Games with "tik" in the title (Tikal, Antike)

It was Kozure, Luch and I this week, joined by a surprise visitor, David.

It was my choice, and I chose a few older favorites that played well with three (though, luckily they also play well with four!)

Tikal

We played this long time favorite for the first time in a while. I love the game, and I'd say that it's probably one of my favorite games to introduce to people when I want to show them what these games are like. Simple rules, straightforward but interesting decisions, beautiful board and components, it's all there. The only problem is the downtime when played by new/ hesitant players, which is why I prefer it with 2-3 players. Luckily, the four players in question did their best to keep things moving.

As an aside, the recent acquisition of Mexica has been interesting because it offers a similar package but with shorter playtime and less AP. Having played it a few times, I'd say that it's also quite compelling but even though it's slightly shorter or easier, I wouldn't say the difference is significant. Further, the components are fine but not nearly as appealing to me. For now, both can exist side by side in my collection.

It was a pretty close game. David managed to keep up admirably considering we all had more experience with the game than he did. Kozure managed to sneakily make my life quite difficult by adding pawns on a couple of temples I was counting on keeping to myself late in the game. On his second last move, he stole a 9 temple I had been building for a while and it was impossible to get it back. To be fair, I had just claimed a temple under his nose a few turns earlier. Ahhh, these types of plays are why I love the game.

Kozure won by a nose, but everyone was close. Well played.

Antike

Antike is yet another game I claim to like a lot, but then don't play. I guess I should say instead that I appreciate the design quite a lot, but I constantly have this feeling that I'll play a game and THAT TIME I'll have a bad experience like the ones I read about on BGG (where people just build up their forces eternally and exist in perpetual stalemate for hours until people get bored and quit). It's never happened to us, and I've never seen signs of the possibility, but the doubt remains. I suppose it could happen, but in practice when we play there seems to be a compelling force which causes us to avoid this situation game after game. I'm not sure what to make of it, except to say that it must boil down to some sort of group-think.

I started out with just a few land units, expanding the empire and focusing on gold. I had successfully won in the past by focussing on tech. David was building a lot of temples (a strategy I've never tried), Kozure was building quite an army and Luch was expanding very rapidly. I failed at an attempt to destroy one of David's temples because I miscalculated a little bit. Advertising my intentions in this way unsurprisingly came back to bite me... but I was still doing ok. I was one point from winning but I couldn't find an avenue for that last point. My army was too small, my borders were threatened by Kozure and David, and Luch was quickly heading to victory. We weren't able to stop him, and he won by getting his last point by completing all the technologies.

I still admire the game, and I enjoyed the session quite a lot. In my opinion, every player would need to decide that an arms race was required in order to lead to an interminable game. If even a single player opts out, others are forced to react and keep up. Anyway, if I had to criticize the game it would be more because much of the theme is left on the cutting room floor when streamlining a game to this degree. It's chess meets Risk, not civ-lite.

Man Factory (Imperial)

Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with 'is wee beady eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!

"So I Married an Axe Murderer"

Imperial. Evil... eeeeevil. This game puts you in the position of everything I hate about modern capitalism; profiting from the misery of war and the machinations of power.

That said... I'm hooked. Obviously this game got a lot of press around its release and has steadily built up a fairly large and somewhat dedicated fanbase. I had actually been avoiding it, for two primary reasons: I hate the board colours (far too bright for a game from this period and of this tone) and I really dislike the underlying concept... basically playing the Krupps, Simon Camerons, Andrew J. Mays, Donald Rumsfelds, KBRs and Blackwaters of the world - war profiteers.

So, how on earth could one have fun playing someone who is essentially on the same moral level as orphanage foreclosers, ambulance-chasing lawyers and people who sell bread for $10 a loaf after a hurricane? Well, the easy answer is that you do exactly what these people do in real life - you disconnect yourself from the misery that your actions are causing. Essentially, you become evil personified... and as long as you're not actually hurting anyone, it's kinda fun to play the bad guy.

The mechanics have been described in more detail and with better effect elsewhere, but the gist of it is that you use Antike's roundel mechanic to control the timing of a number of actions including investing (which amounts to getting money), manoeuvring (moving military units around on the map), building factories, producing (factories create one unit apiece), importing (buying military units without having to produce them) and taxation (getting money and also changing the "credit" status of a nation). There is also a sort of "sub-round" when you have the investor card during the invest round, which allows the player with the card (and players without controlling interest in countries) to buy bonds.

As an overly simplified way of describing it, there is a very basic Antike/Diplomacy 1:1 combat wargame with a fairly interesting investing game overlay - you're basically investing in countries which are successful militarily or economically, with the goal of having the most "stock" (bonds in the game) in the most successful "brand" - er... country. The twist is the strategy is two-faced - you can actually intentionally sink a county you control by plundering its coffers in anticipation of it being taken over by others.

There is a deep, deep strategy in this game. I can see it taking a dozen or more plays to fully appreciate it, and the strategy would change for each number of players as well.

On the downside, there is a (well-documented) possibility of a player (or in the case of five or six players, more than one player) sitting several cycles around the roundel out. I experienced it first hand last night. I was almost actionless for about 30 minutes (not exactly bored, just not actively buying or controlling anything) and by the end I was not having as much fun as I would have liked. In addition, for optimum play, you ideally need a lot of time to make your move. Thus, Imperial is a good candidate for an egg-timer (when playing in the temporal confines of a three to four hour games night). Analysis paralysis is a near and present danger for this puppy.

Overall I quite like this one and may end up adding it to my collection if I can get a good deal.

In last night's game, France, Germany and Great Britain became the major powers, with Austria-Hungary, Russia and everyone's favourite whipping boy Italy bringing up the rear.

With Jaywozer heavily invested in Great Britain, Ouch doing his best impression of the Kaiser in Germany and Agent Easy taking a long term as the (accursed) French, it was left to Bharmer and I to pick up the scraps of Russia and Austria-Hungary. There was a fair amount of movement of ownership and not a few cases where Ouch owned two or even three different nations. I made the mistake of being ousted from Austria-Hungary in the mid-game, which left me largely without cash or options for a good part of the game. Despite this, I managed a close fourth place. Scores were, I believe, Agent Easy 118, Jaywowzer 115, Ouch 108, Kozure 93 and Bharmer 70-something.

"Evil will triumph, because good is dumb."

Spaceballs

Beauty and the Beast (Shogun x 1 and Phoenicia x1)

Clever Production Design vs. Poor Production Design in Games

Phoenicia and Shogun were the games of choice this week. We've tentatively adopted a new format where we play one game from the previous week each week, so as to allow a better exploration of the strategic depth and other subtleties of the game.

Phoenicia on second playing has improved in terms of speed and smoothness of play, but, for me at least, some of the initial interest has worn off. Although it seemed intriguing at first, this system seems to suffer from a marked runaway-leader aspect, a sameness of play and a inevitability of a certain winner which I can't really see any remedy to without major rules changes.

As mentioned in the previous review, the person who leads each auction is the VP leader from the previous round; in case of tied high scores the first player marker (in this case called the Overseer) is passed to the closest tied player to the left of the current Overseer. The benefits of being the auctioneer are that if you have the money, (which you often will, if you are leading in production) you can buy what you need right away without much interference from the other players. Since you control the auction until you give it up, you can conceivable buy a number of low cost items all in your turn if one or two of the other players already have bought an item or are otherwise out of cards or coins.

If you are the last player, you can often buy the one (or choose from the cards remaining) and buy it at cost. However, at that point, your selection is usually so limited as to severely limit your tech path options.

If you get the right combination early and grab the VP lead, you can more or less race to the end and leave the other players wallowing in the 18-24 point range.

Then again, maybe my two wins were a fluke… I'm not certain. I recently read a criticism of Agricola (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/307192 )which, although I cannot comment on the accuracy of it in relation to Agricola, I can apply some of the same criticism of specific feelings about the game to Phoenicia here.

To quote the review:

"There is a whole class of games where the opening setup determines the likely winner. Card games. They have a few other characteristics (at least for good ones): 1) they are short, 2) you play many hands to reduce the luck (or determine the better player). Good players will win more than their ‘fair’ share of games, but won’t win every hand.

Agricola is a single deal card game that takes 90+ minutes to resolve."

…

A good game should take as long as required to determine the winner, and no longer. Bridge (a great game) would be farcical if you spent 30 minutes playing a hand. Agricola is chess between even players where you may be randomly up a knight or down a queen, but don’t know until halfway through the game."

In Phoenicia's case, although you aren't dealt a secret hand of cards for asymmetrical player ability purposes, once one player pulls away, it seems to have a definite snowball effect. The winner seems to be determined early. Add to this the fact that attempting to block another player's strategy by purchasing the card he/she most likely wants is often either impossible or not viable as a strategy. If you did, you'd most likely torpedo your own strategic path, so the prospect of blocking another player by spending your own much-needed resources to stop her/him from getting it is the gaming equivalent of suicide bombing: you may (or may not) stop your intended target, but you'll almost certain kill yourself in the process.

Given that the only direct player interaction is the auction and everything else is player mat optimization, you're left with a game where everyone is left doing their own thing. If you buy the right card combo (often by virtue of where you're sitting for the first auction) early on, you win by snowball effect and the outcome seems pretty fixed. Though I do think I made some savvy choices early on, and shifted production strategy (from improved hunting to improved mining) at the right time to maximize my returns, it really didn't feel tense after the third or fourth round. Once I had money coming in, it wasn't much of a stretch to get more.

Specifically, getting the tracker allows improved hunting, which is a pretty cheap production path for points and production, (tools 2 vs. farming 5) and also affords reduction on the caravan, which is a great boost for points and production. I then gunned for the shipyards (and bid high), which gave me increased hand size, VPs, production and discounts on future improvements. Moving from there to Fort, Smelter, Shipping Fleet and City Walls just sealed the deal.

Easy's observation that the second and third seat players seem to have a definite disadvantage in the auction set-up also seems quite accurate.

Combined with the well-documented graphic design problems (shared VP/production track, poor iconography, low visibility for some critical icons and values) and poor rules-as-written ruleset, this makes for some very difficult obstacles for the enjoyment of the game. However, and this is a big however, it still seems worth playing again for some reason, at least one more time. Faint praise, but one feels like playing Phoenicia because it's a simple, relatively quick playing civilization game with some modicum of theme and tech development - not overlong like the sprawling Civilization or Through the Ages games, but not overly abstracted like Vinci or Tempus. At the same time, it's not a very good quick medium-lightweight civ game, it's just that there's not many successful ones out there. Even Antike, which is in my mind one of the more successful medium-weight civ games, is quite long by comparison.

Does Phoenicia just boil down to a straightforward auction game with tech tree and resource optimization? Pretty much, but it's quick. It lacks other components which (to me) are important to a successful-feeling civ game - exploration/discovery and direct competition. Plus, the art and iconography are mediocre at best, and confusing at worst.

Compared with Phoenicia's graphic layout, Shogun seems positively sparkling. Cleverly thought out balancing factors and a number of very interesting mechanics - cube tower, turn planning, bluff, hidden auction, etc. - remind one what a well thought through system can feel like by comparison to one which feels both graphically and mechanically unpolished. In Phoenicia's defence, Shogun has had one previous incarnation (as Wallenstein) to work out kinks, so it's like comparing a concept car to the fifth or sixth year version/model of a proven car design. The polish of Shogun's art and design definitely makes this the "beauty" of this pairing of beauty and beast.

Shogun balances powerbase-type strategies by awarding points for building types spread across several regions, allowing for players with scattered region cards to benefit. The cube tower also mitigates randomness in attacks and defense that might otherwise result from dice or table-based combat. Overall it is a nicely balanced game, but it still fails to engage me on some level - there isn't much "movement", if you know what I mean.

Last night's game has also underscored for me the concept that it's often better to focus taxation/rice unrest markers in one well garrisoned province rather than trying to spread your forces thin to quell potential unrest across your holdings (the old "You can't make all of the people happy all of the time," maxim). It also reminded me of the possible combination punches of getting reinforce, move and attack orders during a turn.

This game was much closer, and it was near to impossible to predict the winner. It feels like you're more in control, but there is much less movement. One minor criticism I have of this game is that it seems to end just as you're getting going - despite the fact that "getting going" has required 90 minutes already.

I like Shogun, but it remains a game that I don't really look forward to playing when it's selected. I don't dread it, or groan when it's mentioned, but it's still not something that I look forward to playing, like Railroad Tycoon or many of my other highly rated games. I did enjoy this game, as it was pretty close and required attention and careful strategy, but perhaps for the lack of dynamic movement that I previously mentioned, it's never quite as exciting as some other of my favourite games - it lacks as many highs and lows.

One day we'll find a civ game and a waro (weuro) that I like. For now, the search continues.

The sun god hates us (Antike, Ra x2, Palazzo)

Last year, in early January, I talked about my favorite games of 2006. I'm sure I'll be doing it again for 2007, but i'll wait until the year is actually over. I mention it only because this week we played one of the two I had decided were my faves for that year, Antike, and I realized (with some sheepishness, that it was the first time since october 2006! (the other, Railroad Tycoon) hasn't been played since Dec. 2006). Do we have too many games if our FAVORITES from last year only get a single play?!!! Hmmm.

Anyway, Antike was up first. Still quite engaging for a chess-like civ builder. Turns are ridiculously snappy, and everything flows very well. I started in Italy, Shemp in the north and Luch in the east. As the early turns were devoted to expansion, I expanded slightly northward but concentrated on getting the triremes out. Luch also went north, leaving behind him an expanse of virgin territory (which he continued to plunder until the end of the game). This left Shemp in a tight spot because he was really forced to deal with possible conflict on two fronts early on. I drew first blood when I attacked Shemp about 2/3rds of the way through the game. That success netted me 2 cards (14th trireme and 15th city). A few more battles ensued, and I managed to win the game by snatching the last unclaimed advancement right from under Shemp's nose.

Next was two games of RA. The sun god was in a pissy mood that night, though. The tiles came out in strange combinations and any player who tried to go long was destined to fail. I entered the 3rd age of our first game with only the 10 points I started with... but fortune smiled on me and I took the game on a massive haul of buildings. In our second game, Luch found himself using only 1 or 2 of his 4 sun tiles in 2 consecutive eras...

We ended with Palazzo. This was a game on the list of "games which were introduced during Shemp's absence", so after a brief explanation we started (Shemp's eyes were glazed over, as everyone's eyes tend to glaze over when explaining the rules to this one. Seriously, for such a simple game the rules manage to sound both complicated and random no matter how hard I try). Shemp won by a large margin, due to two five story/ single material buildings. It seemed to be well received, though I personally am not sure that I like it very much.

Not sure if we'll have another session before the New Year. If not, have a happy holiday!

3 Players. 3 Games. (Quo Vadis? x2, Antike, Carcassonne x2)

It was just Shemp, luch and I this Wednesday. I picked Antike and Quo Vadis? since they were recent acquisitions... though I wasn't at all sure that either would work well at that number.

Quo Vadis?

Quo Vadis? is a pure negotiation game from Reiner Knizia... not his usual style of game. Roman politicians are vying for election into the senate, and only sharp negotiation and good positional strategy can get them there.

The board is a rather bland depiction of a series of committees, each between 1 and 5 "seats" large. Players have a series of politicians, which they must place in low committees in the hopes of getting promoted into higher ones... ultimately leading to the senate. Along the path to the higher committees, "laurel" tokens are acquired by politicians. The winner is the player who has the most laurels at once the senate is full, so long as that player has at least one politician in the senate.

The meat of the game lies in getting your politicians promoted. The only way for anyone to move ahead is to be voted up, so either that player must already have a majority in the committee or he/she must convince others to vote in their favour. Laurel tokens can be used as a bribe, promises to vote another player's politician up in a different committee can be made, or any other arrangement that can be conceived of can be proposed. As an additional sweetener, anyone who votes for another player gets a free laurel.

The result is a very quick game of negotiation and positional strategy which I found quite engaging despite the fact that it's quite likely to be much better at 4 or 5 players than it was at 3.

We played two rounds. In the both games, Shemp displayed much better negotiation skills than ours and won. Not only did he manage to gain the upper hand in most of the deals, but he did an excellent job of situating himself in chains of committees which ensured him good pathways to the top (not to mention getting many of those "free laurels" by being at the right place at the right time and lending a vote to another player). The deals never got terribly creative (most involved simple laurel payments or promises of votes), but I'm looking forward to seeing how a full group plays out.

Antike

This was our first play of Antike at 3. I've got the second edition, which lowered the winning conditions from 12 to 10 for three players. I'm glad that rule got changed, because getting to 10 seemed about right (it would otherwise grind to a halt as all players armed up for some sort of enormous temple bashing escapade).

We played on the english board, and I started near the center with Luch at the West and Shemp in the South-East. I tried to get boats out and a few temples early on. It always seemed that Luch and Shemp were ahead of me, as both were sending masses of boats and troops out while I seemed to accomplish little. Luch was crowding my areas pretty quickly, and I was forced to abandon my aim to get 2 points in ships early... . After getting my first 7 sea zones, I started focusing on marble and temple building. Shemp's empire was vast and pretty much unchallenged, with a few temples well guarded at the back. It became clear at the end of the game that Luch was going to win on a particular round by building the last temple he needed. I tried to fan out my boats in order to finally get to 14 sea zones and score my last point but didn't succeed. Shemp was nearly resigned to a loss, since he was down 2 points, when he realized he had he was able to knock out two temples I had built previously. He did exactly that and snatched victory from under Luch's nose.

I thought three player Antike was quite good (using the 2nd edition rules). The board is definitely more open, but there was still no time to waste in grabbing the VPs... I felt continuously under the gun to be efficient and grab what I needed as soon as I could. As in our previous sessions, combat didn't play a major role until the very end of the game. Turns go by extremely quickly, and the game continues to fulfill it's promise to deliver a satisfying civilization building experience in approximately 1 1/2 hours.

We finished up the evening with two quick games of Carcasssonne. Base Carc can easily be played in 15 minutes if players draw their tiles ahead of time, and is quite enjoyable this way. Not much to say except that the second game probably had the fewest completed cities that I've ever seen (three?). I won both games, denying Shemp the clean sweep for the evening.

Getting Greedy (Pitchcar Mini x2, Antike, Fantasy Business)

6 people tonight.

We started out with my new copy of PitchCar Mini (with expansion). It's a nice set, with sturdy MDF components (not wood, as some have claimed). Some of the pieces seem a little thicker than others, which can be problematic as you flick and watch your disc bounce off the board and across the room, but I'm willing to forgive it these imperfections... it's a good, fun, silly game. I'm looking forward to trying this out at a family gathering with 8 players!

My first game was just against Luch, who trounced me (I was nearly lapped!), but my second game was a threesome with Bharmer and Luch and I recovered my honour by winning a close match. The shot of the night was in the first game, when Luch expertly flicked his car along a full third of the track! By comparison, all my attempts at ambitious shots failed miserably, so I played it pretty safe. I'd still like to play the full size version some day, but I'm happy with the purchase.

With everyone now arrived and ready, we broke out the main event, a second playing of Antike. JayWowzer was kind enough to bring back his copy, and I was really looking forward to another match. Our first game had been a lot of fun, and I was really impressed that a civ. type game could be so simple and short while still providing a satisfying feel for the growth of a world power, an impressive feat! Still, the reviews I had read since then were decidedly...mediocre, with frequent complaints of long playtime, tedious endgames and general lack of "spark". Needless to say, I really wanted another go at it to see if my first impressions were incorrect.

Last game, I went for an all out civilization advancement strategy. Mainly, I had done so because it seemed like the "wild" currency bonus for completing all the advancements seemed very powerful. It worked, I won without ever having a battle! (the others WERE hot on my heels, though) . I'm sure part of the reason it worked is because we were all learning the game, and the others only realized what I was doing when it was too late, but it did seem a bit out of balance. The rules have been updated, however, so that the trades are now 2 for 1, which seems much more balanced (though I am still unsure about the bonus victory point for completing all 8 which was added at the same time... it didn't come up in our game, however).

We played the german board this week, and I was assigned 3 regions in the lower right corner (+/- greece). I thought this time I would try two things: boats and suicide runs. Basically, knowing that victory points are aquired and then kept no matter what, I wanted to see if I could repeatedly stretch myself extremely thin to reach a victory point and then concede the ground I gained without contest. I hoped to make the majority of those points by building cities and getting boats into sea spaces. I got the point for 5 cities and 7 sea spaces quickly, and then started angling for 10 cities as the land areas were getting crowded faster than the sea spaces. I figured I would penetrate deep into other territories where cities were still available, get my 10, then use them as beachheads to build boats for further sea points. The problem was Luch started threatening my thinly spread out forces and Shemp was eyeing the same territories to the north that I was (there was a bit of a conflict there, as Shemp could not understand why I was heading in that direction). I did manage to advance my defenses in time to ward off too many losses, but getting the 10th city ended up taking too much time, and I lost a few boats on the way. Despite picking up a few advancement VPs, I still needed 2 more and my prospects looked like they would take too much time (there was no way I'd get to 15 cities, and it would be hard to get to 14 boats). My only hope was to diversify into temples or advancement VPs.

Things were quite tight near the end. Shemp had quite a large and solid empire in the north, despite having made zero progression on the advancement track. JayWowzer was building a city of temples in the north west. Kozure and Luch were spreading out in the mid board.

Things were getting quite congested. Territories were changing hands and everyone was scanning the board trying to formulate a plan to get their last point or two. Kozure managed to win by purchasing the last unclaimed advancement before anyone else could get it. He played a good game, because it certainly appears that the players in the middle of the board should be at a dissadvantage by being threatened on all sides. All in all, the whole 6 player game took less than 1 1/2 hours and played just as simply and cleanly as I'd remembered. I'm glad to say that unless Tempus turns out to be really incredible, Antike will definitely fit the bill as a great, simple and short civ style game (maybe world domination would be more accurate). Antike has achieved this by focussing it's efforts on being a good, clean strategy and resource management game... anyone looking for anything beyond basic negotiations or politics should look elsewhere. Also, the "advancements" track, while important to the game, do not really feel like the slow buildup of technological innovation which some might want. To me, the tradeoffs are worth it. I really like the game.

Last up was a game of Fantasy Business. When we last played this game I absolutely sucked at it. I started screwing people too early and simply couldn't make up for the masses of cash the other were making by playing it straight. As I recall, Shemp was excellent at it, winning both games. I was determined to turn a new leaf and try something different.

I purposefully avoided monopolies, but focused on high valued goods. I wanted to keep the incentive high for the other player selling the same types of goods as me to stick with the max. value, so I tried to ensure that I had equal or fewer cards than they did in a particular good. More importantly, I stayed honest until round 7.

Meanwhile, Shemp had become the Herbs and Armour king, having substantial monopolies in both. The cards which break up monopolies never surfaced, so he seemed to be doing quite well. Bharmer struggled at first to stay in the black, but eventually recovered. Kozure and Luch seemed to be playing a conservative game, occasionally screwing their trade partners, but otherwise laying low. JayWowzer had a number of horses which were taking in a LOT of cash. In my mind, the lead was either Shemp, JayWowzer or I, so on the 7th round I started shafting the market (I undercut Jaywowzer for the horses and used a card on Shemp which denied him income from his armour, for example).

I was most proud of the following, though: I had a card which allowed me to wait until the others fixed their prices, and then I could look at them and alter my prices to undercut them. Problem was, I had just screwed everybody moments ago, and I feared they would all drop their prices to the minimum in order to avoid having that happen again. Obviously, if they did that my card would be useless (the best I could do would be to tie them, giving everyone the same income). To avoid this, I wrote my prices in plain view, giving my opponents the assurance that they could safely match my prices! It worked, I played the card and 2 of the 3 were denied their income that round. Hey, I was proud I pulled it off!

The result: I beat out Shemp by a hair for the win. Surprisingly, Luch, who was laying low most of the game, was also very close to winning.

Like Intrige, this is a game where the metagame is probably just as important as the ingame. I could never try the same tricks twice, because everyone would see right through me. Also, if the same player wins a few times in a row, they are likely to be targeted and not have a chance. Unlike Intrige, Fantasy Businee uses special cards to introduce chaos and chance into the system (for example, I was lucky that I drew the powerful and useful cards I did, and I wouldn't have been able to blindside my opponents without them). Not sure if that means the game will have increased long term playability, or a shorter one (once the novelty wears off and the surprise moves stop working). Time will tell.

It takes a village... (Diamant, Tikal x2, Antike, Saboteur)

Quite a crowd at "Chez Kozure" this week.

JayWowzer just couldn't bear the California heat so a mere two weeks after his last visit, we had him in our midst once again. Shamus, having recently humbled us in his first ever evening of german games, thought enough of them to come back... and this time with his girlfriend, Robin!

So, with Shemp out house hunting we had 7 people together. What to play?

We started out with Diamant. Nice, easy fun and fast. In the 3rd cave, Robin found herself all alone and still feeling brave enough to keep going deeper. It paid off in a big way and she left us in the dust (somewhere between 20-30 gems collected in that cave alone). Didn't help that the next two caves were over before they started...

Next Luch requested we play Tikal. We had two copies, so after the explanations we split off and got started. I played with JayWowzer and Luch. It was a great game... competition was tight throughout. I was obscenely lucky and made a triple out of the first 3 treasures I drew. Assuming it would be all downhill from there, I opted to stay out from treasure collecting for the rest of the game (hoping to gain an advantage by not using up valuable action points taking/ trading treasures later on). I made 2 surprise "swoops", taking ownership of high value temples (a 7 and a 10) out from under the other player's noses, but it was too early... I lost a lot of workers in the process and I would need them later on. In the end, I couldn't keep control of enough other temples and JayWowzer's superior mobility and accumulated treasure beat us out in the last few rounds.

The others were still going strong (it was a learning game, after all). Kozure joined us and we moved on to Antike. JayWowzer was kind enough to bring it along so we could give it a spin. I'm sure glad he did! I like the idea of civilization type games, but they are really hard to pull off... Too long, not balanced, fiddly, etc. A truly brilliant civ. game would incorporate war, politics, religion, technological advancements and negotiations in a game which lasted less than 4 hours. Antike is NOT that game, but it IS lots of fun.

Antike is a game set in the ancient mediteranean. Each player starts with a set of three regions, each of which produces a different good (marble, Iron, Gold). Over the course of the game, players race to accumulate a set number of victory points.
The path to that goal is surprisingly clean and simple...

1) Expanding your empire increases your production. Every 5th region under a player's control is worth a VP.
2) GOLD can be accumulated and spent on technological advancements (the wheel, currency, etc). Any player who purchases an advancement gets it's benefit, but the FIRST player to purchase each advancement gets a VP.
3) MARBLE can be spent on building temples. Temples have the direct effect of increasing production and defenses in a region. Every THIRD temple nets a VP.
4) IRON can be spent on building armies (boats or land armies). Occupying 7 ocean hexes nets a VP. Destroying a temple nets a VP.

Actions are selected in a somewhat novel way: The top right corner of the board shows a wheel with each possible action on it (generate marble, build a temple, etc). On a turn, a player can move their marker around the wheel up to 3 spaces and carries out that action (moves beyond 3 spaces are possible at a cost). The wheel is set up in such a way that producing a given resource always leaves a player 1 step too far from the action where it would be spent. It works well and it results in a game which moves remarkably quickly. How many civilization themed games can claim that 4 players take their turns in 2-3 minutes TOTAL?

I started out as Greece. I had a fair number of gold producing regions nearby, so I decided to skip the empire building race and focus on purchasing technological advancements. I took over 4 of those gold regions and built 3 temples on them. I maxed out all the advancements (being the first to buy 5 of the 8). By the end of the game, I was producing 13 gold! Kozure, Luch and JayWowzer had accumulated quite the large empires, armed with a number of armies and fleets. I was VERY nervous that Kozure was going to attack my rather small and fragile territory. One more turn and I think the tide would have turned... As it was I finished the game by expanding to my 10th territory and purchasing 3 temples in quick succession. It was an entirely bloodless game!

In future sessions, I'd never get away with it.

Anyway, Antike manages to incorporate empire building, war and technological advancement in a very elegant and streamlined package which features virtually zero downtime and a very rapid 1.5 hour playtime. If I could find it locally, I'd surely buy it. Chris Farrell has criticized this game on his blog. I can't say I agree with him here. I quite like it.

We finished up with Saboteur. I bought this game, along with Diamant, specifically for our New Year's Eve party... thinking that a nice light game which could accomodate a large group would be a hit (and wanting an alternative to party games, though we would ultimately play those as well). It didn't go over too well.

In Saboteur, players assume the roles of dwarves digging mining tunnels trying to get to 3 different spots which MIGHT contain treasure. The twist is that one or more players MIGHT be traitors! They win if the dwarves finish the game without finding the treasure. It's a card game, and on a turn a player simply plays a card and then draws to replace. The card might be a section of tunnel or a "hazard" card which prevents another player from functioning until they play the appropriate "fix" card (this works exactly like the "hazard/ safety" mechanic from Mille Bornes). Obviously, the traitors try to inconspicuously lead the tunnel in the wrong direction, etc, because the moment they are discovered the hazards start to pile up quick.

The problem on New Year's Eve was that it was simply impossible for the good dwarves to win! The deck routinely ran out before the they could get close to any of the possible destinations. A quick visit to BGG proved to be very confusing... opinions there seemed to be that there was no way for the TRAITORS to win.

How is that possible?

Well, after playing last night I can concur that with 4 players the good dwarves have it pretty easy. The only hand where the traitor came close to stopping the others was caused by me and JayWowzer being completely convinced Luch was the traitor, burying him under a constant barrage of hazards. At the last minute, it became clear we were dead wrong and Kozure was actually the traitor. We recovered and found the gold, but it was pretty lucky (and I have to commend Luch for taking the punishment without letting on we were mistaken... the game lives and dies on players being able to keep their secrets)

Bottom line: Played as-is, the number of players seems to frequently predetermine which side will win. In a 4 player game, a maximum of 1 out of 4 players will be a traitor. In a 7 player game, 3 out of 7 could be traitors. Percentage wise, that's a big difference. Perhaps adding a potential 2nd traitor to the mix in the 4 player game might allow a less predictable shift of power. We'll see. There are probably "ideal" numbers of players where the ratio of traitors and good dwarves is balanced (I'd guess 6 and 9). The good news is that I enjoyed the game much more than I did the first time. It's nothing special, but there aren't a huge number of decent 10 player games, so it will find it's place (and it's certainly fun enough for the occasional play with fewer people).

Oh, and at the next table Robin proved once again that the newcomer should never be underestimated. She won. They are a crafty couple, it seems.

Antike: 9
Saboteur: 6

"Never Try to Play a Player" - Tikal, Film-Noir Style

*cue mournful sax solo and distant police siren*

Ever get the feeling you were being played?

It was a cold and wintery night on the mean streets of Hogtown. There was a knock on the door, the sort of knock that makes a man put down his cheap scotch and flat soda and bother to answer it. They stood there, looking cold and lost - they looked like the sort of people that get eaten if they stay out too long after dark. I had seem him before - he went by the handle of Shamus - strangely, he wasn't a brother gumshoe. He had a slim gal with him, a nice looker, but you could tell she had some brains to rattle around behind that pretty face. I figured her for his moll. Shamus introduced her as "Ms. Potter", and you could hear him put enough "zee" on the Ms. to make it clear they weren't married.

I invited them in.

I had some of the boys in the back already fixing to start up on a game of Tikal, so I pointed the loving couple in the direction of our couch and broke out another copy of the old Mayan shellgame for my new guests to play. Tikal is like a pretty dame from a Sicilian crime family - nice to look at, but you'll find a couple slugs in your back if you let your guard down. Shamus I knew was a bit of a player - he'd run away with a train job a couple of weeks previous, but I chalked that one up to beginner's luck. Tikal was a good game to get to know a person; the real person, if you know what I mean. It's easy enough to suss out, I guess, but it's got more twists than a cheap dimestore licorice, and defeat tasted just as bitter.

Shamus and "Ms. Potter" looked like easy pickings. I laid out the rules and the situation and we got down to brass tacks. Early on, I thought I'd be sailing into the win easy-like. On the first couple of scoring round, I was ahead. I shoulda checked the rear view, though; "Ms. Potter" wasn't far behind. It got a little cut-throat - Shamus and Ms. Potter muscled in on one of my pyramids early on, and I gave Shamus the heave-ho on one that he'd worked up from a 4 pointer. On the second scoring round, I could hear the dogs nipping at my heels... well, if a dog looked like a pretty dame and came at you sideways from an alley with a Saturday Night Special. "Ms. Potter" caught up and passed me by a hair on the second round, and it was off to the races after that. All I was able to eat for the rest of the same was that dame's dust, and it didn't taste nearly as good as Tili's lasagne, or a decent scotch and soda, for that matter. No, defeat was dry as Mayan pottery dust in my mouth, baked in the hot Guatemalan sun.

I had to hand the game over to Trixie... er... Tili, because the other game was done with and the boys were explaining the rules for Antike, but from what I heard, Ms. Potter cleaned up. Ms. Potter won by a good eleven points.

Nope. These kids weren't amateurs. They were players through and through. They'd be back; I could tell by the way they smiled that they knew an easy mark when they saw one. Shamus and his moll Ms. Potter: a couple of cool cucumbers who knew their way around a game of Tikal. I've played the game enough to know when I had been played, and I had been played like a Stradivarius violin; smooth and expert-like, with a clear finish.

*siren fades out, echoing in the street*

[To be honest, I couldn't figure out a way to fit the review of Antike into the film-noir themed session report above, so I'll just do it the old-fashioned way.]

Antike is that rarity of rarieties, the Civilization building game that doesn't go too far into detail (Sid Meier's Civilization) and doesn't gloss over details a little too much (Vinci). After a quick rules explanation by JayWowzer, we were good to go.

I have to say that the roundel-based turn and action selection method is pretty unique. I have to laugh a tiny bit at the concept of a game where gold and currency are two separate and quite distinctly differently used commodities, but that's pretty much my only quibble with the game (oh, and the cover box art. That needed work).

Antike uses a fairly standard area-movement based movement mechanic, but resource acquisition and building are handled in phases which exist as sectors on a roundel. The players place a marker on the action they took, and then can advance up to three sectors for free (or pay one currency unit per sector to advance more) and then take the action on the next section. There are four commodities - iron, marble, gold and currency. The first three can be mined from specific area-based cities - the second, currency, is a per turn income and can be used to substitute like a wild-card for any of the other three resources.

Victory is point based, and varies from 9 points in a 4 player game, up to something like 12 or 13 in a three player game. Players acquire points (one point each) by gaining 5 land areas (king), being the first to develop "know-how" in two steps of five (six?) different categories (scholar), having ships in 7 different sea areas (seafarer), building 3 temples (citizen), conquering a city with a temple (general).

There are basically two types of manoeuvrable units, a land-army (which look like militant meeples) and a fleet (which are cute galley-like things). Other markers and pieces include a white temple, which triples resource output from a city, cities, which are little round dics, and eight-sided tall pieces which are used for markers on the techology tracks and the above mentioned roundel (which governs action types). The components are well made of wood, all are distinct colours and all (with the possible exception of the angry meeple) seem suited to their use.

Combat is similar to the Vinci one-for-one exchange of mutual destruction, with a few modifiers thrown in for defensive know-how (monarchies and democracies defend themselves more effectively) and for temples.

I'm really quite impressed with the game, which combines a simple but clever method for managing resources and buying different types of units and improvements. Combat is simple, but evocative, and options for attacking from sea, land or both at once add a little uncertainty to the strategic scope. It is quite possible to win without attacking anyone, as Agent Easy admirably demonstrated during the game, but I think in future games closer attention will be paid to leaders to prevent a straighforward purchase of victory.

This one is a definite keeper. I'd rate it a 8.5, which might bump up to 9 in subsequent plays. It has the fantastic attribute of being playable in 60-90 minutes, which for this level of detail (medium-light, admittedly, but better than Vinci, for example) is really quite remarkable.

Agent Easy walked away with the win, with JayWowzer coming a close second; Hapi and I fell to distant fourth and third place respectively.