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.

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.

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."

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.

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!