Small Games that Feel Big (Small World, Dominion: Intrigue)

Despite the unfortunate absence of Bharmer and Agent Easy this week, we managed to make it together on a *gasp* Tuesday.

We played two of this year's hot ticket games - Small World and Dominion: Intrigue.

I don't have time to go into a full length rules summary and critique of either, but both games are quick and relatively easy to learn. The kerfuffle on BGG about ambiguous rules in Small World is overblown - the only major rule omission (in my opinion) was the definition of what order you place survivors of attacks (active player first, then left from there). The rest can be worked out with common sense, though the clarification document at BGG does help.

We played Dominion first. I was hoping it would catch on well with our group and by post-game discussion with Luch and Shemp, it's a hit. I was reflecting that it actually combines many of the addictive qualities of CCGs in an even more compressed time-frame - like getting a faster buzz from a drink or *ahem* "pharmaceutical". You get deck-building, deck-optimization, shuffling, card-collection, power-combos (frequently every turn) and a number of other aspects of already addictive CCGs like Magic and Jyhad all rolled into a single 30-40 minute package. It is like a crack version of Magic... can you can make concentrated crack out of crack? Meth? Whatever.

We played two games in two hours, including set-up and rules explanation. Future games should go even more quickly. Our first game was a little extended because although we could have ended it much earlier, no one was quite sure who was winning, so we kept playing a number of turns after somone could have ended it.

Having played Dominion (the "vanilla" base set, that is) on Saturday, it was fresh in my mind for comparison. Base Dominion is faster, but with less choices. Intrigue gives you more choices and more complex card interactions. Both are good on their own merits and it would definitely be good to own both.

A note on teaching Dominion - the suggested "Victory Dance" deck in the Intrigue rulebook is a good teaching deck. However you choose to teach Dominion, try to have a relatively non-punishing deck to teach with - preferably one without curses or too many agonizing decision cards.

The first game was very close: Luch 45 (or was it 47?), Shemp 43 and me with 41. I actually ended it thinking I was ahead. Shemp scored 15 points with Dukes (five duchies times three dukes).

The second game was less close: Luch 63, Kozure 37, Shemp 29. Luch ran away with it after striking the 8 treasure goal line early and snapping up six of the twelve provinces to my three.

Small World is a polished up and tricked-out version of the Vinci rules, (previously discussed) with a cute fantasy theme. I bought it mostly for my high school friends for when we get together monthly, since they tend to prefer conquest-y games. Iwas actually thinking the game would be denser than it turned out, but there's definitely strategy. The reinforcement die does add in a little randomizing spice. The components (as usual from a Days of Wonder published game) are gorgeous, the insert is 90% well done (the unit counter tray could have been done better, counters still flip over and get stuck in the bottom and are subsequently hard to dig out).

Gameplay is fun and quick. We got through rules explanation and a full three player game in 50 minutes. Not as much of a hit as Dominion, but still liked enough.

Both good games in my book - I'm sorry Bharmer and Agent Easy had to miss them.

Next time!

We Hates it, My Precious... We HATES it.

In the blog entry below this one, Agent Easy mentions some games which he indicates that I dislike. I should clarify that I don't really dislike Carcassonne; I just don't feel it offers much challenge, strategically or tactically, once you've played it often enough. I started this post as a comment in response to that post, but I realized it could be of more value as an actual entry.

Since challenge is part of the fun for me in boardgaming, I don't specifically choose Carcassonne when picking for WAGS; however, I will definitely hold onto it for playing with my kids as they grow up. Once they're past... I dunno... eight or so, I'll probably trade it or give it to a relative's family with school-age children.

I can't really think of any games that I hate off-hand.

What I can do is list games which I don't look forward to playing, but often enjoy while actually playing (I'll call them "Daunting Games"), and then games which I neither look forward to and don't particularly enjoy ("Onerous Games").

I should be very clear that just because I list a game as "Daunting", doesn't mean that I hate it, just that I tend not to want to pick it personally, especially for WAGS. Sometimes they are actually games that I feel I should play (because they are good games or because they would improve my strategic abilities) but just don't feel like playing.

Daunting Games (Don't Look Forward to, Do enjoy playing - generally)

• El Grande
• Tigris and Euphrates
• Age of Steam
• Paths of Glory
• Advanced Squad Leader
• Dungeon Twister
• OCS-series wargames (eg. Burma)
• Diplomacy
• Empire of the Sun
  

Onerous Games (Don't Look Forward To, Don't Enjoy Playing - generally)

• Yinsh (... and Dvonn, and other abstracts in this line) - too abstract
  
• Maharajah - can't seem to win against Bharmer. (I kid... but I don't like this game)
  
• Bohnanza - random, tedious, negotiation-heavy
  
• Atlantic Star - dry, theme is badly suited and counter-intuitive
  
• Phoenicia - major run-away leader issues
  
• Kill Doctor Lucky - kill the leader, almost exclusively
  
• Naval Battles - kill the leader, almost exclusively
  
• 1856 - complex, fiddly, overlong
  
• Aladdin's Dragons - random, some cards overpowered to the point of game-breaking
  
• Blue Moon City - ugly, strange theme. actually a decent game, but theme and appearance kill it for me.
  
• Mille Bornes - random, overlong, kill the leader issues.
  
• Fluxx - generally, not enough game, not enough challenge, kill the leader issues
  
• Air War - way too fiddly/complex for the sort of action it purports to try to evoke.
  
• EastFront - strategically too much to consider
  
• Space Alert - random, too easily foiled, crew feel like moronic automatons
  

Note to Agent Easy: I know you don't take it personally that I dislike a number of games that you own - the only real contributing factor is that you own a lot of games and I'm bound to dislike some of them.

Looking through the worst ranked games at BGG, I can't really find too many I would refuse to play with their age group (for example, though I wouldn't play Candyland or Hungry Hungry Hippos with adults, I wouldn't mind playing it with kids)

Some games I just won't play willingly for one reason or another:

Doctor Who: CCG, which I don't really hate... more just feel sorry for. It's just baaaad. Bad art, bad mechanics, bad gameplay.

Lone Wolf and Cub: This game is random, too tough at times and too easy at others, and downright broken in combat. I dislike it additionally because its theme is one I particularly like and they went and made a crappy game of it.

Dante's Inferno: Overlong, fiddly and boring.

Zombies!!!: Overlong and wastes the theme.

Chainsaw Warrior: Overlong, virtually no significant decisions, too difficult. Feels futile.

Mastermind: I have no interest in playing this game. For some reason, the logic of it (simple as I understand it to be) goes off like a bomb in my head and leaves me with frustration headache. One day I will sit down and figure out why I have so much trouble with it... bad mental wiring for that sort of thinking, I guess.

Finally, there is one special "dislike" category that is pretty specific, games which I enjoy playing but really dislike the artwork. For lack of a more precise term, I call them "Ugly but Lovable Games".

Ugly but Lovable Games

• Glory to Rome
• Galaxy Trucker
• Ideology

I like playing these games but every time I do, I find myself wincing at the artwork or components. Glory to Rome is especially, especially painful to me as it is a really fun game otherwise.

Then there are games which are just... plain... ugly. Neither enjoyable (to me) nor attractive.

Just Plain Ugly Games

• Blue Moon City

Anyhow... there are movies (Pearl Harbour, Space Buddies) and TV shows (almost any reality show) which I hate, but I haven't actually played a board game that I hate. Probably because I've avoided playing games which I anticipated hating (most TV-themed board games).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled smiles-and-sunshine-filled WAGS postings.

Hello, Goodbye (Elasund, Blue Moon City, Carcassonne)

With Kozure on vacation, and Bharmer not attending this week, we were left with three players: myself, Shemp and Luch. Although Kozure seems to dislike picking for three, I certainly don't mind as there are a number of games for 3 that I love playing. I settled on a new aquisition through the latest Toronto area math trade (Elasund), an game I wanted to play to see if I felt like keeping (Blue Moon City) and an old favorite (Carcassonne, with the Traders and Builders expansion).

Elasund

Elasund is part of the Catan Adventures line by Klaus Teuber. I haven't played the first of the series, Candamir, and I'm decidedly lukewarm to Settlers of Catan, so what would make me want to give this game a chance? Well, I had heard god things from trusted sources (JayWowzer had recommended it, and Chris Farrell likes it). Also, I wasn't aware of it's lineage when I traded for it. I was a little concerned when I read the rules and realized just how much the core mechanics reminded me of Settlers. Oh well, worth a shot anyways...

We set it up, I explained the rules, and we started. Elasund is a game about building up the first city of Catan. The board represents a grid onto which the buidlings that make up the city will be placed (interestingly, before buildings can be built, building permits need to be placed). A wall surrounds the city, and merchant docks line the western edge. Each turn, the acting player rolls two six-sided dice to see which docks the merchants will visit. Any buildings in that row pay the player that built it a reward of either gold or influence cards. Over the course of the game, players will gain victory points by building certain buildings, participating in the construction of the church, building city walls and/or increasing their standing on the windmill track (that's surely not it's name, but whatever). As in Settlers, placing buildings in the spots that increase their chances of paying out is very important. When a "7" is rolled, the merchant becomes a pirate and steals from another player. Another similarity: the winning condition is that the first player to 10 VPs is the winner. There are other similarities, but it's not worth going on about them.

Despite the similar core mechanics, the game doesn't really feel like Settlers at all. Probably the biggest difference is that there is a real mean streak to the game: It is possible over the course of the game to build over other player's buildings, to knock them back on the windmill chart, to interfere with their plans. From this perspective, I would say the game is more similar to Domaine in competitive feel.

As we played through the first few rounds, I wasn't really sure what to make of it. Every round I would take my actions, and then see what happened. It took until the second half of the game, when the board started filling up and buildings started gettting bulldozed, and the church started getting built that I really started getting a feel for the possibilities. Oddly, Shemp suddenly announced that he finally was starting to figure out what was going on at the same time I was thinking it. I'm still a little perplexed about what it was that made us feel this way, because it's not overly complex. I curious to see if Kozure feels the same way.

Anyway, here are a few things that dawned on me as we played:

1) The windmill track is best used to get a few last points at the end of the game. Buildings on those spaces are likely to get built over, so any advancement is temporary at best.
2) There are some other ways of playing offensively other than building over other player's buildings. Placing a building permit that equals or exceeds those of another player can really mess up his/her plans because they no longer control the building site.
3) Money and resources are so tight that any unexpected expense can force a player to re-evaluate his/her plans. If you can put a building permit in an intimidating place, the cost of upgrading it might be enough to make the player lose a couple of turns.
4) The "0" permit is your friend. Sure, it's easy for another player to outgun you, but you avoid spending resources every time you place it. Those can really add up.

In our game I ended up winning by building a big 2vp building along the coast (where the windmills necessary to move up the track are located), along with a number of other buildings, some wall VPs and some windmill track ones. It was fairly exciting, though, because it was down to a matter of turns before myself or Shemp would manage to place our last cube. Luch gave me a setback by placing a strategic building permit, but it wasn't enough to keep me down... Luch unfortunately fell behind because he built a large building within the footprint of the church and it was eventually booted it off the table.

So, in the end I liked it. Not sure it's fantastic, but I felt pretty happy with it near the end. If I had any complaints, it's that it's fairly luck dependent. We'll see how it fares with time.

Blue Moon City

When I first played this game, and for many sessions afterwards, I've really enjoyed it for the clever card play it made possible. Lately, in never comes off the shelf, and I realized that I might have "played it through". I figured we'd try it again to confirm my suspicions... Now I know that even though I do still like it, I won't really miss it if I traded it away.

Shemp won this game by a fair margin.

Carcassonne

It was nice to give some table time to this old classic (which also happens to be a game Kozure dislikes). My favorite way to play is with the Inns and Cathedrals + Traders and Builders, with a handful of tiles removed at the start of the game.

We opted to do "speed play", as we often do. Certain aspects of the game suffer disproportionally when we try this, for example very few farmers get placed and once you start a road or city, it's less likely to get contested.

I got the majority in all three resources, which netted me 30 points. Although I was behind in the overall counting, the little boost those majorities gave me enough points to win.

Games that take long to set up (Galaxy Trucker, Agricola)

We had another "laissez-faire" dictator this week. Luch asked that we bring a few games, and he'd pick on site. From our bag of games, he picked Galaxy Trucker and Agricola.

Galaxy Trucker

Last time we played this, we discovered Luch had been building his ships without necessarily starting from the center. Bharmer hadn't played before, so a rules explanation was in order and we then started on our voyage of destruction.

The first flight was unusually destruction filled, but at least we all made it to the end. The same couldn't be said of the subsequent flights...

In flight two, the meteors where raining down amidst a variety of combat zones. I had a very successfully designed ships, so I managed to escape unscathed, but the others weren't so lucky. Bharmer lost most of his ship, but the most unfortunate story was that Kozure suffered an unlikely hit early which snowballed into a series of losses leaving him limping along. Luch had a ship that was loaded to the max with batteries, which we originally found very funny, but against all odds he suffered so many attacks that he burned through all of them and was destroyed. I ended the flight with a huge hoard of cash... a nearly insurmountable lead.

Flight three was similar, but Kozure had put together a very good ship and managed a huge comeback. I still did OK, but I wasn't sure if it would be enough. Bharmer and Luch? Well, they didn't do so well.

It wasn't. Kozure beat me by 2 dollars (it was something like 72$ to 70$ to 5$ to 2$).

As usual, it was a fun game. Even amidst total catastrophe, the experience is enjoyable... a very unique game indeed.

Agricola

Given Shemp's absence, it was a good time to play Agricola.

I always go for a huge family in a stone house, lots of animals and little farming, so I thought I'd try something different. I've read that gaining family members takes so many actions, and then feeding them takes actions again, that the perceived advantage of having them isn't as great as it seems.

We played with the K deck, and my starting hand had a number of cards that would work well together for a farming strategy. Chief among them was the swing back plow (I think) which allows me to plough three fields instead of one twice in the game. I spent the first part of the game getting a number of occupations and minor improvements out, then concentrated on getting corn and vegetables for my 6 fields. Production was up.

I also had the animal tamer, which allowed me to keep various animals in the house. Between that and the "family member without a room" action, I had a single room with two family members living with a cow.

I finished with a two room clay house and only three family members. Still, with lots of veggies, some sheep, lots of cards played and few open spaces I thought I had a shot at winning. It ended as a very close game, with only 5 points separating the four players. Kozure once again beat me by 2 points, but the margin was small enough that I'm thinking the "Few family members" strategy could probably work if played better.

I'm actually growing more fond of Agricola as time goes on. I enjoy the puzzle aspect, and have come to see the "denial of choice" interaction as a kind of randomizer for my personal game instead of a traditional multiplayer game. I find the process challenging but fun, and the cards do make each session feel different.

Kill the Leader (El Grande, Beowulf)

It was Shemp's pick, but he couldn't decide what to choose so I brought along a big bag of games. His choices were El Grande and Beowulf, despite his earlier assertion that "kill the leader" would be the theme for the evening (El Grande works, but Beowulf does not).

El Grande

El Grande was up first. Our last play was november of last year, and I found myself unsure of some of the setup despite this being just about my favorite game. I was dealt Old Castille, Kozure was Valencia, Luch was New Castille and Shemp was Basque.

Our group typically doesn't go out of it's way to practice "Kill the Leader" tactics. This time, we repeated the mantra frequently in order to keep the objective clear. Unsurprisingly, it worked... Whoever pulled out to a lead was quickly pulled back. For example, I was starting to break away when my Grande's province was neutralized by a mobile score board and an influx of other player's cubes. It was never clear who was going to win, and everyone was a contender at one point or another. In the end, Shemp (who struggled in the first three rounds with very few points) managed to win by +/-5 points in a VERY close game for all involved. Maybe 10 points separated us all. I've always loved this game, but this one was particularly excellent and I hope we'll carry forward the aggressive play in future sessions. Kozure mentioned again that this isn't a game he favors, but in my opinion there isn't a game out there that can touch it when 4-5 players want to match wits in a meaty game that offers tough choices and opportunities for clever play in an hour and a half.

As an aside, I used to frequently glide into the last turn as the starting player with my 13 power card, move the king to my advantage and score huge points. Over the years, others have been trying to do the same, so we keep having to start earlier and earlier with the low power cards in order to control the bidding. This week, I managed to pull it off after several games where I failed (Shemp is usually the one who steals it from me), but I had to start in round 5 for it to work. Pretty soon, we'll start off the game with our power cards all planned out for the final round!

Beowulf

Beowulf has been a game that has sat on my trade pile for quite some time, despite the fact that I like it. I didn't think the group liked it much, and the odd pairing of theme and mechanics prevented me from introducing it to others. Turns out that many in the group did like it, but thought I had traded it away long ago so they never requested it. Since I had it in the bag of games, Shemp thought it was time to try it out again (the last time was January 2008).

It's hard to pinpoint exactly why, but I particularly enjoyed this session. The risking felt right, in the sense that it worked often but people who risked too often did get bit on occasion. The was an epic battle at the end at the dragon, which saw many players pull out all the stops and some engage in high stakes risking. Shemp and I where both in a tight spot because we both had two wounds and two scratches, so in order to not suffer the exorbitant penalty for ending the game with three wounds we both NEEDED to stay in longer than the other. When the dust settled, I made managed to stay in longer than he did (almost outlasting Kozure and Luch despite their substantially bigger starting hands), but ultimately luck didn't last quite long enough. When we tallied the score at the end of the game, it initially looked like Luch was the victor. However, Shemp pointed out how he would have won if he had been the start player for the last two endgame encounters, which prompted me to revisit the last few turns and I realized that he was, in fact, the starting player due to the result of that dragon battle. Shemp won.

It's worth noting that Shemp had SO MANY POINTS that he would have almost won despite the -15 point penalty even if we hadn't noticed the error. He had obviously picked up a lot of 3 VP scrolls over the course of the game! I've always assumed that if you had three wounds you might as well not bother counting points, I guess I was wrong.

Anyway, after such a fun session, I'll be removing it from the trade pile.