Two weeks, three games (In the Shadow of the Emperor, Die Burgen Von Burgund, Power Grid: First Sparks)

Two weeks ago, we pulled out a game that has languished on the shelves for far too long: In the shadow of the Emperor. Before this, it had been 3.5 years since we last played it!

Obviously, a substantial refresher was in order (and Bearbomb had never played). Luckily, once it gets going it's not too difficult. This is a great example of how well themed an otherwise abstract and dry game can be.

Shemp started as emperor, but after a failed coup by Kozure, I succeeded in taking over the throne. A mid-game alliance with Bearbomb allowed me to survive the next coup and after that I managed to fortify my position considerably and hold on through an all out assault by all players to take me down. Being emperor for several turns does not guarantee victory, but it sure makes it easier. There is so much to manage in this game... How to get majorities in order to be elected, but not necessarily keeping them since points are gained by being newly elected somewhere, not staying elected? How to manage and position your nobles as they age, marry and have children? It's quite a good game, and a very interesting and tight design.

It's a shame it only plays well with 4, or it might come out more often.

This week, we played 2 new (to us) games: Die Burgen Von Burgund (The Castles of Burgundy)and Power Grid: First Sparks.

I have been eyeing DBvB for quite some time now. Stephan Feld, the designer of the game, is one of my favorites right now. He consistently puts out games that are mechanically solid and fun (though they typically suffer from being thematically weak).

Well, first off, I think Feld heard to complaints about the weak theming of his previous games and set out to disprove them. Unfortunately, he did so by designing a game SO WEAK thematically, that the previous ones would shine in comparison. Luckily, the game itself is quite good.

Ostensibly, the theme is establishing the estate around your castle. In practice, it's about rolling dice and using the values rolled to either select from an available pool of tiles, place tiles on your player mat, or ship goods. There is a huge variety of tiles, each color coded according to function, and each imparting a specific benefit to the player once placed in the estate. At first, I was very worried that with so much to take in the game would be a chore to play, but as it turns out it makes logical sense and we were able to internalize most of it pretty quickly.

In addition to the selecting and placing of tiles, players are trying to generate victory points by filling colored regions on the board, and trying to do so before other players. The game then becomes a puzzle, trying to maximize combos of tile powers in order to generate the most VPs.

Players are engaged throughout as turns go very quickly. The game itself is longish, though. Our first game took 1.5 - 2hrs for three players, including rules explanation.

I was ahead for much of the early game, then Shemp jumped to the lead, and then we traded first place for most of the second half of the game. Kozure was not far behind, but trailed. Unfortunately for me, once the end game bonus points were tallied, I placed last and Shemp and Kozure tied for first, 2 points ahead of me! (Kozure won the tie breaker, fewest empty spaces).

When I think about it, the bonuses for completing regions make up a large chunk of the points but in some ways they are misleading. If every player completes the same number of regions in the same rounds, and by the end of the game roughly fill in the same number of regions, the points total will Bethesda same (regardless of who scores which regions, when). That may sound self evident, but more than most games i suspect that this is LIKELY to happen. The difference is going to be a few points here and there, generated by shipping and building combos allowing that extra region to be completed. Of course, the yellow "end game bonus" tiles might also swing things, and generate some long term strategy opportunities we haven't taken advantage of yet, so there's that.

Anyway, I very much liked it and Shemp and Kozure seemed positive as well. Feld strikes again.

Last, we played Power Grid: First Sparks. This is a game that, according to the designer, is being released to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Funkenshlag (the original version of what is now known as Power Grid). Power Grid is a game I enjoy, but it's kind of overlong and extremely mathy. The stated goal of this redesign was to make it shorter and less mathy... How could I not give it a try?!!

In many ways, this is still very much Power Grid despite the re-theming to the stone age. There is still a power plant market, with an available market and a futures market, but now they are called tools and feature such seminal inventions as the basket and the spear. Their purpose is not to generate money but rather food, but in gameplay terms they are analogous. Over time, the baskets get bigger, and the spears pointier, and they allow players to gather food more effectively. To spice things up, "knowledge" cards are intermixed with the tools, giving the player that selects it an advantage in the game (such as fire, speech, etc). Many of the tools are tied to a specific food source, such as bear, fish or mammoth, so it is necessary to make sure that at least one of the player's clansmen are adjacent to the related source of food. The tools are auctioned in a weird, but much faster than regular Power Grid, reverse auction.

And that takes us to the board. This is the biggest change, in my opinion. Instead of having a preset map with various cities and costs to build between them, the board is made up of modular tiles. Spaces that are adjacent to each other can be built to, and the cost only calculated based on the total number of clansmen the player wants to play that turn + the number of clansmen already on the spaces to be occupied. This simplifies the math dramatically. There are no phases to the game limiting how many clansmen can be in which space at which time, it's strictly a function of expansion becoming more expensive as the board gets more crowded. Still, the blocking tactics found in Power Grid are still available here... It can definitely be a good move to build up against someone in an effort to make expansion for them more expensive.

I liked it. The wonderful animeeples, the humorous art on the tools and the addition of "knowledge cards" make the thematic shift work. It's much more accessible and plays in approximately an hour, which is huge. I found the gameplay quite good and still satisfying despite many othe simplifications. My only misgiving is that the modular board seemed less interesting that the various Power Grid maps... I'm hoping it won't get stale because of this. Also, I don't feel like the board positions mattered as much as they should (they did, as far as blocking, but long term positioning seemed somewhat irrelevant).

Falling behind (7 wonders, Robo-rally, I'm the boss!, King of Tokyo, Diamant, El Grande, Cosmic Encounter)

I haven't been updating this regularly, but for the sake of posterity I'm going to record the games played in the last two weeks.

Honestly, it kills me to let the triumphant return of El Grande to the WAGS table pass without more comment, but so it goes. For the record, Shemp and I tied.

(stealth update)
Just wanted to comment on El Grande. If El Grande shows it's age at all, it's in downtime. Between turns, players are not involved in any way and this is something that more recent games have largely eliminated. Still, the gameplay remains extremely engaging for me. There's a simplicity to the process. Many of today's games,as fun as they are, appear to me to be a) variations on "cards with text that breaks rules" or "creatures with powers", or b) "games with so much going on that optimal play is not possible without AP". In the first case, the gameplay itself is usually not particularly interesting... The fun is in finding and creating combos between cards. In b) for many sessions there is no knowing whether the challenge is just doing better than the other guy at understanding the system. You're not necessarily just playing against other players, you are also just struggling to understand the games space. Many games appear interesting, but it's only an illusion because once you become familiar with what is going on and understand the good and bad moves are, you realize the choices are actually pretty obvious and it becomes dull. Anyway, in my mind El Grande is not one of those games. The interface is easy but the choices are always difficult. Great game.

In Soviet Russia Magic cards look at you!

So, you remember Magic: The Gathering, right? You've seen the cards? Have you seen the cards with googly eyes?

If you clicked that link, you have now.

2011 in review

2011 is now history. Here's what we played:

7 plays
7 Wonders

6 plays
Roma/ Roma 2: the arena

5 plays
King of Tokyo
Clans

4 plays
Dominion
Innovation

3 plays
Troyes
Tribune
Panic Station
Civilization (2010 version)
Vikings
Lords of Vegas
High Frontiers
Nightfall
Defenders of the Realm

2 plays
High Society
Maria
Power Grid
Macao
Quarriors
Frag
Go
Alien Frontiers
Ra
Dominant Species
1960: The Making of a President
Yomi
Ra: the dice game

1 play
Urban Sprawl
Last Night on Earth
Galaxy Trucker
China
TransEuropa
Duel of Ages
Android
Power Struggle
Junta: Vive El Presidente
Nexus Ops
Scrabble Slam!
Chaos in the Old World
Steam
Dungeon Twister
Dvonn
Survive!
Acquire
Dixit
Cyclades
Earth Reborn



So, that's 104 plays of 48 different games.

2011 was a lot of fun at WAGS, Perra joined us semi-regularly and Bearbomb looks like he might become a regular as well. We did spend a lot of time with just three players, though, and that has really impacted the choice of games this year. Unlike last year, I acquired quite a few games as the stream of interesting looking games (mostly on the war gaming and American style game side of things) seemed nearly endless. As is often the case with Wargames, I haven't played them much of them if at all (conflict of heroes: price of honor, Sekigahara, A few Acres of Snow), and with the American style games I find them fun but rarely great (Wrath of Ashardalon, Quarriors, Summoner Wars). This has been a really weak year for pure euros in my opinion, or maybe we've played enough that they all look too samey now. Stephan Feld seems to be one of the few designers still able to pique my interest in that field, but due to lack of availability I haven't tried any of his latest games. A few hybrid or otherwise "oddball" titles proved fun, and I think this is the direction the euros will have to go if I'm going to be interested these days (innovation, High Frontier, Nightfall, etc)

Game of the Year
Hard to pick this year. Nothing stands out as a really great, innovative strategy game... Which is the type of game I usually prefer to choose for this slot. I'm going to to pick King of Tokyo, since it does what it sets out to do about as well as it could have. It's not aiming very high, as far as that goes, but the gameplay is fun and the production is great.

I quite enjoyed Tribune, which was new to us this year, but it's actually a few years old. Troyes would likely be the top contender for strategy games, but it's not quite there as a game (not sure... Needs editing I think). Nightfall I also quite enjoyed, but the art and card design bothers me enough that it's not a contender (but that chaining mechanic is quite cool!).

Most innovative/ Interesting game of the Year
Hear I'm going to give it to Innovation. Sure, it's just a card game but it's weird in a wonderful sort of way. I like that the powers become so powerful if certain combos come out, just like Glory to Rome but the games are quite different.

Catacombs became more widely available this year, and I picked it up along with both expansions. We have had lots of fun playing this at home. This is clearly a very innovative game, meshing the dungeon crawl with crokinole... And it works! Not a game for WAGS, but If my oldest son was picking a game of the year, I'm convinced it would be this (well, Summoner Wars might give it a run for it's money I guess).

Wrath of Ashardalon, although not really a great game, is also quite innovative in how it manages to capture a fun dungeon crawl in roughly 1 hour. I doubt this category of game, the short thematic dungeon crawl, is likely to see a better entry.

Lastly, RISK Legacy appears to be a very innovative game but we haven't played it yet, so we'll have to wait until next year to see if it works in practice. Who would of thought that a game that asked you to write on the board and tear up cards would be seen as a good thing?

On an even more personal note, gaming with the kids continues to be great fun. Catacombs, Wrath of Ashardalon, Quarriors!, King of Tokyo, Summoner Wars, Fauna, Zooloretto, Jamaica, Dice Town, Agricola, etc, are all games that have seen much table time with my oldest son even if they don't always show up at WAGS. Although my second son shows much less interest, he will still occasionally play Dice Town, Jamaica or Sorry Sliders. My third appears to have more in common with the oldest. Haba games such as Animal upon Animal, Gold Donkey and Orchard get played a lot (alongside other trusty favorites, such as Chicken Cha Cha Cha, Gulo Gulo, etc, etc).

Being the father of three awesome boys is a really fantastic privilege!