Thousands of free tacos (Maharaja, Puerto Rico, Formula:Motor Racing)

So Taco Bell has offered to give a lifetime of tacos to anyone who is willing to give the company their Playstation 3 (so they can give it to charity). It's an odd story, and not one that affects us (since we don't have one). Still, it inspired Luch, our dictator for the week, to sugeest tacos for the evening. Mmmmm. Tacos.

First game was Maharaja. From the get-go things were going poorly for me... I just couldn't manage to place higher than 4th or 5th, and therefore couldn't really build any palaces. Bharmer, on the other hand, is extremely good at it. Each game, he seems untouchable, but what is interesting is that he uses a different strategy each game. In the first, he was swapping characters all the time. In this one, he manipulated the nobles (?) track endlessly, and continuously built palaces one turn ahead of time (getting the central position with little competition). It's a little weird, but it seems that despite the fact that there is little variety in what actually happens on the board, the way to get there appears to have many options. I don't remember how Tili managed in her first game, but she was very good in her second game, narrowly losing the game to Brian by a single palace (and providing him with the only real competition that game).

My opinion on the game is wavering. There are good things going on, but it moves slowly and the ending can almost be predicted halfway throught he game. That may be because we are not good enough competition for bharmer! It does bother me that he manages first or second in almost every city, even in a 5 player game. Shouldn't that be difficult to do? What are we missing?

Anyway, congrats to Bharmer (and Tili). You are clearly very good at this game.

Next was Puerto Rico. Wow, it had been a long time since we've played. None of us have ever really played this extensively, so it remains a largely "off the cuff" experience (no rote strategies, here). Anyway, I started with an indigo and went straight into tobacco. I was hoping to focus on making money, so I bought the two markets and then added an office. I never did get to use the office (and didn't get much use out of the factory, either). Still, things were going okay. I was hoping to pick up 3 large buildings but bharmer bought one much earlier than I expected anyone to... sparking a rush to buy them. I managed 2.

When the scores were tallied, kozure and I finished quite close: his 52 to my 54.

It was fun to get that out again!

We finished up with Formula: Motor Racing. I'm really enjoying this game right now. Not much to say, except that we managed to beat the bots, and that's an achievement for us.

An evening of Deviance (Diamant, Zombies 4, El Grande, Quo Vadis?)

I thought it would be fun to play a number of games we've played many times before, but with house rules or official variants.

First up was Diamant. We played with a variant I found on BGG which suggested that caves with only 1 ruby in it be replaced with an idol worth 10. This turned out to be a great alternative to the base rules! The idol can't be split, so the only way to pick it up is to be the only one in the cave, or the only one leaving them. When one of these turns up, the tension regarding the otherwise simple stay or go mechanic is brought up a notch. I won the game by being lucky and picking up a couple of idols and lots of diamonds. Very enjoyable... I might never play with the base rules again.

Next was Zombies 4: the end. I didn't actually mean to play this with a variant, I just wanted to give it a spin since it didn't get to play it on Halloween. This is a very silly game which involves searching a forest which grows as the game goes on in search of an old cabin. Zombie dogs are everywhere and the idea is to cast a spell in the old cabin once it is found, in order to dispel the evil. I enjoyed the original Zombies as a funny, silly dicefest. i thought it was worth getting a copy when Kozure decided to sell his... though for variety I tried this standalone expansion set instead since it got good reviews. Sadly, we unwittingly introduced a variant I will term "The boring version of an already questionable game". In the standard rules, when a blank forest tile is brought up, up to 6 zombie dogs are meant to be placed on it. We didn't. Therefore, the only dogs on the board were those specifically called for on the "named" tiles... leaving a rather empty and boring forest for us to explore. Oh well, Luch eventually cast the spell in the old cabin and ended the curse. Good for him (and for us since it finally ended the game). i really didn't enjoy the session much. I think this is partly due to the incorrectly played rules, but I suspect that this is inferior to the original set (the cards didn't seem conducive to a fun game, anyway).

Next was El Grande. In an effort to try to reduce the amount of time between turns, I thought it would be interesting to split the player's actions into two phases. In other words, where a player normally takes an action card and then activates the card's power and/or places caballeros from the court to the board, in this vairant the player chooses one of these two things and then waits for it to come around again before executing his/her second action. The verdict? Suffice it to say that we played the last third of the game using the classic rules. Things didn't seem faster at all! It's quite possible that the major contributor to downtime int his game is analysis, so having two mini-turns simply introduced another round of "thinking". Also, splitting the two phases had the unfortunate effect of broadcasting your intentions to the other plays (the King, in particular, becomes much less usefull).

Last,but not least, was Quo Vadis?. I thought it would be interesting to introduce a set collecting element, so I took out all the chips valued above two and added the lillypads from Knizia'a children game "Leapin' Lilly Pads". We decided to score each lillypad as 1 point, each pair as 3 and each triple as 5. Though it seemed to add a certain amount of analysis paralysis to the game, it was pretty cool to see the tiles turn up and be worth different amounts to different people. This led to some creative deal-making, exactly as I had hoped! Sadly, the one aspect missing is variable income. Picking up a 3 is worth 3. Unlike in, say, Monopoly, the value of a token is pretty easy to measure (in monopoly, the present value must be considered against future potential income). Still, I'd say it was an improvement.

Drain You (Traders of Genoa, Formula: Motor Racing)

Two games this week.

Traders of Genoa

A five player game of Traders of Genoa tends to be a fairly draining affair. As this was Bharmer's first game, we explained the rules and got underway. After our last game, I had read a strategy article on BGG positing that a player who gets the most actions, even though he might be overbidding much of the time, is likely to win. I didn't quite beleive it, but I figured I'd give it a try...

Clearly this guy hadn't played with our group.

WAGS members are a skeptical bunch. You bid high, and everyone figures you want it because you're going to score big, so you get nothing.

At the beginning, with no particulr goal in mind other than bidding high on the actions which became available in the hopes of securing an action every turn, things were looking grim. "I'll bid 20 on the post office" was met with "Easy is going for a messages strategy, don't let him". On the next player's turn, "I'll bid 20 on the cathedral". Predictably, "Easy is going for an ownership marker strategy, don't let him". (that last example isn't entirely fair... I almost always go for an ownership marker strategy, even when I don't start off that way. They were right to be suspicious). Either way, in the first go around the table, I only got one action.

I kept trying, though. As the game wore on, I stayed agressive and went out of my way to outbid other players in order to secure turns for myself. I think they eventually decided I was digging my own grave, because they did eventually start accepting my offers. If I hadn't actually BEEN digging my own grave, things would have been looking up. I spent too much of my earnings, and only managed a third place finish. I think that in the end Shemp managed the strategy I was trying more effectively. He bid high when it mattered, but not every time. He also had a very interesting stretch where he collected the goods we didn't want in high numbers. At the time, it seemed he was standing still, but in the end he was able to accomplish more in his final turns than we did. Bharmer showed a knack for this game... in his first outing he managed a close second place through a solid and straightforward small/ large order + messages strategy.

Someone noted that ToG has a tendency to "peter out" near the end. Not sure what it is, but we all have a tendency to "peak" a little early... fulfilling all our orders, etc, a little too early and not having enough time to start the process again. I"m sure there's some ineffiviency on our parts here. Better planning would probably solve this, but why does it seem to happen everytime?

We capped things off with a game of Formula: Motor Racing. Not a whole lot to say about this, except that it continues to be very enjoyable, fluffy entertainment. I tend to laugh more playing this than many of the supposed "humourous" games, so that's good. Luch wiped the floor with us, which is actually a nice change from consistently loosing to the non-player cars.

You did your part, little 50 year old boy (Mall of Horror, Betrayal at House on the Hill)

Another Halloween has come and gone, and with it another session of horror themed games.

It's the first time in a month and a half for all five of us to be playing at the same time. The honour of the first game went to Mall of Horror, an impulse Hallowe'en buy on Kozure's part. I was excited to play it, because the concept is pretty interesting...

Mall of Horror

Mall of Horror is a rather innovative take on the zombie boardgame genre. Every player controls 3 characters who are trapped in a mall. There are five stores where the characters can barricade themselves, and a parking lot which is extremely dangerous but where valuable equipment can be found. Every round, zombies arrive and try to break into the stores. As long as the characters outnumber the zombies, they are safe... but the zombies keep coming and numerical superiority doesn't last forever. If characters find themselves outnumbered, somebody will die. This is where the true colours of the game reveal themselves... Rather than resort to combat, players must VOTE to pick the victim! Loser gets eaten (I'm guessing this is meant to simulate the characters pushing someone to the front). When the game ends, the winner is the player who has the most valuable characters left in the game.

So, basically, this is Survivor: Zombie edition. It's quite a fun game.

There are a number of additional details which enrich the gaming experience:

1) The three characters are not equal. There is a "hot babe" worth 7 points at the end of the game, a "tough guy" worth 5 and a "guy with a gun" worth 3. The girl has no special ability, other than being worth the most. The tough guy counts as two characters when determining if the zombies can break a barricade. The guy with the gun gets two votes when determining who gets sacked (because he's got a gun, which makes him convincing).

2) Every round, each player must secretely choose a destination for one of their characters. Staying in place is NOT an option. This creates very interesting dynamics because a location which was safe last round (because the characters outnumbered the zombies) can suddenly become deadly if a few characters leave. Also, there is a maximum number of characters in each location, which causes a lot of tension as areas become overriden with Zombies and the remaining available spaces in other stores are full. If a player chooses a destination which ultimately cannot accomodate a character, it winds up in the parking lot. Ouch.

3) One player is voted "Head of Security" each round. Normally, players don't know where the zombies will arrive every round. A newly elected head of security has a big advantage because he/she gets to see, through his short-circuit cameras, where the zombies will be going and he/she can act accordingly.

4) The parking lot is very dangerous because every single zombie in the area eats a victim (i.e. they don't need to outnumber the victims). The reason characters would go there is that the parking lot is home to life-saving equipment, such as guns and barricading materials. In game terms, any survivors vote one player to draw 3 cards. That player chooses one, then MUST give a second card to another player and then discard the third. Ass-kissing typically ensues.

The game manages to create a very interesting atmosphere of tension and desperation as the zombies start piling on the board and the player's characters start dwindling. Negotiating skills are put to the test. Promises for future consideration and "watching each other's backs" can mean the difference between making it to the end and... not. If I were to fault the game it would be that in the absence of any real currency, the creativity of negotiations is somewhat limited. Also, player elimination could easily force a player to watch from the sidelines early on... a potential problem in a game of this length (1-1.5 hours). This is easily the best zombie game I've played, and the game mechanics capture the theme very well. Despite this, the game is more in the "Intrigue" and "Quo Vadis?" camp of cut-throat negotation games. Less nasty than Intrigue, but still nasty.

Shemp ran away with the game, teaming up with Kozure early on and generally out-maneuvering and out-negotiating the rest of us throughout the game. He backstabbed Kozure at just the right time, knocking him out of contention for the lead. Bharmer was nearly eliminated early on. Luch and I did our best, but we couldn't change the pecking order. Interestingly, on the last round it became clear how fragile any lead in the game can be... Shemp found himself with his two remaining characters in the parking lot on the last round. There were two zombies there. He had a "hide" card which allowed one of his characters to survive, but if he hadn't he would have been wiped off the board and out of contention. Fortunatly for him, he had prepared for such an event and was holding onto that card for quite some time. Kozure did finish second, and the rest of us lost all our characters.

We finished off the evening with our yearly game of Betrayal at House on the Hill. The scenario which came up saw me, as a little girl, be the traitor. The story goes that the house is alive and likes to feed on humans. In return for eternal youth, I led the other players here as a sacrifice. Every round, the other player's character could potentially age dramatically. I simply needed to wait and let them die fo old age, or get directly involved and "help move things along". Meanwhile, the other players were running around and trying to cast spells in various rooms of the house in order to remove the enchantment and save themselves. Predictably, the old priest died quickly. The dynamite I lobbed at the little boy helped me eliminate him (though he had aged to his 50s by then, and had successfully cast 1 or 2 spells... leading to the blog entry's title). Shortly thereafter, the woman also succumbed to old age. Only the jock remained, and he had hardly aged at all due to exceptional rolling on Shemp's part. Just as I thought to myself that things were looking good for me, the dumb thug stumbled across the last room they needed to find and succesfully cast the final spell. I lost.

It's a stupid game, but I enjoy it. The variety of the scenarios continues to impress.