Give the man his camel (Goa, Aladdin's Dragons)

JayWowzer made his way up to our fair country once more. Meanwhile, a carpeting snafu kept Kozure out of action. That made us a foursome for the evening.

Goa

We started with Goa. Luch has been trying to get this on the table for quite some time, but something always seemed to come up. I'm glad we did get around to it... it's a great game. I have to admit that I find the auction a bit strange, though. I've never really been comfortable with auctions that have players exchanging money rather than paying to the bank (Modern Art does this as well). I'm not sure why, but there's a feeling of futility in there. Bidding a certain tile up hurts the bidders, but benefits the auctioneer. A player who spends all their money early in the round frequently gets it back during the auction because the money they spent goes to another player who, flush with money, will likely spend it on an upcoming tile. Anyway, it's a small detail because the game works despite this weirdness. The rest of the game may be multiplayer solitaire, but the decisions are interesting and the game never seems to play out the same way since the tiles you win during the auction combined with the expedition cards largely determine the most effective course of action. Another odd thing: I don't think I've EVER advanced the money track or ship track past the 2 step. Are there winning strategies which depend on money or ships? I suppose in my next game I'll have to try it, but off the top of my head I can't think of how it would go.

I won the game having maxed the expedition and production tracks, founded all four colonies and collected a triple in my expedition cards. Luch, frequently the winner at Goa, came in second.

Aladdin's Dragons

We've played Aladdin's Dragons a few times before, and I think I'm going to have to go back and read those session reports because I don't remember what we had said. I remember liking it, but I don't think I loved it. For whatever reason, this week's session was really good and I distinctly felt that it was a better game than I remembered. Clearly, there are a few things which could go wrong: Because the winner is the player with the most tiles, it can become mathematically impossible to win a few turns before the game is over. Also, the spell cards are fairly chaotic in their effect. Conversely, the counter-spell artifact feels at once too easy AND to difficult to play (and that essentially depends on whether you plan on using an artifact that round or not, because if you do you probably NEED to use that other artifact and therefore can't afford to waste that opportunity). Anyway, it may be just a case of having equally skilled players playing the game and balancing out the rough edges, but none of those "problems" really came up for me and ruined the game.

It's funny, too, because even though I won I constantly felt like I was losing. You simply can't win everything you want and so I was seeing all the opportunities I was missing as my blind bids proved to be too small or my guesses about what other players were going for proved false. I suppose the same thing was going on for everyone, though. Jeff seemed to be picking up a lot of artifacts, so I had him pegged as the winner. He also held the camel 80% of the time. I went more than one round without artifacts, but I picked up two on a couple of occasions.

The last round was the most memorable. There was only one artifact left, which obviously created a situation where everyone put everything they had onto the same space (with consideration to the gems they had to spend and those they hoped to win).
What threw a wrench into the whole thing was that the palace guard turned out to be a 10, so those of us without any "spare change" were eliminated from the running in the palace. In this case, JayWowzer SHOULD have been the the highest bidder and happy winner of the last artifact, but he ran out of money and Luch picked it up instead. That tile would have tied JayWowzer with me, and probably won him the game on the strength of the tie-breaker scrolls (I only had one, I think he had two).

Very close...

Games concerning the absence of food (Corn - The Civgame, In the Year of the Dragon)

This week the group indulged me by agreeing to play my prototype, "Corn - The Civgame". I constantly dabble in creating games, but rarely get anywhere with them. My last attempt, Corn-22, was not particularly good. I had high hopes that this one would be better...

Well, first of all, this one isn't supposed to be goofy. It's a fairly rules-heavy civilization builder. I wanted to make a game that combined exploration, technological advancement, war and politics that didn't need a huge board, 8 hour playing time or millions of little bits. Also, setup time bothers me, so I made quick setup a goal.

I'll get this out of the way up front: It wasn't very well received. Despite this, I was happy with the experiment. Beyond the problems which came up due to unresolved rules, unpredicted combinations, etc, a few things were working against a pleasant first run-through:

- It's got lots of rules, and I didn't explain them particularly well.
- The playing pieces were very poor. To small, too light, not particularly user-friendly.
- Critical play-aids were missing. This is probably the biggest mistake I made. The missing list of buildings was the worst offender.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the turn order/ action selection mechanism (it's not perfect, though: earlier versions restricted the the number of cards players were dealt, and I added to that substantially for the playtest. In retrospect, it was too many). I felt that the exploration was working and the development was working reasonably well. We didn't play long enough for the different player's civilizations to butt heads, or for the political aspect of the game to really take off, but at the very least I was able to get a sense of certain things that need to be worked out. Though no one will know this but me, the balance of resource production vs. building costs has improved substantially over previous solo playtests.

I hope that the group will be willing to try it again, and I'm really hoping that we can have a conversation here about thoughts on what worked and what didn't.

A few changes I need to make before it gets played again:
- It used to be a requirement that a port be built in order to embark onto water (at a lake or river). When I eliminated it, I didn't realize it made bridges obsolete (since it is quicker and cheaper to gain the water transportation technology and cross wherever you want). I will be reintroducing ports. Also, I was counting on certain landscape features (lakes, rivers and mountains) to provide natural boundaries that would define the regions in the game. However, under those rules Wonders found in water exist in BETWEEN regions, and therefore couldn't belong to anyone. I think the only solution in this case is to remove the ability to discover Wonders in water hexes. Also, I will have to require that Wonders not be discovered on river hexes, just to overcome a placement issue (placing the wonders obscures the rivers, and there's no simple way to eliminate that). It's not an unreasonable limitation, so I'll just choose the simple route. Lastly, I will be requiring the presence of cubes on resources to have them produce. This will eliminate ownership questions and, conversely, allow others to come and use them if they are crafty.

When Kozure arrived, we put away the prototype and played In the Year of the Dragon. I tried to see if the war parades could be put to good use (get ahead in the people track by putting on parades and then choose the powerful older workers without being forced to fall back in the turn order). It seemed to be working pretty well, and then THE BAD MOVE happened.

In the month the droughts was upon us, I had the first move. In a fit of idiocy, I forgot I had no rice and instead chose to BUILD A THIRD PALACE. The drought happened, I lost 3 people and the palace I had just built. Ugggh.

I figure I bounced back pretty well. I had a good lead until then, and ended tied for second with Kozure. Bharmer cruised past us to victory on the strength of 5 palaces and many people working in them.

I'm still quite happy with this one. It feels rather malleable in the sense that there always seems to be several ways you COULD go. While planning for the upcoming disaster is the main driver for the game, building a good monthly points engine, staying ahead in the person track and going for straight points are all viable and important at different parts of the game. Good stuff.