Goin' Old Skool (El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Santiago)

Ah, El Grande. I missed you.

I was thinking the other day that it would be interesting to look up when was the last time I had played a few of the games that I claim are my "favorites". The result was disappointing.

El Grande, probably my favorite game, hadn't been played in nearly a year and a half!

Last week, I brought it along in the hopes that there would be time at the end of the evening, but no dice. Lucky for me, Shemp picked it this week along with Tigris and Euphrates and Santiago.

El Grande

Roughly 4 rounds into the game, Luch was far in the lead, Shemp was in second and Kozure and I were trailing. Luch made an offhanded remark that he was not in the mood to choose intrigue, and simultaneously mentioned that he normally loses at the game. It was a Seinfeld-ian moment, because we all kind of realized he was probably in the lead because he was playing the opposite of the way he normally does (there was a time when Luch was referred to as Hapi on this blog. This was a reference to the fact that He Always Picks Intrigue). Anyway, after the realization, he started choosing Intrigue more, and promptly lost the lead he had.

Shemp leapt into the lead. He managed a couple of very nice point grabs with single caballeros (the efficient, german one, no doubt). I was making a comeback, partly due to the backlash Shemp was receiving for being in first place... but would it be enough?

It was. The last scoring round was unpredictable, but when the dust settled red (me) was in the lead.

Tigris and Euphrates

T&E is my second most played game if you count BGG online games, but my actual face to face games have been few and far between. I love the game, but the analysis paralysis it brings to the table makes it well suited to turn based computer play. Face to face, and with two players much less familiar with the game than Shemp and I, the game played out quite differently. I suppose you could say that with the pressure of time, the game developed less optimally than it typically does online. I developed a long skinny kingdom in the north that I *never* would have built normally. I paid for it, too, because Shemp started disaster tiling in strategic locations to swing vast parts of my kingdom to his control. Kozure had retreated to a corner of the board where he was benefiting from a monument. Luch was the swing in the three way battle going on in the center of the board. Although I had a large presence on the board, my score was weak in blue. When the score was tallied, Shemp was the obvious winner and I was tied for last.

We finished with Santiago. Although we had difficulty remembering to distribute the new money every round, in general the game went smoothly. A large crop of green beans allowed me to win the game. Since Santiago is a difficult game to talk about, I won't really try. Fun, though.

I had a great time playing these older titles. There are certainly some lessons in recent game design that seem to have come in vogue after the release of El Grande and T&E.. notably variable turn order mechanics and downtime minimizing. These aren't things that bother me if the game is engrossing enough, as these ones are for me, but Kozure was visibly "antsy" throughout much of the evening.

Sorry, Kozure. I'll be picking El Grande again in the near future!

Shemp played himself so hard he's bleeding (Jumpgate, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm)

We played a second session of Kozure's prototype, Jumpgate. This was was the first time Shemp and Bharmer had tried it, and I think it was the first playtest with the full complement of 4 players. I was initially worried that there would be too much chaos with 4... many games where the board changes significantly between turns suffer a little bit in my opinion. There's often a feeling of lost control that I find unsatisfying. Luckily, it didn't really feel that way. Again, I'm not going to talk about it too much but it was fun playing it again.

One note: For posterity, I want to record that during this game Bharmer managed to "Bharmer", "Luch" and perform a "quarter Ono". It was quite remarkable.

We finished the evening with our second game of Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm.

I was dealt an excellent hand. My starting world was the Separatist Colony. In my hand were 3 alien cards that had a military bent, and a fourth card that boosted military. They complemented each other so well I was able to put down military/ alien worlds and developments effortlessly, grabbing a "first to have 3 alien cards" chit along the way. I only had a single production world, the damaged Alien Factory, but between it and another card I had played it gave me 6 cards a shot. I spent the second half of the game putting down military worlds for free and 6VP developments. I don't normally do well at Race, but this one was playing itself. I ended the game 20 points ahead of the second place player, Kozure. Yay me!

Aren't we popular? (Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm, Agricola)

This night's session neatly assembles the two hottest games for 2008; Race for the Galaxy and Agricola. What could make this impossibly hot duo any hotter? We were playing the just released Gathering Storm expansion for RftG!!!

Catch your breath. Pick your jaw up from the floor.

Okay, it's not nearly as exciting as that. Particularly for us, because unless I'm mistaken our collective opinion on both those games are : Good/ very good... but not great. Still, good/ very good adds up to a fine night's entertainment, so who am I to complain?

Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm

I find it intriguing that this expansion comes complete with an expanded storyline to further that of the initial game. Mostly, this is intriguing to me because when I play Race for the Galaxy, I am aware of very little theme. I would have gone so far as to describe the original setting as particularly generic. Still, I'm actually kind of glad that the game's designer uses a storyline to develop the game... it makes me feel like there is a purpose behind the development of the expansions even if I currently am not really "feeling" it.

In reality, it was the the addition of a fifth player and the solitaire "bot" that attracted me. The additional cards are nice, but I haven't played enough to really know the base deck that well so the "newness" of the cards will be lost on me (most of the cards are still pretty new to me). I wasn't even aware of the new goal tokens, so that was a nice surprise!

The game played just fine with 5 players. I was a little afraid that all the phases would get chosen every round, making things a little "samey" throughout. It didn't really happen. It's still the same game, but we did play with the goal tokens so it did feel a little different. The goals introduce two new ways to score points: The first is a series of 3 point goals that reward the player that reaches particular achievements first (the ones we drew this game were: First to play 3 Alien cards into their tableau, First to accumulate 5 victory points, First to play worlds that produce all of the possible goods and First to to play a "6" development). The second is a series of 5 point goals that reward the player with the most of something (the two we drew were: The most developments and the most military). For our first game, anyway, the goals felt pretty good. It added a sense of urgency to accomplish certain things before other players, therefore increasing player interaction, without dramatically changing the feel or flow of the game. Of course, the danger with this sort of thing is that the players who's goals naturally align with goals on the table are unfairly advantaged (for example, the most military is almost surely going to go to the player with New Sparta). Anyway, it's a concern but it didn't feel like a problem in our first game.

Having claimed two of the "first goals" and one of the "most" goals, and finished the game with a 12 card tableau (including one 6) I thought I stood a pretty good chance of winning. Alas, Bharmer not only beat us, he was way ahead!

Agricola

Bharmer hadn't played this with the cards before, so he asked that we include them. Kozure shuffled up the entire deck of "E" cards and that's what we used (I actually hadn't played with the whole "E" deck myself, so I wound up seeing a number of new cards too).

Since I always seem to go long on animals, I figured I would try to take advantage of a particular occupation I had which allowed me to pay a food for a ploughed field at the start of every round. Problem was that, just like last game, I got carried away and started trying to get way too many of my other cards on the table as well. Although I feel the cards I did play were at least all used, I'm not 100% sure they got me further than NOT playing them. Because I was trying to coordinate the effects of all these cards, I never actually got around to planting anything in my ever growing pastures! I also was particularly poor at accumulating food without the help of the animals and ovens I was used to. I didn't ever resort to begging, but on two occasions I was saved by lucky breaks (other players giving me food for my master forester's wood space). On the final turn, I had to consume the two vegetables I was holding onto to feed the family, and lost 3 points because of it.

I came in second with 30, but Kozure crushed us with 38.

Monsters, indeed. (Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!)

Kozure and I got together again for some wargaming.

We played the "Monsters" scenario from Conflict of Heroes, Awakening the Bear! I was the attacking Germans, Kozure was the defending Russians.

This scenario introduces vehicle combat to players, and as such features a large number of tanks, trucks and APCs. A large hill separates the germans from two smaller hills that they are trying to take... and of course that's where the Russians are waiting and hoping to make the most of their elevation advantage.

I was at first a little overwhelmed by the number of units I had under my control, and intimidated by the task of waltzing into a well defended area. Thankfully, Kozure advised me on a couple of things and helped me clear up what I should try to do. I split up a few small teams to circle the hill in two directions while my main force crashed into the waiting Russians.

After the first turn, I had accomplished little. I hadn't taken any of the minor checkpoints in the first hill, and was nowhere near getting to the major objectives.

In the second turn, I organized a fire group in the middle and started laying down smoke to make the approach a little less deadly (thanks again to the selfless Kozure, who realized that the strategic importance of smoke was lost on me). It worked pretty well... I was climbing onto the hill and gaining ground. The Russians had a positional advantage, but as they were much slower and less effective units it was only a question of time before I would take the hill. By the end of the second turn, I had reached one of the two intermediate checkpoints and the russians were on the run from the hill.

I believe until now we were losing units at roughly the same rate. It felt (to me) that we were losing a lot of units, and watching our CAPS dwindle permanently was getting a little scary, but at least it was happening to both of us.

By now, Kozure's reinforcements were entering the board. These were massive tanks, heavily armed and armoured. I'm not 100% sure that these are the "monsters" from the title, but that's the way it felt to me. He spread them to block the two routes around the hill and effectively made life very difficult. A couple of hidden units which sprung up in those areas didn't help either.

Unfortunately for Kozure, he chose to load up his truck with a couple of his units on the edge of a forest that was within firing range of my tanks and movement range of one of another of my tanks. After firing and damaging a couple of units, I played a card which allowed me two moves without possible reaction and engaged him in close combat. He was out of CAPS, and they were used, so he was powerless to stop me. All units were destroyed. Kozure seemed sleepy around this point, and although he noticeably perked up afterwards a lot of damage had been done.

Kozure suggested that I try to make a break for one of the objectives on the last turn of the game. I had a number of units within range so I decided to give it a try (besides, attacking the monster tanks was NOT likely to work). It meant having to run the units through well defended terrain one at a time in order to sap the defense. In the end, the numbers game worked in my favour and I was *just* able to make it.

I won the game, but it was a squeaker. Obviously, Kozure helped me a lot with his advice, so I can't really claim a real victory.

Don't get too comfortable, Kozure: soon, the master will become the apprentice.

The game was a lot of fun to play, and the flexible yet simple system continues to impress me. I really look forward to playing some more.

I.H.T.C.I.M.T. (Diamant x2, TransEuropa x2, Power Grid, TransAmerica)

This week's post will be short:

Games were played in an environment of giddiness that was extreme even by our measure. I.H.T.C.I.M.T. will live on forever.

We played 2 games of Diamant. Those were surely the deadliest caves in Diamant history! 4-5 disasters in a row happened more often than you'd think...

Then, we played TransEuropa twice. Can anything really be said of TransEuropa? Not really, except that Bharmer appears to be pretty good at it.

We then played a ridiculously fast 6 player game of Power Grid. We weren't trying to speed play or anything, but it still clocked in a well under 2 hours... maybe even 1.5 hours. We played on the U.S.A. map (in honour of the recent elections, I suppose). I started in the hideously expensive south west, and pretty much lost when I made that decision. No one else started there, but Luch and Shemp came knocking soon enough. That meant that the few possibilities I had to expand beyond the LA area were eaten up before I could get to them.

Kozure zoomed ahead in the networked city count, and somehow avoided the downsides. He won the game with only JayWowzer as a possible threat to his win.

Speaking of JayWowzer, it's possible this was his last hurrah with us (his project in Canada is nearly complete). If we don't cross paths again, it was a pleasure gaming with you!

(we finished off with a game of TransAmerica. As usual I did very badly. Bharmer didn't win this one, but he was awfully close)