One more time, with feeling! (Goa, Blue Moon City)

We played two games I personally had played once before, but were new to the rest of the group: Goa and Blue Moon City.

Goa worked very well in it's second outing. It was nice to see that turns went by very quickly and everyone caught on to the game system (which seems intimidating at first, but is actually fairly simple).

Near the end of the first half of the game, I came across a few opportunities to grab a number of discovery cards. Lo and behold, 5 of my 6 cards had the same symbol on them! I spent the second round of the game unable to draw or play discovery cards, and I was constantly wondering whether I would fall hopelessly behind because of it. In the end, the 15 points my set got me were the game winners, so I certainly can't complain!

I find the discovery cards somewhat awkward. I've read that many find this particular progress track to be too powerful, and I'm inclined to agree. Drawing cards not only significantly improves your chances of making a move at a greatly reduced price, but the cards themselves are worth MORE points at the end! It could be that familiarity will even out the game, or that every game will feature all players pushing hard on their discovery track.

Blue Moon City was next. I find myself really liking this one, though reaction from other tends to be lukewarm. Can't really explain it, but I do find it satisfying to look at my hand and to figure out my next move. The game moves ultra quickly, and the race for scales and crystals is engaging. It's a Ticket to Ride level strategy game, but this one seems tighter (even if the other is ultimately more approachable to non-gamers in rules complexity and theme).

I started out off on my own to see whether I could make a solo expedition work. The consensus seems to be that in order to win, you have to stay where the group is. There was a couple of single contribution buildings which looked like they might work for me. After a few turns, I gave in and joined the pack. It was a very tight race, with the last space of the obelisk determining the winner. On top of that, all but one building were constructed when it all ended.

Kozure won the game.

I found it interesting how the game evolves. At first, the possibilities for using your hand are rather endless. You need to pick a strategy and go. However, as the options narrow, the card draw becomes more important (so cycling thorugh cards until you get the ones you need becomes critical). Unlike Ticket to Ride, where waiting on the right cards starts pretty much right at the beginning, Blue Moon City allows you to make the best out of what you have for the first 2/3rds of the game.

I like it.

Improbability and the East (San Juan, Shogun)

...or The Dice Tower is Luch's Harsh Mistress

...or The Dice Tower is Easy's Fluzy Lover

First, the big news: Congrats to Kozure and Tili on the arrival of mini-Kozure #2! Despite the baby's arrival, this particular family's commitement to gaming runs deep... This Wednesday, a mere two days after birth, we played at Kozure's place at their request!

While waiting for Luch to arrive, Bharmer and I played a game of San Juan with Tili (did I mention this was two days after birth?). Bharmer ran away with this one, being able to build a couple of large buildings and having the best resource production going. Tili and I pretty much tied, I beleive.

I have to say that from this session, I think that San Juan works much better with 3 than with 4 (and since 2 plays similarly to 3, I guess that must work just as well). Why? Because with 3 (and 2) players more of the roles go unchosen each round. This leads to a less homogeonous game where a player's choice really does impact the other players... with 4 players it seemed that resource production, building and trading occured pretty much every round. With 4, it was quite possible that no resources would be produced for several rounds or that building wouldn't occur. Anyway, it felt like a more satisfying game to me.

As Luch arrived, we set up Shogun. Tili retired for the evening and Kozure sat in. In our last game, I had enjoyed the game quite a bit, but described the game as an adult version of Mousetrap. How did game #2 go? Pretty much the same.

For the record, I won this game. Also for the record, there's no way in hell I should have!

For the first year, I tried to skip out on rice production to see what would happen. I also decided to focus on winning majorities in buildings over other ways to generate points. Not generating rice did lessen my angry farmers, and it was well I did because the rice deficit card which came around in winter was the -7 one. Ouch. I had the potential for 3 nasty revolts, and my building strategy combined with poor planning in the fall had left me short on soldiers. I was fully expecting to get ravaged. Due to the -7, I wasn't the only one in line for a wallopping, but I was by far the worse off.

Guess what, I survived completely unscathed and everyone else lost at least a province. Luch lost three.

The second year was similar. I planned for Rice this time. There were attacks, and I won and lost my fair share. Still, the previous winter had really stacked things in my favour. By the second winter, I had planned for the revolts and didn't lose anything to them. The others didn't fare as well, despite also having planned, and were crippled as a result (this time we were facing down a -6 rice drought).

What can I say? I feel I played a good game, that my building strategy was generally well thought out despite a few glaring mistakes along the way. Still, there were SO MANY large swings of luck that I felt that the result was kind of out of my control.

Shogun does a lot of things right: Despite being long, it never FEELS long. The planning phase is fun, if a little brain-breaking. Seeing things play out is entertaining. you always have more you want to do than you can, and the decisions feel like they matter. Finally, the dice tower is a really fun way to resolve battles.

But (you knew there would be a "but"), I still feel that it's not as much a strategy game as it seems it should be. So much rides on which of the 4 event cards comes up at which point (particularly in winter). Also, the order in which the 10 action cards comes up can REALLY mess up your plans (the timing of combat card and the treasure actions being particularly crucial). Immediately losing the province card if you lose a battle, and therefore potentially losing the associated action, can also be pretty devastating. Lastly, for all the "fun" of the dice tower, it does have a way to introduce more chaos than most randomizers would. These items can literally crush a player's plans unless they play ultra conservative at all times. A Game of Thrones has similar swings of fate with it's decks, and I guess that's one of the reasons I keep comparing the two.

In contrast, the randomized special cards are an example of the type of luck I'd expect to find in the game. As players secretely bid for turn order, the randomized powers create an interesting tension between chosing turn order vs the power you want. It makes the choice interesting, but isn't devastating or unbalancing towards one player or the other.

So, in the end, Shogun fails (for me) to be a STRATEGY game on the same level as similarly heavy games such as Power Grid, El Grande or even Railroad Tycoon (where luck is present, but in controlled ways). Despite that, it's a lot of fun... I'd prefer to play this over Power Grid, actually. I guess i'm mostly harping on the disconnect between what the game seems to want to be, and what it is.

Anyway, i've gone on for quite some time now. i'd be interested in other people's point of view on the matter!

Edit: I better way to describe my feelings towards Shogun occurred to me today... In Shogun, you can't win unless you play well strategically (where+when to build temples, which provinces to take, protecting your investments, etc). However, there is enough large swings of luck that your best play could easily get erased by bad luck.

In other words, play well + cross your fingers.

WarO / FightO (A Game of Thrones)

Kozure will soon become a dad again. Anyday now soon. So we gave him a chance to pick a little in advance of his normal week. His choice? A Game of Thrones (a recent, ludicrously inexpensive aquisition).

A Game of Thrones is a Waro (wargame/ euro hybrid) based on a series of books I know nothing about. It feels like a cross between Shogun and Antike to me, though most people tend to decribe it as a shorter Diplomacy.

As is typical for this sort of game, every player starts by picking a faction (which, in turn, determines a variety of starting conditions). The goal of the game is to grow the faction's territory by conquering regions until 7 cities/ strongholds are controlled by a player (who immediately wins the game). Along the way, military units will be produced on land and sea, battles will be fought and backs will be both scratched and stabbed.

There are a number of mechanics working in parallel as the game progresses:
- 3 decks randomly reveal a card at the start of each turn. Those decks determine what events take place that "period". There are several types of cards, but the three most important are:
- Supply. Player must cross-reference the number of regions with barrel symbols exist in their territory with a chart which will tell them how large of an army they can maintain (and in what configurations).
- Army Production. All cities and strongholds produce new soldiers, subject to the limits imposed by supply.
- Political Upheaval. This forces players to make a secret bid to detrmine the ranking in three categories: Political Power, Military Might and Intelligence. Each of these is very powerful in it's own right and being first place conveys additional bonuses to that player. For example, the order of the Political Power track determines turn order and the first place player determines the result of all tie breakers.
- The cards may force the advancement of "the barbarians track"... representing an everpresent threat of barbarian attack to the north. If/When they attack, all players have an opportunity to work together to fight them off.
- Following that, players must assign actions to all units simultaneously and secretly. They are then all revealed and executed in turn order (I found this, in particular, similar to Shogun).
- Advance the turn marker and start over.

Combat is quite simple. Compare the value of units in combat, add the value of any units which have chosen to participate and then play a card with a combat value to determine the final total. The loser generally must retreat all units to an adjacent friendly region. In other words, actually losing units is supposed to be fairly rare.

The intention, I think, was to create a game of conquest which had many opportunities for diplomacy, but which lasted only 3-4 hours. Although I enjoyed the game, ours did not feature much diplomacy at all.

I don't recall names, but my faction started on the east island. Kozure was in the barren north all by himself, Luch was on the west coast and Bharmer was in the south. Not knowing what to do, and being relatively close to two regions which were defended by neutral forces but gave a number of good resources if conquered, I decided to go for them. This put me into Bharmer's territory, leaving Luch and Kozure to bump heads to the north. Lucky for me, bharmer was rather peaceful and didn't attack me until I started attacking him! My expansion strategy seemed like it was working... I had 5 cities/ strongholds about 5 turns into the game (which seemed good at the time).

Two things were affecting my game pretty dramatically: 1) I started the game resource poor, so my military formations were limited to singles + 1 pair + 1 triple. That situation didn't change until the turn the game ended, so it posed a very real limiation on my game. 2) The positions of power came of for auction fairly frequently. I spent a LOT of money to keep the throne, and on occasion held the military might one as well. It seemed like turn order mattered a lot, and determining tie-breakers was also very usefull. This also meant that Bharmer was perpetually last in many of these tracks because he was my main opposition.

Anyway, luck was with me this game. I didn't lose a single conflict, I managed to hold on to the throne the entire time I needed it, no-one attacked me when I couldn't defend myself and ... most importantly... I spied an opportunity to grab the last two cities I needed totally by accident (in other words, I put everything in place to do it the prior turn, but was working towards something else at the time). In a nutshell, I was able to hop onto a boat I had just placed with two soldiers I had just moved to get into two of Kozure's undefended territories. Game over.

This is a game that will get better when people understand what things are worth. I feel I won this game because I took a lucky chance on the throne of power being important, because Bharmer and Luch weren't attacking me and because we didn't have enough experience with boats to really see and understand all the implications of sea travel. Now that all these things are well known, the next game will have a totally different dynamic.

Another side effect of our inexperience was that very little diplomacy was concducted/ needed. It was Easy vs. Bharmer South and Kozure vs. Luch north. With the larger picture in view, I'd bet that negotiations will be far more interesting next time.

Anyway, A Game of Thrones is a game that I enjoyed but which I think will be substantially better next time (I had a splitting headache for much of the evening, so that may have coloured my view somewhat). The simultaneous action assignment and the various interlocking mechanisms driving what looks like a war game reminded me strongly of Shogun and the simplicity of combat and economy of units/ action types reminded me of Antike. Compared to Shogun, I'd say that the system FEELS somewhat more natural and better tied to the theme (Shogun is very euro-like in it's disconnect between theme and mechanics), but I can't yet say whether that leads to a better game or not. Compared to Antike, I'd say that if you were to add a few layers of WARO chrome to Antike but kept things generally restrained you'd get something like AgoT.