Last year, in early January, I talked about my favorite games of 2006. I'm sure I'll be doing it again for 2007, but i'll wait until the year is actually over. I mention it only because this week we played one of the two I had decided were my faves for that year, Antike, and I realized (with some sheepishness, that it was the first time since october 2006! (the other, Railroad Tycoon) hasn't been played since Dec. 2006). Do we have too many games if our FAVORITES from last year only get a single play?!!! Hmmm.
Anyway, Antike was up first. Still quite engaging for a chess-like civ builder. Turns are ridiculously snappy, and everything flows very well. I started in Italy, Shemp in the north and Luch in the east. As the early turns were devoted to expansion, I expanded slightly northward but concentrated on getting the triremes out. Luch also went north, leaving behind him an expanse of virgin territory (which he continued to plunder until the end of the game). This left Shemp in a tight spot because he was really forced to deal with possible conflict on two fronts early on. I drew first blood when I attacked Shemp about 2/3rds of the way through the game. That success netted me 2 cards (14th trireme and 15th city). A few more battles ensued, and I managed to win the game by snatching the last unclaimed advancement right from under Shemp's nose.
Next was two games of RA. The sun god was in a pissy mood that night, though. The tiles came out in strange combinations and any player who tried to go long was destined to fail. I entered the 3rd age of our first game with only the 10 points I started with... but fortune smiled on me and I took the game on a massive haul of buildings. In our second game, Luch found himself using only 1 or 2 of his 4 sun tiles in 2 consecutive eras...
We ended with Palazzo. This was a game on the list of "games which were introduced during Shemp's absence", so after a brief explanation we started (Shemp's eyes were glazed over, as everyone's eyes tend to glaze over when explaining the rules to this one. Seriously, for such a simple game the rules manage to sound both complicated and random no matter how hard I try). Shemp won by a large margin, due to two five story/ single material buildings. It seemed to be well received, though I personally am not sure that I like it very much.
Not sure if we'll have another session before the New Year. If not, have a happy holiday!
Monday, December 24, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
It's broke, let' fix it (Conquest of the Empire)
... or 'another evening of deviance'
Conquest of the Empire is a game I’ve always had mixed feelings about. It’s close to being very interesting, it’s sometimes fun, but it’s got problems. In May, after the last time we played it, I started thinking about possible variants which might help the game work a bit better. I was therefore pretty happy when Luch decided to pick it this week, as it gave us the chance to try some of these ‘fixes’.
The variants:
1) Moving:
Problem: Movement is wonky. Triremes are not as useful as they could be due to the fact that units can move as far as they want unless they are blocked. In my mind, the blocking itself was also problematic… a single unit stopping a large army felt cheap to me.
Variant: Units are limited to moving 5 spaces. Units encountering resistance must leave behind one unit per enemy crossed.
Result: This change had virtually no impact on the game. Further, blocking became nearly impossible, so no one bothered.
Thoughts: On one hand, this is more a philosophical problem than a game problem, so abandoning might be in order. If I were to pursue it, however, forcing players to leave behind 2 or 3 units per enemy crossed might strike a good balance between effective defense that isn’t needlessly paralysing. Another thought that crossed my mind is that an ‘overrun’ rule could be implemented which allows movement to continue if any combat along the way takes only 1 round to resolve.
2) Differentiation of Units:
Problem: Units aren’t differentiated enough. The most effective unit is the cheapest, and the others have varying cost but equal contributions to the game.
Variant: I proposed that 6 soldiers or 3 cavalry in excess of an opponent’s forces in a region could apply ‘intimidation’ to cancel an influence token during scoring. I also proposed that the presence of a catapult in a battle give a player an additional die (max 1 additional die regardless of the number of catapults).
Result: We entirely forgot to apply the intimidation rule, which suggests to me that it’s too fiddly in practice. I liked the catapult rule (and it did ensure that most people tried to have one in the mix whenever possible), but others found it to be too powerful.
Thoughts: Maybe it’s fine the way it is. In our next game, we should play without the catapult rule and pay attention to how people purchase units.
3) Getting more done in fewer actions:
Problem: The number of steps required to move an army, attack and then convert influence tokens can cause the game to stagnate for players, particularly in the later rounds when it’s obvious there aren’t enough moves left to accomplish anything.
Variant: Immediately at the end of winning a battle, a player has the choice to convert 1 (or 2 if a ceasar is present) influence tokens at 30 talents each.
Result: I really liked this change. I think the others did too.
Thoughts. This element had an impact on the game, and added some interesting decisions. I’d say this one’s a keeper.
4) Fixing the political system:
Problem: The political system doesn’t quite work. It doesn’t feel well integrated and isn’t used very much due to it’s high cost and unreliability of the results.
Variant: This was the biggest change. Players didn’t start with any political cards. The political cards themselves were separated from the ‘choose/purchase a card’ action. As an action, a player could choose a political action card and call any face up vote. The player was free to spread the rewards for passing the vote amongst several players or to keep it for him/herself (ex: win 40 talents could become ‘I propose that I receive 20 talents, that Mike receive 10 and Luc receive 10). Once the terms were set, all players secretely committed vote cards (which they would have aquired through the normal ‘choose/purchase a card’ action) and declared ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. All committed votes by all parties are spent. If the vote passes with a majority, the effect happens as proposed. The political action card was then considered ‘used’ and placed face down until the next campaign season.
Verdict: This change is a step in the right direction, but still didn’t work very well. In the first campaign season it worked, and several interesting proposals were made. Interest in choosing vote cards was higher than it used to be. However, in subsequent seasons, all vote cards from the first season were spent, and so players were frequently taking a vote card as their first action and then calling a vote through a political card as their second action, conscious of the fact that no one had any cards left to counter.
Thoughts: Players simply need more vote cards to make this work. We should probably go back to starting with some vote cards, and should probably receive a number throughout the game. It would be interesting to weave into the game a way to earn automatic votes. For example, let’s say that players started with 4 vote cards (at random). Then, certain regions could be designated as politically important (some being victory point generating regions, and others not). Control of these regions would yield an automatic vote (or random vote card) in any political action. This would probably require the creation of a new token which would indicate political control, to distinguish itself from the influence tokens.
Session:
The random setup dealt a harsh blow to Kozure (hmmm, another variant needed? Choosing initial locations, perhaps?) but gave the rest of us reasonably even territories. Shemp and I were concentrated around Italia, Luch and Bharmer more to the south and east. Kozure had single regions spread throughout the map, which would prove to be difficult to defend.
Shemp and I happily shared first place in Italia before long, and were otherwise getting fairly prosperous through our various acquisitions. Bharmer was winning despite his absence in Rome, largely because he was going unopposed in several 15 point regions (Egyptus, etc). Luch started getting hammered early and often.
As the game took it’s course, Bharmer’s terrible luck in battle and constant spats vs Luch sent his empire crumbling. Kozure made a remarkable comeback in Asia (crushing Bharmer's last substantial presence)and Shemp grabbed first place in Italia. In a very shrewd move, Shemp spent enormous amounts of money to make sure he was allied with me and Kozure in the last season. This meant there was literally nothing any of the players with remaining large armies could do to unseat him from his lead.
When the dust settled, I had gathered enough influence from the remnants of Luch and Bharmer to help me catch up to Shemp`s lead... along with a quick 15 point grab through the Hail Ceasar political card. The two of us were tied. Only, we weren’t, because I realized that I’d been counting my points for two seasons as though I still had the tie for first in Italia. Ooops. Close second for me, then.
(I looked into the tiebreaker rule, and it goes to the player with the most influence chits on the board. That would have been me. Grrr.)
Anyway, Conquest of the Empire remains perplexing for me. It is occasionally quite fun… shows moments of brilliance… but also engenders boredom, frustration and feels unpolished. Downtime is a factor (honestly, it doesn’t bother me much in this game, but others in the group took issue). There is a weird problem which results in too many choices to act quickly, but not enough choices to have something interesting to do at all times.
Finally, although I’m not opposed to long games, they are much more pleasant when you feel like you can contribute until the end. The combination of very few moves in the game, the need to make several moves in sequence to achieve a result and long play time means that you often can foresee several turns ahead where you want to go and you just have to wait until you get there. Or, worse, that you know you don’t have enough time to actually do anything, so you just wait for the game to be over (which can still be an hour away).
Other games played in this genre: Risk, Vinci, War of Thrones, Nexus Ops (sort of similar), Sid Meier’s Civilization. Looking to try: Mare Nostrum. Some of these are bad. Others are good, but either have a more limited scope than CotE, or a different focus altogether.
With it’s combination of ameritrash theme/ bits and some euro sensibilities, it’s inclusion of combat, area control, politics and event cards, Conquest should be an amazing game. It’s a shame it will take continued exploration with variants to make it great (if it ever gets there).
edit: I reread our past blog entries on this game and I'm a little fascinated at the change in my perspective. At first, I really liked the game despite it's faults. Since our last playing, I seem to have transformed those faults into the guiding impression of the it in my mind. The sessions reports describe games that were far more dynamic than this last session. Did the variants encourage a more static game? (we pretty much sat and held the territory we started with for most of the game, with the exception of Kozure near the end). Did the added focus on the political aspect take so many moves away from the conquest that fewer things got accomplished? Either way, it seems like it was an odd convergence of a session which matched the flaws I had convinced myself the game had. Something to think about.
Conquest of the Empire is a game I’ve always had mixed feelings about. It’s close to being very interesting, it’s sometimes fun, but it’s got problems. In May, after the last time we played it, I started thinking about possible variants which might help the game work a bit better. I was therefore pretty happy when Luch decided to pick it this week, as it gave us the chance to try some of these ‘fixes’.
The variants:
1) Moving:
Problem: Movement is wonky. Triremes are not as useful as they could be due to the fact that units can move as far as they want unless they are blocked. In my mind, the blocking itself was also problematic… a single unit stopping a large army felt cheap to me.
Variant: Units are limited to moving 5 spaces. Units encountering resistance must leave behind one unit per enemy crossed.
Result: This change had virtually no impact on the game. Further, blocking became nearly impossible, so no one bothered.
Thoughts: On one hand, this is more a philosophical problem than a game problem, so abandoning might be in order. If I were to pursue it, however, forcing players to leave behind 2 or 3 units per enemy crossed might strike a good balance between effective defense that isn’t needlessly paralysing. Another thought that crossed my mind is that an ‘overrun’ rule could be implemented which allows movement to continue if any combat along the way takes only 1 round to resolve.
2) Differentiation of Units:
Problem: Units aren’t differentiated enough. The most effective unit is the cheapest, and the others have varying cost but equal contributions to the game.
Variant: I proposed that 6 soldiers or 3 cavalry in excess of an opponent’s forces in a region could apply ‘intimidation’ to cancel an influence token during scoring. I also proposed that the presence of a catapult in a battle give a player an additional die (max 1 additional die regardless of the number of catapults).
Result: We entirely forgot to apply the intimidation rule, which suggests to me that it’s too fiddly in practice. I liked the catapult rule (and it did ensure that most people tried to have one in the mix whenever possible), but others found it to be too powerful.
Thoughts: Maybe it’s fine the way it is. In our next game, we should play without the catapult rule and pay attention to how people purchase units.
3) Getting more done in fewer actions:
Problem: The number of steps required to move an army, attack and then convert influence tokens can cause the game to stagnate for players, particularly in the later rounds when it’s obvious there aren’t enough moves left to accomplish anything.
Variant: Immediately at the end of winning a battle, a player has the choice to convert 1 (or 2 if a ceasar is present) influence tokens at 30 talents each.
Result: I really liked this change. I think the others did too.
Thoughts. This element had an impact on the game, and added some interesting decisions. I’d say this one’s a keeper.
4) Fixing the political system:
Problem: The political system doesn’t quite work. It doesn’t feel well integrated and isn’t used very much due to it’s high cost and unreliability of the results.
Variant: This was the biggest change. Players didn’t start with any political cards. The political cards themselves were separated from the ‘choose/purchase a card’ action. As an action, a player could choose a political action card and call any face up vote. The player was free to spread the rewards for passing the vote amongst several players or to keep it for him/herself (ex: win 40 talents could become ‘I propose that I receive 20 talents, that Mike receive 10 and Luc receive 10). Once the terms were set, all players secretely committed vote cards (which they would have aquired through the normal ‘choose/purchase a card’ action) and declared ‘yea’ or ‘nay’. All committed votes by all parties are spent. If the vote passes with a majority, the effect happens as proposed. The political action card was then considered ‘used’ and placed face down until the next campaign season.
Verdict: This change is a step in the right direction, but still didn’t work very well. In the first campaign season it worked, and several interesting proposals were made. Interest in choosing vote cards was higher than it used to be. However, in subsequent seasons, all vote cards from the first season were spent, and so players were frequently taking a vote card as their first action and then calling a vote through a political card as their second action, conscious of the fact that no one had any cards left to counter.
Thoughts: Players simply need more vote cards to make this work. We should probably go back to starting with some vote cards, and should probably receive a number throughout the game. It would be interesting to weave into the game a way to earn automatic votes. For example, let’s say that players started with 4 vote cards (at random). Then, certain regions could be designated as politically important (some being victory point generating regions, and others not). Control of these regions would yield an automatic vote (or random vote card) in any political action. This would probably require the creation of a new token which would indicate political control, to distinguish itself from the influence tokens.
Session:
The random setup dealt a harsh blow to Kozure (hmmm, another variant needed? Choosing initial locations, perhaps?) but gave the rest of us reasonably even territories. Shemp and I were concentrated around Italia, Luch and Bharmer more to the south and east. Kozure had single regions spread throughout the map, which would prove to be difficult to defend.
Shemp and I happily shared first place in Italia before long, and were otherwise getting fairly prosperous through our various acquisitions. Bharmer was winning despite his absence in Rome, largely because he was going unopposed in several 15 point regions (Egyptus, etc). Luch started getting hammered early and often.
As the game took it’s course, Bharmer’s terrible luck in battle and constant spats vs Luch sent his empire crumbling. Kozure made a remarkable comeback in Asia (crushing Bharmer's last substantial presence)and Shemp grabbed first place in Italia. In a very shrewd move, Shemp spent enormous amounts of money to make sure he was allied with me and Kozure in the last season. This meant there was literally nothing any of the players with remaining large armies could do to unseat him from his lead.
When the dust settled, I had gathered enough influence from the remnants of Luch and Bharmer to help me catch up to Shemp`s lead... along with a quick 15 point grab through the Hail Ceasar political card. The two of us were tied. Only, we weren’t, because I realized that I’d been counting my points for two seasons as though I still had the tie for first in Italia. Ooops. Close second for me, then.
(I looked into the tiebreaker rule, and it goes to the player with the most influence chits on the board. That would have been me. Grrr.)
Anyway, Conquest of the Empire remains perplexing for me. It is occasionally quite fun… shows moments of brilliance… but also engenders boredom, frustration and feels unpolished. Downtime is a factor (honestly, it doesn’t bother me much in this game, but others in the group took issue). There is a weird problem which results in too many choices to act quickly, but not enough choices to have something interesting to do at all times.
Finally, although I’m not opposed to long games, they are much more pleasant when you feel like you can contribute until the end. The combination of very few moves in the game, the need to make several moves in sequence to achieve a result and long play time means that you often can foresee several turns ahead where you want to go and you just have to wait until you get there. Or, worse, that you know you don’t have enough time to actually do anything, so you just wait for the game to be over (which can still be an hour away).
Other games played in this genre: Risk, Vinci, War of Thrones, Nexus Ops (sort of similar), Sid Meier’s Civilization. Looking to try: Mare Nostrum. Some of these are bad. Others are good, but either have a more limited scope than CotE, or a different focus altogether.
With it’s combination of ameritrash theme/ bits and some euro sensibilities, it’s inclusion of combat, area control, politics and event cards, Conquest should be an amazing game. It’s a shame it will take continued exploration with variants to make it great (if it ever gets there).
edit: I reread our past blog entries on this game and I'm a little fascinated at the change in my perspective. At first, I really liked the game despite it's faults. Since our last playing, I seem to have transformed those faults into the guiding impression of the it in my mind. The sessions reports describe games that were far more dynamic than this last session. Did the variants encourage a more static game? (we pretty much sat and held the territory we started with for most of the game, with the exception of Kozure near the end). Did the added focus on the political aspect take so many moves away from the conquest that fewer things got accomplished? Either way, it seems like it was an odd convergence of a session which matched the flaws I had convinced myself the game had. Something to think about.
Friday, November 30, 2007
I'll be waiting... with a gun and a pack of sandwiches (Flying colours, Way Out West)
Lots of gunfire this evening.
Luch, Kozure and I opened with Flying Colours, a naval war game from GMT. We played an introductory scenario which boils down the conflict to a simple 2 vs 1 fight. Luch and I teamed up as the British and Kozure played the lone (but much larger) french ship. It's a basic hex and counter war game, played on a large paper map of the ocean. Rules, for our scenario at least, were quite simple for a wargame. Movement factors in wind direction in a simple way, and other than that the rest of the rules involved combat (choosing to shoot the hull or the sails, arc of fire restrictions, dice result tables, etc). In our brief session, Luch and I sped along to the back of Kozure's ship. Along the way, I took a shot just as I was rounding the bend and started a fire onboard his ship. Then, I took a perfect shot right down the length of his hull and cleared the way for Luch to do the same. We both rolled high, and the French sunk like rocks.
We got pretty lucky, and I'd say the scenario felt pretty heavily weighted in our favour (Kozure confirmed this later). Still, it seemed like the system would be fun enough to play a more fleshed out scenario next time.
Next, we played Way Out West. JayWowzer and Shemp had arrived. I think it's the first time we've played with five.
Full disclosure: I always feel lost when I play this game. Although eurogames frequently make you feel like there are all sorts of things you'd like to do, and very few actions to do them, WoW takes is a few steps further and I never feel like I'm being effective. In fact, I was convinced that I'd never even come close to winning before (though, apparently I won our last game. I'll have to re-read that post to remember it).
True to form, the game started and I was perpetually broke, never in possession of the store or hotel where it was usefull (or the wagon, for that matter). I decided to build the jail everywhere, and see if I could take other buildings over later on. I also decided I'd try to start fights when the odds were approximately 3 to 4 against me (since the weaker side shoots first, it seems like an advantage to go in weaker). Whether it's an ill advised plan to start with, or luck just wasn't on my side, all I can say is I tried to put that plan in action on 2 occasions in Abalene and both times I lost everything. I was down to 1 cowboy on the board (in Kansas) and it was protecting the last 4 cows I had on the board. I thought I was sunk. Then, something funny happened... everybody started fighting each other around me and THEY lost everything. My cows in Kansas city stayed safe (giving me the majority) and Dodge City went from raging metropolis to ghost town. I had since placed 2 cowboys there and had my pick of the buildings to take over. Having gained the majority (through buildings, I still had no cows outside of Abalene) I scored big at the endgame and won.
On my ride home, I was thinking about how my win was mostly a result of other people misfortune, and how JayWowser wound up with very little to do on his final few turns. It occurred to me that these are similar "issues" we've had with Conquest of the Empire... another Wallace game (more or less). The limit of 2 actions per turn in both games force players to make things happen over a series of moves, and the fact that certain items must be in place (cowboys, in this instance) and that they are easily lost, can easily lead to situations where players have nothing to do. I think I called this a problem of "inertia" in CotE. Anyway, it's just an observation. I'll lump Way Out West into the same category as Shogun... games I always find fun for the experience, despite the fact they ... might not work exactly right as a strategy game. They are also similar in the sense that they FEEL heavy and strategy oriented in most of their mechanics, but are then sent kareening in the other direction by one or two aspects of the game.
But really, could the Wild West and strategy REALLY be found in the same game and feel right? Probably not.
edit: I re-read the last Way Out West post, to see if I had really won. I did. Unsurprisingly, the reason was similar: the leading player was undone, and I spied an opportunity in the aftermath. Who knew the cowboy way favoured the sneaky?
2nd edit: a quick trip to BGG shows me we are not the only ones that want to redo the board. There are already a number of alternates there for download!
Luch, Kozure and I opened with Flying Colours, a naval war game from GMT. We played an introductory scenario which boils down the conflict to a simple 2 vs 1 fight. Luch and I teamed up as the British and Kozure played the lone (but much larger) french ship. It's a basic hex and counter war game, played on a large paper map of the ocean. Rules, for our scenario at least, were quite simple for a wargame. Movement factors in wind direction in a simple way, and other than that the rest of the rules involved combat (choosing to shoot the hull or the sails, arc of fire restrictions, dice result tables, etc). In our brief session, Luch and I sped along to the back of Kozure's ship. Along the way, I took a shot just as I was rounding the bend and started a fire onboard his ship. Then, I took a perfect shot right down the length of his hull and cleared the way for Luch to do the same. We both rolled high, and the French sunk like rocks.
We got pretty lucky, and I'd say the scenario felt pretty heavily weighted in our favour (Kozure confirmed this later). Still, it seemed like the system would be fun enough to play a more fleshed out scenario next time.
Next, we played Way Out West. JayWowzer and Shemp had arrived. I think it's the first time we've played with five.
Full disclosure: I always feel lost when I play this game. Although eurogames frequently make you feel like there are all sorts of things you'd like to do, and very few actions to do them, WoW takes is a few steps further and I never feel like I'm being effective. In fact, I was convinced that I'd never even come close to winning before (though, apparently I won our last game. I'll have to re-read that post to remember it).
True to form, the game started and I was perpetually broke, never in possession of the store or hotel where it was usefull (or the wagon, for that matter). I decided to build the jail everywhere, and see if I could take other buildings over later on. I also decided I'd try to start fights when the odds were approximately 3 to 4 against me (since the weaker side shoots first, it seems like an advantage to go in weaker). Whether it's an ill advised plan to start with, or luck just wasn't on my side, all I can say is I tried to put that plan in action on 2 occasions in Abalene and both times I lost everything. I was down to 1 cowboy on the board (in Kansas) and it was protecting the last 4 cows I had on the board. I thought I was sunk. Then, something funny happened... everybody started fighting each other around me and THEY lost everything. My cows in Kansas city stayed safe (giving me the majority) and Dodge City went from raging metropolis to ghost town. I had since placed 2 cowboys there and had my pick of the buildings to take over. Having gained the majority (through buildings, I still had no cows outside of Abalene) I scored big at the endgame and won.
On my ride home, I was thinking about how my win was mostly a result of other people misfortune, and how JayWowser wound up with very little to do on his final few turns. It occurred to me that these are similar "issues" we've had with Conquest of the Empire... another Wallace game (more or less). The limit of 2 actions per turn in both games force players to make things happen over a series of moves, and the fact that certain items must be in place (cowboys, in this instance) and that they are easily lost, can easily lead to situations where players have nothing to do. I think I called this a problem of "inertia" in CotE. Anyway, it's just an observation. I'll lump Way Out West into the same category as Shogun... games I always find fun for the experience, despite the fact they ... might not work exactly right as a strategy game. They are also similar in the sense that they FEEL heavy and strategy oriented in most of their mechanics, but are then sent kareening in the other direction by one or two aspects of the game.
But really, could the Wild West and strategy REALLY be found in the same game and feel right? Probably not.
edit: I re-read the last Way Out West post, to see if I had really won. I did. Unsurprisingly, the reason was similar: the leading player was undone, and I spied an opportunity in the aftermath. Who knew the cowboy way favoured the sneaky?
2nd edit: a quick trip to BGG shows me we are not the only ones that want to redo the board. There are already a number of alternates there for download!
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Random games (Blue Moon City, Goa, Transeuropa, Carcassonne)
With Bharmer and Kozure out this week, I was glad I had packed my bag with a number of games that were good at three.
Blue Moon City
I explained the rules to Shemp, and then he proceeded to show US how the game is played. Clearly, the man has a knack for the it because as much as luck has a big role in the game, strategy is very important and he really seemed like he knew what he was doing (he avoided wasting cards on getting scales when he couldn't win the majority, for example, wich is a very common mistake). In the final turns of the game, Shemp was one offering from winning with a pile of crystals in front of him. He skipped the obelisk and went to a building, so he obviously was just short one or two. I was also one offering away, but quite a bit short on crystals. Lucky for me, Luch forced the payout of scales on his turn and I was the big beneficiary. With my newfound wealth, I managed to swoop in for the win. Shemp should have won, but such is luck. This is my favorite middleweight game right now, always extremely enjoyable. Too bad it maxes out at 4 players.
Goa
And another fine game which is limited to 4. Shemp hadn't played this one either so we explained it and got underway (in record time, too). I couldn't really get things working right... always short one or two actions from doing what I wanted properly. Worst of all, Luch kept getting to level 4 in each track just before I would! He won quite handily, with all four islands discovered and a well advanced set of tracks. I'll have to look it up, but I think Luch creamed us last time we played this too. I guess everyone has a inclination for certain games.
Transeuropa
Since we had about 1/2 hour left, we brought out Shemp's copy of Transeuropa. I've played Transamerica quite often, but not this version. I can't say it felt substantially different, with the sole exception that some of the Nordic countries seem particularly hard to get to. Luch took a major dive on the first round, bringing him to within 1 point of losing. Then, as this game often does, things flipped pretty dramatically in the following rounds and I wound up losing big time (I think Shemp and Luch tied for the win)
Carcassonne
With 10 minutes left, we opted for speed Carcassonne. As soon as you play a tile, you grab your next one. As soon as it's your turn, you must play. This is one for the Conan brain, and apparently I don't have one... I SUCKED. I beleive I was lapped by both players. Oh well! (the end of the game comes REAL FAST with just the base tiles). I think Shemp won on the strength of his farmers. Game over in 10 minutes flat.
Blue Moon City
I explained the rules to Shemp, and then he proceeded to show US how the game is played. Clearly, the man has a knack for the it because as much as luck has a big role in the game, strategy is very important and he really seemed like he knew what he was doing (he avoided wasting cards on getting scales when he couldn't win the majority, for example, wich is a very common mistake). In the final turns of the game, Shemp was one offering from winning with a pile of crystals in front of him. He skipped the obelisk and went to a building, so he obviously was just short one or two. I was also one offering away, but quite a bit short on crystals. Lucky for me, Luch forced the payout of scales on his turn and I was the big beneficiary. With my newfound wealth, I managed to swoop in for the win. Shemp should have won, but such is luck. This is my favorite middleweight game right now, always extremely enjoyable. Too bad it maxes out at 4 players.
Goa
And another fine game which is limited to 4. Shemp hadn't played this one either so we explained it and got underway (in record time, too). I couldn't really get things working right... always short one or two actions from doing what I wanted properly. Worst of all, Luch kept getting to level 4 in each track just before I would! He won quite handily, with all four islands discovered and a well advanced set of tracks. I'll have to look it up, but I think Luch creamed us last time we played this too. I guess everyone has a inclination for certain games.
Transeuropa
Since we had about 1/2 hour left, we brought out Shemp's copy of Transeuropa. I've played Transamerica quite often, but not this version. I can't say it felt substantially different, with the sole exception that some of the Nordic countries seem particularly hard to get to. Luch took a major dive on the first round, bringing him to within 1 point of losing. Then, as this game often does, things flipped pretty dramatically in the following rounds and I wound up losing big time (I think Shemp and Luch tied for the win)
Carcassonne
With 10 minutes left, we opted for speed Carcassonne. As soon as you play a tile, you grab your next one. As soon as it's your turn, you must play. This is one for the Conan brain, and apparently I don't have one... I SUCKED. I beleive I was lapped by both players. Oh well! (the end of the game comes REAL FAST with just the base tiles). I think Shemp won on the strength of his farmers. Game over in 10 minutes flat.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Where...are...you? (Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Fury of Dracula, To Court the King)
Shemp and Bharmer were out this week, but in an email to us Shemp mentioned we should take this occasion to play Lord of the Rings: Sauron and Clue: The Great Museum Caper, since he hates them and he won't be there. I wanted to play Fury of Dracula, so I couldn't completely satisfy his request, but 1 out of 2 ain't bad, right?
Clue: The Great Museum Caper
I'm not sure why I keep bringing this one out, because it just doesn't seem to work. There's a part of me that really wants this to be a really good casual-friendly game (as it's described by many on BGG), but each session ends the same way... the thief didn't have a chance. I thought that playing with 3 players would be better balanced than with 4, and it was, but not probably enough. In our two games, the thief was caught easily before there was much danger of a successful escape with 3 paintings. Maybe rolling d6 for the detectives is too much or maybe the layout of the board is too restrictive. Fortunately (unfortunately ?), I got another glimmer of hope during the final few moves of my turn as the thief which will probably cause me to give it yet another go: I don't think I"ve been capitalising enough on the order of movement of the detectives. In other words, If I move between each detective's turn I am much safer running towards a player that just moved because I will get to move once or twice before that player gets another turn. I'm pretty sure I've been letting the location of the pawns and my objectives dictate my move, and possibly the game would be easier if the thief took greater advantage of the timing aspect.
Still, it's so easy to get backed into a corner by the detectives... I'll probably give it one last try at some point and then trade it away.
Fury of Dracula
Another game of hidden movement, but this one far more successful in design. Fury of Dracula is a game I really enjoy as a change of pace. It represents, to me, many of the great things "Ameritrash" games bring to the table (well integrated theme, mostly) but streamlined with eurogame sensibilities to make it a manageable and reasonably smooth experience.
Dracula was played by Kozure this time, so this was my first game ever on the hunters' side. Luch had Lord Godalming and Seward. I had Van Helsing and Mina. Kozure played an excellent game of cat and mouse, starting out in the east and snaking around us while convincing us that he was elsewhere (in fact, a lucky card draw revealed that his starting location was right next to us, and yet he managed to evade us and remain hidden most of the game). A well armed Van Helsing did manage to find and attack the count in Munich and inflict enormous damage with his stake and sacred bullets but he fell a few points short of sealing the deal... Dracula escaped and a hapless Mina soon wandered into a well protected catacomb where she died and gave Kozure the victory.
I'm curious how many Dracula victories are directly a result of Mina's death. Both of ours have been.
The reason I think this game succeeds so well is that the rules are fairly streamlined and the amount of dice rolling and modifiers which need to be kept track of a kept to a minimum. Also, the "hidden character" works because finding it is not the only goal... you also have to kill it. This means that the tension inherent in trying to pin down the count (or in evading the characters, if you're Dracula) doesn't operate in a straight line. You may have to find, fight and find again several times over the course of the game. I like it because it avoids the *cheap victory* feeling you get in Clue:TGMC (for example) when you accidentally land on the thief and win the game. My only complaint is that it takes too much space on the table for all the bits and character cards, that the game runs a little too long, and that the combat system is a little clunky (all the separate decks, the downtime it creates, the fruitless "loops" which can occur in combat). I'm not sure what system could have improved on these points without sacrificing flavor, but it would be interesting to come up with one.
To Court the King
Luch left us, so me and Kozure tried out To Court the King, a dice rolling game which seems to try to mash together Yahtzee and (insert random renaissance Italy themed euro... Louis XIV? Princes of Florence?).
Game play is simple enough. Roll three dice, set at least one aside, and roll again until all dice have been set aside. According to the result of the rolls (a pair, a full house, a straight), you may be able to purchase a card which will give you a special power towards all your subsequent rolls. Maybe you'll be able to roll and additional die, set the value of one of your dice, re-roll a die, etc, etc. The first player to roll 7 of a kind ends the game and then a final roll-off determines the winner.
Deciding which character cards to try to purchase, and then how to best use their powers, is fairly fun. I imagine for more than 3 players the downtime might get too high, and there is the real potential that the best choice will eventually become too easy to pick out, but it will take more games to know for sure. I wish there was a bit more tension in the choices, however. It would have been nice, for example, if collecting 1s somehow yielded powerful cards to offset the risk of going after such a weak suit. As it is, 6s are always better than 3s or 1s. Higher totals always win. Different viable strategies might have made it more engaging.
I can't really say that it grabbed me too much, but it certainly wasn't bad (I guess I'm just not sure in what circumstances I'd want to play it in the future... it's got too much going on for non-gamers, it's too long for filler and too random for a serious game). I think I'll prbably trade it sooner rather than later.
In the game we played, I made it to seven of a kind first, but the queen it gave me was not enough to let me win the game. Kozure took it with 8 (or 9?) of a kind.
Clue: The Great Museum Caper
I'm not sure why I keep bringing this one out, because it just doesn't seem to work. There's a part of me that really wants this to be a really good casual-friendly game (as it's described by many on BGG), but each session ends the same way... the thief didn't have a chance. I thought that playing with 3 players would be better balanced than with 4, and it was, but not probably enough. In our two games, the thief was caught easily before there was much danger of a successful escape with 3 paintings. Maybe rolling d6 for the detectives is too much or maybe the layout of the board is too restrictive. Fortunately (unfortunately ?), I got another glimmer of hope during the final few moves of my turn as the thief which will probably cause me to give it yet another go: I don't think I"ve been capitalising enough on the order of movement of the detectives. In other words, If I move between each detective's turn I am much safer running towards a player that just moved because I will get to move once or twice before that player gets another turn. I'm pretty sure I've been letting the location of the pawns and my objectives dictate my move, and possibly the game would be easier if the thief took greater advantage of the timing aspect.
Still, it's so easy to get backed into a corner by the detectives... I'll probably give it one last try at some point and then trade it away.
Fury of Dracula
Another game of hidden movement, but this one far more successful in design. Fury of Dracula is a game I really enjoy as a change of pace. It represents, to me, many of the great things "Ameritrash" games bring to the table (well integrated theme, mostly) but streamlined with eurogame sensibilities to make it a manageable and reasonably smooth experience.
Dracula was played by Kozure this time, so this was my first game ever on the hunters' side. Luch had Lord Godalming and Seward. I had Van Helsing and Mina. Kozure played an excellent game of cat and mouse, starting out in the east and snaking around us while convincing us that he was elsewhere (in fact, a lucky card draw revealed that his starting location was right next to us, and yet he managed to evade us and remain hidden most of the game). A well armed Van Helsing did manage to find and attack the count in Munich and inflict enormous damage with his stake and sacred bullets but he fell a few points short of sealing the deal... Dracula escaped and a hapless Mina soon wandered into a well protected catacomb where she died and gave Kozure the victory.
I'm curious how many Dracula victories are directly a result of Mina's death. Both of ours have been.
The reason I think this game succeeds so well is that the rules are fairly streamlined and the amount of dice rolling and modifiers which need to be kept track of a kept to a minimum. Also, the "hidden character" works because finding it is not the only goal... you also have to kill it. This means that the tension inherent in trying to pin down the count (or in evading the characters, if you're Dracula) doesn't operate in a straight line. You may have to find, fight and find again several times over the course of the game. I like it because it avoids the *cheap victory* feeling you get in Clue:TGMC (for example) when you accidentally land on the thief and win the game. My only complaint is that it takes too much space on the table for all the bits and character cards, that the game runs a little too long, and that the combat system is a little clunky (all the separate decks, the downtime it creates, the fruitless "loops" which can occur in combat). I'm not sure what system could have improved on these points without sacrificing flavor, but it would be interesting to come up with one.
To Court the King
Luch left us, so me and Kozure tried out To Court the King, a dice rolling game which seems to try to mash together Yahtzee and (insert random renaissance Italy themed euro... Louis XIV? Princes of Florence?).
Game play is simple enough. Roll three dice, set at least one aside, and roll again until all dice have been set aside. According to the result of the rolls (a pair, a full house, a straight), you may be able to purchase a card which will give you a special power towards all your subsequent rolls. Maybe you'll be able to roll and additional die, set the value of one of your dice, re-roll a die, etc, etc. The first player to roll 7 of a kind ends the game and then a final roll-off determines the winner.
Deciding which character cards to try to purchase, and then how to best use their powers, is fairly fun. I imagine for more than 3 players the downtime might get too high, and there is the real potential that the best choice will eventually become too easy to pick out, but it will take more games to know for sure. I wish there was a bit more tension in the choices, however. It would have been nice, for example, if collecting 1s somehow yielded powerful cards to offset the risk of going after such a weak suit. As it is, 6s are always better than 3s or 1s. Higher totals always win. Different viable strategies might have made it more engaging.
I can't really say that it grabbed me too much, but it certainly wasn't bad (I guess I'm just not sure in what circumstances I'd want to play it in the future... it's got too much going on for non-gamers, it's too long for filler and too random for a serious game). I think I'll prbably trade it sooner rather than later.
In the game we played, I made it to seven of a kind first, but the queen it gave me was not enough to let me win the game. Kozure took it with 8 (or 9?) of a kind.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Hey, Zed (Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game, Witch Trial)
Halloween Special, super special event!
Pumpkin Pie!
Treat sized snax!
Zombies!
Witches!
Last Night on Earth
At the math trade, a few people were playing this game I had never heard of. It was LNoE. It looked pretty cool, but honestly these types of "Ameritrash" games don't usually do much for me. Too long, too many rules, too fiddly, etc, etc.
Still, I keep wanting to like them. I've purchased and/or played a variety of these "thematic" and "fun" games in the hopes of finding one that struck the right balance between the campy fun of horror movies and a game that works AS A GAME. Those I've tried so far have all been dissapointments in one way or another:
Zombies: Too long, endgame doesn't work. Still, moderately fun if played using the quickplay rules on BGG.
Zombies 4: The suck.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: Very ambitious, but lacked in followthrough. I enjoyed the scenarios, but didn't like that they were obviously never playtested. The "betrayal" mechanic is cool in theory, but clumsy in practice. Still, I had some fun with this one despite it's rather significant faults.
Arkham Horror: Way too long and fiddly for me. Not enough actual decisions. The rest of the group likes it, though.
Not an exhaustive list to be sure, but the pattern is there. Lots of attempts, very few good games. Enter Last Night on Earth.
Is it good? Well, it's not perfect. It's certainly not "great", but it is fun and it does work, so it's easily the most successful attempt yet.
LNoE is a game about everyday people stuck in a zombie nightmare. Though 2-6 players can play, the game always involves 4 heroes and a "horde" of 14 zombies. 1-4 players play cooperatively as the good guys, and up to 2 players play cooperatively as the Zeds. There is a modular board, 8 different heroes and a handful of scenarios to keep things interesting. Gameplay can be boiled down to this: Zombies move 1 space, heroes move 1d6 spaces. Both sides draw and play cards which can cause effects, modify combat, etc, etc. There's more to it, but that's the style of play. Turns fly by, which in my opinion is a great success in the game design.
I'll admit that there is nothing particularly clever or inspired about the game, the trick is that what it does try to do it does well. We played two scenarios, one where the heroes need to take out 15 zombies in 15 turns and the other where the heroes need to find keys and a gas tank so they can high-tail it out in the truck at the center of the board before night falls. Both were fun and seemed balanced (though the heroes won both games, they all went down to the wire). The truck scenario was particulary interesting because in the first few rounds, we found the items we needed and I was thinking that the scenario would be a cake-walk. Then I realized what Shemp was doing (he was playing the zombies)... we weren't being attacked because they were all heading to the truck. Getting there, filling the gas tank and taking off would not be easy. A lucky shot with some dynamite (and, as it turns out, a horribly missplayed rule) cleared the way for us with 2 rounds to spare and we got out.
The production quality is also excellent. The miniatures are very nice, the boards and cards are of high quality and the rulebook is very nice. The zombie theme is well captured by good scenarios and a good deck of hero and zombie cards. I enjoyed it, and unlike past horror efforts, I expect this one will stay in my collection.
(as an aside, I didn't mention Mall of Horror even though we've played it a few times. I actually like MoH, and think that it represents a very original and generally successful way to deal with the zombie theme. However, it's not an ameritrash style game, so I left it out)
We finished up with Witch Trial, a good game by CheapAss. ACTUALLY funny, and with rules that work (though very luck heavy). Probably the best of theirs that I've played. It seemed like my role in the game was to fill other lawyer's pockets, as I couldn't seem to win a case at all! Kozure won.
Pumpkin Pie!
Treat sized snax!
Zombies!
Witches!
Last Night on Earth
At the math trade, a few people were playing this game I had never heard of. It was LNoE. It looked pretty cool, but honestly these types of "Ameritrash" games don't usually do much for me. Too long, too many rules, too fiddly, etc, etc.
Still, I keep wanting to like them. I've purchased and/or played a variety of these "thematic" and "fun" games in the hopes of finding one that struck the right balance between the campy fun of horror movies and a game that works AS A GAME. Those I've tried so far have all been dissapointments in one way or another:
Zombies: Too long, endgame doesn't work. Still, moderately fun if played using the quickplay rules on BGG.
Zombies 4: The suck.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: Very ambitious, but lacked in followthrough. I enjoyed the scenarios, but didn't like that they were obviously never playtested. The "betrayal" mechanic is cool in theory, but clumsy in practice. Still, I had some fun with this one despite it's rather significant faults.
Arkham Horror: Way too long and fiddly for me. Not enough actual decisions. The rest of the group likes it, though.
Not an exhaustive list to be sure, but the pattern is there. Lots of attempts, very few good games. Enter Last Night on Earth.
Is it good? Well, it's not perfect. It's certainly not "great", but it is fun and it does work, so it's easily the most successful attempt yet.
LNoE is a game about everyday people stuck in a zombie nightmare. Though 2-6 players can play, the game always involves 4 heroes and a "horde" of 14 zombies. 1-4 players play cooperatively as the good guys, and up to 2 players play cooperatively as the Zeds. There is a modular board, 8 different heroes and a handful of scenarios to keep things interesting. Gameplay can be boiled down to this: Zombies move 1 space, heroes move 1d6 spaces. Both sides draw and play cards which can cause effects, modify combat, etc, etc. There's more to it, but that's the style of play. Turns fly by, which in my opinion is a great success in the game design.
I'll admit that there is nothing particularly clever or inspired about the game, the trick is that what it does try to do it does well. We played two scenarios, one where the heroes need to take out 15 zombies in 15 turns and the other where the heroes need to find keys and a gas tank so they can high-tail it out in the truck at the center of the board before night falls. Both were fun and seemed balanced (though the heroes won both games, they all went down to the wire). The truck scenario was particulary interesting because in the first few rounds, we found the items we needed and I was thinking that the scenario would be a cake-walk. Then I realized what Shemp was doing (he was playing the zombies)... we weren't being attacked because they were all heading to the truck. Getting there, filling the gas tank and taking off would not be easy. A lucky shot with some dynamite (and, as it turns out, a horribly missplayed rule) cleared the way for us with 2 rounds to spare and we got out.
The production quality is also excellent. The miniatures are very nice, the boards and cards are of high quality and the rulebook is very nice. The zombie theme is well captured by good scenarios and a good deck of hero and zombie cards. I enjoyed it, and unlike past horror efforts, I expect this one will stay in my collection.
(as an aside, I didn't mention Mall of Horror even though we've played it a few times. I actually like MoH, and think that it represents a very original and generally successful way to deal with the zombie theme. However, it's not an ameritrash style game, so I left it out)
We finished up with Witch Trial, a good game by CheapAss. ACTUALLY funny, and with rules that work (though very luck heavy). Probably the best of theirs that I've played. It seemed like my role in the game was to fill other lawyer's pockets, as I couldn't seem to win a case at all! Kozure won.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Camel. Hump. (Princes of Florence, Through the Desert, China)
BHarmer's pick this week. A random assortment of games, but good ones.
Princes of Florence
We opened up with one of my all time favorites, Princes of Florence. As far as I'm concerned, there is no better optimisation game. What does this type of game need to do well? Players need to be largely in control of their fates, but there needs to be just a little luck to keep things from becoming static, and just enough player interaction that a player might feel the pressure to change an otherwise ideal strategy to react to evolving circumstances.
I've tried a few different strategies in this game. The pure builder and jester strategies are both popular, but since they are fairly obvious the competition for those resources are typically pretty tight (making them less effective as a result). Instead of going a middle road, as I usually do lately, I decided to try to simply bulk up my professions early and see if the extra hand size would carry me through the game. I auctioned for a recruiter card on the first round and purchased a profession as my first action. I purchased another profession on the second round. This meant that, along with the jester I had won in the auction, my works were worth a minimum of 8 (6 profession cards and 2 for the jester). As a large number of my professions required forests and the freedom of religion or opinion, I was able to gather what I needed and play a large number of works cost effectively.
Things didn't go perfectly, though. The profession cards and prestige cards I drew didn't match up well with my hand. As I tried to bid up other players I got stuck with a builder I didn't want. I miscalculated on a turn and nearly made it impossible for myself to complete my plan to complete two works on the final round. These things make me happy, because if they never happened, the game would quickly become very boring. I'm glad the resources are so limited, I'm glad that there are so few turns, and I'm glad that I can use the auction to make life difficult for other players (and that it can come back and bite me).
It was a very tight game until the end. I won due to the two works on my last round.
Through the Desert
After the usual griping about the terrible colours that the camels come in, we played two rounds of this excellent little game. Kozure killed us in the first, with a good number of 'longest chains' and surrounded areas. I won the second, largely due to a large 21 point area of the board I was able to cordon off. This is probably the first time that my initial placement amounted to more than just 'I'll place this camel near those two water holes' or 'between these two palm trees'. I placed a camel halfway up the edge of the board, and placed two blockers to the right of it. Since the blockers matched the colour of the other player's camels in the area, it was tricky for them to come block my land grab. Obviously, in a five player game the odds of having a placement strategy work are minimal since it's just luck no one saw what I was doing or even that they didn't place a camel or two in a place which would have screwed up my plan unknowingly. Still, they didn't and it worked! Still, it's pretty cool that despite what seemed like a game winning move, the lead was pretty small since I had to forego so many other scoring opportunities (water holes, palm trees, longest chains) in order to make it work.
Oh, and I ALMOST enclosed a circle right in the middle of the board. That would have been cool (damn you Kozure!!!)
China
We ended with China, another excellent game which packs a punch in very little time. 4 Players is pretty much as high as it will go before kind of breaking down, though (and 3 is best). Luch usually seems to go heavy on advisors, and Kozure normally seems to go majorities and chains. I went advisors as well, so I was in frequent competition with Luch. Not sure who won the game, because we realized later that we forgot to score the roads! Minus those, I had won, but I was very weak in connections so it could have been anyone's game.
Princes of Florence
We opened up with one of my all time favorites, Princes of Florence. As far as I'm concerned, there is no better optimisation game. What does this type of game need to do well? Players need to be largely in control of their fates, but there needs to be just a little luck to keep things from becoming static, and just enough player interaction that a player might feel the pressure to change an otherwise ideal strategy to react to evolving circumstances.
I've tried a few different strategies in this game. The pure builder and jester strategies are both popular, but since they are fairly obvious the competition for those resources are typically pretty tight (making them less effective as a result). Instead of going a middle road, as I usually do lately, I decided to try to simply bulk up my professions early and see if the extra hand size would carry me through the game. I auctioned for a recruiter card on the first round and purchased a profession as my first action. I purchased another profession on the second round. This meant that, along with the jester I had won in the auction, my works were worth a minimum of 8 (6 profession cards and 2 for the jester). As a large number of my professions required forests and the freedom of religion or opinion, I was able to gather what I needed and play a large number of works cost effectively.
Things didn't go perfectly, though. The profession cards and prestige cards I drew didn't match up well with my hand. As I tried to bid up other players I got stuck with a builder I didn't want. I miscalculated on a turn and nearly made it impossible for myself to complete my plan to complete two works on the final round. These things make me happy, because if they never happened, the game would quickly become very boring. I'm glad the resources are so limited, I'm glad that there are so few turns, and I'm glad that I can use the auction to make life difficult for other players (and that it can come back and bite me).
It was a very tight game until the end. I won due to the two works on my last round.
Through the Desert
After the usual griping about the terrible colours that the camels come in, we played two rounds of this excellent little game. Kozure killed us in the first, with a good number of 'longest chains' and surrounded areas. I won the second, largely due to a large 21 point area of the board I was able to cordon off. This is probably the first time that my initial placement amounted to more than just 'I'll place this camel near those two water holes' or 'between these two palm trees'. I placed a camel halfway up the edge of the board, and placed two blockers to the right of it. Since the blockers matched the colour of the other player's camels in the area, it was tricky for them to come block my land grab. Obviously, in a five player game the odds of having a placement strategy work are minimal since it's just luck no one saw what I was doing or even that they didn't place a camel or two in a place which would have screwed up my plan unknowingly. Still, they didn't and it worked! Still, it's pretty cool that despite what seemed like a game winning move, the lead was pretty small since I had to forego so many other scoring opportunities (water holes, palm trees, longest chains) in order to make it work.
Oh, and I ALMOST enclosed a circle right in the middle of the board. That would have been cool (damn you Kozure!!!)
China
We ended with China, another excellent game which packs a punch in very little time. 4 Players is pretty much as high as it will go before kind of breaking down, though (and 3 is best). Luch usually seems to go heavy on advisors, and Kozure normally seems to go majorities and chains. I went advisors as well, so I was in frequent competition with Luch. Not sure who won the game, because we realized later that we forgot to score the roads! Minus those, I had won, but I was very weak in connections so it could have been anyone's game.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Ouch (Nexus Ops, Ingenious, Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Jungle Speed + Expansion)
This post is quite late. The evening in question is Wednesday, September 28th (I wasn't around this week. From the emails, it's possible there was no gaming at all in my absence)
I chose to play the new games I received at the recent math trade (Nexus Ops, Ingenious and Jungle Speed + Expansion), along with one I received at the previous one (Clue: The Great Museum Caper).
Nexus Ops
Nexus Ops is a game from Avalon Hill's recent attempt to make a comeback in boardgaming. While the line in general didn't see much success (or so I hear), Nexus Ops was one of only two games to get any sort of positive recognition (the other was Vegas Showdown). Billed as a sort of "Risk done right", I thought it might fill a niche in my collection.
The concept is a little forced: It's the future and a new planet has been discovered which seems to be rich in Rubium. Each player represents a corporation which wants to mine the planet for all it's worth. To this end, it sends in soldiers and enlists creatures on the planet to help. In practice, it's an excuse to get a bunch of armies together and fight.
The board consists of a number of hexogonal tiles, layed in a circular pattern just like Settlers of Catan, except that the center is an elevated platform. Each player has a base at one edge where units are deployed. After the initial setup, the game consists purely of deploying units, fighting and collecting income based on the mines the player controls at the end of a turn. It sounds simple, and it is, but the designers have slipped in there a few nice ideas which make this game work where others might have failed:
1) The victory condition is acheiving 12 victory points. Victory points are almost exclusively gained by winning battles. This small decision ensures that the game keeps moving and never results in turtling.
2) Players gain secret missions at the end of every turn. These are normally to win a battle in a certain place, with a certain unit or under certain conditions. Players will normally alter their play to attempt to satisfy the conditions, which allows the game to feel a little less repetitive than it otherwise would.
3) If a player wins a battle, he/she is allowed to play mission cards to gain victory points. However, if this occurs the losing player gets to draw an "energize" card, which will grant him an advantage in the future (such as rolling additional dice, destroying units, etc). This is a nice, simple way to keep losing players in the running.
4) The creatures seem well balanced. The expensive ones are worth more, due to the powers they get and their superior ability in battle. Still, they are risky because a well coordinated attack by several smaller units. Even with lots of money, it's never obvious which units a player should buy.
I had fun with Nexus Ops. Though the overall visual impression of the game is ridiculously tacky, the component quality is generally quite good (the only excpetion would be the cardboard center obelisk, which seems too cheap for the rest of the game). The brightly coloured creatures are kinda cool, though in a few instances they could have been better differentiated.
I think it will do just fine in my collection... there for those sessions were I just want to beat stuff up.
Session Report
Not knowing how to play the game, I opened with just 2 units... a soldier and a rock spider. I discovered another rock spider but was unable to man any of my starting mines (leaving me with little income for the next turn). Having observed the weakness of my opening move, the other players purchased more cheaper units and spread out while keeping people behind to generate income. A few turns in, things were looking grim. Shemp, Luch and Kozure had lots of units on the board... my only saving grace was that I managed to get 2 rock spiders on the monolith and enjoyed the energize card bonus for many rounds before the others got fed up with exploring the board and purchasing reinforcements. Kozure started moving into my home base and I could do very little to fight back (Kozure was the USSR of this game, with nearly half the board under his control). Luch was taking the lion's share of the VPs by succesfully battling Shemp and Kozure. My stash of cards was difficult to use because I had so few units, but I managed to focus on a few easy battles and accumulated a pretty good score considering. Shemp couldn't roll a winning die to save his life, and Kozure wasn't fighting very much at all which meant his VP total didn't really reflect his dominance of so much territory.
Entering what was our last round, Luch and I were both in a position to potentially win on our turns. Difference was, I needed to get lucky, and he was so strong that it was almost inconceivable that he would'nt win.
He did.
Ingenious
Ingenious is a kind of variant on dominos which also reminds me of Blokus for it's relative simplicity. There's not much to it (you place a tile which has two symbols on it and score points according to how well it matches with what's already on the board) but the Tigris and Euphrates style scoring and the fact that it plays well with 2, 3 or 4 players make it a much better game in my opinion (I also like Blokus, but the base set only really plays well with 4).
I think everyone liked it, but to be fair I mostly got this one to play with non-gamers at home.
Clue: The Great Museum Caper
This was a game I picked up at the last math trade. When we played it, it seemed like fun but I couldn't understand how it was possible for the thief to win. I almost traded it away at this math trade because the box is SO big, and the game seemed SO unbalanced, that I figured it wouldn't get much play. Having failed to trade it, I figured I'd give it another shot.
The balance seemed even worse than before. Utterly impossible, in fact. I've checked BGG, I can't see anything we are doing wrong. I'm guessing that 2-3 players would work better, but I'm not sure I'll ever find out...
(oh, and Shemp said at the end of the game that he couldn't decide whether he would rate this above or below Lord of the Rings: Sauron. Considering how much he hates that game, I was quite surprised. Sure, it's not working very well...but it's not a game that stands out enough that it would even occur to me that it would be worthy of hating. And this from a guy who likes Scotland Yard, so I thought he might really go for this)
Back to the trade pile.
Jungle Speed + Expansion
Not much to say, except that if you've ever played this before and thought that it made your head hurt... you ain't seen nothing yet. The new cards provided are not all new patterns. They are further variations on the existing ones! There are subtle changes which are not easy to process, and the whole thing is very headache inducing.
I LOVE it.
(note: I don't recommend playing with the full deck with 4 people. Our game did end (I won), but it could have gone on for a long time. )
I chose to play the new games I received at the recent math trade (Nexus Ops, Ingenious and Jungle Speed + Expansion), along with one I received at the previous one (Clue: The Great Museum Caper).
Nexus Ops
Nexus Ops is a game from Avalon Hill's recent attempt to make a comeback in boardgaming. While the line in general didn't see much success (or so I hear), Nexus Ops was one of only two games to get any sort of positive recognition (the other was Vegas Showdown). Billed as a sort of "Risk done right", I thought it might fill a niche in my collection.
The concept is a little forced: It's the future and a new planet has been discovered which seems to be rich in Rubium. Each player represents a corporation which wants to mine the planet for all it's worth. To this end, it sends in soldiers and enlists creatures on the planet to help. In practice, it's an excuse to get a bunch of armies together and fight.
The board consists of a number of hexogonal tiles, layed in a circular pattern just like Settlers of Catan, except that the center is an elevated platform. Each player has a base at one edge where units are deployed. After the initial setup, the game consists purely of deploying units, fighting and collecting income based on the mines the player controls at the end of a turn. It sounds simple, and it is, but the designers have slipped in there a few nice ideas which make this game work where others might have failed:
1) The victory condition is acheiving 12 victory points. Victory points are almost exclusively gained by winning battles. This small decision ensures that the game keeps moving and never results in turtling.
2) Players gain secret missions at the end of every turn. These are normally to win a battle in a certain place, with a certain unit or under certain conditions. Players will normally alter their play to attempt to satisfy the conditions, which allows the game to feel a little less repetitive than it otherwise would.
3) If a player wins a battle, he/she is allowed to play mission cards to gain victory points. However, if this occurs the losing player gets to draw an "energize" card, which will grant him an advantage in the future (such as rolling additional dice, destroying units, etc). This is a nice, simple way to keep losing players in the running.
4) The creatures seem well balanced. The expensive ones are worth more, due to the powers they get and their superior ability in battle. Still, they are risky because a well coordinated attack by several smaller units. Even with lots of money, it's never obvious which units a player should buy.
I had fun with Nexus Ops. Though the overall visual impression of the game is ridiculously tacky, the component quality is generally quite good (the only excpetion would be the cardboard center obelisk, which seems too cheap for the rest of the game). The brightly coloured creatures are kinda cool, though in a few instances they could have been better differentiated.
I think it will do just fine in my collection... there for those sessions were I just want to beat stuff up.
Session Report
Not knowing how to play the game, I opened with just 2 units... a soldier and a rock spider. I discovered another rock spider but was unable to man any of my starting mines (leaving me with little income for the next turn). Having observed the weakness of my opening move, the other players purchased more cheaper units and spread out while keeping people behind to generate income. A few turns in, things were looking grim. Shemp, Luch and Kozure had lots of units on the board... my only saving grace was that I managed to get 2 rock spiders on the monolith and enjoyed the energize card bonus for many rounds before the others got fed up with exploring the board and purchasing reinforcements. Kozure started moving into my home base and I could do very little to fight back (Kozure was the USSR of this game, with nearly half the board under his control). Luch was taking the lion's share of the VPs by succesfully battling Shemp and Kozure. My stash of cards was difficult to use because I had so few units, but I managed to focus on a few easy battles and accumulated a pretty good score considering. Shemp couldn't roll a winning die to save his life, and Kozure wasn't fighting very much at all which meant his VP total didn't really reflect his dominance of so much territory.
Entering what was our last round, Luch and I were both in a position to potentially win on our turns. Difference was, I needed to get lucky, and he was so strong that it was almost inconceivable that he would'nt win.
He did.
Ingenious
Ingenious is a kind of variant on dominos which also reminds me of Blokus for it's relative simplicity. There's not much to it (you place a tile which has two symbols on it and score points according to how well it matches with what's already on the board) but the Tigris and Euphrates style scoring and the fact that it plays well with 2, 3 or 4 players make it a much better game in my opinion (I also like Blokus, but the base set only really plays well with 4).
I think everyone liked it, but to be fair I mostly got this one to play with non-gamers at home.
Clue: The Great Museum Caper
This was a game I picked up at the last math trade. When we played it, it seemed like fun but I couldn't understand how it was possible for the thief to win. I almost traded it away at this math trade because the box is SO big, and the game seemed SO unbalanced, that I figured it wouldn't get much play. Having failed to trade it, I figured I'd give it another shot.
The balance seemed even worse than before. Utterly impossible, in fact. I've checked BGG, I can't see anything we are doing wrong. I'm guessing that 2-3 players would work better, but I'm not sure I'll ever find out...
(oh, and Shemp said at the end of the game that he couldn't decide whether he would rate this above or below Lord of the Rings: Sauron. Considering how much he hates that game, I was quite surprised. Sure, it's not working very well...but it's not a game that stands out enough that it would even occur to me that it would be worthy of hating. And this from a guy who likes Scotland Yard, so I thought he might really go for this)
Back to the trade pile.
Jungle Speed + Expansion
Not much to say, except that if you've ever played this before and thought that it made your head hurt... you ain't seen nothing yet. The new cards provided are not all new patterns. They are further variations on the existing ones! There are subtle changes which are not easy to process, and the whole thing is very headache inducing.
I LOVE it.
(note: I don't recommend playing with the full deck with 4 people. Our game did end (I won), but it could have gone on for a long time. )
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Math Trade Day (Entdecker, Lock n' Load: Band of Heroes)
2nd Toronto Area Math trade has come and gone.
This time, instead of Yorkdale shopping center, the trade was cleverly arranged to coincide with the TABS game convention (Toronto Area Boardgame Society). Therefore, after trading all our games, we could elect to go inside and get some gaming in. This year, I traded away Zombies 4 (a very unfortunate purchase) and Betrayal at the House on Haunted Hill (a game I actually sort of enjoyed, but was too often frustrating) for Ingenious, and Pueblo (a game I enjoyed, but never got around to actually playing often enough) for Nexus Ops. While I was at the convention, I also picked up used copies of Jungle Speed and it's expansion for $20 total.
A good day.
Once inside, I wandered around and eventually sat with a few players to try out Entdecker, a game I was hoping to trade for but lost out.
Entdecker
Entdecker is a game by Klaus Teuber which, apparently, was supposed to be part of his original vision for Settlers of Catan. While Entdecker was not a bad game by any means, this type of story clearly reinforces why designers need good editors.
Entdecker is an exploration game. The large board depicts a grided expanse of water, a number of paths which lead to huts and a giant sea snake at the top (the scoring track). The water is then seeded with a few island tiles and bonus point objectives (there are various starting setups available).
On a player's turn, they must pick a starting point for their expedition and then announce how many spaces they plan to explore. There is a cost associated with this, and the full amount must be paid up front. Open face tiles are extremely expensive, and face down ones are cheap but risky. Tiles are then drawn one by one and placed Carcassonne style on the board from the point of origin. If, at any point, the player draws a tile he/she can't play OR the player chooses to place a token on a tile the exploration phase ends... any remaining money spent on unflipped tiles is lost! It's no big surprise that the reason players are placing tokens on tiles is that when an island becomes fully explored it will score points, determined by it's size, to players who have a presence there (area majority style). In this game, all players present get SOMETHING (2nd player gets half of first, 3rd player gets half of 2nd, 4th gets half of 3rd). When the sea is fully explored, the game ends.
There are two major and one minor mechanics which are worth mentioning here:
1) Players have scout tokens, settlements and forts. When determining majorities, numbers matter but there are a few anomalies: a single fort trumps any number of settlements or scouts. A single settlement trumps any number of scouts. Not surprisingly, settlements and forts cost quite a bit more than scouts.
2) When an island is scored, players retrieve any settlements and forts they had on the island. However, scouts are instead placed on the island exploration tracks on the right of the board. At the end of the game, the value of each track is revealed and the player with the most scouts on each track wins those VPs (it's not totaly random, though. Players do have 1 or 2 opportunities to see the value of the huts). These points seem to amount to roughly 1/3 of the entire score, so this mini-game cannot go unnoticed.
3) Money is very scarce in the game. When a player goes to less than 4 gold, he/she must roll a die. That players gets the amount listed on the die, and all other players get that much +1. In other words, you never want the be the one to have to roll the die, because you are giving an advantage to the other players.
Overall, I quite liked the game. I was afraid it would feel like a Carcassonne clone, but it really doesn't. The exploration feeling is there, and the contest for islands and the island exploration tracks works really well. The randomness is important but suited to the theme. It does have a big problem though... it's way too long. This should have been a 1 hour game, but ours took over 2 hours. It simply doesn't stay fun for that period of time. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to play this again, but if I do I would want to try reducing the board size to see if it helped.
Theres a fun game in there, but it needs to be shorter.
(as for the session report, I was trailing for most of the game as one player consistently nabbed the best islands after others would worked hard to develop them and another player was quite sharp at spotting easy opportunities for quick points. I found myself being the money roller one most turns. I managed to send many of my scouts to the island exploration tracks and redeemed myself at the endgame. I still came in 3rd, but the scores were much closer than they had been.)
Next, I played the introductory scenario of Lock n' Load, Band of Brothers with Kozure (who goes regularly to these things, though the rest of our group does not). It's a simple little scenario which involves a small group of allies holed up in a few central buildings as the axis storms in with an equally small team on a random edge of the board. The goal is to be in possession of that central area by the end of 6 turns. I was doing a decent job of holding my own against Kozure (a much more experienced wargamer), and felt I had a chance of winning until the final turn when I did a very stupid thing: I grouped my forces into a large force and ran through open terrain to obliterate his forces in melee. The problem? As I crossed the open terrain, I gave him a beautiful opportunity to mow me down with opportunity fire. And that's what he did.
All in all, I quite enjoy this game. The rules for infantry combat are simple for this type of game, the box ships with a large number of scenarios, the unit count is low (making setup and takedown fast and easy, and making the scenarios easy to digest in short periods of time). It makes for a much more satisfying game than Memoir '44 from the point of view of experiencing a small scale battle with interesting winning conditions and varied scenarios, though Memoir clearly is simpler and has certain advantages of its own (most of them aesthetic).
This time, instead of Yorkdale shopping center, the trade was cleverly arranged to coincide with the TABS game convention (Toronto Area Boardgame Society). Therefore, after trading all our games, we could elect to go inside and get some gaming in. This year, I traded away Zombies 4 (a very unfortunate purchase) and Betrayal at the House on Haunted Hill (a game I actually sort of enjoyed, but was too often frustrating) for Ingenious, and Pueblo (a game I enjoyed, but never got around to actually playing often enough) for Nexus Ops. While I was at the convention, I also picked up used copies of Jungle Speed and it's expansion for $20 total.
A good day.
Once inside, I wandered around and eventually sat with a few players to try out Entdecker, a game I was hoping to trade for but lost out.
Entdecker
Entdecker is a game by Klaus Teuber which, apparently, was supposed to be part of his original vision for Settlers of Catan. While Entdecker was not a bad game by any means, this type of story clearly reinforces why designers need good editors.
Entdecker is an exploration game. The large board depicts a grided expanse of water, a number of paths which lead to huts and a giant sea snake at the top (the scoring track). The water is then seeded with a few island tiles and bonus point objectives (there are various starting setups available).
On a player's turn, they must pick a starting point for their expedition and then announce how many spaces they plan to explore. There is a cost associated with this, and the full amount must be paid up front. Open face tiles are extremely expensive, and face down ones are cheap but risky. Tiles are then drawn one by one and placed Carcassonne style on the board from the point of origin. If, at any point, the player draws a tile he/she can't play OR the player chooses to place a token on a tile the exploration phase ends... any remaining money spent on unflipped tiles is lost! It's no big surprise that the reason players are placing tokens on tiles is that when an island becomes fully explored it will score points, determined by it's size, to players who have a presence there (area majority style). In this game, all players present get SOMETHING (2nd player gets half of first, 3rd player gets half of 2nd, 4th gets half of 3rd). When the sea is fully explored, the game ends.
There are two major and one minor mechanics which are worth mentioning here:
1) Players have scout tokens, settlements and forts. When determining majorities, numbers matter but there are a few anomalies: a single fort trumps any number of settlements or scouts. A single settlement trumps any number of scouts. Not surprisingly, settlements and forts cost quite a bit more than scouts.
2) When an island is scored, players retrieve any settlements and forts they had on the island. However, scouts are instead placed on the island exploration tracks on the right of the board. At the end of the game, the value of each track is revealed and the player with the most scouts on each track wins those VPs (it's not totaly random, though. Players do have 1 or 2 opportunities to see the value of the huts). These points seem to amount to roughly 1/3 of the entire score, so this mini-game cannot go unnoticed.
3) Money is very scarce in the game. When a player goes to less than 4 gold, he/she must roll a die. That players gets the amount listed on the die, and all other players get that much +1. In other words, you never want the be the one to have to roll the die, because you are giving an advantage to the other players.
Overall, I quite liked the game. I was afraid it would feel like a Carcassonne clone, but it really doesn't. The exploration feeling is there, and the contest for islands and the island exploration tracks works really well. The randomness is important but suited to the theme. It does have a big problem though... it's way too long. This should have been a 1 hour game, but ours took over 2 hours. It simply doesn't stay fun for that period of time. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to play this again, but if I do I would want to try reducing the board size to see if it helped.
Theres a fun game in there, but it needs to be shorter.
(as for the session report, I was trailing for most of the game as one player consistently nabbed the best islands after others would worked hard to develop them and another player was quite sharp at spotting easy opportunities for quick points. I found myself being the money roller one most turns. I managed to send many of my scouts to the island exploration tracks and redeemed myself at the endgame. I still came in 3rd, but the scores were much closer than they had been.)
Next, I played the introductory scenario of Lock n' Load, Band of Brothers with Kozure (who goes regularly to these things, though the rest of our group does not). It's a simple little scenario which involves a small group of allies holed up in a few central buildings as the axis storms in with an equally small team on a random edge of the board. The goal is to be in possession of that central area by the end of 6 turns. I was doing a decent job of holding my own against Kozure (a much more experienced wargamer), and felt I had a chance of winning until the final turn when I did a very stupid thing: I grouped my forces into a large force and ran through open terrain to obliterate his forces in melee. The problem? As I crossed the open terrain, I gave him a beautiful opportunity to mow me down with opportunity fire. And that's what he did.
All in all, I quite enjoy this game. The rules for infantry combat are simple for this type of game, the box ships with a large number of scenarios, the unit count is low (making setup and takedown fast and easy, and making the scenarios easy to digest in short periods of time). It makes for a much more satisfying game than Memoir '44 from the point of view of experiencing a small scale battle with interesting winning conditions and varied scenarios, though Memoir clearly is simpler and has certain advantages of its own (most of them aesthetic).
Friday, September 28, 2007
The problem with card games... (Naval Battles, Plunder)
... is that their inherent randomness can bite you.
We played a couple of card based games this week, Naval Battles and Plunder.
Naval Battles is a game which reminds me of many other battle games, like Zero!, most CCGs and many take that! style games... You have your assets (the cards in play in front of you) and you use them as the vehicle to play effects on other player's assets. They might counter with a card of their own, you might modify your effect, etc, etc. In this case, we are dealing with WW2 naval warfare and each player controls a fleet of ships. Each ship has particular weapons. Players essentially take shots at other boats by matching the cards in their hands with the size of the guns they have available. The theming is further enhanced by 6 decks of nation specific ships (each reflecting the relative strengths/ weaknesses of the nation in the naval arena), a few nice formation vs weaponry rules, by an "air raid" mechanic which plays a significant role in the game and reasonably evocative card art. It's not too long, accomodates 2 to 6 and seems to play well. I was a little lukewarm to it, as I often am with this type of game, but all in all I would happily play again. One small complaint: The game forces players to do a lot of cross-referencing between the attack cards in their hands with the guns on the ships they have available. Unfortunately, the card design places this frequently used information on the right side of the card... and therefore hidden if you hold you hand of cards normally. Pretty small complaint. There is a partnership variant that sounds interesting.
If memory serves me well, Shemp and Luch each won a game. I played the French and did nothing to alter their reputation in naval warfare expertise.
Plunder is a game where everyone is a pirate looking for treasure. the cards are used to create an ever expanding play area. Pirate move along between ports, coastlines and open sea. Cities get sacked and ships get boarded. Sadly, our game this week was so full of highly improbable combinations of events that I can't help but feel I have no idea how it should play normally. It took a long time for any of us to draw any cards which opened up the starting layout. Shemp drew a ridiculous amount of "storm" cards (there is only one in the deck, but it is potentially disastrous and is the reshuffled into the deck) Luch got stuck in a corner, having a very difficult time getting out. On one turn, I drew 7-8 open sea tiles, making an enourmously long sraight which was difficult to navigate because of the movement mechanic.
It seemed to have nice ideas. Goods can be purchased at one port and resold at a profit. Enemy ships that get boarded yield big treasure, but you need a "friendly place" to trade it for cash. Ships can be upgraded, etc. For whatever reason, though, our session was surely far from ordinary. I will reserve judgement until I play it again at least once. At the very least, I think we should double the number of sea card used in the begining.
We played a couple of card based games this week, Naval Battles and Plunder.
Naval Battles is a game which reminds me of many other battle games, like Zero!, most CCGs and many take that! style games... You have your assets (the cards in play in front of you) and you use them as the vehicle to play effects on other player's assets. They might counter with a card of their own, you might modify your effect, etc, etc. In this case, we are dealing with WW2 naval warfare and each player controls a fleet of ships. Each ship has particular weapons. Players essentially take shots at other boats by matching the cards in their hands with the size of the guns they have available. The theming is further enhanced by 6 decks of nation specific ships (each reflecting the relative strengths/ weaknesses of the nation in the naval arena), a few nice formation vs weaponry rules, by an "air raid" mechanic which plays a significant role in the game and reasonably evocative card art. It's not too long, accomodates 2 to 6 and seems to play well. I was a little lukewarm to it, as I often am with this type of game, but all in all I would happily play again. One small complaint: The game forces players to do a lot of cross-referencing between the attack cards in their hands with the guns on the ships they have available. Unfortunately, the card design places this frequently used information on the right side of the card... and therefore hidden if you hold you hand of cards normally. Pretty small complaint. There is a partnership variant that sounds interesting.
If memory serves me well, Shemp and Luch each won a game. I played the French and did nothing to alter their reputation in naval warfare expertise.
Plunder is a game where everyone is a pirate looking for treasure. the cards are used to create an ever expanding play area. Pirate move along between ports, coastlines and open sea. Cities get sacked and ships get boarded. Sadly, our game this week was so full of highly improbable combinations of events that I can't help but feel I have no idea how it should play normally. It took a long time for any of us to draw any cards which opened up the starting layout. Shemp drew a ridiculous amount of "storm" cards (there is only one in the deck, but it is potentially disastrous and is the reshuffled into the deck) Luch got stuck in a corner, having a very difficult time getting out. On one turn, I drew 7-8 open sea tiles, making an enourmously long sraight which was difficult to navigate because of the movement mechanic.
It seemed to have nice ideas. Goods can be purchased at one port and resold at a profit. Enemy ships that get boarded yield big treasure, but you need a "friendly place" to trade it for cash. Ships can be upgraded, etc. For whatever reason, though, our session was surely far from ordinary. I will reserve judgement until I play it again at least once. At the very least, I think we should double the number of sea card used in the begining.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Mania! Mania? (Jungle Speed, RoboRally, Canal Mania)
Apologies to the gods of blogging, I'm posting this a week and a half late (it's a session report for Wendesday the 12th of Spetember). Why the delay? I'm blaming in on Metroid Prime 3.
We kicked off the evening with Jungle Speed. Does age matter? maybe. Shemp wasn't doing too hot in our game, but JayWowzer and I were neck and neck. Does time matter? Definitely. Starting out the evening with the game led to a far slower game than normal... I guess we hadn't properly "stretched" our gaming mojo yet.
RoboRally with 5 players should be chaotic enough, but I wanted to up the ante. I chose a scenario which appeared to be quite deadly (3 flags concentrated at the center of a board, with pits and conveyor belts all around). No one died in the first round, so that was discouraging. I cruised along unimpeded to the 1st and 2nd flag while the others struggled to get anywhere. Sadly, I lost all my mad programmin' skilz and ran around in circles trying to get number 3. Meanwhile, Luch managed to finish it off. I did manage to reprogram a few robots with my radio control beam, and Luch did manage to shoot alot of robots with his rear-firing laser. Kozure lost his last robot before the end of the game, and I don't beleive that Shemp ever made it to flag 1. Hmmm.
Canal Mania
Canal Mania can be best described as Railroad Tycoon meets Ticket to Ride (and, to a much lesser extent, Maharaja). You've got a board littered with English cities, and you need to connect them with canals. It resembles Ticket to Ride because you have routes you are trying to fulfill, and you must draw cards from a face up supply in order to pay for playing the canal pieces. It resembles Railroad Tycoon because you place hexagonal pieces of canal paths on the board, and ship goods from town to town once you've made the connections. Scoring also draws from both of it's sources: You primarily get points for completing your routes and sending goods across a long network of your cities. From Maharaja, the game borrows a very similar "role" system.
When I first was explained the rules, I thought the whole thing sounded pretty clever. It seemed like many of the downsides of the previous games had been addressed and/or streamlined. You would no longer be frustrated for a long period of time waiting for a particular colour of card to come up, because the cards come in only 5 varieties (actually, 4+ wilds) and every route can use a combination of all 4 different types. Also, the routes you choose determine the only places you can play on the board, so there should be much less analysis paralysis than the totally open options of Railroad Tycoon.
Oh, and the special powers of the roles, and the ease with which they can be swapped around, makes it possible to do SOMETHING productive at almost any time.
But you know what? It didn't do much for me. I'd play the original games before this one any day. It wasn't bad at all, but the process felt slower and more constrained than they do. The slower part might resolve itself with more plays (it SHOULD move fast, because there aren't many choices at any one time. I guess the multiple phases in each player's turn takes it's toll). I think the part that bothered me, though, was the scoring...
There are just a few ways to score points:
1) fulfill routes (contracts)
2) place tiles along those routes that are worth points
3) deliver goods along a long series of your cities
The problem I have is that the points for the routes seem irrelevant. A route worth twice as much takes twice as long to complete. They also go through 2 cities. Therefore, after I've completed a long route, you've completed two short ones, and we are even again.
Then, the choice of tiles used is fairly prescribed as well. I haven't played this often enough to know for sure, but it seems like over the course of a game most players will gain approximately the same number of points from tiles.
So, that leaves connections for delivering goods. Here, major differences in points can occur. If I have a good series of unconnected routes, and you don't, I bet there is nothing you could do to win. Therefore, it seems like the other two paths to victory engage players in a very close battle where 1 or two points will separate the winner from the loser, but the goods delivery makes that race irrelevant. So, then, why bother with counting the rest?
And finally, if the delivered goods are the key to victory, I would hope that there would be fair control over which routes you pick. Not so. On your turn, you pick from the available 5 routes (or much less, if some have already been taken). You can't play without a route, so if you don't have one, you pick from what's available. It seems that only 6-7 routes get completed in a game, so the luck of having the right route available at the right time seems very important to victory.
Now, I could obviously be missing something because I've played only once and didn't do well. Kozure CRUSHED us with a well connected series of canals. Clearly, he "Got It" way before we did (at least, long before I did). We were all virtually tied in second place.
I'd definitely play again. I eventually came around to Maharaja, and it's quite possible I just didn't get Canal Mania this time.
Note to potential buyers: there is very little "mania" involved in Canal Mania.
We kicked off the evening with Jungle Speed. Does age matter? maybe. Shemp wasn't doing too hot in our game, but JayWowzer and I were neck and neck. Does time matter? Definitely. Starting out the evening with the game led to a far slower game than normal... I guess we hadn't properly "stretched" our gaming mojo yet.
RoboRally with 5 players should be chaotic enough, but I wanted to up the ante. I chose a scenario which appeared to be quite deadly (3 flags concentrated at the center of a board, with pits and conveyor belts all around). No one died in the first round, so that was discouraging. I cruised along unimpeded to the 1st and 2nd flag while the others struggled to get anywhere. Sadly, I lost all my mad programmin' skilz and ran around in circles trying to get number 3. Meanwhile, Luch managed to finish it off. I did manage to reprogram a few robots with my radio control beam, and Luch did manage to shoot alot of robots with his rear-firing laser. Kozure lost his last robot before the end of the game, and I don't beleive that Shemp ever made it to flag 1. Hmmm.
Canal Mania
Canal Mania can be best described as Railroad Tycoon meets Ticket to Ride (and, to a much lesser extent, Maharaja). You've got a board littered with English cities, and you need to connect them with canals. It resembles Ticket to Ride because you have routes you are trying to fulfill, and you must draw cards from a face up supply in order to pay for playing the canal pieces. It resembles Railroad Tycoon because you place hexagonal pieces of canal paths on the board, and ship goods from town to town once you've made the connections. Scoring also draws from both of it's sources: You primarily get points for completing your routes and sending goods across a long network of your cities. From Maharaja, the game borrows a very similar "role" system.
When I first was explained the rules, I thought the whole thing sounded pretty clever. It seemed like many of the downsides of the previous games had been addressed and/or streamlined. You would no longer be frustrated for a long period of time waiting for a particular colour of card to come up, because the cards come in only 5 varieties (actually, 4+ wilds) and every route can use a combination of all 4 different types. Also, the routes you choose determine the only places you can play on the board, so there should be much less analysis paralysis than the totally open options of Railroad Tycoon.
Oh, and the special powers of the roles, and the ease with which they can be swapped around, makes it possible to do SOMETHING productive at almost any time.
But you know what? It didn't do much for me. I'd play the original games before this one any day. It wasn't bad at all, but the process felt slower and more constrained than they do. The slower part might resolve itself with more plays (it SHOULD move fast, because there aren't many choices at any one time. I guess the multiple phases in each player's turn takes it's toll). I think the part that bothered me, though, was the scoring...
There are just a few ways to score points:
1) fulfill routes (contracts)
2) place tiles along those routes that are worth points
3) deliver goods along a long series of your cities
The problem I have is that the points for the routes seem irrelevant. A route worth twice as much takes twice as long to complete. They also go through 2 cities. Therefore, after I've completed a long route, you've completed two short ones, and we are even again.
Then, the choice of tiles used is fairly prescribed as well. I haven't played this often enough to know for sure, but it seems like over the course of a game most players will gain approximately the same number of points from tiles.
So, that leaves connections for delivering goods. Here, major differences in points can occur. If I have a good series of unconnected routes, and you don't, I bet there is nothing you could do to win. Therefore, it seems like the other two paths to victory engage players in a very close battle where 1 or two points will separate the winner from the loser, but the goods delivery makes that race irrelevant. So, then, why bother with counting the rest?
And finally, if the delivered goods are the key to victory, I would hope that there would be fair control over which routes you pick. Not so. On your turn, you pick from the available 5 routes (or much less, if some have already been taken). You can't play without a route, so if you don't have one, you pick from what's available. It seems that only 6-7 routes get completed in a game, so the luck of having the right route available at the right time seems very important to victory.
Now, I could obviously be missing something because I've played only once and didn't do well. Kozure CRUSHED us with a well connected series of canals. Clearly, he "Got It" way before we did (at least, long before I did). We were all virtually tied in second place.
I'd definitely play again. I eventually came around to Maharaja, and it's quite possible I just didn't get Canal Mania this time.
Note to potential buyers: there is very little "mania" involved in Canal Mania.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Conan the ...Eurogamer (?)
"Between the time when the first game of Chess was played, and the rise of the sons of Caylus, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Essen upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"Ouch suggested we throw off the burden of heavy thinking and play using only our Conan-brain - quick and intuitive play without deep strategy. Amid much thick Austrian accents and exhortations to "get out of the tunnel, it's not safe," we completed a full game of Power Grid in just over one hour last night. Conan-thinking!
Interestingly, despite the low-brow intent we played a relatively close game of Ticket to Ride - Shemp and Ouch tied at 101 (I trickled in at 80 with a poor mid-late-game ticket draw unfulfilled, Hilaria - something less... she elected not to count, I believe) - it came down to destination tickets filled - of which Shemp had more.
Power Grid was a lop-sided win for Shemp. I did my initial placement poorly (grabbing easy early connections rather than going for long-term strategy) and then Ouch was persuaded to blockade me rather than go for a more long-term strategy himself. Consequently, Shemp had the western half (we played with the top three regions of Germany) all to himself for most of the game. He earned it, but we helped by playing poorly.
"He did not care any more... life and death... the same. Only that the crowd would be there to greet him with howls of lust and fury. He began to realize his sense of worth... he mattered. In time, his victories could not easily be counted... he was taken to the east, a great prize, where the war gamers would teach him the deepest secrets. Language and writing were also made available, the designs of Knizia, the philosophy of Ulrich and Kramer.. But, always, there remained the discipline of dice."Oh, I finally won a game of Trans Europa! Wooooooo! Apparently all I have to do to do well at games is to say "This is the time I will not suck at playing X." Power of positive thinking! (gag)
We played Carcasonne stupid-fast. It was... interesting. Any faster and it would have been pointless-fast. The layout was a mess.
Ticket to Ride (~0:50) [Shemp 101, Ouch 101, Kozure 80, Hilaria >80), Power Grid (~1:10) [Shemp 17, Ouch, 14, Kozure 11 - not even close] , Trans Europa (0:35) [Kozure 1, Shemp & Ouch - 14+] and Carcassonne (0:20) [Ouch (by a wide margin), Kozure, Shemp (scores not fully calculated after Ouch was shown to be easily the winner)], all after a 7:45 PM start time. Not bad, eh?
"So, did Conan travel to all his destinations in America, power the grid of Germania, connect the cities of Europa and lay waste to the fields of Carcasonne. And having no further concern, he and his companions sought adventure in the West. Many wargames and euros did Conan play. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand... And this story shall also be told."
Friday, September 07, 2007
OK, Maybe I Don't Loathe El Grande as Much as I Used to.
"Don't call it a comeback
I been here for years"
LL Cool J, "Mama Said Knock You Out"
For about a year and a half, my feelings toward El Grande have been somewhat ambivalent. I said on Wednesday night that the way I feel about playing El Grande is probably the way that bands like Taco, Soft Cell or Thomas Dolby feel about the 1980s; it's something that I was good at once but haven't had a hit with for years and would likely never have again.
Never say never.
Celebrating the triumphant return of Shemp, we played an oldie but goodie, the third true Euro introduced to the group after I brought Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan one fateful weekend, El Grande.
As I alluded to earlier, once I was quite good at this game. I applied my personal experience with strategic wargames, building up powerbases and defending them tenaciously. For about three or four straight gaming sessions of this (and we didn't play it all that often), I was winning consistently and by a fair margin. It was... glorious.
Then it went downhill. My fellow gamers cottoned onto the fact that the game isn't about (well not entirely about) powerbases, and a fluid/dynamic style of play would more often be rewarded with victory. Slowly I slipped down the VP tree, eventually reaching my usual spot of fourth or fifth out of five players, often by quite a wide margin from the first place player. There I have remained for the better part of two years or so, never really managing higher than a third place finish. While I appreciate the skill and challenge of the game, I haven't really enjoyed it very much during most of that period.
Wednesday night, all that changed.
I've abandoned my previous, methodical approach, to adopt what I call the "smash and grab" approach. Most of my bids and moves are aimed at grabbing quick points and spreading my caballeros across the board (but not too thinly) so that all of my resources aren't tied up in the aforementioned powerbases. I defend my Grande, of course, but I also know when to cut losses and either shift the Grande or otherwise abandon it's extra two points to concentrate elsewhere.
Special scoring, mobile scoreboards, and tower scoring are important to this approach. A careful watch on the VP track is also important, as your moves must be geared to giving the least aid to the leader(s) while giving the most to yourself or lower score players.
I'm still no El Grande "Grande", but I've finally pulled myself out of the doldrums of fifth place finishes. Last night's game was very close, with 2-3 points separating each place, and a total of 7 points (I believe) separating the first place player from the last.
Our second game of the evening, Theophrastus was also very close. I came in first with 60 or 61 points, the last place player was 54 (?) - not much wiggle room there. The game is quite different but equally enjoyable with two, three or four players - more strategic with two, much more back-stabby and rapid with four. As I commented last session we played this, Theophrastus has a lot of rules which are easy to forget - for example, in the so-called "scoring round" (which is actually a limited play round before scoring occurs), you are not permitted to discredit other students' or Theophrastus' work, or change any aspect of Theophrastus' formula. In the heat of alchemical battle, this is easy to forget.
Still a very enjoyable game with a lot of opportunity for optimization as well as player interaction. Solid without being stellar.
I believe our generous host Shemp snapped some pics of the VP tracks to commemorate the closeness of the games. I'd also like to thank Shemp for hosting and welcome him back after a long summer hiatus.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Closer
El Grande:
That's showing Kozure @ 110 points, Easy @ 108 points, myself @ 107, and Bharmer @ 106. The closest game of El Grande we've had. The lead changed three times during the scoring of the final province! A squeaker, big-time.
Theophrastus:
As you can see, really close scores here, too. AND there were close through all three rounds. In fact, after the second round, you can see that our cumulative scores (in the squares) were 26,26,27, and 27. Not very good scores, but close ones, indeed. Kozure won w/ 60, and I brought up the rear w/ 54. An extremely evenly matched night made for a thrilling return!
That's showing Kozure @ 110 points, Easy @ 108 points, myself @ 107, and Bharmer @ 106. The closest game of El Grande we've had. The lead changed three times during the scoring of the final province! A squeaker, big-time.
Theophrastus:
As you can see, really close scores here, too. AND there were close through all three rounds. In fact, after the second round, you can see that our cumulative scores (in the squares) were 26,26,27, and 27. Not very good scores, but close ones, indeed. Kozure won w/ 60, and I brought up the rear w/ 54. An extremely evenly matched night made for a thrilling return!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Terakh, Tikal and Tan Tuan...er... San Juan
Or, "How Bharmer Kicked our Behinds Repeatedly"
First up was Terakh, the light strategy game with a fantasy/magic theme. I enjoy this game for its combination of chess-like strategy with a few wargame-y aspects like attack and defence modifiers, asymmetrical player powers and to-hit rolls. The designers have done a good job of finding the right balance between simplicity and theme for a game of this size and intended investment of time.
I came out swinging and dealt some pretty good hits quite early, eventually knocking both Ouch and Bharmer down to 2 and 1 points respectively (with a little help from Ouch), remaining at 3 points myself. Bharmer was in a tight spot, sandwiched between the two of us (an unfortunate but common occurrence when you're the third player to place in a three player game) and was attacked from both sides. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, but then Bharmer laid both Jason and I low with two successive Plague (?) cards, which reduce all Elders by one point unless they are already at one point or on a purple tria. Then the Terakh Crisis hit, which promptly killed Ouch and I, leaving Bharmer standing. So, after about 50 minutes of play, the game winner was decided by a dice roll. Normally, not my ideal ending, but a fun game and all the more impressive to see Bharmer win after being knocked down so thoroughly earlier in the game.
Tikal followed. For the first time in about a half-dozen or more plays, I think we actually managed to remember to place a new hex tile at the beginning of each player's turn, rather than forgetting and placing it afterwards, or not placing one at all, or remembering a turn or two later. This simple rules error has been the bane of our Tikal-playing careers, for some reason, we never got into the solid habit of remembering to do it at the right time.
So, this time we really cracked down on each other, heaping scorn on people who forgot.
Despite this revolutionary advance in gameplay, Bharmer pulled away early on and remained in the lead for the rest of the game. He grabbed at least two three-sets and three (or more) two-sets of treasure by the end (something like that, I can't remember), having scored between 12 and 21 points on treasure alone almost every scoring round but the first. I fell behind initially but eventually regained a little ground with treasure and careful positioning, though in the end it wasn't enough. Bharmer scored somewhere in the 110-115 range, I scored in the 85-90 range, and I think Ouch was 70-75 range. My personal mistakes here were failing to block Bharmer as often as I was able to block Ouch, and not getting in position to take treasures first before Bharmer. Our Tikal games are typically closer than this, so this substantial victory by Bharmer was pretty embarassing for both Ouch and I. Bharmer was helped substantially by placing almost every treasure site save one (as I recall), so luck of the draw did enter into it, but not to detract from his victory; he did play quite well.
At this point, Ouch had to leave, claiming the need to retire early.
With only about half an hour left in the evening, we turned to the only short two player we had on hand, San Juan.
What a shambles. Bharmer thoroughly trounced me, scoring something like 48 to my measly 21. I was completely outclassed in every category, failing to build even a single 6 building.
In my defence, I never actually drew a six-building to begin with, but I still played horribly. I missed several opportunities to build silver mines due to bad planning, and invested too many cards in the chapel before I had cards to spare. I was beaten by Bharmer's good play and my own poor judgement and timing.
I build a coffee roaster early, but my second build, a black market, and third build, the archive, were poorly chosen. I added stupidity to mismanagement by building a chapel fourth. I did have some poor draws, but this was a hole of my own digging. I had built all of seven (eight?) buildings when Bharmer plunked down his twelfth. Bharmer did well with the production building + guild hall combo, and also managed some other 6-point building bonuses, including a bunch from his palace.
I limped to the finish line, my only uncertainty about the victor being whether he doubled or tripled my score in the end.
This remains a decent game, and very elegant in its size, playing time and complexity. I remain somewhat leary of the problem like mine; once you fall behind you are almost certainly doomed against any player of competence - and it is not terribly difficult to fall behind due to bad early draws. Still, I deserved to lose that one.
And that, my fellow WAGSters, is why I vote that Bharmer not be allowed to play any more.
Just kidding. Mostly. Well... sorta.
Die Bharmer, die!
First up was Terakh, the light strategy game with a fantasy/magic theme. I enjoy this game for its combination of chess-like strategy with a few wargame-y aspects like attack and defence modifiers, asymmetrical player powers and to-hit rolls. The designers have done a good job of finding the right balance between simplicity and theme for a game of this size and intended investment of time.
I came out swinging and dealt some pretty good hits quite early, eventually knocking both Ouch and Bharmer down to 2 and 1 points respectively (with a little help from Ouch), remaining at 3 points myself. Bharmer was in a tight spot, sandwiched between the two of us (an unfortunate but common occurrence when you're the third player to place in a three player game) and was attacked from both sides. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, but then Bharmer laid both Jason and I low with two successive Plague (?) cards, which reduce all Elders by one point unless they are already at one point or on a purple tria. Then the Terakh Crisis hit, which promptly killed Ouch and I, leaving Bharmer standing. So, after about 50 minutes of play, the game winner was decided by a dice roll. Normally, not my ideal ending, but a fun game and all the more impressive to see Bharmer win after being knocked down so thoroughly earlier in the game.
Tikal followed. For the first time in about a half-dozen or more plays, I think we actually managed to remember to place a new hex tile at the beginning of each player's turn, rather than forgetting and placing it afterwards, or not placing one at all, or remembering a turn or two later. This simple rules error has been the bane of our Tikal-playing careers, for some reason, we never got into the solid habit of remembering to do it at the right time.
So, this time we really cracked down on each other, heaping scorn on people who forgot.
Despite this revolutionary advance in gameplay, Bharmer pulled away early on and remained in the lead for the rest of the game. He grabbed at least two three-sets and three (or more) two-sets of treasure by the end (something like that, I can't remember), having scored between 12 and 21 points on treasure alone almost every scoring round but the first. I fell behind initially but eventually regained a little ground with treasure and careful positioning, though in the end it wasn't enough. Bharmer scored somewhere in the 110-115 range, I scored in the 85-90 range, and I think Ouch was 70-75 range. My personal mistakes here were failing to block Bharmer as often as I was able to block Ouch, and not getting in position to take treasures first before Bharmer. Our Tikal games are typically closer than this, so this substantial victory by Bharmer was pretty embarassing for both Ouch and I. Bharmer was helped substantially by placing almost every treasure site save one (as I recall), so luck of the draw did enter into it, but not to detract from his victory; he did play quite well.
At this point, Ouch had to leave, claiming the need to retire early.
With only about half an hour left in the evening, we turned to the only short two player we had on hand, San Juan.
What a shambles. Bharmer thoroughly trounced me, scoring something like 48 to my measly 21. I was completely outclassed in every category, failing to build even a single 6 building.
In my defence, I never actually drew a six-building to begin with, but I still played horribly. I missed several opportunities to build silver mines due to bad planning, and invested too many cards in the chapel before I had cards to spare. I was beaten by Bharmer's good play and my own poor judgement and timing.
I build a coffee roaster early, but my second build, a black market, and third build, the archive, were poorly chosen. I added stupidity to mismanagement by building a chapel fourth. I did have some poor draws, but this was a hole of my own digging. I had built all of seven (eight?) buildings when Bharmer plunked down his twelfth. Bharmer did well with the production building + guild hall combo, and also managed some other 6-point building bonuses, including a bunch from his palace.
I limped to the finish line, my only uncertainty about the victor being whether he doubled or tripled my score in the end.
This remains a decent game, and very elegant in its size, playing time and complexity. I remain somewhat leary of the problem like mine; once you fall behind you are almost certainly doomed against any player of competence - and it is not terribly difficult to fall behind due to bad early draws. Still, I deserved to lose that one.
And that, my fellow WAGSters, is why I vote that Bharmer not be allowed to play any more.
Just kidding. Mostly. Well... sorta.
Die Bharmer, die!
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Dying the Sky with Blood, and Pounding the Earth (Crimson Skies, Jungle Speed) 8454
Short post:
We played Crimson Skies, a "Clix" game featuring a boardless movement system (similar to Wreckage). In it, concept planes face off in arial combat. I beleive it's a two player game, but it worked fine with 4. Not much to say, except that I thought it was quite a bit better than HeroClix (and wreckage, for that matter) due to a more reasonable learning curve. This would be due to the fact that planes tend to start off with powers which they can only lose as they get hit... HeroClix characters aften gain abilities as they weaken. Also, those powers are relatively easy to absorb since the colour chart matches up reasonably well. The most interesting part (also the one I had the most problems with) was the movement mechanic. After initiative is determined, you play a "Maneuvre" card (my term, not theirs) to describe how your plane will fly. The card shows a flight path and you essentially place cardboard hex pieces end to end and match the flight path until your flight reaches it's speed rating in spaces. In theory, it's a nice way to encapsulate many of the possible movements that a plane could do without adding much complexity. In practice, I sometimes wished I could deviate slightly from the flight paths available since it seemed arbitrarily limiting at times. Also, while the cardboard spacers eliminate the need for a board, precision is lost and alignments can get out of wack if people aren't careful.
Ultimately, though, it's not a game for rules lawyers. It's a fun game if you accept the inherent "sloppyness" of a board-free environment and some of the game's limitations (and let's be honest... planes go fast. I might be kidding myself that such modifications in flight would be easy).
Team Easy-Bharmer took the skies in a tight formation and barreled towards Luch, leaving Kozure to fight a single one of Bharmer's planes. Much questionable maneuvring occured, mostly on my part, and planes threatened to crash on multiple occasions (that was mostly Luch, Kozure, Bharmer. Mostly.) I took down one of Luch's planes and Kozure got enough solid hits on Bharmer that he decided it was wise to escape rather than crash and burn. Team Easy-Bharmer ultimately shot our way to victory, despite much flying ineptitude all around. Well, everyone but Kozure (and that was expected).
We finished off with Jungle Speed.
We played Crimson Skies, a "Clix" game featuring a boardless movement system (similar to Wreckage). In it, concept planes face off in arial combat. I beleive it's a two player game, but it worked fine with 4. Not much to say, except that I thought it was quite a bit better than HeroClix (and wreckage, for that matter) due to a more reasonable learning curve. This would be due to the fact that planes tend to start off with powers which they can only lose as they get hit... HeroClix characters aften gain abilities as they weaken. Also, those powers are relatively easy to absorb since the colour chart matches up reasonably well. The most interesting part (also the one I had the most problems with) was the movement mechanic. After initiative is determined, you play a "Maneuvre" card (my term, not theirs) to describe how your plane will fly. The card shows a flight path and you essentially place cardboard hex pieces end to end and match the flight path until your flight reaches it's speed rating in spaces. In theory, it's a nice way to encapsulate many of the possible movements that a plane could do without adding much complexity. In practice, I sometimes wished I could deviate slightly from the flight paths available since it seemed arbitrarily limiting at times. Also, while the cardboard spacers eliminate the need for a board, precision is lost and alignments can get out of wack if people aren't careful.
Ultimately, though, it's not a game for rules lawyers. It's a fun game if you accept the inherent "sloppyness" of a board-free environment and some of the game's limitations (and let's be honest... planes go fast. I might be kidding myself that such modifications in flight would be easy).
Team Easy-Bharmer took the skies in a tight formation and barreled towards Luch, leaving Kozure to fight a single one of Bharmer's planes. Much questionable maneuvring occured, mostly on my part, and planes threatened to crash on multiple occasions (that was mostly Luch, Kozure, Bharmer. Mostly.) I took down one of Luch's planes and Kozure got enough solid hits on Bharmer that he decided it was wise to escape rather than crash and burn. Team Easy-Bharmer ultimately shot our way to victory, despite much flying ineptitude all around. Well, everyone but Kozure (and that was expected).
We finished off with Jungle Speed.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Let's build cities (Blue Moon City, Carcassonne:The City)
Just Bharmer and myself this night. I brought along a selection of two player games and we each picked one. I did my best to convince him to go with Rommel in the Desert, but he didn't bite.
Blue Moon City
We started out with Blue Moon City (Bharmer's pick). It was an interesting mix of completing each other's buildings and running off and doing our own thing. With only two players, it seemed like cards were more abundant (though I can't explain why that would be). On a couple of occasions, we would complete three section buildings on one turn! (after calling a dragon or two, of course). This obviously led to big swings in position. I had the early lead, building three sections of the obelisk pretty quickly. Bharmer had only one, but late in the game he managed to complete a lot of buildings without giving much to me, so he was winning the crystal race pretty handily. I tried to force a last minute scale payout to get the last few crytals I needed in time... but it wasn't fast enough. He swooped in and placed his last two cubes in the obelisk for the win.
This game continues to be good fun for me. It's typically a very tight race, and the way payouts work keeps everyone in the running while making the leader hard to spot. I noticed once again that Knizia's math was pretty honed in making this game: every time I play a two player game there appears to be JUST ENOUGH crystals on the board to allow both players to win (and then only if they've managed some shared payouts earlier in the game). Very tight indeed.
Looking at your hand and coming up with a clever use of your cards is always satisfying, and is probably my favorite aspect of the game.
Carcassonne: The City
The second (and last) game of the evening was Carcassonne: The City... a game I enjoy but rarely play due to it's similarities to the original (if it weren't such an attractive set, I'd probably trade it away) . Anyway, the session was unfortunately hurt by a number of rules missunderstandings (caused by the overly brief overview I gave Bharmer), which led to moves he wouldn't have made otherwise. Example: thinking he knew that roads split neighbourhoods, I didn't mention it. Boy, that led to an "aha!" moment, and not in a good way! Anyway, I did manage a very lucrative guard which overlooked a loooong section of the city full of public buildings, but I also scored a ton of points from the neighborhoods I won due to the rules mistakes. Anyway, I had a good time... hopefully so did Bharmer!
Oh, and judging by the city we've built, Iwould guess we would make terribly poor city planners. I won't be quitting my day job.
Blue Moon City
We started out with Blue Moon City (Bharmer's pick). It was an interesting mix of completing each other's buildings and running off and doing our own thing. With only two players, it seemed like cards were more abundant (though I can't explain why that would be). On a couple of occasions, we would complete three section buildings on one turn! (after calling a dragon or two, of course). This obviously led to big swings in position. I had the early lead, building three sections of the obelisk pretty quickly. Bharmer had only one, but late in the game he managed to complete a lot of buildings without giving much to me, so he was winning the crystal race pretty handily. I tried to force a last minute scale payout to get the last few crytals I needed in time... but it wasn't fast enough. He swooped in and placed his last two cubes in the obelisk for the win.
This game continues to be good fun for me. It's typically a very tight race, and the way payouts work keeps everyone in the running while making the leader hard to spot. I noticed once again that Knizia's math was pretty honed in making this game: every time I play a two player game there appears to be JUST ENOUGH crystals on the board to allow both players to win (and then only if they've managed some shared payouts earlier in the game). Very tight indeed.
Looking at your hand and coming up with a clever use of your cards is always satisfying, and is probably my favorite aspect of the game.
Carcassonne: The City
The second (and last) game of the evening was Carcassonne: The City... a game I enjoy but rarely play due to it's similarities to the original (if it weren't such an attractive set, I'd probably trade it away) . Anyway, the session was unfortunately hurt by a number of rules missunderstandings (caused by the overly brief overview I gave Bharmer), which led to moves he wouldn't have made otherwise. Example: thinking he knew that roads split neighbourhoods, I didn't mention it. Boy, that led to an "aha!" moment, and not in a good way! Anyway, I did manage a very lucrative guard which overlooked a loooong section of the city full of public buildings, but I also scored a ton of points from the neighborhoods I won due to the rules mistakes. Anyway, I had a good time... hopefully so did Bharmer!
Oh, and judging by the city we've built, Iwould guess we would make terribly poor city planners. I won't be quitting my day job.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
This is a "Hot" scene, with... "Heat"... and ... "Chemistry" (Maharaja, Taj Mahal, Yspahan) 8237
Games set in the Middle-East, played in a very hot apartment.
Maharaja
We've played Maharaja many times. My opinion on the game has swayed, but one thing that has remained constant is that Bharmer always wins. He is always very much in control, always a few steps ahead. I was determined to make this evening the exception...
Out of the gate, I had the lowest character so I went first (we dealt these randomly... more on that later). I of course went to the next scoring area and secured a majority by claiming the center palace. With money in hand, I proceeded to the next scoring area (though I also accelerated the return of the first scoring area by advancing the character track). As the game went on, I was awash with money and doing very well. On my final turn, I placed two palaces and ended the game with a comfortable lead.
Here's the thing: this game got me thinking, and I'm pretty sure that the player who goes first in the first turn usually wins. The money earned in the easy majority on the first scoring round makes the rest of the game significantly easier. Unless we are collectively doing something wrong, it seems very difficult to catch up once you've fallen behind. I'm not sure why it's taken so long for me to notice it, but it seems rather mandatory to bid for starting order in the future! There's probably a way to take a loss on the fist round and secure a majority on the next scoring, but all it takes is a single person messing with the track to kill that strategy. Anyway, I had fun but I suspect that those who weren't in the running didn't enjoy it much.
Taj Mahal
We played our first four player of this wonderful game. Not much to tell, but I has a great time as always. Easily one of my favorite games (funny, too, because this is one I normally win but Luch beat me by a point). Kozure, who vowed to make this the "time he played Taj Mahal and didn't suck at it" was doing quite well for the majority of the game, but fell back in the last few rounds. Oh well!
Yspahan
We finished off with a three player of Yspahan. In my second outing, I tried to go for cards rather than the camel track. I was monumentally lucky by pulling the exact card I wanted the first time I drew (I gathered lots of gold and then immediately drew the card that lets you build a building ignoring the cost of the camels). I built the one that gives me a bonus cube every time I placed in a disctrict. Wow, that's a powerful ability to have from the beginning! That, combined with a very lucky die roll for 4 souks in the most expensive disctrict on the last round combined to give me a decisive win. It's actually a little boring when exceptional good luck gives you a win over your opponents, but it's a short game and it's too early to tell whether this sort of thing happens often. I still like it.
Maharaja
We've played Maharaja many times. My opinion on the game has swayed, but one thing that has remained constant is that Bharmer always wins. He is always very much in control, always a few steps ahead. I was determined to make this evening the exception...
Out of the gate, I had the lowest character so I went first (we dealt these randomly... more on that later). I of course went to the next scoring area and secured a majority by claiming the center palace. With money in hand, I proceeded to the next scoring area (though I also accelerated the return of the first scoring area by advancing the character track). As the game went on, I was awash with money and doing very well. On my final turn, I placed two palaces and ended the game with a comfortable lead.
Here's the thing: this game got me thinking, and I'm pretty sure that the player who goes first in the first turn usually wins. The money earned in the easy majority on the first scoring round makes the rest of the game significantly easier. Unless we are collectively doing something wrong, it seems very difficult to catch up once you've fallen behind. I'm not sure why it's taken so long for me to notice it, but it seems rather mandatory to bid for starting order in the future! There's probably a way to take a loss on the fist round and secure a majority on the next scoring, but all it takes is a single person messing with the track to kill that strategy. Anyway, I had fun but I suspect that those who weren't in the running didn't enjoy it much.
Taj Mahal
We played our first four player of this wonderful game. Not much to tell, but I has a great time as always. Easily one of my favorite games (funny, too, because this is one I normally win but Luch beat me by a point). Kozure, who vowed to make this the "time he played Taj Mahal and didn't suck at it" was doing quite well for the majority of the game, but fell back in the last few rounds. Oh well!
Yspahan
We finished off with a three player of Yspahan. In my second outing, I tried to go for cards rather than the camel track. I was monumentally lucky by pulling the exact card I wanted the first time I drew (I gathered lots of gold and then immediately drew the card that lets you build a building ignoring the cost of the camels). I built the one that gives me a bonus cube every time I placed in a disctrict. Wow, that's a powerful ability to have from the beginning! That, combined with a very lucky die roll for 4 souks in the most expensive disctrict on the last round combined to give me a decisive win. It's actually a little boring when exceptional good luck gives you a win over your opponents, but it's a short game and it's too early to tell whether this sort of thing happens often. I still like it.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Potluck! (Yspahan, Dungeon Twister, Louis XIV, Jungle Speed) 8169
I had everyone bring a game they owned tonight.
Yspahan
Yspahan is a game I'd heard much about recently, but what I heard hadn't intrigued me very much. Having played it, I'm happy Bharmer took the plunge... it's a very good game.
It's a game about trading in the middle east, but the theme is thinly applied. This falls squarely in the category of games where theme could be just about anything (not to imply that the theme isn't appropriate or welcome, just that it's somewhat irrelevant). Really, it's just one in a long line of euros where the goal is to get as many victory points as possible by managing your resources and making tough choices along the way. What sets this game apart for me (after one play, mind you) is that there seems to be several legitimate avenues to success and the level and type of confrontation feels just about perfect. All this, and the game is very short at 45min. to an hour!
Each turn. players must choose between claiming souks for points, building buildings (for points and special powers), claiming spots on the "camel track" and gaining money or camels (a form of currency in the game). One of the most interesting aspecs of the game is the dice mechanic which generates these choices: the starting player rolls eight dice. The dice are then spread on a board with 6 fields. All the dice showing the highest number rolled get placed in the "generate money" field. The dice showing the lowest value is placed in the "generate camels" field. The rest of the dice are spread out according to the value shown on the fields in between in ascending order. Example:
Roll=1,2,2,2,4,6,6,6.
Result=Place the die with the 1 on the camel field, the three dice with 2s on them on the second field, the die with the 4 on the third field and the three 6s on the highest field (because no 3s or 5s were rolled, this leaves the fourth and fifth field empty).
The fields with dice on them determine the choices available to the players. 3 dice on the camels would allow a player to take three camels. 3 dice on the second field allows a player to place three cubes on the sooks of a particular region (among other things). Etc, etc. In this way, the choices are constantly changing, and depending on the situation a player might want to choose something to advance his strategy, or to prevent another player from doing something advantageous to them.
My biggest complaint about the game would be that for such a quick and light game, there are a lot of rules. Once learned, it's easy to ignore this criticism, but I would consider it a barrier to teaching it to some people I think would otherwise enjoy this level of game. On the other hand, rules density shouldn't be a surprise considering one of the main strengths of the game is that many viable strategies are available.
Bharmer won. I came in a reasonably close second and Tilli was third.
Dungeon Twister
Luch arrived and we set up to play Dungeon Twister. Rather than attempt a four player game, we played two simultaneous 2 player games. I really enjoy the game for the balance it brings between strategy and chaos, and the theme helps releive it of some of the dryness it could have had otherwise. The rest of the group isn't enamoured with it, sadly, so I might not get to play much until I find someone who likes it as much as I do.
I won against Kozure 5-0, and Luch won against Bharmer 5-4.
Louis XIV
Another game I like very much, Louis XIV is another example of a very nice strategy game that packs a lot of punch in a short timeframe (and a small box). Now that I think about it, it's also pretty rules heavy. Goes with the territory, I suppose.
Things went very well for me. I was able to get almost all the goods I needed, when I needed them. I completed the mission which gives you a free cube where Louis is every turn... I think that one is very powerful. With it, I managed to fulfill 7 missions over the course of the game, giving me a victory (Bharmer was a close second). Very good game.
We finished off with two rounds of my favorite closer of all time, Jungle Speed . Good times.
Yspahan
Yspahan is a game I'd heard much about recently, but what I heard hadn't intrigued me very much. Having played it, I'm happy Bharmer took the plunge... it's a very good game.
It's a game about trading in the middle east, but the theme is thinly applied. This falls squarely in the category of games where theme could be just about anything (not to imply that the theme isn't appropriate or welcome, just that it's somewhat irrelevant). Really, it's just one in a long line of euros where the goal is to get as many victory points as possible by managing your resources and making tough choices along the way. What sets this game apart for me (after one play, mind you) is that there seems to be several legitimate avenues to success and the level and type of confrontation feels just about perfect. All this, and the game is very short at 45min. to an hour!
Each turn. players must choose between claiming souks for points, building buildings (for points and special powers), claiming spots on the "camel track" and gaining money or camels (a form of currency in the game). One of the most interesting aspecs of the game is the dice mechanic which generates these choices: the starting player rolls eight dice. The dice are then spread on a board with 6 fields. All the dice showing the highest number rolled get placed in the "generate money" field. The dice showing the lowest value is placed in the "generate camels" field. The rest of the dice are spread out according to the value shown on the fields in between in ascending order. Example:
Roll=1,2,2,2,4,6,6,6.
Result=Place the die with the 1 on the camel field, the three dice with 2s on them on the second field, the die with the 4 on the third field and the three 6s on the highest field (because no 3s or 5s were rolled, this leaves the fourth and fifth field empty).
The fields with dice on them determine the choices available to the players. 3 dice on the camels would allow a player to take three camels. 3 dice on the second field allows a player to place three cubes on the sooks of a particular region (among other things). Etc, etc. In this way, the choices are constantly changing, and depending on the situation a player might want to choose something to advance his strategy, or to prevent another player from doing something advantageous to them.
My biggest complaint about the game would be that for such a quick and light game, there are a lot of rules. Once learned, it's easy to ignore this criticism, but I would consider it a barrier to teaching it to some people I think would otherwise enjoy this level of game. On the other hand, rules density shouldn't be a surprise considering one of the main strengths of the game is that many viable strategies are available.
Bharmer won. I came in a reasonably close second and Tilli was third.
Dungeon Twister
Luch arrived and we set up to play Dungeon Twister. Rather than attempt a four player game, we played two simultaneous 2 player games. I really enjoy the game for the balance it brings between strategy and chaos, and the theme helps releive it of some of the dryness it could have had otherwise. The rest of the group isn't enamoured with it, sadly, so I might not get to play much until I find someone who likes it as much as I do.
I won against Kozure 5-0, and Luch won against Bharmer 5-4.
Louis XIV
Another game I like very much, Louis XIV is another example of a very nice strategy game that packs a lot of punch in a short timeframe (and a small box). Now that I think about it, it's also pretty rules heavy. Goes with the territory, I suppose.
Things went very well for me. I was able to get almost all the goods I needed, when I needed them. I completed the mission which gives you a free cube where Louis is every turn... I think that one is very powerful. With it, I managed to fulfill 7 missions over the course of the game, giving me a victory (Bharmer was a close second). Very good game.
We finished off with two rounds of my favorite closer of all time, Jungle Speed . Good times.
Friday, July 20, 2007
The "War and Peace" of Eurogames (Die Macher) 8098
Die Macher has a certain notoriety at BoardGameGeek for a few reasons. It's the first game entered in the database, 20 years after it's release it's still in the top 10 highest rated games and it's one of the longest and most complicated eurogames ever. Despite it's high praise and legendary status, I was never under the impression I would actually PLAY it...
Well, Valley Games recently reprinted this classic as a very nice language independent version and Bharmer decided he wanted it. There you go.
Die Macher
The Idea
Each player represents a german political party trying to win a series of local elections in an effort to win the national one.
How it works
The game consists of 7 local elections played more or less sequentially. Each election consists of several short phases, where players engage in various activities meant to further their campaign. They will modify their party's platform to more closely match local opinion, purchase media support, plan local parties to drum up support, use special members of the party (termed the "shadow cabinet") to lock votes, create/ sway key issues, improve public opinion for their party or damage the reputation of others, etc, etc. Finally, Opinion Polls are commissioned and the results are manipulated by the commissioning party in order to achieve the desired effect (to boost their party or hurt others), or they simply do not publish the results if they can't be salvaged. When all is said and done, votes are tallied and a winner of the local election is declared. Players then move on to the next regional election, and the cycle begins again.
This being a game about politics, it only makes sense that the central concern revolves around opinions. Each player's party has a position on five issues (such as being "pro nuclear energy"). Each region, similarly, has a position on four issues. As the elections progress, the national opinion is slowly formed and/or changed. Parties with platforms which closely match the position of the region get more votes. Parties with platforms which closely match the national position gain party membership as the game progresses, and gain victory points at the endgame.
I said earlier that the elections are played more or less sequentially. In fact, while players are competing in the current local election, the next 3 are also visible and can be influenced by all the tools at the party's disposal in advance of those elections actually occuring. Certainly, a player who has layed the foundation for a successful election ahead of time stands to get greater rewards with less work. On the other hand, nothing is etched in stone, and effort/ money/ resources played too early can easily be reversed before that election starts.
In typical german game fashion, all this theme is represented rather dryly by hordes of wooden cubes being manipulated on a large abstract board (in this case, the board looks like a giant illustration of a circle divided into many little rings). Luckily (and also in typical german game fashion), the mechanics are quite interesting and work well together to make a very challenging and clever game with little or no downtime, despite it's length.
Thoughts
I actually didn't feel that Die Macher was the monster it's made out to be. Maybe it's because we've played lots of games, or maybe it's because I also play wargames on occasion (or maybe it's because I took the time to watch the introductory video by "Boardgames with Scott"). It's certainly the heaviest pure german game I've played, but despite the long playtime, many phases in the game and myriad interlocking mechanics, the end result did not feel overwhelming or overlong. In fact, our first game, including rules explanation, took only 4.5 hours! I suspect our next game would be roughly 3.5 hours. Die Macher remained engrossing throughout and was quite fun. My only (minor) gripe with the game as a system would be that no matter how cleverly the game mechanics represent real life politics the experience feels alot more like pushing cubes around for victory points that blazing the campaign trail. The theme is so strongly embodied in the rules that it's a bit of a shame that it comes off as abstracted as it does. From a components point of view, most things are quite functional and of high quality, but a few unfortunate icon choices has led to difficulty differentiating between certain political stances. It's really unfortunate, too, because you find yourself doing that quite commonly over the course of a game. Also, there is a mechanic for forming coalitions which doesn't seem to work that well. While coalitions are an integral part of german politics (I'm told), their impact on the game is a little underwhelming considering how many stars need to align to make it happen (congruent stances on at least 2 issues + the play of certain shadow cabinet cards in the current election). I won't pretend to have a good understanding of how all the scoring opportunities come together, though, so that comment might be very premature.
Kozure mentioned that he liked the fact that this was a german game which managed to combine passive-agressive play with aggressive-aggressive play successfully, a rare feat (most shy away from direct conflict). I agree with him. Off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of which tries to do the same is Kramer's Wildlife.
Session Report
This has been long enough, so I'll keep it short.
I came out strong at the beginning, locking a few high scoring media cubes and winning many votes in the local elections. Problem was, I pushed my shadow cabinet to hard at the beginning and was left without their support in the last few regions. The fact that the local and national position on most issues went from positive to negative over the course of the game without a similar shift in my party's ideals led me to a score of 0 in the final three regions!
I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
The game was characterized by enormous bids for opinion polls (I beleive $26 000 was pegged as a "ridiculously high" price for those cards, but commonly surpassed none-the-less). In the first few rounds, I overbid drastically for turn order (though aside from the wasted money I think the turn order advantage was worth it). We were all quite aggressive on the media front, typically filling the 5 cube limit well in advance of any local elections.
Anyway, Luch was the decisive winner, with Bharmer and Kozure nearly tied for the 2nd prize. As for me, the three 0s put me out of the running to win. I was too absorbed trying to make things go my way to really notice what Luch did to come out ahead, but he DID have the largest national party at the end along with a couple of high scoring media cubes.
Next time, I will crush him.
Well, Valley Games recently reprinted this classic as a very nice language independent version and Bharmer decided he wanted it. There you go.
Die Macher
The Idea
Each player represents a german political party trying to win a series of local elections in an effort to win the national one.
How it works
The game consists of 7 local elections played more or less sequentially. Each election consists of several short phases, where players engage in various activities meant to further their campaign. They will modify their party's platform to more closely match local opinion, purchase media support, plan local parties to drum up support, use special members of the party (termed the "shadow cabinet") to lock votes, create/ sway key issues, improve public opinion for their party or damage the reputation of others, etc, etc. Finally, Opinion Polls are commissioned and the results are manipulated by the commissioning party in order to achieve the desired effect (to boost their party or hurt others), or they simply do not publish the results if they can't be salvaged. When all is said and done, votes are tallied and a winner of the local election is declared. Players then move on to the next regional election, and the cycle begins again.
This being a game about politics, it only makes sense that the central concern revolves around opinions. Each player's party has a position on five issues (such as being "pro nuclear energy"). Each region, similarly, has a position on four issues. As the elections progress, the national opinion is slowly formed and/or changed. Parties with platforms which closely match the position of the region get more votes. Parties with platforms which closely match the national position gain party membership as the game progresses, and gain victory points at the endgame.
I said earlier that the elections are played more or less sequentially. In fact, while players are competing in the current local election, the next 3 are also visible and can be influenced by all the tools at the party's disposal in advance of those elections actually occuring. Certainly, a player who has layed the foundation for a successful election ahead of time stands to get greater rewards with less work. On the other hand, nothing is etched in stone, and effort/ money/ resources played too early can easily be reversed before that election starts.
In typical german game fashion, all this theme is represented rather dryly by hordes of wooden cubes being manipulated on a large abstract board (in this case, the board looks like a giant illustration of a circle divided into many little rings). Luckily (and also in typical german game fashion), the mechanics are quite interesting and work well together to make a very challenging and clever game with little or no downtime, despite it's length.
Thoughts
I actually didn't feel that Die Macher was the monster it's made out to be. Maybe it's because we've played lots of games, or maybe it's because I also play wargames on occasion (or maybe it's because I took the time to watch the introductory video by "Boardgames with Scott"). It's certainly the heaviest pure german game I've played, but despite the long playtime, many phases in the game and myriad interlocking mechanics, the end result did not feel overwhelming or overlong. In fact, our first game, including rules explanation, took only 4.5 hours! I suspect our next game would be roughly 3.5 hours. Die Macher remained engrossing throughout and was quite fun. My only (minor) gripe with the game as a system would be that no matter how cleverly the game mechanics represent real life politics the experience feels alot more like pushing cubes around for victory points that blazing the campaign trail. The theme is so strongly embodied in the rules that it's a bit of a shame that it comes off as abstracted as it does. From a components point of view, most things are quite functional and of high quality, but a few unfortunate icon choices has led to difficulty differentiating between certain political stances. It's really unfortunate, too, because you find yourself doing that quite commonly over the course of a game. Also, there is a mechanic for forming coalitions which doesn't seem to work that well. While coalitions are an integral part of german politics (I'm told), their impact on the game is a little underwhelming considering how many stars need to align to make it happen (congruent stances on at least 2 issues + the play of certain shadow cabinet cards in the current election). I won't pretend to have a good understanding of how all the scoring opportunities come together, though, so that comment might be very premature.
Kozure mentioned that he liked the fact that this was a german game which managed to combine passive-agressive play with aggressive-aggressive play successfully, a rare feat (most shy away from direct conflict). I agree with him. Off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of which tries to do the same is Kramer's Wildlife.
Session Report
This has been long enough, so I'll keep it short.
I came out strong at the beginning, locking a few high scoring media cubes and winning many votes in the local elections. Problem was, I pushed my shadow cabinet to hard at the beginning and was left without their support in the last few regions. The fact that the local and national position on most issues went from positive to negative over the course of the game without a similar shift in my party's ideals led me to a score of 0 in the final three regions!
I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
The game was characterized by enormous bids for opinion polls (I beleive $26 000 was pegged as a "ridiculously high" price for those cards, but commonly surpassed none-the-less). In the first few rounds, I overbid drastically for turn order (though aside from the wasted money I think the turn order advantage was worth it). We were all quite aggressive on the media front, typically filling the 5 cube limit well in advance of any local elections.
Anyway, Luch was the decisive winner, with Bharmer and Kozure nearly tied for the 2nd prize. As for me, the three 0s put me out of the running to win. I was too absorbed trying to make things go my way to really notice what Luch did to come out ahead, but he DID have the largest national party at the end along with a couple of high scoring media cubes.
Next time, I will crush him.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Tide of Dice
Short break at work, so a short post about last week's games.
It was technically Brian's pick at my place - he couldn't think of anything he particularly wanted, so he said he'd decide once we got there.
We played Liar's Dice (a.k.a Bluff, Perudo, Bullsh*t, etc.) again - it's a quick filler. My parents were around until 8 PM, so we played something they could get into easily.
Afterwards, I left it up to Brian and he selected Tide of Iron, a recent wargame purchase I had made which was sitting off to the side on the kitchen table (only because I hadn't found time to stuff it into the downstairs closet, not because I was trying to push it on anyone.
Tide of Iron is a introductory/novice level wargame aimed at people who are interested in WWII tactical combat but don't want the complexity of Combat Commander: Europe, Advanced Squad Leader or the Advanced Tobruk System. That said, it's about two steps up in terms of complexity from Memoir '44.
It has a long set up time, necessitated by its interesting but somewhat flawed modular squad composition system and geomorphic terrain system. Components are excellent and rules are great. It's a very good low-medium (3-4 out of 10) complexity wargame, good for transitioning players between games like Memoir '44 and more grognardy offerings.
The tag-team of Bharmer and Ouch kept me hard pressed through the game and finally broke through with one turn remaining. I did handicap myself somewhat by giving myself fewer starting Strategy cards than is called for in the scenario, but it didn't make all that much of a difference, and they played well.
No time for a more detailed review save to say that Tide of Iron will be waiting for the day my eldest son turns 10 or 11 or so. I think he'll enjoy it quite a bit.
It was technically Brian's pick at my place - he couldn't think of anything he particularly wanted, so he said he'd decide once we got there.
We played Liar's Dice (a.k.a Bluff, Perudo, Bullsh*t, etc.) again - it's a quick filler. My parents were around until 8 PM, so we played something they could get into easily.
Afterwards, I left it up to Brian and he selected Tide of Iron, a recent wargame purchase I had made which was sitting off to the side on the kitchen table (only because I hadn't found time to stuff it into the downstairs closet, not because I was trying to push it on anyone.
Tide of Iron is a introductory/novice level wargame aimed at people who are interested in WWII tactical combat but don't want the complexity of Combat Commander: Europe, Advanced Squad Leader or the Advanced Tobruk System. That said, it's about two steps up in terms of complexity from Memoir '44.
It has a long set up time, necessitated by its interesting but somewhat flawed modular squad composition system and geomorphic terrain system. Components are excellent and rules are great. It's a very good low-medium (3-4 out of 10) complexity wargame, good for transitioning players between games like Memoir '44 and more grognardy offerings.
The tag-team of Bharmer and Ouch kept me hard pressed through the game and finally broke through with one turn remaining. I did handicap myself somewhat by giving myself fewer starting Strategy cards than is called for in the scenario, but it didn't make all that much of a difference, and they played well.
No time for a more detailed review save to say that Tide of Iron will be waiting for the day my eldest son turns 10 or 11 or so. I think he'll enjoy it quite a bit.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Attack of the Weenie Hoards!!! (Hey! That's my Fish!, Liar's Dice, Bohnanza, Mama Mia!, Wheedle, Set, Jungle Speed)
Luch wanted to play lots of really short games. To that effect, we managed to play Hey! That's my Fish!, Liar's Dice, Bohnanza, Mama Mia!, Wheedle, Set, Jungle Speed. Surely, this is a record for most DIFFERENT games played in an evening, and maybe most games too.
Missing the cut were: Falling!, Cash n' Guns and Can't Stop.
Bohnanza
I learned that Kozure is not a big fan of Bohnanza. Myself, I like the game, though I agree that three rounds is too long. The biggest problem, though, is how deeply counter-intuitive some of the mechanics are. The cards cannot be sorted or moved in your hand (I'm looking at you, Bharmer!). The three phases in each round always take a read through of the rules to remember. Whatever, it's a fun game once it gets rolling. Luch won, which was not surprising because he was clearly the best at setting up trades in his favour (my favorite was when he refused to take a card Kozure was offering him until he agreed to give him both, knowing Kozure could not afford to keep both cards)
Mama Mia!
I cleaned up at this game. Apparently, it's hard to complete all your orders by the third round but I had all but one done in the second. Throughout, it seemed like everyone else was playing for my benefit (if I had an order for 3 olives and a pepperoni, the other players would play 3 olives leading to my turn, and I would complete the order). I don't expect to see luck like that again for a loooong time.
Wheedle
When I last played this game, I rocked. This time, not so much. Out of four rounds, I called three and made errors in all of them. My score at the end was -10. The others seemed to be doing quite well, so I apologize to all for repeatedly making potentially good hands redundant.
Set
Set seems to be a board game version of Wii's Big Brain Academy. Find patterns in a set of tiles before the other players do. The patterns have to be pretty specific, though: The image on each card has four characteristics (colour, shape, number and fill). To make a pattern, every characteristic has to be THE SAME or DIFFERENT on all three cards. It's pretty hard to do (and to explain), but Kozure was clearly much better at it than us. He CRUSHED us. Big Brain indeed.
Jungle Speed
This was a lot of fun when we last played with guest Wagster Sonja. I'm happy to say that it was just as much fun last night. There was a lot of laughter, twitchyness and bruised fingers to show for it. Once more, Kozure displayed his affinity for pattern recognition by winning 2 of the 3 games rather comfortably, with Luch winning the third. Me? On a couple of occasions I felt like I was on fire and doing really well. Then Kozure would win, and I would realize that I am old, slow and not good at pattern recognition. Sigh. Anyway, this is lots of fun and I hope it becomes a semi-regular evening closer. Back to the Big Brain Academy for me... I will avenge these losses!
Missing the cut were: Falling!, Cash n' Guns and Can't Stop.
Bohnanza
I learned that Kozure is not a big fan of Bohnanza. Myself, I like the game, though I agree that three rounds is too long. The biggest problem, though, is how deeply counter-intuitive some of the mechanics are. The cards cannot be sorted or moved in your hand (I'm looking at you, Bharmer!). The three phases in each round always take a read through of the rules to remember. Whatever, it's a fun game once it gets rolling. Luch won, which was not surprising because he was clearly the best at setting up trades in his favour (my favorite was when he refused to take a card Kozure was offering him until he agreed to give him both, knowing Kozure could not afford to keep both cards)
Mama Mia!
I cleaned up at this game. Apparently, it's hard to complete all your orders by the third round but I had all but one done in the second. Throughout, it seemed like everyone else was playing for my benefit (if I had an order for 3 olives and a pepperoni, the other players would play 3 olives leading to my turn, and I would complete the order). I don't expect to see luck like that again for a loooong time.
Wheedle
When I last played this game, I rocked. This time, not so much. Out of four rounds, I called three and made errors in all of them. My score at the end was -10. The others seemed to be doing quite well, so I apologize to all for repeatedly making potentially good hands redundant.
Set
Set seems to be a board game version of Wii's Big Brain Academy. Find patterns in a set of tiles before the other players do. The patterns have to be pretty specific, though: The image on each card has four characteristics (colour, shape, number and fill). To make a pattern, every characteristic has to be THE SAME or DIFFERENT on all three cards. It's pretty hard to do (and to explain), but Kozure was clearly much better at it than us. He CRUSHED us. Big Brain indeed.
Jungle Speed
This was a lot of fun when we last played with guest Wagster Sonja. I'm happy to say that it was just as much fun last night. There was a lot of laughter, twitchyness and bruised fingers to show for it. Once more, Kozure displayed his affinity for pattern recognition by winning 2 of the 3 games rather comfortably, with Luch winning the third. Me? On a couple of occasions I felt like I was on fire and doing really well. Then Kozure would win, and I would realize that I am old, slow and not good at pattern recognition. Sigh. Anyway, this is lots of fun and I hope it becomes a semi-regular evening closer. Back to the Big Brain Academy for me... I will avenge these losses!
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Umm... what? (Liar's Dice, Zendo, Mao, Dvorak)
or... Metagaming is a harsh mistress.
For a change of pace, Kozure chose a variety of games where ther "metagame" matters as much as the game itself (he called them "nomic" games, though I'm not familiar with the term). In other words, what you know about the other players' habits and inclinations is as important as the rules themselves (poker is one such game). We were graced by the presence of normally absent Wagster Shemp (the lure of such an odd theme was too much for him to resist, it seems. Let the metagames begin!)
Liar's Dice
Everybody starts with 5 dice. They are rolled and kept hidden. Players must, in turn, make a bet or call. A bet might be "I bet there are three 4s on the table". To raise the bet, a player would have to either say that there were four (or more) 4s, or that there were three 5s (or 6s). When a player chooses to call the bet, the dice are revealed and SOMEONE will lose dice depending on who was right. If the caller was right, the last player who bet loses as many dice as they overbid. If the better was right, the caller loses one die. Play continues until everyone loses all their dice but one player. To make things interesting, 1s were wild.
This turned out to be quite a fun, light game. The player elimination isn't a big deal, since it's so short (except when you are eliminated in the first round... which did happen to me once). Countless variants exist, which would be fun to try. It seemed like our choice to limit raising the bet to raising the value AND the number of dice limited the variety of betting (once you have reached the 6s, there's not much you can do but increase the number of dice. By the end, we seemed to go to the 6s pretty quickly). I understand that this makes it a quicker game, but allowing a player to go from "three 6s" to "four 2s" would allow players to steer things back to the strengths in their rolled dice... or to bluff about it. As it was, it seemed more like straight push your luck. Fun though.
Zendo
There are several identical objects in 4 different colours. One player must think of a rule (such as the group must contain two red pieces) and then display two sets of objects... one which obeys the rule and one which breaks it. The key is that the player can leave several red herrings. In the previous example, the set which obeys the rule could consist of 4 objects, two of which are red and two of which are blue. The red blocks are stacked, but the blue ones are on their side. The other players must, in turn, put together sets of objects in an attempt to try to figure out what the rule is. Is the rule that the group needs to contain four pieces? Is the rule that two objects must be on their side? etc, etc. After each attempt, the player who knows the rule must declare whether the set obeys the rule or not.
This was a very clever game. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out what is going on, things fall into place rather quickly. As usual, I tried to overcomplicate things with my solutions (Kozure's initial rule was that one of the objects needed to be red. My first guess was "There has to be two red objects, arranged in a grid, with one object on it's side). Live and learn. Bharmer stumped us with "There has to be a red and blue object but they can't touch".
Mao
Mao is a game that, by definition, you aren't supposed to know about until you play it. I therefore won't ruin the surprise here, except to say that it involves playing a game without knowing it's rules. During our session, Luch came very close to losing it when he repeatedly comitted error after error. Kozure should have been careful, Luch was playing with a knife at the time.
I couldn't help but think that the game would have been better if the player who knew the rules wasn't playing, but all the reviews I've read since then seem to imply that the player "in the know" is normally involved. It's no surprise that Kozure won.
Dvorak
The last new game of the evening was Dvorak. Dvorak could be renamed "invent your own game", but whatever.
In Dvorak, the players collaborate to come up with a theme and a goal. Afterwards, players each secretely define 8 cards which will make up the draw deck for the game. There are no rules or standards for the cards, and since they are not discussed, there is no garantee that the means to end the game exist in the deck. Once gameplay begins new rules or cards can be added through unanimous vote. Players draw and play cards until the game objectives are met.
I won't embarrass the group by describing what the chosen theme was. I will say that two of the cards I created were "Corn" and "Fancy Hat", and that they were otherwise without description or use (just to see). Over the course of the game, a "Hole" card was added to the game by Luch which combined with the corn card producing unintended results. The fancy hat ended up being instumental to Bharmer's victory, of course.
It's an interesting game, but experience would probably lead to more satisfying results. The card mix wound up being pretty bad if getting anywhere was a priority. At a certain point, you are tempted to invent rules just so that an end can happen! Obviously, this comes off feeling cheap. I'm sure that very clever sessions of this have occurred, and that some players have been able to introduce rules which gave them advantages and led to victory (rather than going for "funny"). Our session was big on funny, but low on clever.
For a change of pace, Kozure chose a variety of games where ther "metagame" matters as much as the game itself (he called them "nomic" games, though I'm not familiar with the term). In other words, what you know about the other players' habits and inclinations is as important as the rules themselves (poker is one such game). We were graced by the presence of normally absent Wagster Shemp (the lure of such an odd theme was too much for him to resist, it seems. Let the metagames begin!)
Liar's Dice
Everybody starts with 5 dice. They are rolled and kept hidden. Players must, in turn, make a bet or call. A bet might be "I bet there are three 4s on the table". To raise the bet, a player would have to either say that there were four (or more) 4s, or that there were three 5s (or 6s). When a player chooses to call the bet, the dice are revealed and SOMEONE will lose dice depending on who was right. If the caller was right, the last player who bet loses as many dice as they overbid. If the better was right, the caller loses one die. Play continues until everyone loses all their dice but one player. To make things interesting, 1s were wild.
This turned out to be quite a fun, light game. The player elimination isn't a big deal, since it's so short (except when you are eliminated in the first round... which did happen to me once). Countless variants exist, which would be fun to try. It seemed like our choice to limit raising the bet to raising the value AND the number of dice limited the variety of betting (once you have reached the 6s, there's not much you can do but increase the number of dice. By the end, we seemed to go to the 6s pretty quickly). I understand that this makes it a quicker game, but allowing a player to go from "three 6s" to "four 2s" would allow players to steer things back to the strengths in their rolled dice... or to bluff about it. As it was, it seemed more like straight push your luck. Fun though.
Zendo
There are several identical objects in 4 different colours. One player must think of a rule (such as the group must contain two red pieces) and then display two sets of objects... one which obeys the rule and one which breaks it. The key is that the player can leave several red herrings. In the previous example, the set which obeys the rule could consist of 4 objects, two of which are red and two of which are blue. The red blocks are stacked, but the blue ones are on their side. The other players must, in turn, put together sets of objects in an attempt to try to figure out what the rule is. Is the rule that the group needs to contain four pieces? Is the rule that two objects must be on their side? etc, etc. After each attempt, the player who knows the rule must declare whether the set obeys the rule or not.
This was a very clever game. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out what is going on, things fall into place rather quickly. As usual, I tried to overcomplicate things with my solutions (Kozure's initial rule was that one of the objects needed to be red. My first guess was "There has to be two red objects, arranged in a grid, with one object on it's side). Live and learn. Bharmer stumped us with "There has to be a red and blue object but they can't touch".
Mao
Mao is a game that, by definition, you aren't supposed to know about until you play it. I therefore won't ruin the surprise here, except to say that it involves playing a game without knowing it's rules. During our session, Luch came very close to losing it when he repeatedly comitted error after error. Kozure should have been careful, Luch was playing with a knife at the time.
I couldn't help but think that the game would have been better if the player who knew the rules wasn't playing, but all the reviews I've read since then seem to imply that the player "in the know" is normally involved. It's no surprise that Kozure won.
Dvorak
The last new game of the evening was Dvorak. Dvorak could be renamed "invent your own game", but whatever.
In Dvorak, the players collaborate to come up with a theme and a goal. Afterwards, players each secretely define 8 cards which will make up the draw deck for the game. There are no rules or standards for the cards, and since they are not discussed, there is no garantee that the means to end the game exist in the deck. Once gameplay begins new rules or cards can be added through unanimous vote. Players draw and play cards until the game objectives are met.
I won't embarrass the group by describing what the chosen theme was. I will say that two of the cards I created were "Corn" and "Fancy Hat", and that they were otherwise without description or use (just to see). Over the course of the game, a "Hole" card was added to the game by Luch which combined with the corn card producing unintended results. The fancy hat ended up being instumental to Bharmer's victory, of course.
It's an interesting game, but experience would probably lead to more satisfying results. The card mix wound up being pretty bad if getting anywhere was a priority. At a certain point, you are tempted to invent rules just so that an end can happen! Obviously, this comes off feeling cheap. I'm sure that very clever sessions of this have occurred, and that some players have been able to introduce rules which gave them advantages and led to victory (rather than going for "funny"). Our session was big on funny, but low on clever.
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