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.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
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).
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