Housekeeping Note.

Just before the most recent session report shows up, I wanted to point out that the sidebar's "Navigate by Game" section has been updated, for the first time in over a year. All session reports prior to this post should be accounted for. Now you can go nuts browsing the archives.

Or, browse them without going nuts.

Your choice.

NOTE: I'm not sure everything is 100% correct, so let me know if you find any errors or omissions.

This Jane Person May Be Of Interest To You.

She posts sentences.

She appears to think a lot about games and playing.

Stop Bharmering (Railroad Tycoon x2)

It's not every day that a new word enters the English language. Wednesday was one such day. The word has proven so useful at describing something we gamers face all too often that once we came up with it, we found ourselves using it constantly.

It describes a player who doesn't know who's turn it is, particularly when it's his/her turn.

The word, my friends, is "Bharmering".

Use it once, and you'll wonder how you got along without it. I'm sure by this time next year, it will be a part of the basic vocabulary of gaming.

Poor Brian (heretefore know as "Bharmer"). He certainly isn't guilty of Bharmering more often than anyone else, but he had the misfortune of committing the error just as we were saying there should be a word for it. So it is.

Anyway, the game last night was Railroad Tycoon. Bharmer had never played, but since he managed to beat the group in his first outing of Power Grid, we felt he was up to the task of jumping right in. Luch dominated the game by taking control of the red cube rich north east. I did my best to stop him, but to no avail. Kozure worked on the south east, along with Bharmer, and linked to chicago along another line. Shemp started in the south and worked his way up to the west of the mountains. I really wasn't doing anything productive, building short lines everywhere, missing out on the hotel in Chicago (as well as my Tycoon's bonus of 2 points per link out of there), and wasted an effort trying to reach Toronto to claim a service bounty before Bharmer. Overall, the race for 2nd, 3rd and 4th place was tight but Luch won decisively. Bharmer trailed pretty badly for 5th place, but he was hampered the entire game by some unwise early decisions due to inexperience.

We played a second game, now that everyone was familiar. I got caught up in a ridiculous bidding war against Luch for the 1st move. I think I quit at $22000! The starting cards were potentially quite lucrative, though, so it wasn't entirely insane. Luch started in the North East again, but the board had a very different distribution of cubes than the last game, so it didn't prove to be such a huge advantage. Most of the red cubes started on the red cities... the board was described by Kozure as "goods poor", due to this type of distribution. I played a much better game this time, establishing a good medium sized route early on near Cincinatti and grabbing a few card bonuses. I also slowly built a route from New York to Chicago (to satisfy my Tycoon bonus). Chicago became a nightmare of crossing tracks as the area was heavily developped by Kozure, Shemp and myself. Everyone was having a pretty good game this time, with most players neck and neck. I was trailing, but my east-west goal was fairly long term (and expensive... I was taking shares like they were going out of style).

A funny thing happened in the end. One of the most common criticisms of the game manifested itself for the first time: The big 20 point bonus card revealed itself on the 2nd last round, and I was the only one capable of fulfilling it (having already made the connection from New York to Chicago). I had already planned out my last 6 actions... I would upgrade my engine to 6 (2 actions) and then ship the 4 red cubes from New York to Chicago for 24 points. I was therefore not even considering going for the bonus, since I'd be sacrificing the easy deliveries in order to do it and the cost would be higher. Then, on the last turn, a government land grant came up. No one took the card, so on my turn I was able to cheaply go to Kansas, claim the bonus and still make a few deliveries. I went from last place to a win!(though by a single point). Had the card not come up, I would have still vaulted to 2nd place with my long term strategy coming to fruition, but I'm happy to say that in the end the bonus did not swing the game entirely.

Anyway, it was a fun night. I really enjoy the game despite it's design flaws. I have a sneaking suspicion that it may be worthwhile removing the "Railroad Executive" cards from the start pile, since they seem to come up fairly often and allow the start player to rack up significant points (and, no, the auction doesn't balance this out. If the start cards are so good that a real bidding war errupts, the player to the left of the start player is the real winner).

I have a feeling we might be doing more of this type of evening in the future... playing the same game twice instead of a number of games... should be a good way to get a more in depth appreciation for the bigger games we play. I'm looking forward to it.

Until then, stop Bharmering.

House of 10,000 Bad German Accents

What is it about "Power Grid" that makes our gaming group adopt bad Teutonic accents and make off-colour jokes about Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven? How is it that a friendly gaming night degenerates into a morass of bad puns and similar inanity?

Not since the classic "I have wood for sheep" phrase was uttered while playing Settlers of Catan has a game engendered such low humour.

Well, it's a great game, despite all the silliness. As this was Mr. H's first go at this particular gem, we started the evening with the standard introductory game of Step 1 only and a 7 city goal. Mr. H caught on quickly, but not quickly enough to stop Kozure from snagging the lead. Shemp might have come closer to the front runners save for a miscalculation by one Electro which cost him a connection.

Our second, full game was pretty tight. We decided to leave out the two southernmost regions to avoid creating the narrow playing areas we've had in the past. This allowed for fairly wide-open play and a consequently closer game - no one player was locked out of the standings by the usual "Great Wall of China" strategy (although Shemp did make a great try at it).

Mr. H made a few excellent acquisitions of green power plants and pulled off the win with something like 15 Electros in reserve. Hapi came in second with around 8 or 9, and Shemp came up with third, managing to power 17 but only having 1 Electro left.

What about yours truly? Well, a boneheaded power plant overpurchase in step 1 left me with insufficient electros to buy the resources to power it, leaving four cities in the dark, and me about thirty electros behind everyone else for the rest of the game. Despite playing catch up and almost getting there, I only managed to connect 16 cities before the curtain came down.

This game was the closest yet - most of the games we've played previous to this one had one or two clear leaders with a abundance of electros left over, and at least one (and sometimes two) other players behind by three or four connections.

This continues to be one of my favourite games. Tight game play, difficult decisions over a limited set of options, but relatively little AP (analysis paralysis), combined with a good theme and relatively clear ruleset (depsite the three or four rules around timing which tend to be niggly) make this one a winner.

We didn't get around to the proposed second game, "Way out West", due to a late start (my fault), but I'm looking forward to trying out Martin Wallace's cowboy epic next week or sometime soon.

Ja?

Ja, pardner.

It takes two to tango (Napoleon, Baker Street, Tally Ho!, Memoir '44)

In an effort to play a few games which rarely see table time, we decided to make this Wednesday all about 2 player games.

There was exactly 4 of us, so we paired off and picked from a stack of available titles. Kozure and Brian picked "Baker Street" (note to self, Brian needs an alias) and Luch and I chose Napoleon.

I recently picked up this copy of the Gamma 2 edition of Napoleon used. I had wanted to try out a Columbia Block game, and I had heard lots of people recommend this one as a nice introductory game.
The game itself looks a little dated with the simple graphics stamped directly on the wood blocks, but unlike current Columbia Games offerings, the board is mounted (which is nice).

I won't get into much description regarding what a "block game" is. If you don't know, go to BGG or the Columbia Games website. Suffice it to say that each player's units are represented by wooden blocks, with the statistics of those units printed on one side. Essentially, you know WHERE your opponent's units are, but not WHAT they are (or how damaged they are).
This is a pretty early one, with the version I purchased dating from the '70s.

Basically, one player plays the French forces led by Napoleon and the other player plays the English and the Prussians. The goal of each player is to eliminate half of the opposing player's units. Movement is simple... essentially players can move the forces from two cities to any adjacent cities on their turn. If units of opposing forces find themselves in the same city, they do battle. Battle is handled by a separate "Battle Board" where units face off across a battle line and use various maneuvres to try to "Rout" the ennemy. Interestingly, each side of the line is split into three regions (termed "columns") similar to Memoir '44 (and Battle Cry/ C&C ancients). I haven't played enough war games to know whether such an organization is frequently used in war games or not, but the left, middle and right flank arrangement must be fairly representative of the fighting for this period.

The rules make the English/Prussian player (the "allies") place his/her pieces on the board first, and city limits ensure that the units are rather scattered to start. The French player not only has the advantage of being able to place second (thus exploiting any weaknesses in the starting player's position), but is allowed to group his/her forces into much larger concentrations and move first as well. Of course, the French are outnumbered, and have a VERY short time limit to defeat the enemy, so they need a few breaks.

I played the French both times. In the first game, Luch positioned his forces along the flanks. I concentrated my units down the middle and marched right up to a rather easy victory. The second game, Luch was not so easily fooled. He started further back and more spread out, though with a concentration in the middle. I decided to try two large forces down both flanks. This was harder to accomplish. I succesfully marched to Ghent and also took Brussels, easily destroying the British. Unfortunately, the Prussians where putting a solid defense at Liege and I was very close to losing due to attrition. 3 badly hurt units were on the run from a large and powerful Prussian army, hoping to last long enough for the Prussian supply problems to make them implode. It came down to a single die roll, as my band faced yet another round of pursuit fire on the last turn before the Prussian defeat. If any units survived, the win was mine. A single unit did, and with that Napoleon won.

I liked it. In time, I think I'll pick up Rommel in the Desert and Hammer of the Scots. Wargames have a "freedom of movement" (for lack of a better expression) which is lacking in most Eurogames, so it's nice to have games such as these in a collection (alongside euro-american hybrids like Duel of Ages, Fury of Dracula, and the like). This game's mechanics feels fairly modern, despite their age. It's a pretty clean, simple and short game. The "battle board" is a nice way to bring a finer grain to what would otherwise be a highly abstracted war game. That said, I can't seem to interpret some of rules (the rule book provided is quite vague, and researching a 30 year old game online isn't easy). Despite the fact that this game is still technically "in print", the current version is quite different. I've read the new rules, and tried to extrapolate how to they would apply to the 1st edition, but some rules are still frustratingly vague. Particularly, many rules depend on the units being "engaged", but in practice it's quite hard to tell at times if they are or not. Anyway, I'll post to the forums and get that stuff worked out. I had fun, and I think Luch liked it too. It would have been nice to play a game with Kozure, since he's the wargame guy, but we'll save that for another time.

We followed up with a quick game of Tally Ho. Not much to say about that one... it's a cute game, enjoyable for what it is, but the luck in the initial random placement probably decides most games.

Last, we played Memoir '44. We combined two sets with the intention of playing the "Omaha Beach" Overloard scenario... little did we know those rules are meant for 8 players! Rather, we simply left each player in charge of one half of the battle and played it straight. It was Luch and Kozure as the Axis vs. Brian and I as the Allies. My tanks were eliminated very early by a "barrage" attack, but Brian's managed to break the enemy line and cross to some of the towns worth victory points. I had a hard time accomplishing anything since I was being cut down as fast as I could get onto the beach. Luckily, my own "Barrage" wiped out Luch's artillery compound (a very unlikely event) and gave me some breathing space. It came down to the wire, but Kozure and Luch pulled a victory by knocking out a different group of Brian's tanks who were racing to occupy another town for the last point.

Fun game, if only it didn't take so long to set up!!!