2 (Dungeon Twister, Carcassonne: The City, Mr. Jack x2)

A little late, but here it is.

We ended the year with a two player games night, as others needed to attend to christmas preparations. It was just Shemp and I .

Dungeon Twister

I hadn't realized it, but Shemp had never played Dungeon Twister. Way back in 2007 DT was played this a couple of times, but apparently he wasn't at either session. Since no one present seemed to particularly like the game back then, I had relegated it to something I played outside of WAGS and never suggested it. Glad I brought it, because Shemp wanted to try it out and seemed to quite enjoy it!

I haven't ever handicapped my play against inexperienced players, though sometimes I think I should to avoid turning opponents off from the game. Luckily, Shemp is a very good player and I didn't really have to. There was an blunder made in the first few turns where he allowed me to get my goblin out unopposed, but after that the game was quite competitive... I did win but the score was close (maybe I would have lost if my goblin hadn't made it!). The game was unusually combat heavy, and both of us made good use of the rotation gears, speed potions, etc. All in all, it was a lot of fun and I'm very happy to have a willing opponent at WAGS! (as an aside, this continues to be one of my favorite games. I purchased the Prison set just to get the solo rules, which I had heard very good things about. I'm sorry to say that it has fallen flat with me. Buyer beware! I received Earth Reborn by the same designer over Christmas, and I'm very much looking forward to giving that a try. It looks very ambitious)

Carcassonne: The City

We played a quick game of Carc: The City afterwards. The game was characterized by ridiculously long corridors of city, caused by both of us lining up the purple buildings with the soldiers on the walls. In the end, the city walls didn't come anywhere close to closing and the game ended due to lack of tiles. I won this game as well because I paid more attention to the "farmers" (what are they in the City?), but Shemp's loooong lines of purple buildings gave him huge points as well.

Mr. Jack

When me and Shemp have a two player session, Mr. Jack always makes an appearance. We continue to find it difficult to win as Jack, but it's fun giving it a shot. The light side won on both occasions (once as me, once as Shemp).

Two is company (Steam x2, Mr. Jack x2, Carcassonne: The City)

We had an unusual two player session this week... just me and Shemp could make it. Other than wargames, my collection is fairly light on two player games, but we did get a chance to play a few games that don't often see the light of day.

Steam: St. Lucia
I bought this Bezier Games expansion map mostly for the single player side (which I like a lot). It's a bit strange because every single space gets a cube at the start of the game, and absolutely no coloured cities exist until somebody urbanizes. IT makes for a map that changes substantially between plays and is quite wide open with opportunity in the first half (though it does get tight before the game ends). Surprisingly, I did get to play the St. Lucia side once before with Luch on New Year's day. In that game, we pretty much had each started on one end of the island and worked down towards the middle. Not so with Shemp. I payed for first player privileges and after I had established my link he immediately built off of it. Unsurprisingly, our relationship was poisonous to both of us. I kept hold of the first player action and urbanized all the towns in the south using up all the coloured cities in the process and ensuring my track was in the way for all his deliveries.

(I'll note that we got a rule wrong... we played that the first player had the option to keep paying to go first until he passed or the 2nd player took the initiative special action. The correct rule is that turn order alternates... much more forgiving on player 2).

Shemp had a great deal of trouble getting in the black with this setup, and in the end I won fairly handily. This was all around a live and learn type of experience for both of us... I'm sure we would play very differently next time. All in all, it's a good two player board that I can see playing again.

Steam: Jamaica

Jamaica is a curious board. It's a small map, and relatively symmetrical. There are just two coloured cities in the middle and a handful of towns on either end. The game does not have a set number of rounds, and instead ends once all goods are exhausted. It didn't take us long to figure out that this was going to be a very barren board very quick. Barren board = brutal game. The only thing that could have made it more difficult is if they introduced terrain that cost more than usual to cross. Oh, yeah. They did that. The middle is mountainous, and those add +3 to track costs.

I urbanized both ends of the board, placing my track so that Shemp would hopefully be forced to ship through my links. Both our debts were spiraling out of control because building our infrastructure was expensive and long deliveries were hard to find. Most of the game was spent making sad 1-3 link deliveries. I faced bankruptcy on numerous occasion, with my income and VPs at -10/0 respectively. At one point, I had t spend 19 dollars (!!!) to develop 4 links of track to keep me from having zero delivering potential for the rest of the game (I had to rebuild 2 sections of track on mountain spaces). Luckily, I managed to scrape together enough points to get me by. Only near the end of the game did we start approaching solvency. If memory serves, Shemp won by a point and our scores were 0 and -1. Good times.

We made the assumption that using a two player map meant that the goods growth placeholders started with only 2 goods cubes (since that's what the rules state for 3 players). Considering the impact it had on the game, it's possible it should have been three. I posted a question on BGG... we'll see.

Mr. Jack

Shemp had never played this game before. It's one of the few two player games (that aren't wargames) that I've bothered to hold on to, because I liked it enough to keep even if it gets played rarely.

I played first as Jack, and almost managed to win. It came down to the last round, where Shemp discovered who I was (the cop) and was *just* able to catch me in time.

Shemp tried his hand at Jack next, and did much better than most in their first play. On the first few rounds, I managed to eliminate all but three suspects, but he successfully eluded further narrowing for quite a while. I believe I caught him in the 7th round, which was approximately 3 rounds more than any other first timer I've seen.

Although it's tough to play Jack, this is a very fun game that hits the right note between ease of play and strategy, luck and control. Good game.

Carcassonne: The City

We ended the evening with a oldie. Carcassonne: The City gets very little play in our group, and I've considered trading it away because of that on many occasions. However, I do like it and... it's just such a nice package! I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Yet.

I went far too aggressive on "farmers" (I know, wrong terminology for this set, but I can't remember what they actually use). I was short meeples throughout the game and missed out on the guard's scoring opportunities in the end. It was a competitive game, with just a few points separating us, but Shemp did win.

As we were packing up The City, we realized we had played much later than we usually do (12:15am!). Whatever, it was fun.

Let's build cities (Blue Moon City, Carcassonne:The City)

Just Bharmer and myself this night. I brought along a selection of two player games and we each picked one. I did my best to convince him to go with Rommel in the Desert, but he didn't bite.

Blue Moon City

We started out with Blue Moon City (Bharmer's pick). It was an interesting mix of completing each other's buildings and running off and doing our own thing. With only two players, it seemed like cards were more abundant (though I can't explain why that would be). On a couple of occasions, we would complete three section buildings on one turn! (after calling a dragon or two, of course). This obviously led to big swings in position. I had the early lead, building three sections of the obelisk pretty quickly. Bharmer had only one, but late in the game he managed to complete a lot of buildings without giving much to me, so he was winning the crystal race pretty handily. I tried to force a last minute scale payout to get the last few crytals I needed in time... but it wasn't fast enough. He swooped in and placed his last two cubes in the obelisk for the win.

This game continues to be good fun for me. It's typically a very tight race, and the way payouts work keeps everyone in the running while making the leader hard to spot. I noticed once again that Knizia's math was pretty honed in making this game: every time I play a two player game there appears to be JUST ENOUGH crystals on the board to allow both players to win (and then only if they've managed some shared payouts earlier in the game). Very tight indeed.

Looking at your hand and coming up with a clever use of your cards is always satisfying, and is probably my favorite aspect of the game.

Carcassonne: The City

The second (and last) game of the evening was Carcassonne: The City... a game I enjoy but rarely play due to it's similarities to the original (if it weren't such an attractive set, I'd probably trade it away) . Anyway, the session was unfortunately hurt by a number of rules missunderstandings (caused by the overly brief overview I gave Bharmer), which led to moves he wouldn't have made otherwise. Example: thinking he knew that roads split neighbourhoods, I didn't mention it. Boy, that led to an "aha!" moment, and not in a good way! Anyway, I did manage a very lucrative guard which overlooked a loooong section of the city full of public buildings, but I also scored a ton of points from the neighborhoods I won due to the rules mistakes. Anyway, I had a good time... hopefully so did Bharmer!

Oh, and judging by the city we've built, Iwould guess we would make terribly poor city planners. I won't be quitting my day job.

Getting the red haired step children out to play (Pueblo, Domaine, Tower of Babel, Aladdin's Dragons, Carcassonne: The City)

A big pile of games played this week. Bharmer and Kozure couldn't join us, but JayWowzer rounded us out to a foursome. I chose a number of games which rarely get played in the group. Many don't get out often simply because they are four player, but most of them have oddities which make them "niche" games in my mind.

Prior to JayWowzer's arrival, we played a three player game of Pueblo. We had Shemp's wife choose the locations for the "Sacred Sites", and the resulting board was devilishly difficult. As usual, Luch displayed a knack for burying himself deep behind other player's pieces. He had quite a lead up to the end of the game. Unfortunately for him, in the last round he was forced to play two very costly pieces (he misplayed the block order, leaving him with 2 coloured ones to place last). Once the final score was calculated, the shaman saw more of Luch than he could handle... giving me an unlikely win (I still have a sneaking suspicion that we counted something incorrectly... Luch was REALLY well buried except on that one face). I really enjoy pulling this one out every once in a while... it's a nice change of pace.

Domaine was next. It had been a long time, and we always seem to play this one incorrectly. Still, it's a great game if you are in the mood fore some good, confrontational fun. However, as I've often mentioned, the game is pretty fragile... If everyone isn't paying attention, a player can inadvertently get a windfall. Unfortunately, this kind of happened. Luch and I didn't do what we needed to do to prevent JayWowzer from winning the game as he inherited a huge territory down the middle! Oh well, it's a part of the game to manipulate things to be in the right place at the right time, for all I know he might have orchestrated the whole thing! I thought I had a good shot until it happened, though.

Tower of Babel saw it's first play in some time. Always an enigma, I like to give this one a shot once in a while. There is no game in my collection which eludes me as much as this one... I understand the mechanics, but I don't understand the strategy. After last night, I came to the conclusion that it's a fragile game in a lot of ways: 1) the tendency is to hoard cards and complete works on your own. Once that starts, the game gets boring real fast because everyone is just waiting for their turn to build their monument (and the ultimate winner is probably determined by the player who is lucky enough to draw the needed cards first.) 2) Since the bidding strategy isn't obvious, many players are making bad bids. This has the compounding effect of making a "well played" bid irrelevant, since there is usually a better (i.e. poorly played) one available. Anticipating what others might do becomes basically impossible. 3) the bonus cards just don't work very well. Some are significantly better than others (hmmm, would you like to exchange 5 cards or take a 2nd turn... I wonder). With all that, I'm still going to keep giving it chances until it clicks or someone offers me something for it in trade. It's certainly not bad, and it's short for an area control/ bidding type game. We'll see. I spent the game trying to accumulate purple chips, 2nd/3rd placement points on temples and scorned auction points. I was feeling pretty good about my prospects and in fact I thought I won the game... until Luch pulled out 2 of his bonus cards which gave it to him!

As I was returning Aladdin's Dragons to JayWowzer, we played a farewell session. As with many bidding games, it takes a while to get familiar with the relative values of items and enjoyment of the game increases with repeated play. I played my worst game so far (coming in last with 5 artifacts, while Luch had 7), but I won't hold that against it. One aspect of the game which revealed itself to me this game: go for spells early AND USE THEM,,, as the game progresses, they become nearly impossible to play! I was also surprised to see that very few players had to pass over artifacts this game due to insufficient funds. By contrast, it was quite commonplace in our first few games.

Last, but not least, was Carcassonne: The City. I don't often play this since I actually prefer the base game (particularly with the first two expansions), but it's still quite good. I stumbled across a pretty lucrative tower guard when I started the second round, so I eventually tried to maximize that by placing the notable buildings in his view (ignoring most other scoring methods). If I had thought of it earlier, it probably would have worked out better. As it was, I managed a decent 2nd place to Luch.

Well, this was definitely Luch's night. Out of 5 games, he won 3 (and nearly won a 4th).

I Build, I Bleed, I Barter (Carcassonne - The City, Jyhad CCG and Santiago)

Well, it finally happened. The strike which was keeping my wife off course for nearly a month has finally ended. Good news for her, but bad news for gaming! The month off from WAGS I spoke of earlier will finally happen.

Lucky for me, it was my pick.

While waiting for Kozure, four of us played Carcassonne the City (Luch, Shemp, Sonja and I). Sonja hadn't played, but she was familiar with Carc Hunters and Gatherers, so she caught on pretty quick. The abstraction of the game defies session reporting... but let's just say that Shemp showed a knack for picking the right walls to guard. He won.

With Kozure ready and willing, I broke out the Jyhad CCG (now known as "Vampire: The Eternal Struggle" CCG).

*Edit*
To those not familiar with the game, it is a collectible card game (CCG) where each player takes the role of a Methuselah (an ancient and powerful Vampire) vying for ultimate control by destroying the influence of his opponents (measured in "blood pool"). Everyone has two decks: the first holds the cast of vampires which the Methuselah will use as pawns and the second holds cards representing the various actions those vampires may take. As the game was designed for multiplayer from the ground up, a number of design decisions help to keep the game from devolving into a slugfest where the least involved player inevitably wins. First is a "Predator - Prey" mechanic which forces a player to focus most of his atention to the player on his/her left. This means that your forces must be balanced to be offensive enough towards your prey while being defensive enough towards your predator at all times. It also means that any player more than one seat away from you is potentially your ally, since the pressure they place on your predator or prey makes life easier on you. Of course, things can't get too friendly, because as players are eliminated that player who used to be 2 seats away might now be your new predator or prey! Finally, a well implemented political system allows certain referendums to take place which can effect the whole table at once (and this is one of the key places where short term alliances across a table can really pay off).

The basic turn order works as follows:

1. Untap

2. The Methuselah can play a MASTER card, if he/she has any. This represents the Methuselah taking DIRECT action in the world, rather than through a minion.

3. The Methuselah can direct his minions to take action:
A damaged vampire can hunt to replenish him/herself
It can attempt to bleed his Methuselah's Prey
It can call a political action
It can equip itself with equipment or a retainer
It can engage an ally (non-vampire minion, like a werewolf or street gang)
An "ACTION" card can be played and the vampire does what the card says

4. The Methuselah transfers up to 4 points from his/ her blood pool (the "life" total of the player) to uncontrolled vampires he has waiting to enter the game. For this reason, a player must constantly balance his/ her well being with the need to employ minions in order to survive and thrive. (side note: blood pool is extremely hard to replenish, and is also the currency for playing MASTER cards, equiping minions, etc. Since being reduced to 0 blood pool eliminates a player from the game, these expenses must be carefully considered... it's not uncommon for a player to spend a good portion of the game teetering on oblivion)

ACTION MODIFIER cards can be played by the acting player to alter the action, and REACTION cards can be played by another player to counter the action (to be specific, the player's minions are playing those cards).

ACTIONS can be blocked. Actions have an associated STEALTH rating, and if the target METHUSELAH can muster enough INTERCEPT to match they can stop the action from happening. For this reason, STEALTH and INTERCEPT are the most fundamental ACTION MODIFIERS and REACTION CARDS.

If an action is succesfully blocked, the acting vampire and the blocking vampire enter combat. Combat has it's own subsystem, but all cards played are COMBAT cards. Vampires first determine range, then exchange strikes, and then determine if the combat will go to another round. Combat doesn't necessarily end with a defeated vampire.

* end of edit to add game description *

This game holds a special place in my heart because back in university I started playing it as soon as it came out. It quickly replaced Magic as my CCG of choice (I had also played Magic CCG, Illuminati CCG, Shadowrun CCG, Star Wars CCG and Dr. Who CCG). I lived with Luch at the time and we played it pretty much every chance we had. I wound up amassing a pretty large collection of cards and making quite a number of very good decks. At the time, Kozure and Shemp also played on occasion, but never got into it as much as we did.

Now, 10 years later, the introduction of Vampire: Prince of the City rekindled my interest to make decks and play again. I still counted it as one of my favorite games, despite it's long moratorium... I was very curious to see how it would go.

The answer is: Like a lead ballon.

Jyhad is a wonderful game on many levels. The game mechanics are very good. The theme is very well integrated into the game. There is real tension. The multiplayer aspect is extremely well implemented. Sadly, there are three very big downfalls:
1) The rules, though individually clear and straightforward, are complex due to sheer volume.
2) The game features player elimination.
3) The game is pretty long.

Now, when you combine a game that has lots of rules with the inherent complexities of a CCG, you wind up with quite a beast. Each card must be read and understood. Many have a fair bit of text on them, with different results in different circumstances. Most, by their very nature, are intended to allow something not normally allowed by the rules. That's a lot to take in. Make it a 5 player game, and it gets even more complex! Me and Luch were still pretty comfortable. Kozure didn't comment much, so I don't really know, but Shemp said he wasn't quite comfortable and Sonja was obviously buried in information overload. She had never played a CCG before, and it didn't help that I let her play a commercial preconstructed deck without being terribly familiar with it... The Ravnos deck she played turned out to be heavily defensive and reliant on tricky cards to get their job done.

But like I said, there is so much to admire! The central mechanic of giving up your own life essence to influence your minions (and other such things) is brilliant. The Predator/ Prey relationship gives order to the chaos which can result from multiplayer CCGs. That being said, the political system prevents the players from ever being able to ignore the players they are not directly involved with... "My enemy's enemy is my friend" is a concept which can really be turned to your advantage in Jyhad through the various referendums which come and go. The rules and card types do a great job of building a slow tension as everyone jockeys for position while hanging on to a very slim lifeline.

Our game pitted several clan specific decks against each other. The Nosferatu (me) preyed on the Ravnos (Sonja), who preyed on The Lasombra (Kozure), who preyed on the Brujah (Shemp), who preyed on the Tremere (Luch), who preyed on me.

Things were shaping up well. I started out quickly with a 4 capacity vampire, who soon equipped with a set of hand claws for increased combat damage and found a handy hunting ground (through a master card I played). I then influenced a larger minion to the table… a prince no less, and got ready to start doing some damage. Meanwhile, the other clans were readying their minions. There was a brutal battle between the Brujah and the Tremere which saw the 6 Tremere vampire reduced to 0 through 2 shots by a 22 magnum loaded with manstopper rounds. I managed to tear up one of Sonja’s big hitters myself, sending it to torpor after a few rounds of “growing furies” and the like. My referendum to force all players to lose 1 blood pool for every tapped vampire was also successful… Kozure, being neither my predator or my prey, had little to lose backing my position and the motion carried. We both lost 1 and the others lost 2-3 (to those who haven’t played the game, that difference may seem low, but every point is important as it’s not uncommon to spend a good chunk of the game trying to hold on with +/- 5 blood pool left!).

Although Shemp’s deck was doing fairly well, it could not do anything to prevent the stealthy Lasombra. One turn before I was going to eliminate Sonja, Kozure took out Shemp. Since the game was going long, and some weren’t really comfortable enough with the system to enjoy it, we called it at that point. Despite the good things going on, it was clear we weren’t firing on all cylinders. I guess it was too much too soon.

I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t a success (though for me, I can definitely say the magic is still there)

We had a quick conversation on our preferences for types of complexity afterwards. It was very interesting! As I said before, CCGs are complex by their very nature because no matter how simple the rules are you are faced with a hand of cards and each has an effect which can change the environment, nature of rules and play. That said, each game system is likely to highlight different complexities.

Let’s take Jyhad and compare it to Illuminati CCG and Shadowrun CCG (since those are the other CCGs we play on occasion)

In Jyhad, there are many rules to cover the many phases and aspects of the game. It is rules complex.
In Illuminati, there are also a fair number of rules, but they tend to be variations on a central mechanic so it’s not too hard to pick up the basics. It’s rules moderate.
Shadowrun is a little more like Jyhad. There are several phases and subsystems, with cards specific to each. Still, it's significantly simpler overall.

In Jyhad, Your individual decisions are not to overwhelming, because you tend to be limited by the situation on the table and the cards in your hand. Once you understand the rules, gameplay is pretty straightforward (and the system has very few ambiguities, which is nice). Internalizing the rules is the main challenge.
In Illuminati, a fair bit of effort is required to understand what is on the table at a given time. There are countless modifiers through the cards in your hand, the cards on the table, the current “New World Orders”, etc. To complicate things further, on most turns any other player is free to get involved. Gameplay cannot be simplified without accepting that modifiers will be missed (that's probably the point, but it feels wrong to me). Typically, after trying to determine the possible outcome of a possible move, I give up and resort to "What the hell, let's see what happens".
In Shadowrun, you neither have too much to consider, nor much difficulty determining what to do on a round. Unfortunately, instead of resulting in a better game than both the other entries it kind of feels a little bland. It's a good game, but the least engaging of the three for me.

Since I am typically willing to absorb a lot of rules so long as the game plays smoothly afterwards, Jyhad suits me fine. Illuminati, on the other hand, I typically find overwhelming (though still enjoyable). Put a different way, once you "get" the Jyhad system, there isn't much to it. I feel I can focus on my objectives, weigh my options, try to manipulate the table, etc. Picking my action is an important decision, but figuring out the outcome is simple. In Illuminati, I will always have to stop and read all the cards on the table and do the math every turn (as does anyone else who wants to get involved). It's the same issue I had with Arkham Horror... I need to draw info from too many sources at one time to figure out what's going on at any given time. There are too many rules which need to be remembered and taken into consideration AT THE SAME TIME. More often than not, something gets forgotten. Again, in Illuminati I think that's part of the point, it's a humorous game after all. In Arkham Horror, it's just a problem (IMHO).

I’ll definitely try to bring this out again, but maybe with a smaller group and strictly with the decks I made up (as they were meant to be simpler than the preconstructed ones). Hopefully the audience will still be willing!

We finished off with a game of Santiago. I angled for a big potato farm, but didn’t quite make it. For a while, I was a contender! (I blew any chance I had in the second last round by going high on a bid and still winding up third… leaving me broke and with no good plantation to show for it). Luch was looking good with a few big stakes in a few fields, but in the end it was Shemp who carried it on the strength of some good representation in many fields of varying worth. On an amusing note, Sonja was endlessly perturbed by our group’s lack of interest in bribes. We all typically shunned the money and went for the strategic move on the board… which not only makes us very different than her other gamer friends but also pretty cheap (of course, if she thinks we are cheap at Santiago, she should see us at Traders of Genoa!).

See you in a month!

A GigaWak of Games (Carcassonne - The City, China x2, Pueblo, Formula Motor Racing x3, )

Something OLD: Pueblo
Something NEW: China
Something BORROWED: Formula Motor Racing
Something BLUE: Carcassonne - The City (ok, I'm cheating here... the original is in a blue box!)

I think we've set a new record for number of games played in a single WAGS evening... 7!

It was my pick this week. I really enjoyed our "Invasion of the Middleweight Euros!" evening in December, so I thought I'd try it again.

We started the evening with my new copy of Carcassonne - The City.

First off, it's a beautiful package (the box, in particular is very nice). The set comes with a promo pamphlet encouraging people to visit the town in France! I wonder... are they making the assumption that anyone who has enough cash to buy this deluxe set might be good targets for travel ads? (If so, it's really a shame that there's no real Catan!). It was a Christmas gift, and the obvious question was "is a Carc variant different enough from the original to be worth owning?"

I own the basic set and just about all the expansions. I quite like it for the simplicity of the original and the way the expansions each increase the complexity/strategy as desired (most of them are well conceived). Still, it has problems (and I don't mean the randomness): Roads are not well balanced, the farmers are fiddly and the endgame scoring can be tedious. On top of that, it's really much better with 2 than with 3-6.

At one point, I tried playing Hunters and Gatherers online to see if it improved on the original. There's a lot to like, particularly the way the "farmers" are scored (the hunters get points for every deer and mammoth in the field, minus one animal for each tiger which has been placed in the field). "Roads" (rivers) are better balanced with "cities" (forests). Finally, incentive to finish other player's forests is included in the base set through a "bonus tile" mechanic. It's a good game, and it does a good job of being a more interesting and better balanced game out of the box, with new mechanics which substantially change the "spirit" of the game (the deer vs tiger mechanic is overtly confrontational, and the bonus tiles can swing the fortunes on the board faster than the incremental nature of the original ever did). I hate to say it, but I thought the art was so bad that I honestly felt I'd never want to pull it out (the fact that a few of the bonus tiles seemed overly powerful and the added complication for newbies didn't help)

Carcassonne - The City seems closer to the base game in spirit. As always, the game mechanics continue to be basically the same (draw a tile, place it on the table and decide if you want to place a meeple on one of the features). In the beginning of the game, the three locations are quite familiar: 1) Roads 2) Markets (forests in the original) 3) Residential areas (Farms in the original). Effort has been made to make each strategy viable: Roads continue to score only 1 point per tile, but if it ever stretches to 4 tiles or more each tile is worth double. Markets can potentially show 3 different types of goods for sale, and the value of the market equals the number of tiles x the number of different goods in it. The residential districts are worth 2 points per market which surrounds it.

The most obvious change, in the beginning, is that tiles only need to match at the roads (a mechanic lifted from Carcassonne - The Castle, yet another previously released standalone version of the game). As the game progresses, subtler things begin to reveal themselves. The nature of the scoring mechanism for the roads and markets encourages players to end their opponent's scoring opportunities early before they are worth much. The distribution of the tiles & flexible placement rules seem to encourage smaller "fields", which are both easier to visualize and simpler to score.

The big twist are the city walls. The game is split into 3 rounds, and a few very different element are introduced once the 2nd round begins: City walls, towers and guards.

The tiles are split into 3 nearly equal piles. Once the first pile runs out, the first player to score points must place the first segment of the city wall. Every other player follows suit by placing a piece of wall, attached to the first one, along the perimeter of the tiles already placed on the table. The walls effectively limit expansion of the city and "finish" features on the board. Therefore, they can be used offensively to end a large market or road (or kill it before it's worth more than just a couple of points). In additon, meeples can be placed on a just placed wall as "knights". Knights score points for "seeing" certain types of buildings in the residential districts in a straight line from where they stand. The towers are an additonal oportuntiy for the the player who initiated the wall building to score a few points.

Round 3 is the same as round 2, except that the number of walls placed everytime a player causes points to be scored is doubled.

The game ends once the tiles run out, or once the city wall comes within 4 pieces of surrounding the city.

The end result is interesting. I appreciate that the game is better balanced, I enjoy that the rythm of the game changes as the rounds progress (indeed, at each step a new layer of things to consider is introduced), and I like that the scoring happens much more quickly at the endgame. For whatever reason, the whole thing works just as well as a multiplayer game as it does with 2 (not something I feel about the base game... I think it's the way the walls work, but I'm not sure).

Also, the whole things looks quite nice once completed. A lot of my coworkers were very interested in the game on the strength of the appearance alone! This, combined with the fact that the rules ramp up as the game progresses (rather than being more complex from the start as in Hunters and Gatherers) means the game can be quite approachable despite the added depth. One coworker bit immediately and wanted to play at lunch. He loved it.

So, is it worth owning if you've already got the original and lots of expansions? I'd say yes. Not a must buy unless you are really taken by the appearance (as I was), but solid nonetheless. I'd probably pick this as the better game to introduce to new players, so long as they are not really afraid of a little complexity. In the context of our WAGS group, I think that I still slightly prefer the base set (when played with King and Scout, Inns and Cathedrals and Traders and Builders).

Hmmm. That was a lot longer than I expected it to be!

I won the game. An unlikely tile placement wound up connecting me to Kozure's lucrative residential district. Also, I tried fairly hard to shut down my opponent's scoring oportunities before they became too valuable (my previous experience with the game gave me an advantage there). Still, it was close... I doubt I'll have any advantage next time.

We followed with 2 games of China, joined by Tili. I won't spend too much time here, but this play solidified my opinion that this is a very good (if unspectacular) strategy game with a surprisingly short play time. It was nice to see that Shemp managed a win while totally ignoring the advisors, as it proves there is more than one way to succeed.

Pueblo was played with all four sacred sites, using the advanced rules. Our Pueblo quickly became difficult to manage and "good" moves were few and far between. The location of the sacred sites effectively neutralized two corners of the board! I overbid for starting position and never quite recovered. Shemp and I were losing pretty badly through the game and it was a race between Luch and Kozure for "least proud" master builder. Luch seems to have a knack for the game... he was well protected through to the end and won.

We finished with 3 rounds of Formula Motor Racing... the silly (but very quick) Knizia racing game. Yet again, us humans were hopelessly outmatched by the non player cars (this keeps happening because we beat each other up and leave those cars alone). Luch had the lead in the first round (amongst human players), lost most of it in the 2nd, and had the choice to hand it to me or Shemp in the last round. He chose me, but that's a hollow victory. I say we call it a tie!

It's a stretch to call this an evening of middleweights, but we sure played a lot of games!