levels. The game mechanics are very good. The theme is very well integrated into the game. There is real tension. The multiplayer aspect is extremely well implemented. Sadly, there are three very big downfalls:
1) The rules, though individually clear and straightforward, are complex due to sheer volume.
2) The game features player elimination.
3) The game is pretty long.

Now, when you combine a game that has lots of rules with the inherent complexities of a CCG, you wind up with quite a beast. Each card must be read and understood. Many have a fair bit of text on them, with different results in different circumstances. Most, by their very nature, are intended to allow something not normally allowed by the rules. That's a lot to take in. Make it a 5 player game, and it gets even more complex! Me and Luch were still pretty comfortable. Kozure didn't comment much, so I don't really know, but Shemp said he wasn't quite comfortable and Sonja was obviously buried in information overload. She had never played a CCG before, and it didn't help that I let her play a commercial preconstructed deck without being terribly familiar with it... The Ravnos deck she played turned out to be heavily defensive and reliant on tricky cards to get their job done.

But like I said, there is so much to admire! The central mechanic of giving up your own life essence to influence your minions (and other such things) is brilliant. The Predator/ Prey relationship gives order to the chaos which can result from multiplayer CCGs. That being said, the political system prevents the players from ever being able to ignore the players they are not directly involved with... "My enemy's enemy is my friend" is a concept which can really be turned to your advantage in Jyhad through the various referendums which come and go. The rules and card types do a great job of building a slow tension as everyone jockeys for position while hanging on to a very slim lifeline.

Our game pitted several clan specific decks against each other. The Nosferatu (me) preyed on the Ravnos (Sonja), who preyed on The Lasombra (Kozure), who preyed on the Brujah (Shemp), who preyed on the Tremere (Luch), who preyed on me.

Things were shaping up well. I started out quickly with a 4 capacity vampire, who soon equipped with a set of hand claws for increased combat damage and found a handy hunting ground (through a master card I played). I then influenced a larger minion to the table… a prince no less, and got ready to start doing some damage. Meanwhile, the other clans were readying their minions. There was a brutal battle between the Brujah and the Tremere which saw the 6 Tremere vampire reduced to 0 through 2 shots by a 22 magnum loaded with manstopper rounds. I managed to tear up one of Sonja’s big hitters myself, sending it to torpor after a few rounds of “growing furies” and the like. My referendum to force all players to lose 1 blood pool for every tapped vampire was also successful… Kozure, being neither my predator or my prey, had little to lose backing my position and the motion carried. We both lost 1 and the others lost 2-3 (to those who haven’t played the game, that difference may seem low, but every point is important as it’s not uncommon to spend a good chunk of the game trying to hold on with +/- 5 blood pool left!).

Although Shemp’s deck was doing fairly well, it could not do anything to prevent the stealthy Lasombra. One turn before I was going to eliminate Sonja, Kozure took out Shemp. Since the game was going long, and some weren’t really comfortable enough with the system to enjoy it, we called it at that point. Despite the good things going on, it was clear we weren’t firing on all cylinders. I guess it was too much too soon.

I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t a success (though for me, I can definitely say the magic is still there)

We had a quick conversation on our preferences for types of complexity afterwards. It was very interesting! As I said before, CCGs are complex by their very nature because no matter how simple the rules are you are faced with a hand of cards and each has an effect which can change the environment, nature of rules and play. That said, each game system is likely to highlight different complexities.

Let’s take Jyhad and compare it to Illuminati CCG and Shadowrun CCG (since those are the other CCGs we play on occasion)

In Jyhad, there are many rules to cover the many phases and aspects of the game. It is rules complex.
In Illuminati, there are also a fair number of rules, but they tend to be variations on a central mechanic so it’s not too hard to pick up the basics. It’s rules moderate.
Shadowrun is a little more like Jyhad. There are several phases and subsystems, with cards specific to each. Still, it's significantly simpler overall.

In Jyhad, Your individual decisions are not to overwhelming, because you tend to be limited by the situation on the table and the cards in your hand. Once you understand the rules, gameplay is pretty straightforward (and the system has very few ambiguities, which is nice). Internalizing the rules is the main challenge.
In Illuminati, a fair bit of effort is required to understand what is on the table at a given time. There are countless modifiers through the cards in your hand, the cards on the table, the current “New World Orders”, etc. To complicate things further, on most turns any other player is free to get involved. Gameplay cannot be simplified without accepting that modifiers will be missed (that's probably the point, but it feels wrong to me). Typically, after trying to determine the possible outcome of a possible move, I give up and resort to "What the hell, let's see what happens".
In Shadowrun, you neither have too much to consider, nor much difficulty determining what to do on a round. Unfortunately, instead of resulting in a better game than both the other entries it kind of feels a little bland. It's a good game, but the least engaging of the three for me.

Since I am typically willing to absorb a lot of rules so long as the game plays smoothly afterwards, Jyhad suits me fine. Illuminati, on the other hand, I typically find overwhelming (though still enjoyable). Put a different way, once you "get" the Jyhad system, there isn't much to it. I feel I can focus on my objectives, weigh my options, try to manipulate the table, etc. Picking my action is an important decision, but figuring out the outcome is simple. In Illuminati, I will always have to stop and read all the cards on the table and do the math every turn (as does anyone else who wants to get involved). It's the same issue I had with Arkham Horror... I need to draw info from too many sources at one time to figure out what's going on at any given time. There are too many rules which need to be remembered and taken into consideration AT THE SAME TIME. More often than not, something gets forgotten. Again, in Illuminati I think that's part of the point, it's a humorous game after all. In Arkham Horror, it's just a problem (IMHO).

I’ll definitely try to bring this out again, but maybe with a smaller group and strictly with the decks I made up (as they were meant to be simpler than the preconstructed ones). Hopefully the audience will still be willing!

We finished off with a game of Santiago. I angled for a big potato farm, but didn’t quite make it. For a while, I was a contender! (I blew any chance I had in the second last round by going high on a bid and still winding up third… leaving me broke and with no good plantation to show for it). Luch was looking good with a few big stakes in a few fields, but in the end it was Shemp who carried it on the strength of some good representation in many fields of varying worth. On an amusing note, Sonja was endlessly perturbed by our group’s lack of interest in bribes. We all typically shunned the money and went for the strategic move on the board… which not only makes us very different than her other gamer friends but also pretty cheap (of course, if she thinks we are cheap at Santiago, she should see us at Traders of Genoa!).

See you in a month!

Guillotine, Royal Turf, Louis XIV, Theophrastus.

Quick one:

Guillotine: A very light game about choping people's heads off. Basically, a "take that" type game which takes place over 3 "days" (hands). Each "day" the dealer lays out a string of nobles to be executed. On your turn, you have the option of playing one card before the noble at the front of the line gets executed (you get fame points for having done the deed). Of course, cards allow the order of the line-up to be changed, and other shenanigans. For fast, light, easy fun this is a very good game.
I can imagine that the theme might be awkward to introduce, however...

Royal Turf: This game is much better when played by the correct rules. By rolling first, and THEN picking which horse to move, the game ceases to be completely random. A good, light game.

Louis XIV: I'd heard so much about this one, I'm glad we finally tried it. Thematically, we are dealing with players trying to gain favours from the varous nobles in the court of Louis XIV. Mechanically, it felt a lot like a mash-up between El Grande and Traders of Genoa. From El Grande, there are elements of area control and influence token management. On the other hand, the resource collecting, "missions" oriented gameplay and movement mechanic all remind me of Traders of Genoa.

Overall, the game sounds very complicated when the rules are being read but plays as a "middleweight" game in practice. Your hand of cards dictates to a certain degree what areas you can influence, so the "decision tree" is not too bad. One of my favorite aspects of the game is that the rules make it sometimes beneficial to come in 2nd rather than 1st on any particular noble, which adds a nice twist to the decision making.

Shemp was out of the gate early with 2 missions accomplished by the first round. We did a pretty good job catching up, be we didn't quite make it. I played pretty poorly, and came in last. I'm looking forward to playing that again!

Theophrastus: Theophrastus is supposed to be showing us how to make our own magical experiments. He lays out the recipe, but leaves out some of the details (I know I need 3 base medals, but which ones?). Each player gets a turn developping Theophrastus' spell, and playing cards on their own concoctions to try to match the mysterious recipe. Various cards and abilities give players sneak peeks, allow cards to be exchanged between player, etc.

Also a nice game!

FAST FAST FAST s l o w FAST (Jungle Speed x3, Power Grid, Poison)

Remove your jewelry, clip your nails... Jungle Speed hit the table this Wednesday and it got violent real quick.

If you don't know, Jungle Speed is a game where each player has a stack of cards they are trying to get rid of. Each card has a symbol on it, and players take turns revealing cards. If the card just flipped matches one another player has in front of them, those two players must quickly reach for the "totem" in the middle of the table... First player to grab it gets to give all his face up cards to the loser.

This is both harder and more interesting than it sounds. Many of the symbols are VERY close to being identical, but aren't. Cards will occasionally turn up which change the parameters of the game (such as colour matching, rather than symbol matching). Some cards simply reward the first player to grab the totem when flipped. The worst part: If you ever mess up and grab the totem when you weren't supposed to... you get EVERY player's face up cards.

Kozure, Luch, Shemp, Sonja and I squared off. We got "twitchy" real fast.

... well MOST players did. In this group, Sonja clearly kept her cool when we could not. The system penalizes far more heavily for grabing the totem in error than it does for being slower than the other player in a duel. Lucky for her, she was both FASTER and MORE ACCURATE than we were. She won all three games handily.

Are we getting slow in our old age?

Anyway, this was unquestionably a pleasant surprise. It was crazy, but lots of fun for what it was. This was Luch's pick from a long list of Sonja's games we had never played. Good call.

Next up was Power Grid. What a change of pace! After such a frantic opener, this one felt (to me) like molasses. This was particularly odd because one of the things I've always liked about this game was that the broken up phases of the game typically keeps things moving and keeps the game from going too long between player's turns. I think it might have to do with number of players... more than 4 might just be too much (I also felt like this the time we played with 6, but never when we've played with 4). On a personal note, I was having a hard time making the calculations for buying the building due to "foggy brain" syndrome, so I was definitely responsible for a good chunk of the slowdown. Oh well!

We played the Germany map. My memory for german cities is extremely limited, so I'll just say that I started in Essen and grew from there. Sonja immediately crowded me while Luch started in the North and Kozure/ Shemp went to the South. Over the course of the game, I tried to lay back and go for the end run with a large amount of cash, but I was completely unable to pull it off. Due to the pressure by Sonja, I constantly had to spend to break out of possible dead ends. I wasn't generating the income I needed, and a few of my plant purchases were "unwise". Luch was a green machine, but not expanding too fast in the North. Shemp tried to block off the South while Kozure managed to spread himself in an arc across much of the board. Sonja found herself on the last turn with insufficient power generation to compete for the win, and I ran out of cash to build enough buildings. It came down to cash on hand between Shemp and Kozure.... Shemp had more.

We finished up with Knizia's Poison since we didn't have enough time for Tower of Babel or the Jyhad CCG.

This is an "ultralight" game. It takes only a few minutes to play, is extremely simple and is quite fun for what it is. It's another Knizia numbers manipulation game with a thin theme applied (shades of High Society and Lost Cities). Players have a hand of cards with values from 1 to 7, in three colours. There are three pots (huge unnecessary cardboard pictures of cauldrons), one for each colour. In turn, players play a card into one of the pots. If the sum total of the cards in the pot is over 13, it boils over and the player takes all the cards in the pot. Additionally, there are "poison" cards which are wild and always valued at 4. Once all cards are played, each player gets 1 point per colour card they accumulated, and 2 for each "poison".

Of course, there's a Knizia twist.

Wait for it...

If you are the player with the MOST cards of a particular colour, you have developed an immunity to it and don't have to score those cards!

I had a good time with this one. There is some skill in hand management and observation of which colours have been taken by who, but it's mostly fast and easy. Sonja has a knack for picking fun "light" games (her record so far, For Sale!, Jungle Speed and Poison, has been very good). A very nice closer for the evening (for the record, she won this game after two hands with a score of 2. I was a close second with 4, and the others were much higher)

I Don't Want the Whole City, Just Your Half

Tonight we played the Illuminati New World Order CCG and White Wolf's new offering, Vampire: Prince of the City. I spent far too long writing the review and session report for Vampire, so I'll leave it to someone else to describe the Illuminati game. I posted a detailed game review at BGG. For brevity's sake, I'll only post the session report:

Giovanni Grimani, Primogen of the Ventrue, stared fixedly across the smoke-filled room at Sal “the Bulldog” Di Falco. He despised everything about the man, from his shoddy Armani knock-off suit to his butchering of the beautiful Italian language with his thick Sicilian-American accent. Grimani twisted a gold ring around on his finger, a personal gift from the Doge of Venice in 1789 in thanks for his help with a small Gangrel insurgent problem. He considered briefly the possibility of simply leaping across the massive teak table and ripping Di Falco’s throat out with his fangs. Sal’s mob of petty gangsters had disrupted Kindred operations in the city at a most inconvenient time – the succession of the Prince. In another time and place, Grimani would’ve simply killed Di Falco at a distance with a flock of bats, or perhaps a dire wolf or two. He couldn’t stomach even the thought of drinking Di Falco’s putrid and cocaine-laced mortal blood.

Today, though, they were here to talk business. Grimani had the Daeva to worry about, and he couldn’t spare the vitae to deal with small-time crime bosses right now. The Ventrue steepled his fingers and composed himself before speaking in the cultured tones of his own Venetian-accented Tuscan dialect.

“Signore DiFalco, my interest in the operations of police precinct 4 is strictly business related. We’re seeking to ensure the safety and security of the honest man on the street.”

Sal grunted and blew out a long stream of sickly-sweet cigar smoke. His consigliore, a thin man slouched in the shadows nearby, shifted uncomfortably.

“Listen, Grimaldi or Grimani, or whatever your name is. My paisan and I have always had our thumb on the cops in this town. You… your chalky-white crew comes in here throwing money around and roughing up my boys. I don’t think you got the interest of any guy on the street in mind at all. I think youse is trying to take over the joint, and whatever else weird and unsettling that is going on all over the place is part of your doing. I got people disappearing in Nobility Hill, turning up whiter than a sheet in nightclub back rooms, and I haven’t heard from my insiders at City Hall in weeks.”

Grimani leaned forward, adjusting his signet ring again.

“I don’t know exactly what you’re implying, Signore,” he began.

“I’m not implying nothin’, padrone. Fari vagnari a pizzu. Let me wet my beak too, or I’ll be blowing the whistle on you and your animales. I’ve heard what’s going down in this town. You guys ain’t what you seem to be.”

Grimani was just about to summon up the vitae to bend the little crime lord to his will when the window to the back alley blew inward in a shower of glass shards. Chen Weimin, the dreaded “Black Dragon”, primogen of the Gangrel, landed in a cat-like crouch near the center of the table. The mortals fell backward in surprise and shock, but Grimani stood and assumed a defensive stance.

“So,” the Ventrue Primogen smiled, “you’re not going to let me put the police in my pocket so easily after all, Chen?”

“I don’t know why you even wasted your time with these Kine, blue-blood,” snarled the Black Dragon, “but I’m going to mess up that expensive suit of yours. Maybe even mark up that pretty face. This won’t be like Chicago in ‘31. You may control the arts district and city hall, but I’m going to take the cops away from you.”

“Come and try it, Gangrel,” Grimani spat, and the Danse Macabre began another round.

Set-Up

We had our first play-through of Vampire: Prince of the City last night. It’s an interesting game. With four players and a first time through, we chose a six turn game length. We dealt out the clans – I received the Daeva, Hapi was the feral Gangrel, Agent Easy received the horrifying Nosferatu, and Shemp took the regal Ventrue. Seating order was the order introduced above, and I offered to take Regent for the first turn so I could demonstrate mechanics.

Turn 1

Everyone drew new cards in the first turn, and a number of events popped up, including National Guard Patrols, Rival Racketeers, Media Exposure and Philosophical Debate. Suffice it to say, this curbed our intial activities somewhat. We decided by group assent that maybe the cards hadn’t been shuffled properly and discarded National Guard Patrols so that we’d at least be able to move around properly in our very first turn. No one wanted to try their hand at an event challenge yet, and no one was in range for player challenges except Hapi and Easy, and neither wanted to risk the media exposure (forgetting we had no personal prestige to lose yet). I proceeded to the Cathedral and influenced it and the Synagogue. The Ventrue bolted for the arts and entertainment district and captured a few of its locations unopposed, despite the mob troubles. Curiously, the Nosferatu and Gangrel decided to fight over areas in the tranportation domain, with the rail station and underground being prime contests.

Turn 2

I maintained Regency, and the game continued. On the next turn, I cemented my hold on the Religious domain by taking the mosque and made some inroads into the Business domain. The Gangrel and Nosferatu continued to hold each other up in the Transport domain, with the Nosferatus gaining the upper hand and the Gangrel switching focus to the Industrial domain. The Ventrue had a number of lucky rolls and grabbed the entire Arts and Entertainment domain, then getting two zones in the Government domain Exclusive Salon, Federal Investigation and Command of the Harpies events came up during the turn, but we defeated collectively the Philosophical Debate event and the Daeva and Venture banded together to beat the Command of the Harpies.

Turn 3

Shemp jumped into the lead by getting the domain control bonus as well as a lot of personal prestige, and took over the regency. Some people hunted and others drew cards this time during the resource phase, as vitae loss started to tell on the Primogens. We had enough territories to challenge Media Exposure, which we did easily, but no one trusted each other enough to get rid of the Federal Investigation or the Rival Racketeers yet. Shemp finished taking over the Government district as well as a zone or two in the Reseach district, then I took over and solidified my hold on the Business domain and increased my presense in the Religious. Hapi grabbed most of the rest of the Industrial domain while Agent Easy contested a few locations in the Transport, not quite gaining domain control. Federal Investigation popped up around this turn, further making our use of Activation cards difficult. Shemp wisely played Master of Defense as his strategy, and the Gangrel played Mentalist and Supporter. I unwisely played Master Strategist early, not realizing that it’s better to play once I actually have other strategies in hand. There were a few challenges in this round, but nothing decisive.

Turn 4

This was mostly a consolidation round, with players picking up various zones around the city. To be perfectly honest, I can't remember exactly what happened in this round, so some of the events of Turn 5 may have happened in Turn 4, and Turn 6 events may have happened in Turn 5.

Turn 5

Shemp was still in the lead, so he continued as Regent, but I was close behind. Drunken Vandal and Local Security turned up during card draws as well as Vitae Curse and The Danse Macabre. I traded City Services Domain to Hapi, hoping that it would encourage him to fight Shemp in both the Medical Centre and Easy in the Metro Underground. The number of events was getting ridiculous, so we banded together again on Easy’s challenge to get rid of Federal Investigation. Shemp took out Local Security. A few influence contests had popped up in the turn previous in the Government domain as people figured out Shemp was extending his lead, so the Ventrue, Gangrel and Daeva popped up nearby each other to fight over the Police Department (described in narrative above). I had already been forced to run in a previous turn by Agent Easy’s Vigor-using Nosferatu, so I was cautious to only try a social challenge. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about Shemp’s Master of Defence strategy, so I only gained two influence while Shemp effectively lost none. Similarly, the Gangrel attack only succeeded in giving Shemp more personal prestige. Influence contests were popping up in the Community domain, and Shemp demonstrated that he had managed the High Society Domain strategy giving him another domain. Fortunately, the Gangrel and Daeva wrested control of the Police Department and the Morgue respectively from the Venture, and their domain control was broken over that area. Going into the final turn, Shemp was still in the lead, however, with me a close second, and Easy and Hapi gaining ground behind us. Vitae Curse came up during the round.

Turn 6

On turn 6 the gloves came off with a flurry of player challenges. Leech Troublemaker event came out to compound the danger of the Vitae Curse, and no one wanted to bother with the Danse Macabre, since it technically affected the Regent more. Unfortunately we were all too focused on taking each other out to bother with the four remaining events.

I foolishly played Consolidator, thinking it would get me bonus prestige for the Master Strategist card as well as protect my two domains, but Easy promptly stole it from me in a mental challenge. I was worried about the Gangrel hitting my domains, so I used my Traffic Controller retainer to send him to the Slums. Shemp sat in the Police Department zone for the final round, not wishing to mix it up with anyone, having a low vitae count.

The Ventrue’s dominance having been broken up by the other three clans, the Nosferatu tried to take me down by taking away the Mosque and Mercantile Sector zones from me, eliminating my domain control in both. I regained the Synagogue but lost the Merchantile Sector, but I still had control over the Religious domain. In the end, the score was Shemp 39, Kozure 36, Agent Easy 32 and Hapi 25. However, Shemp was put into torpor by last round blood loss (there was a Vitae Curse). In addition, the Leech Troublemaker event had also recently come into play, and Kozure (me) with one vitae left after the vitae curse, rolled a 3. Fortunately, Agent Easy rolled a 2, and we were spared the indignity of the third place finisher coming in first due to bad die rolls.

At first it looked like the Ventrue were going to run away with the lead, but leader-killing tactics and the disadvantage of moving first brought Shemp down far enough for me to whittle away at his lead. Poor vitae management forced him into torpor in the final round, although I almost met a similar fate.

Curiously, 12 of the 20 event cards came up during the game, which seemed like quite a bit. We’ll have to shuffle the deck even more thoroughly next time.

An exciting and challenging game, with the final winner decided in the final moments of the game.

Clarissa Dubonnet, primogen of the Daeva, stepped over the torpor-stricken body of Giovanni Grimani. She peered around at the gathered Kindred with her beautiful grey green eyes and smiled the smile that was partially responsible for the English Civil War.

“I am now Prince of this city,” she said imperiously, concealing carefully her near-torpor fatigue, “and I spare the Unlife of this Primogen, so lately my opponent in the Danse Macabre. I expect all strife and conflict in this city to cease by midnight, by my decree.”

Chen Weimin, primogen of the Gangrel, and Facilitus the Unseen, primogen of the Nosferatu, bowed their heads in deference, but Clarissa could sense their seething resentment. Facilitus especially had come close to toppling her careful house of cards.

“The Masquerade is re-established. Let all Kindred in the City know that I am their master, and my word is law.”

The Masquerade went on, but so did the Danse Macabre. There would be another reckoning someday.

L'esprit de l'escalier

There is a late 18th century phrase "L'esprit de l'escalier" which refers to the uncomfortable realization of a sparkling remark or turn of phrase which you manage to think of as you are leaving, instead of right at the moment you needed it.

I don't know what the best equivalent phrase is for gaming, but often I discover certain rules after a second read-through of a rulebook after playing a game for the first time. It's happened to us before, in Puerto Rico's colonist calculation errors most tellingly (and prolongedly), and more recently in my misinterpretation of Royal Turf. I would feel badly about it, but given that we've played over 70 games together, two major rules explanation errors and a dozen or so small errors aren't so bad.

Tonight I discovered two errors in the way we played Vampire: Prince of the City, although one is apparently something which needs to be corrected specifically by White Wolf.

The first error is that you may only use a discipline once per turn unless specified otherwise. I believe there were a few occasions where Dominate was used to add several dice to a roll. I missed this rule.

The second error is that Resilience cannot prevent the vitae lost at the end of a turn. This is not entirely clear from the rulebook and will apparently be included in the official errata.

Gaming session report to follow...

El Grande, Bohnanza, China, Modern Art

We played a rather random assortement of games this week. I'll be unavailable for WAGS gaming for about a month, so Shemp was nice enough to let me pick the games. I went for a few which we hadn't played in a long while.... El Grande, Modern Art and Bohnanza.

El Grande:

I love, love, love this game.

I can't quite explain it.

I love that the mechanics are both clever and elegant.

I love that the various systems work together to produce a game that is rich without being fussy (I'm looking at you Power Grid and Puerto Rico!!!)

I love that the choices are in some ways constrained, but that the ultimate result of a player's turn can still be very surprising. Despite the focus of the game, it feels very open ended.

I love that an otherwise static and simple landscape changes significantly according to the action cards available, the position of the King and the use of the Castillo.

When I play this game, I feel very engaged.

The only significant drawback, in my opinion, is the potential for analysis paralysis and the related downtime between turns. Some newer designs do more to keep decisions smaller and therefore keep things moving a little better (Power Grid and Puerto Rico both share this advantage). Small price to pay, however... I'd play this any day over those two.

(For the record, RA is my #1 game, not El Grande. I would say that technically I prefer El Grande as a game system and experience, but RA comes so close... and in a much shorter timespan, that I give it the edge. Going down to #3 and beyond, we would find games that I greatly enjoy but which are not nearly as good as these two, in my opinion)

... but enough about me!

This session of El Grande was a pretty good challenge. Shemp jumped to an early lead by scoring the "5" regions right after taking sole control of them. Kozure nipped at his heels for the first third of the game, focusing on the south and Catalonia. I spent too many resources on my home province, New Castille, but was nearly saved by having the opportunity to score it several times. Nearing the end, Luch had fallen behind but there was a three way race for first. Shemp capitalized on several 2nd and 3rd place points and snatched the lead in New Castille to seal the win.

We then switched gears and pulled out Bohnanza. I hadn't played since the first time Luch introduced it to us (a year ago?). We were hazy on the rules, but a quick refresher had us back on track. I tried to last the entire game without third field, and managed it easily enough. We only played through the deck once, as Kozure had to leave, but in the end Luch beat me by a point. I enjoyed it, but get the feeling a few more players would have helped.

With Kozure gone, we played China. I bought this game (along with RA and Through the Desert) in order to bolster my stock of good 3 player games. Ironically, I hadn't yet played it with 3! Matching my experience with Web of Power, the game plays very well at this number... probably at it's best in fact. The more players involved, the more you are just "reacting" to the situation on the board at the moment your turn comes up... too much changes from one round to the next to have much real strategy. With 3 there is some control and it's possible to see a plan come to fruition. We introduced the "fortifications" advanced rule (allows a player to add a black podium under a house which doubles the value of a long road and/or region score). Not a significant change by any means, I could take it or leave it. I'd still like to try this with the Web of Power rules someday, but I definitely had fun with this version as well. Luch set up some very nice majorities with his advisors and looked like a solid contender for the win early on. I managed a nice move where I funneled Shemp's house placement in such a way that I could place a 2nd advisor in a critical region and tie for majority... a move which would net me 8 points at the game's end. Still, Shemp layed his own network of advisor majorities and netted just enough points to squeak ahead with the win.

It seems that Shemp and area majorities go as well as Shemp and greed! (see previous post)

We finished off with a 3 player game of Modern Art. I knew this one was not supposed to be very good at this number, but I hadn't played it in so long I just wanted to get it on the table. We played with the dummy hand, just to spice things up. I enjoyed it well enough, but it's far more random than the game should be. In the first season Christine P ended with a majority with only 1 painting actually auctioned off by a player (the rest came from the dummy hand). I was the "happy" benefactor, but luckily I'm not that good at the game so it was no blowout (witness the double SEALED auction where I bid $75 000 only to discover that the next two bids where $6 000 and $2 000. Ummm, ooops) . I did eventually win, but it was anyone's guess right to the end. My mittfull of Karl Gitters in the final round, 2 of them double auctions, won me the game as the previously unplaced artist's paintings repeatedly found their way into my collection for a song.

As I said previously, I won't be participating for a month so odds are there won't be any blog posts for that time. See you in April!