Avalon Hill, we hardly knew Ye (Nexu Ops, Vegas showdown)

Poor Avalon Hill. They decide to make Euro-influenced games and then, despite good reception from the game community, shuts down the line after the sales don't meet mass-market expectations. This week, we played a couple of the better ones: Nexus Ops and Vegas Showdown (for the record, Robo-Rally is another excellent game from this line, even though we didn't play it tonight)

Nexus Ops

In the hopes that Nexus Ops played better with three than it does with two, we set up and started battling. I drew the "Hit 'em where it hurts" secret mission and noticed that Bharmer was a little soft in his base defense, so I went on a rampage. It was a gamble from the start, and I can say unequivicaly that it didn't pan out. Over the course of repeated attempts, I Bharmer and I waged mutual destruction without any real advance. Meanwhile, Kozure spread out over 50% of the board and was generating a very good income. Having been thwarted with Bharmer, I amassed a sizeable army and came down on Kozure's dragon (which was accompanied by a few other units). He played a card which reversed the order of attacks and then tore me to shreds before my expensive units could do anything.

Needless to say, I didn't win. Kozure continues his big year with another decisive win in the plains of Rubium.

It was a fun game. I'm glad I have Nexus Ops... it does what it sets out to do.

Vegas Showdown

Vegas Showdown has been played a few times by WAGS, but only once by me and that was a long time ago. I was looking forward to playing this Princes of Florence/ Amun-Re esque game again. The central auction mechanism obviously lost much of it's tension with only three players, but we did manage to bid other players up on a few occasions. I was well on my way to filling both ends of my play mat in addition to connecting both ends when I realized the game was about to end. A quick calculation revealed that I needed to choose between purchasing a slots room or saving my money and buying alarge room worth 12 VPs. I chose to wait and buy the big one, but I realized right after that I actually had enough to do both.

Guess what,I lost by less than the margin of that error! The slots would have filled my yellow zone (casino?), giving me the 5 points. Oh well, live and . All in all, a fun game. learn.................................................................................................................................................................................

About WAGS.

Ten Top Trivia Tips about WAGS!

1. WAGS were declared extinct in 1902!
2. WAGS are the world's tallest woman.
3. It's bad luck to put WAGS on a bed.
4. If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt they would fill WAGS.
5. The moon is 400 times closer to the Earth than WAGS, and 400 times smaller.
6. Europe is the only continent that lacks WAGS.
7. WAGS are actually a vegetable, not a fruit.
8. WAGS can be seen from space!
9. Astronauts get taller when they are in WAGS!
10. WAGS can not regurgitate!

I am interested in - do tell me aboutherhimitthem

That's a big table (Railroad Tycoon, Citadels)

We played on Shemp's new Big Table. It's so big, it makes Railroad Tycoon seem reasonable. No. Really.

Railroad Tycoon

Our friend Agent Oral joined us for what was supposed to be a party of 7 but turned out to be a foursome (Bharmer and Luch were absent and my sister's fiancee, Pablo, got cold feet). We explained the game, along with the auction variant we play with (a For Sale! style auction to determine player order). We then debated what type of card variant we should try (the original method of laying out 2x #of players + 1 every turn seems limited). We went with 2x # of players + #players each turn. That was too many cards, so we'll try something else next time ... maybe start with cards=# of players + 1/2 # of players every turn afterwards? We'll see.

Shemp and Kozure fought over the north-east. I split my attention between the central-east and the Chicago area. Oral went south to capitalize on a service Bounty in Mobile. I built a nice little network which gave me a nearly endless supply of 4 link deliveries, but it was only good for second place... Kozure finished the giant East-West twenty pointer and ran away with the victory. Railroad Tycoon continues to be a very fun game. As soon as we can come up with a better card distribution method, it'll be that much better.

Citadels

Citadels hasn't been played at WAGS in ages. That's not by accident, with 4 or 5 players it's not very good (because of the way it works out with the card removed, the player who sits to the right of the king gets really screwed). However, since Agent Oral had to leave, we were left with 3 and I quite like it as a 2 or 3 player game. I HEAR it's good with 6, 7 or 8, but I've never played. Ironically, I brought it since I expected a big crowd, but I was happy to play it with our small one.

Kozure caught himself in a few instances of out-second(triple)-guessing himself into mistakes. I made the mistake of taking the King and Merchant too predictably and getting assassinated. Shemp made the fewest mistakes and, appropriately, won the game.

Anyway, I had a pretty good run in won games last year, but this year seems to belong to Kozure. With Railroad Tycoon tonight, I think he's won 3/4s of the games played. Time to take him down.

In the cornfields of Greece (Perikles, To Court the King)

I'm just going to post something quick, since it's already Tuesday and I don't want to fall behind.

We played our second session of Perikles. Shemp wasn't around, so last week's crown wasn't contested. Bharmer was playing his first game, and as usual this didn't seem to hold him back much. Having learned a few lessons previously, we didn't let anyone get too many statues in the lucrative city states of Corinth, Thebes and (? I forget the name of the last one. Margle or something). Battles seemed to be fought with more purpose, as we tried to knock down the value of certain cities and snap up points for battles elsewhere. In my final round, I explored the use of the persian armies and found them very powerful. In fact, between the fact that ignoring the pursuit for kingship saves you many cubes in the process, and spares you from wasting resources defending your invesments in battle, there seems to be many immediate advanages. You are free to place as many cubes as possible and leave them there, and then attack the big point battles in force. I'm sure there's a winning strategy there. Unfortunately, I didn't find it right away... Kozure won a very close game.

I'm happy to say that Perikles remained extremely engaging. It actually seemed FAR less random and opaque in our second playing... leading me to believe that there is a solid and balanced game in addition to a compelling one.

We finished with To Court the King. This was my first time playing with more than 2 players. Still perfectly enjoyable, but definitely something I could lose from my collection without worrying about it. I'm quite sure this will make it onto the next local math trade.

Alas, I did not witness any prevenge this time around.

Games Played 2007 + Favorites

2007 was, as always, a good year at the WAGS gaming group. I've compiled a list of our games played this year. I did it rather quickly, so it may contain errors, but it's a general overview. Also, a few sessions weren't recorded, so many of these games got more plays than I'm listing here. The big winner would appear to be Clue: The Great Museum Caper, but in reality it received that many plays because it's short, typically played several times in one sitting, and... most of all... I was desperately trying to prove to myself that it's actually playable (I'm still not sure). I would therefore crown Jungle Speed as the WAGS most played game of the year.

8 Plays:
Clue: The Great Museum Caper

6 Plays:
Jungle Speed

5 Plays:
Ra
San Juan

4 Plays:
Mr. Jack

3 Plays:
TransEuropa
Wheedle
Tikal
Goa
Blue Moon City
Dungeon Twister
Beowulf

2 Plays:
Shogun
Carcassonne
Last Night on Earth
Blokus
Power Grid
Downfall of Pompei
Taj Mahal
Theophrastus
Terrakh
El Grande
Way Out West
Louis XIV
Liar’s Dice
LOTR: Confrontation
Palazzo
Domaine
Yspahan
Mission Red Planet

1 Play:
Ideology
Space Dealer
Vegas Showdown
Wildlife
Tigris and Ephrates
Modern Art
LOTR: Sauron
Mall of Horror
Vampire: Prince of the City
A Game of Thrones
Doom
For Sale!
Tower of Babel
Hey! That’s My Fish
Bohnanza
Mama Mia!
Set
Zendo
Mao
Dvorak
Pirate’s Cove
Die Macher
Tide of Iron
Crimson Skies
Carcassonne: The City
Maharaja
Naval Battles
Plunder
RoboRally
Canal Mania
Ticket to Ride
Witch Trial
Princes of Florence
Through the Desert
China
Nexus Ops
Ingenious
Flying Colours
Fury of Dracula
To Court the King
Antike
Conquest of the Empire
Santiago

So, that's 43 games played only once, and 18 games played twice, and only 12 games TOTAL played more than twice. Apparently, we have gaming attention deficit disorder.

2007 didn't contain any knockout new games for me, like Taj Mahal/ Tikal or El Grande. Jungle Speed has certainly become a personal favorite, and Blue Moon City & Beowulf are also very good. Yspahan impressed me as a great medium weight game (in the same vein as Ra and China). A game of Thrones seemed like it could be a very good Waro, but one game was simply not enough to assess that one. Finally, Last Night on Earth was a great success as a thematic but playable horror game.

As a sidenote, Blue Moon City has been the biggest hit for my family and friends outside of WAGS. My interest in wargaming has netted me Lock n' Load: Band of Heroes and Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage. I've managed to play both once, but I'd really love to find a way to play these titles with more regularity... 2 player games have a difficult time getting on the table with my current situation, and complex ones even moreso.

Predictions/ wishes for the new year: Our rate for purchasing new games has diminished substantially, but still continues a good clip. I bet we'll see even fewer purchases this year. The math trades have been a fun way to cycle games in and out of my collection without having to spend money, so I think I'll participate in one or two of those. I hope to see more Railroad Tycoon and Game of Thrones... as well as continued play of my favorites (El Grande, Ra, Taj Mahal).

To another good year!

PREvenge (Zooloretto, Perikles, Beowulf, Ra)

PREvenge: The act of exacting revenge for something another player may do in the future.

A new year, another new term which should see much circulation amongst Wagsters in 2008 (2007 was unquestionably the year of "Bharmering", though "Swedish Betrayal" also made a strong showing).

Our first Wags gathering of 2008 was a very good one. We were able to start a little earlier than normal since most of us aren't working this week, so we were able to get a good number of games in.

Zooloretto

Zooloretto is the Spiel de Jares winner for last year. It's a game about building a zoo aimed squarely at a family audience. It's a simple exercise of drawing animal tiles and trying to fill your pens constrained by the fact that each one must be single species. There are various details which add some decision making, such as the fertility of some animals, currency which allows you to swap animals, purchase them from other players, etc. There are also vending stalls which add another method of scoring points. When I was playing it, I was sure it reminded me of something, but couldn't quite place it... Ra maybe? Not sure (I haven't played Coloretto, the card game Zooloretto is based on, so that's not it). The drafting and aquiring of tiles is similar: each round you essentially draw a tile and place it in a truck, or take all the tiles in a truck. You might therefore be tempted to take a truck before it's full just to get a particular tile you really need, or you might find yourself cursing because a tile you want is accompanied by one you don't.

It's a good family game. There are decisions to be made, it's not too complicated. and it's quite attractive (I especially like the box cover). I tried a three player game with my 4.5 year old son and he said he liked it, but it seemed to me to be a bit beyond him so I guess it's probably best suited for 5/6 and up. For a group of adult gamers, it's fun but not mindblowing.

Perikles

Perikles is a game by the same designer as Way Out West and Conquest of the Empire (as well as Age of Steam and many other games which we have not played as a group). His designs tend to be characterized by fairly lengthly play, moderately heavy rules/ strategy and intricate interelationships between the mechanics of the game. They also often walk the line between a german style game and an american style one. Perikles is no different.

Perikles is a game of politics and combat in Greece during the Peloponesian war. The rather sparse board shows 6 greek city states where players vie for political control (using an interesting twist on area majority where the win goes to the player who has the biggest presence AND has been nominated as leader there). Once the leaders of each city-state are determined, those players receive their armies and go to war. Each city-state's army has it's characteristics... Sparta has a powerful army, Athens has an enormous fleet, etc. Once the wars are resolved, players who won battles get VPs and then the leaders of all the city-states have statues erected in their honour. The trick is that every loss a city-state suffers reduces it's prestige, so the endgame VPs those statues give a player go down if it loses. Rinse and repeat 3 times. It all boils down to a game where each decision has an impact on many aspects of the game and, like Way Out West, most decisions that help you will often hurt you elsewhere. A couple of examples:

1) If you are elected leader of a city-state, your presence there will be severely weakened there for the next round.
2) If you were once the leader of a city state, your statue there gives you motivation to help defend it in the future even if it's not currently yours (to keep that city's prestige high)

In our game, the first round saw Luch lead his army to several victories so we were all weary of him as the early leader (my only army was thebes, and I was soundly crushed in three battles so that particular already unspectacular army became even worse). The second round was mostly "bash Athens" due to the battles we drew. By the end of the that round, it became clear that Shemp's many leaders on the board would net him many points unless those cities were handed a few defeats before the end of the game. We did what we could, but Shemp prevailed (and a key win in that last round with the odds slightly against him didn't help). PREvenge, the title of the blog, was used when Shemp decided to screw Luch through a political nomination in anticipation of a move he was sure Luch would do to him. Honestly, as much as we laughed about the concept of "PREvenge", I can't remember if his hunch was right.

The group loved this game... I was pretty unsure about the purchase after reading the rules (it was an impulse buy at the Fantasy Flight christmas sale for $10), so it was a bit of a relief to actually play it. Trying to piece together how to place your influence in the cities, where to nominate yourself, how to try and get weak opponents nominated against you, deciding which battles to fight, which to defend, etc, makes for a deep and satisfying puzzler that succesfully walks the line between euro strategy and wargame immersion. Personally, I was engrossed in a similar way that I tend to get with El Grande, but on a somewhat larger scale (that's a compliment). At 2-3 hours, we won't be playing that often, but I get the feeling we'll be seeing it again in the not too distant future.

We ended the evening with a game of Beowulf which Kozure won (man, oh man where the risks not on my side!). Looks like he may have regained the knack that allowed him to dominate us for the first few games... Despite my awful showing, I still really enjoy this game. I'm glad I ignored the negative hype and bought it.

Finally, we ended with a very fun session of Ra. Kozure also won this one after a lengthy drought.

A great beginning to the new year. Here's hoping it's a good one.

What Does It Mean?

Maybe it means that a very large game has met its woodgrained match.