Bharmer purchased the reprint of Taj Mahal recently, and Kozure picked up the Battlestar Galactica CCG. Obviously, we had to play them.
I personally played Taj Mahal a few times through the computer interface a few times prior to last night, but I didn't really understand the game. Having now played it using the proper rules, I have to say I'm very impressed.
The theme in Taj Mahal is extremely thin. It involves aquiring influence with different nobles in India, but has very little measurable impact on the game. The game reolves around a series of contests were players try to win the favour of the nobles, aquire goods and build palaces. Bottom line, this is a race to aquire points and there are many available paths to do so. Perhaps a more useful description would be to say that this game is what happens when Knizia mixes the board play of Web of Power with a reversed version of poker and adds a dash of Ra-type scoring.
It's a classic, and there's probably very little left to say about the game. I need to play it a few more times but on first inspection this could turn out to be one of my favorites.
1) This is a meaty strategy game. There seems to be a lot of potentials paths to victory (connecting palaces, focusing on goods, keeping the yellow noble, etc).
2) There is enough randomness to keep things interesting, but a player will rarely be at the mercy of bad luck.
3) There is very little downtime since individual decisions tend to be fairly small.
The biggest knock I can level against the game is that the myriad scoring options can make the game difficult to learn. Our first game made it obvious that if players focus too much on their own goals, they can make it easy for another player to walk off with lots of easy points (i.e. player 1 plays a card with a red and yellow noble. The other players fight over the elephants, handing player 1 easy majorities). Experience will likely solve this, but it's possible that it's too detrimental to bother and that this will turn out to be a real flaw.
I found the card management to be surprisingly difficult. Ultimately, the two biggest decisions you have to make every round is which suit to lead in and what two cards to take at the end of the round. Going for province tiles tends to be about stamina, since there seems to be so many elephants that getting out quick with a lead is very rare. I guess the trick is to try to accumulate long suits if this is your goal. The nobles are tricky because they don't seem to be equally worthwhile. Obviously leading with a dual noble card increases your chances of ducking out with a quick noble/ palace (and a good shot at picking up a bonus chit), but if you get matched you need to have enough in reserve to avoid getting absolutely nothing. This game seems to severely punish going for a goal (noble/ elephant/ etc) and failing, since all cards are spent regardless and replenishing your hand is hard to do. The palaces and road connecting doesn't seem to provide enough points to carry a player to victory, so I have to assume this is meant to supplement a lead rather than create it.
Kozure mopped the floor with us. He managed to both keep the yellow noble through much of the game AND win several fo the province tiles. Clearly, we weren't on our toes. Bharmer was not doing too badly, but Shemp, Luch and I were pretty far behind. It's a brain burner, but it's quite elegant and fast moving once you figure it out. I'm really looking forward to playing this again.
We finished the evening with a four player game of the Battlestar Galactica CCG. I'm a fan of the series, but I didn't even know about this game!
As far as CCGs go, it's quite good. Many of the common pitfalls are avoided: Each card plays multiple roles, so there is very little "resource clumping"... the frustration caused when a required resouce cards don't show up or show up too frequently (mana in Magic CCG is the prototypical example of this)magic CCG). They are also used as combat randomizers and to represent the threat of Cylon raiders.
Players go through the typical steps of accumulating resources, building up a team and duking it out. The last phase in each round involves fighting cylons as a group, which is kind of interesting. One mechanic, which involves placing cards ina staging area before they can be deployed doesn't really add up to much more than "tapping" and "untapping" (which we accidentally did several times instead)... but there is no doubt it better suits the theme.
As i said, it was pretty good. I still think I prefer Vampire, but CCGs have an inherent complexity level which I find I have less patience for than i used to (having to read, understand and consider the impact of each card and then having to keep track of the myriad cards played by other players on the table). Obviously, the only reason Vampire gets a pass on that one is because I played that one enough to know most of the cards by heart... not because it does any better on that count. also like Vampire, it seems to have the potential to run a bit longer than it should. What puts Vampire over the top for me is the multiplayer aspect... there are mechanics in Vampire (the predator/ prey relationship and the political system in particular) which give structure to the dynamics of the game and prevent free for all ganging up on the leader.
It was a pretty close game. Luch almost had an early win as his Zarek card gave him tons of points in a few rounds. Unfortunately for him, he was 1 point short of victory and was subsequently torn to shreds by the rest of us. Shemp, kozure and I hovered around the same level until we artifically declared a particular round the "last" round. Luch ended up playing kingmaker since he had one last ship to attack with and the opportunity to attack any of us with it... deciding the winner in the process (Shemp).
Showing posts with label Card Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Card Games. Show all posts
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Thursday, March 30, 2006
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!
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!
Monday, December 12, 2005
Conspiracy. Intrige. Paranoia.
3 games. I think the "theme" is clear. Italian Sausages, clearly a "suspicious" food, provided sustenance.
In attendance: Easy, Kozure, Luch, Shemp, Sonja.
Kozure hadn't yet arrived, so we started with Conspiracy (a 4 player game). We settled into our roles (I was Paris, Shemp was Tokyo, Luch was Washington and Sonja, new to the game, flexed her command of the German language as Berlin).
Brief recap: Conspiracy is a game where each player represents a major power who wants to reclaim a secret briefcase located at the center of the board. 12 spies (each with a terrible pun for a name), occupy the board... but they aren't controlled by particular players. Instead, the players are given $10 000 to "bribe" the spies to do their bidding. Since bribing is secret, no one ever really knows which spy is working for who until someone tries to make a move someone else doesn't want. And since additional bribes can be made throughout the game, loyalties shift.
As is often the case in this game, the likely winner changed several times over the course of the game. There aren't many "steps" between the center of the board and a player's home base (3 being the shortest route, I think), so it's not uncommon for the briefcase to move a single square and have everyone suddenly realize that a particular player is suddenly in a position to win.
My memory is hazy (as always), but I beleive I blew "Peking Tom"'s cover fairly early on... a character several players had invested heavily into. With "Miss Behavin'" nearby I tried a quick snatch and grab of the suitcase towards Paris but was intercepted. Soon after, Shemp looked like a threat as a series of characters under his sway gathered near Tokyo and seemed unstoppable. Through cooperation, we managed to get it out... and into Sonja's territory. She was within one move of winning, but it was not to be.... Luch, who's initial large investment in "Rock Bottom" seemed to be going to waste (since NO ONE was moving him anywhere), was pleasantly surprised to see that character suddenly find himself with the case 2 squares from his base. We had no way of stopping him.
Next up was Intrige. This was our first game with 5 players (Kozure had arrived by now), and the dynamics are quite different with an odd number of players! In a 4 player game, 2 pairs of players usually end up helping each other (using the term loosely!). With 5 players, things aren't quite as even, and "Friendships" (again, used loosely) come and go much faster. Backs were stabbed all around, and I can't think of any particular alliances which lasted more than a turn or two (Though my France saw a lot of Shemp's American employees, and vice versa, until the final few turns). Shemp had the unfortunate luck of being deemed the leader early on and was hopelessly shut out for the 2nd half of the game because of it. Sonja and I managed to accumulate quite a bit of wealth as things went on, but I ended the game with a very tiny lead for the win.
Last up was was Paranoia, Mandatory "Bonus Fun" Card game. I was pleasantly surprised last time as this seemed to be a decent game, for a "Take That" system. I liked that the "missions" focused the card play rather than letting it be a free for all. I liked that each player had objectives which would naturally lead to backstabbing, chaos and "general hilarity". It seemed to work, and we laughed a lot, so I was happy with the purchase (despite some of the obvious shortcomings concerning graphic design and play length issues). Having played it a second time, though, I'm not so sure. For whatever reason,things weren't "clicking". We kept forgetting the fiddly rules about discarding treason counters for exposing/killing traitors. We missplayed the way characters are meant to come back to the game after they get killed. etc, etc. I looked through the ruledbook too many times for a game of this "weight". Also, I had more hands filled with cards I couldn't use than last time. All these things contributed to a hand that wasn't much fun. I hope to try it again, with a cheat sheet at my side, but it's not likely to get many more chances if it goes like that again.
In attendance: Easy, Kozure, Luch, Shemp, Sonja.
Kozure hadn't yet arrived, so we started with Conspiracy (a 4 player game). We settled into our roles (I was Paris, Shemp was Tokyo, Luch was Washington and Sonja, new to the game, flexed her command of the German language as Berlin).
Brief recap: Conspiracy is a game where each player represents a major power who wants to reclaim a secret briefcase located at the center of the board. 12 spies (each with a terrible pun for a name), occupy the board... but they aren't controlled by particular players. Instead, the players are given $10 000 to "bribe" the spies to do their bidding. Since bribing is secret, no one ever really knows which spy is working for who until someone tries to make a move someone else doesn't want. And since additional bribes can be made throughout the game, loyalties shift.
As is often the case in this game, the likely winner changed several times over the course of the game. There aren't many "steps" between the center of the board and a player's home base (3 being the shortest route, I think), so it's not uncommon for the briefcase to move a single square and have everyone suddenly realize that a particular player is suddenly in a position to win.
My memory is hazy (as always), but I beleive I blew "Peking Tom"'s cover fairly early on... a character several players had invested heavily into. With "Miss Behavin'" nearby I tried a quick snatch and grab of the suitcase towards Paris but was intercepted. Soon after, Shemp looked like a threat as a series of characters under his sway gathered near Tokyo and seemed unstoppable. Through cooperation, we managed to get it out... and into Sonja's territory. She was within one move of winning, but it was not to be.... Luch, who's initial large investment in "Rock Bottom" seemed to be going to waste (since NO ONE was moving him anywhere), was pleasantly surprised to see that character suddenly find himself with the case 2 squares from his base. We had no way of stopping him.
Next up was Intrige. This was our first game with 5 players (Kozure had arrived by now), and the dynamics are quite different with an odd number of players! In a 4 player game, 2 pairs of players usually end up helping each other (using the term loosely!). With 5 players, things aren't quite as even, and "Friendships" (again, used loosely) come and go much faster. Backs were stabbed all around, and I can't think of any particular alliances which lasted more than a turn or two (Though my France saw a lot of Shemp's American employees, and vice versa, until the final few turns). Shemp had the unfortunate luck of being deemed the leader early on and was hopelessly shut out for the 2nd half of the game because of it. Sonja and I managed to accumulate quite a bit of wealth as things went on, but I ended the game with a very tiny lead for the win.
Last up was was Paranoia, Mandatory "Bonus Fun" Card game. I was pleasantly surprised last time as this seemed to be a decent game, for a "Take That" system. I liked that the "missions" focused the card play rather than letting it be a free for all. I liked that each player had objectives which would naturally lead to backstabbing, chaos and "general hilarity". It seemed to work, and we laughed a lot, so I was happy with the purchase (despite some of the obvious shortcomings concerning graphic design and play length issues). Having played it a second time, though, I'm not so sure. For whatever reason,things weren't "clicking". We kept forgetting the fiddly rules about discarding treason counters for exposing/killing traitors. We missplayed the way characters are meant to come back to the game after they get killed. etc, etc. I looked through the ruledbook too many times for a game of this "weight". Also, I had more hands filled with cards I couldn't use than last time. All these things contributed to a hand that wasn't much fun. I hope to try it again, with a cheat sheet at my side, but it's not likely to get many more chances if it goes like that again.
Labels:
Card Games,
Conspiracy,
Intrige,
Paranoia,
Session
Friday, November 04, 2005
Tikal, the Domaine of Paranoia!
This Wednesday, Luch decided to pick Domaine and Tikal. I brought along "Paranoia, Mandatory *Bonus Fun* Card game", a fairly recent acquisition, as filler.
Domaine has been a staple in our group for some time. Initially, I was put off by the big land grab at the end which was always determining the winner. With a few plays, this simply became part of the strategy... try to keep other players from getting such a windfall, while trying to line one up for yourself. The other issue I had was that we never got the rules right. Even after several plays, the rule which prohibits using the chancery after all face down cards have been drawn kept getting forgotten! This session was the first where we played 100% correctly.
I started out with my usual strategy... aim to capture as many mines as possible. One of my initial placements, right in the middle of the board, was adjacent to 3 different mines. I was able to take them quite early and had plentiful income for the whole game because of them. The other players weren't far behind (typically 2 apiece), however, so the advantage wasn't that great. I wound up with a really good shot at getting a large chunk of land, but didn't draw the cards I needed to close it up. That, and the other players noticed it in time to make sure they weren't helping! I did eventually get a large chunk of land out of it, but by then it had been cut nearly in half by the others. Meanwhile, as Shemp, Kozure and Luch built fairly powerful kingdoms across the board no one noticed the end run Kozure was planning on. Before we could react, he closed of a large chunk and won the game. Another fun session of Domaine!
Next was Tikal. It was Shemp's first go at the game, and after a brief rules explanation we off exploring! I started pouring explorers onto the board, thinking that I it would give me an advantage over time to be out early (this is normally a good strategy in El Grande). I combined this with a plan to set up "corridors" and base camps at choke points to give me near exclusive access to sections of the board. Unfortunately, each and every one of these decisions turned out to be bad ones! The mass of of explorers at the beginning of the game haunted me because it's very difficult to maintain a majority there since it's so wide open and accessible to everyone. To make things worse, they are low value temples which require a significant investment to improve. As things developed, the map did have many corridors, making movement quite difficult for everyone. I managed to get base camps far enough down those corridors to get me there faster than other players could, but Shemp (drawer of all volcanoes this game), kept laying them in ways which effectively reduced those corridors to dead ends. My explorers had a very difficult time to get anywhere. The others had much more effective strategies of reaching and holding harder to access temples. In the end, Kozure had his pieces well distributed at many otherwise abandoned mid level temples and ran away with the victory (Shemp, in his first playing, came in second closely followed by myself and Luch in a tie for last). A wonderful game!
Last was Paranoia. This is a new game by Mongoose Publishing. I didn't really know what to expect, because there weren't any reviews for it (even at BGG!). I mostly bought it because I really liked the old RPG.
This appears, at first glance, to be a fairly typical "Take That!" type game. The result is better than I expected, but I have a few reservations:
The world of Paranoia involves a "Brave New World" type future, with a computer in charge of keeping everyone happy. Unfortunately, the computer has been reprogrammed too many times and has now gone insane. It is now paranoid and thinks that "Commie Mutant Traitors" are everywhere. Problem is, they sort of are. In fact, each player is a mutant and part of a secret society. Second, the Computer wants everyone to be "Happy", by lethal force if it has to. You get the idea. For the purposes of the card game, most of this is unimportant, but it puts things in context (powers and secret societies are alluded to in card text, but don't directly come into play).
Players represent "Troubleshooters", citizens of Alpha Complex unfortunate enough to be charged with accomplishing impossible missions for the Computer. Each character has a security level, which determines how many hits they can take, how much treason they can commit before they are deemed "Traitors", and how many actions they can perform (i.e. the size of their hand). One player is the "Team Leader". He starts with a higher rank, which would be an advantage, but one of the best ways to improve your character is to kill the team leader and become one yourself, so it's pretty hard to stay alive. Incidentally, all players receive 6 clones, or "lives" in video game speak...
Each round, a "Mission" card is revealed. The card identifies what the characters are told to do by the Computer, what happens if they succeed and what happens if they fail. Players hold "Action Cards" which are dealt at the same time as the mission. These are the only cards they get for the entire mission! On a player's turn, they may play one card, either on the mission or another player. Each "Action Card" contains several boxes, each containing instructions for the cards effect depending on if it's directed to yourself, another troubleshooter or *gasp!* the mission. The mission ends once any player runs out of cards, once all characters but one have died, or once the mission is accomplished. At that point, survivors get their bonus or penalty depending on the success of the mission and any characters who have too many "Traitor" counters are executed.
Then, a new Mission is revealed and new "Action" cards are dealt to each player according to current security level.
Keep doing this until one player runs out of "Clone" tokens. At that point, the highest security level character wins.
I didn't have terribly high hopes for the game after reading the rules and examining the cards. Surprisingly, I had a very good time playing the game! This might be because the basics of the game are fairly simple (All card effects and missions boil down to just three things: gaining or taking away rank, traitor tokens and/ or wound tokens). The cards are funny, but more importantly the game play is funny... with characters framing other players, attacking each other, getting screwed by "out of turn" cards which cancel or redirect effects. The sense that most missions are hopeless, and that the best way out is to backstab your friends is well preserved. On top of that, the "Mission" cards and limited hand of cards seem to focus the play a little bit (In a game like "Chez Geek, there isn't much rhyme or reason to playing your turn... you just do stuff to other people and hope to get ahead). Once players match up what's in their hand with the results of potentially succeeding or failing the mission, each one will need to try something a little different to come out ahead (or alive).
Of course, it's got issues. 6 lives is probably too much, you can wind up with a hand of cards which aren't useful and the components aren't exactly world class (though the cards are a fairly thick plastic). The biggest problem, though, is the graphic design. All instructions are rendered in text. With so many potential applications of a card, and several cards in your hand, it's just too hard to know at a glance what you can do. The frustrating thing is, since the game is reduced to just a few concepts it would have been very easy to replace most of the text with easy to understand symbols. In fact, point form text would have been an improvement! ("+1 treason" is much easier to see that "Assign 1 treason token to any player"). I'm tempted to make paste ups for the cards before I play again.
We'll see how it stands up to repeated playing, but for now I'm pleasantly surprised.
Luch won the game, and we had lots of laughs. This is not a game to take seriously. It could have been done better, it could have been done worse, but what we got was a fairly clever and enjoyable game of "Screw yer Neighbour"
Paranoia:(provisional) 7
Domaine has been a staple in our group for some time. Initially, I was put off by the big land grab at the end which was always determining the winner. With a few plays, this simply became part of the strategy... try to keep other players from getting such a windfall, while trying to line one up for yourself. The other issue I had was that we never got the rules right. Even after several plays, the rule which prohibits using the chancery after all face down cards have been drawn kept getting forgotten! This session was the first where we played 100% correctly.
I started out with my usual strategy... aim to capture as many mines as possible. One of my initial placements, right in the middle of the board, was adjacent to 3 different mines. I was able to take them quite early and had plentiful income for the whole game because of them. The other players weren't far behind (typically 2 apiece), however, so the advantage wasn't that great. I wound up with a really good shot at getting a large chunk of land, but didn't draw the cards I needed to close it up. That, and the other players noticed it in time to make sure they weren't helping! I did eventually get a large chunk of land out of it, but by then it had been cut nearly in half by the others. Meanwhile, as Shemp, Kozure and Luch built fairly powerful kingdoms across the board no one noticed the end run Kozure was planning on. Before we could react, he closed of a large chunk and won the game. Another fun session of Domaine!
Next was Tikal. It was Shemp's first go at the game, and after a brief rules explanation we off exploring! I started pouring explorers onto the board, thinking that I it would give me an advantage over time to be out early (this is normally a good strategy in El Grande). I combined this with a plan to set up "corridors" and base camps at choke points to give me near exclusive access to sections of the board. Unfortunately, each and every one of these decisions turned out to be bad ones! The mass of of explorers at the beginning of the game haunted me because it's very difficult to maintain a majority there since it's so wide open and accessible to everyone. To make things worse, they are low value temples which require a significant investment to improve. As things developed, the map did have many corridors, making movement quite difficult for everyone. I managed to get base camps far enough down those corridors to get me there faster than other players could, but Shemp (drawer of all volcanoes this game), kept laying them in ways which effectively reduced those corridors to dead ends. My explorers had a very difficult time to get anywhere. The others had much more effective strategies of reaching and holding harder to access temples. In the end, Kozure had his pieces well distributed at many otherwise abandoned mid level temples and ran away with the victory (Shemp, in his first playing, came in second closely followed by myself and Luch in a tie for last). A wonderful game!
Last was Paranoia. This is a new game by Mongoose Publishing. I didn't really know what to expect, because there weren't any reviews for it (even at BGG!). I mostly bought it because I really liked the old RPG.
This appears, at first glance, to be a fairly typical "Take That!" type game. The result is better than I expected, but I have a few reservations:
The world of Paranoia involves a "Brave New World" type future, with a computer in charge of keeping everyone happy. Unfortunately, the computer has been reprogrammed too many times and has now gone insane. It is now paranoid and thinks that "Commie Mutant Traitors" are everywhere. Problem is, they sort of are. In fact, each player is a mutant and part of a secret society. Second, the Computer wants everyone to be "Happy", by lethal force if it has to. You get the idea. For the purposes of the card game, most of this is unimportant, but it puts things in context (powers and secret societies are alluded to in card text, but don't directly come into play).
Players represent "Troubleshooters", citizens of Alpha Complex unfortunate enough to be charged with accomplishing impossible missions for the Computer. Each character has a security level, which determines how many hits they can take, how much treason they can commit before they are deemed "Traitors", and how many actions they can perform (i.e. the size of their hand). One player is the "Team Leader". He starts with a higher rank, which would be an advantage, but one of the best ways to improve your character is to kill the team leader and become one yourself, so it's pretty hard to stay alive. Incidentally, all players receive 6 clones, or "lives" in video game speak...
Each round, a "Mission" card is revealed. The card identifies what the characters are told to do by the Computer, what happens if they succeed and what happens if they fail. Players hold "Action Cards" which are dealt at the same time as the mission. These are the only cards they get for the entire mission! On a player's turn, they may play one card, either on the mission or another player. Each "Action Card" contains several boxes, each containing instructions for the cards effect depending on if it's directed to yourself, another troubleshooter or *gasp!* the mission. The mission ends once any player runs out of cards, once all characters but one have died, or once the mission is accomplished. At that point, survivors get their bonus or penalty depending on the success of the mission and any characters who have too many "Traitor" counters are executed.
Then, a new Mission is revealed and new "Action" cards are dealt to each player according to current security level.
Keep doing this until one player runs out of "Clone" tokens. At that point, the highest security level character wins.
I didn't have terribly high hopes for the game after reading the rules and examining the cards. Surprisingly, I had a very good time playing the game! This might be because the basics of the game are fairly simple (All card effects and missions boil down to just three things: gaining or taking away rank, traitor tokens and/ or wound tokens). The cards are funny, but more importantly the game play is funny... with characters framing other players, attacking each other, getting screwed by "out of turn" cards which cancel or redirect effects. The sense that most missions are hopeless, and that the best way out is to backstab your friends is well preserved. On top of that, the "Mission" cards and limited hand of cards seem to focus the play a little bit (In a game like "Chez Geek, there isn't much rhyme or reason to playing your turn... you just do stuff to other people and hope to get ahead). Once players match up what's in their hand with the results of potentially succeeding or failing the mission, each one will need to try something a little different to come out ahead (or alive).
Of course, it's got issues. 6 lives is probably too much, you can wind up with a hand of cards which aren't useful and the components aren't exactly world class (though the cards are a fairly thick plastic). The biggest problem, though, is the graphic design. All instructions are rendered in text. With so many potential applications of a card, and several cards in your hand, it's just too hard to know at a glance what you can do. The frustrating thing is, since the game is reduced to just a few concepts it would have been very easy to replace most of the text with easy to understand symbols. In fact, point form text would have been an improvement! ("+1 treason" is much easier to see that "Assign 1 treason token to any player"). I'm tempted to make paste ups for the cards before I play again.
We'll see how it stands up to repeated playing, but for now I'm pleasantly surprised.
Luch won the game, and we had lots of laughs. This is not a game to take seriously. It could have been done better, it could have been done worse, but what we got was a fairly clever and enjoyable game of "Screw yer Neighbour"
Paranoia:(provisional) 7
Labels:
Area Control,
Card Games,
Domaine,
Paranoia,
Session,
Tikal
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
WAGS + Cards = Old School FUN!
We had a surprise request from Tili last week: Let's play cards. Not fancy Shmancy designer card games. Cards.
Always happy to indulge a craving, we gathered around the table for an evening of Hearts and Poker!
With 5 players, the character of Hearts changes a bit. It's very hard to shoot the moon, so it was rarely attempted (and never accomplished). Still, it was a fun bit of nostalgia (I used to play this a lot in high school).
Next up was Poker. We played for fun (Read: not for money) and took turns calling the game. While the others were mostly content calling standard poker variations (from the standard: This is how many cards you get, this is what's wild and this is how many times you get to drop cards to the fancier pre-set variations such as "Samurai" and "The King and his children" (I don't think I remembered that title quite right)). I did my best to come up with new, "exciting" and "original" variations such as "Squeeze the Weasel" and "Secrets of the Dead". Please note that the fact that the established variations worked much better than my homebrews is irrelevant. IRRELEVANT. We finished the night off with a few rounds of Texas Hold'em.
I love playing cards... I grew up playing 500, Kanasta, Hearts, Asshole, etc. Poker is not a game I have played very much, but it was a fun way to spend an evening. Texas Hold'Em, though, I just don't "get". To me, it just isn't very fun... I honestly don't understand how this became such a rage. They've eliminated card playing and replaced it with limited bluffing (the other versions have both... a much more interesting combination in my mind).
All in all, I had a great time. Tili should suggest games more often!
Always happy to indulge a craving, we gathered around the table for an evening of Hearts and Poker!
With 5 players, the character of Hearts changes a bit. It's very hard to shoot the moon, so it was rarely attempted (and never accomplished). Still, it was a fun bit of nostalgia (I used to play this a lot in high school).
Next up was Poker. We played for fun (Read: not for money) and took turns calling the game. While the others were mostly content calling standard poker variations (from the standard: This is how many cards you get, this is what's wild and this is how many times you get to drop cards to the fancier pre-set variations such as "Samurai" and "The King and his children" (I don't think I remembered that title quite right)). I did my best to come up with new, "exciting" and "original" variations such as "Squeeze the Weasel" and "Secrets of the Dead". Please note that the fact that the established variations worked much better than my homebrews is irrelevant. IRRELEVANT. We finished the night off with a few rounds of Texas Hold'em.
I love playing cards... I grew up playing 500, Kanasta, Hearts, Asshole, etc. Poker is not a game I have played very much, but it was a fun way to spend an evening. Texas Hold'Em, though, I just don't "get". To me, it just isn't very fun... I honestly don't understand how this became such a rage. They've eliminated card playing and replaced it with limited bluffing (the other versions have both... a much more interesting combination in my mind).
All in all, I had a great time. Tili should suggest games more often!
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Bright Lights, Big City
New Week.
2 new games.
Joined by our honorary Wagster, JayWowser, we took on Kozure's new copy of Power Grid. This is a top 5 game which had a reputation for fiddly rules but tight and enjoyable gameplay. How did it fare? Well, first off, we played a 6 player game where half the players had played a basic game and the other had never played. For this reason, our first full game took quite a long time (over 3 hours). Still, it turned out to be quite good.
Most of the criticisms regarding fiddly rules are valid. There are 3 rounds, and the rules change in each successive one, every turn has a lot of steps, there are lots of little pieces which all do different things and finally the is a lot of "book-keeping" type activites which SOMEONE playing the game needs to remember (ex: power plants getting cycled in or out of the game, resources being put back into circulation, etc). I remember thinking that this was one of those games which would play in under 1/4 of the time if it was turned into a computer game.
That being said, the game's got a lot going for it. For all their complexity, the mechanics do two things very well: 1) They create the illusion of a changing economy, a fluctuating market in fuel sources. 2) The players who are trailing have advantages against the leaders to keep them in the game. It's not terribly elegant, but it works.
The basics are simple enough:
1)Each player bids on power plants until everyone has bought one or passed.
2)Fuel is purchased for the power plants
3)Players build connections between cities
4)Players burn fuel to produce energy to those cities in order to generate money
The winner is the player who, once the requisit number of power plants have been built by any player, manages to power the most cities (and if that results in a tie) the one with the most money.
There is honestly too much going on in the game to decribe succinctly, but a few items deserve to be noted:
1) The fuel economy is represented by a chart indicating the cost of different fuels. The larger the available quantity of fuel, the cheaper it is. Different fuels power different power plant (coal, oil, garbage and uranium). In the beginning, coal is plentiful and cheap, but if everyone buys coal power plants it gets snapped up pretty quick and becomes expensive. In contrast, since garbage and uranium are initially expensive players are tempted to avoid the plants which use them as fuel. This seems to lead to a few players who have easy access to the fuel when it becomes cheap. Of course, everyone wants the wind generators, since they provide power without the need to purchase any fuel! for all the interlocking systems of the game, there is one they DON'T have which would seem to be a natural: Players who invest in a technology early gain no advantage or discount on future power plants of the same type.
2) The board is made up of cities which are eligible to receive power plants. In each phase from 1 to 3, the players can only have as many cities as the number of the current phase. This has the interesting effect of making the board alternately constricted and open as the game goes from phase to phase. Since the progression from phase to phase occurs differently each game, players must be flexible and think ahead in order to avoid being boxed in for a few turns. To keep things constricted, a game with fewer players uses a smaller portion of the board.
Interesting note: In a classy move, the board ships with two maps on a two sided board, U.S. AND Germany!
3) The winning conditions are counter-intuitive at first. The game ends once SOMEONE builds his/her 14th power plant (in a 6 player game). At the end of that turn, the player who was able to power the most of his/ her plants in the cities wins. Therefore, if the player who built the 14th plant first only has enough fuel to power 3 cities, any other player who manages to power more than that will win. More typically, what seems to happen is that a few players manage to make it to 14, but not all of them have reserved enough fuel to power all of them. If there are ties, the most remaining money wins.
In our game, we quickly discovered that the board feels very full, very fast. Our starting cities where all very close and I feared that my proximity to Tili and Kozure might do me in pretty early. I banked on claiming about 5 cities in my area, but my first plan was to secure an escape route for future growth in Eastern Germany. Sadly, turn order didn't go my way and Tili blocked up the escape route right away. I slowly put plants in the 5 cities nearby and then, when phase 2 came up, started claiming the second spots in the territory of my neighbour to the south: Kozure. Little did I know that JayWowser had plans to snap up all but 3 of them in one turn! (He was clearly playing a boom and bust game, doing very little for several turns and then exploding with big purchases once in a while). Having been outbid on the eco-plants by Tili, I resorted to focusing on coal. I managed to build a trio of plants which could power 14 cities quite early, and that proved to be instrumental later on... As other where busy bidding on plants to get to 14 in the last few rounds, I was able to spend my second last round just buying fuel for the plants, and my last round doing nothing but building my last cities and powering them (putting me in a very favorable financial position compared to the others, who were spending big bucks bidding on power plants). Shemp managed to also build plants in 14 cities on that last turn, but I had much more money in hand, giving me the win.
Luch spent, I think, the entire game in the "last player" turn order. This afforded him the opportunity to buy fuels first (making them cheaper), and build first (giving him a jump on prime locations). Unfortunatly, that strategy didn't pan out for him. Still, it seems that it could definitely work because the advantages are clearly there.
A few early notes on possible strategy:
1) The North West section of the Germany board, with many nearby cheap connections, really seems like the place to be.
2) Cycling your plants too many times gives diminishing returns. The plants are expensive, and cities progressively return less money (going from 1 to two cities gives a player 11 more electros, but going from 13 to 14 gives only 5 or so more).
3) Going last in the turn order can be a huge advantage, but it would likely have to be teamed up with a strategy of using coal or oil power plants (Because buying those first would always mean cheap fuel and cause other players to pay more). If the last place player is using eco plants or nuclear energy, his ability to go first isn't that useful, since he's not in competiton for fuel anyway.
Anyway, great game. Look forward to playing it again (I bet it will be much faster!)
Next up was Fairy Tale, a japanese card game brought to us my JayWowser.
I won't spend too much time describing this one... it's basically a set collecting game where players try to accumulate points by matching complementary cards, playing high scoring single cards and satisfying the condition on them or play cards which disrupt the other player's plans. The theme is that players are building a story, or something. The card art is quite nice in a Manga sort of way (although overly busy with symbols), but in the end the theme is quite thin... Which is okay because I though the game itself was really good.
The heart of the game is in the hand building... Each player is dealt 5 cards. They choose one and pass the rest to the left. Then they choose 1 card from the fours they were passed, and so on, until they have chosen five cards. Then they discard 2 cards and play the round with the remaining 3.
Players then choose 1 of their cards and reveal them simultaneously. Players check to see if any cards have global effects (such as the "Hunt" cards which immediately cancel any black cards just revealed, or the variety of cards which reveal or hide previously played cards). This continues until all three cards are played, and the whole thing (drafting of cards, etc) happens 4 times, for a toal of 12 cards layed.
At the end, each player counts up to see how many points they've made. Many cards are simply worth the amount printed on them. Others act as multipliers for themselves (if you have 1, it's worth 1 point. If you have 2, they are each worth 2. Etc) Others are "friends" of another card, and are worth 3 times as many of the "friend card" which you have managed to accumulate.
In the first of our two games, we didn't do too badly considering we didn't really grasp the way the cards worked just yet. Kozure won it, I think. The second game saw us all trying a few strategies, with the most impressive being Shemp's, who managed to get all but one of his baby dragons, resulting in 6x6 points=36. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that wasn't enought to win... My hand of "Friend" cards and individual points nudged slightly ahead of Kozure's version of the same.
All in all, a great filler game which only takes 20-30 mintues to play and was lots of fun. It's a shame it's such a hard one to find!
Anyway, JayWowser (if you are reading this) it was nice having you again, and we look forward to another!
Powergrid: 8.5
Fairy Tale:8
2 new games.
Joined by our honorary Wagster, JayWowser, we took on Kozure's new copy of Power Grid. This is a top 5 game which had a reputation for fiddly rules but tight and enjoyable gameplay. How did it fare? Well, first off, we played a 6 player game where half the players had played a basic game and the other had never played. For this reason, our first full game took quite a long time (over 3 hours). Still, it turned out to be quite good.
Most of the criticisms regarding fiddly rules are valid. There are 3 rounds, and the rules change in each successive one, every turn has a lot of steps, there are lots of little pieces which all do different things and finally the is a lot of "book-keeping" type activites which SOMEONE playing the game needs to remember (ex: power plants getting cycled in or out of the game, resources being put back into circulation, etc). I remember thinking that this was one of those games which would play in under 1/4 of the time if it was turned into a computer game.
That being said, the game's got a lot going for it. For all their complexity, the mechanics do two things very well: 1) They create the illusion of a changing economy, a fluctuating market in fuel sources. 2) The players who are trailing have advantages against the leaders to keep them in the game. It's not terribly elegant, but it works.
The basics are simple enough:
1)Each player bids on power plants until everyone has bought one or passed.
2)Fuel is purchased for the power plants
3)Players build connections between cities
4)Players burn fuel to produce energy to those cities in order to generate money
The winner is the player who, once the requisit number of power plants have been built by any player, manages to power the most cities (and if that results in a tie) the one with the most money.
There is honestly too much going on in the game to decribe succinctly, but a few items deserve to be noted:
1) The fuel economy is represented by a chart indicating the cost of different fuels. The larger the available quantity of fuel, the cheaper it is. Different fuels power different power plant (coal, oil, garbage and uranium). In the beginning, coal is plentiful and cheap, but if everyone buys coal power plants it gets snapped up pretty quick and becomes expensive. In contrast, since garbage and uranium are initially expensive players are tempted to avoid the plants which use them as fuel. This seems to lead to a few players who have easy access to the fuel when it becomes cheap. Of course, everyone wants the wind generators, since they provide power without the need to purchase any fuel! for all the interlocking systems of the game, there is one they DON'T have which would seem to be a natural: Players who invest in a technology early gain no advantage or discount on future power plants of the same type.
2) The board is made up of cities which are eligible to receive power plants. In each phase from 1 to 3, the players can only have as many cities as the number of the current phase. This has the interesting effect of making the board alternately constricted and open as the game goes from phase to phase. Since the progression from phase to phase occurs differently each game, players must be flexible and think ahead in order to avoid being boxed in for a few turns. To keep things constricted, a game with fewer players uses a smaller portion of the board.
Interesting note: In a classy move, the board ships with two maps on a two sided board, U.S. AND Germany!
3) The winning conditions are counter-intuitive at first. The game ends once SOMEONE builds his/her 14th power plant (in a 6 player game). At the end of that turn, the player who was able to power the most of his/ her plants in the cities wins. Therefore, if the player who built the 14th plant first only has enough fuel to power 3 cities, any other player who manages to power more than that will win. More typically, what seems to happen is that a few players manage to make it to 14, but not all of them have reserved enough fuel to power all of them. If there are ties, the most remaining money wins.
In our game, we quickly discovered that the board feels very full, very fast. Our starting cities where all very close and I feared that my proximity to Tili and Kozure might do me in pretty early. I banked on claiming about 5 cities in my area, but my first plan was to secure an escape route for future growth in Eastern Germany. Sadly, turn order didn't go my way and Tili blocked up the escape route right away. I slowly put plants in the 5 cities nearby and then, when phase 2 came up, started claiming the second spots in the territory of my neighbour to the south: Kozure. Little did I know that JayWowser had plans to snap up all but 3 of them in one turn! (He was clearly playing a boom and bust game, doing very little for several turns and then exploding with big purchases once in a while). Having been outbid on the eco-plants by Tili, I resorted to focusing on coal. I managed to build a trio of plants which could power 14 cities quite early, and that proved to be instrumental later on... As other where busy bidding on plants to get to 14 in the last few rounds, I was able to spend my second last round just buying fuel for the plants, and my last round doing nothing but building my last cities and powering them (putting me in a very favorable financial position compared to the others, who were spending big bucks bidding on power plants). Shemp managed to also build plants in 14 cities on that last turn, but I had much more money in hand, giving me the win.
Luch spent, I think, the entire game in the "last player" turn order. This afforded him the opportunity to buy fuels first (making them cheaper), and build first (giving him a jump on prime locations). Unfortunatly, that strategy didn't pan out for him. Still, it seems that it could definitely work because the advantages are clearly there.
A few early notes on possible strategy:
1) The North West section of the Germany board, with many nearby cheap connections, really seems like the place to be.
2) Cycling your plants too many times gives diminishing returns. The plants are expensive, and cities progressively return less money (going from 1 to two cities gives a player 11 more electros, but going from 13 to 14 gives only 5 or so more).
3) Going last in the turn order can be a huge advantage, but it would likely have to be teamed up with a strategy of using coal or oil power plants (Because buying those first would always mean cheap fuel and cause other players to pay more). If the last place player is using eco plants or nuclear energy, his ability to go first isn't that useful, since he's not in competiton for fuel anyway.
Anyway, great game. Look forward to playing it again (I bet it will be much faster!)
Next up was Fairy Tale, a japanese card game brought to us my JayWowser.
I won't spend too much time describing this one... it's basically a set collecting game where players try to accumulate points by matching complementary cards, playing high scoring single cards and satisfying the condition on them or play cards which disrupt the other player's plans. The theme is that players are building a story, or something. The card art is quite nice in a Manga sort of way (although overly busy with symbols), but in the end the theme is quite thin... Which is okay because I though the game itself was really good.
The heart of the game is in the hand building... Each player is dealt 5 cards. They choose one and pass the rest to the left. Then they choose 1 card from the fours they were passed, and so on, until they have chosen five cards. Then they discard 2 cards and play the round with the remaining 3.
Players then choose 1 of their cards and reveal them simultaneously. Players check to see if any cards have global effects (such as the "Hunt" cards which immediately cancel any black cards just revealed, or the variety of cards which reveal or hide previously played cards). This continues until all three cards are played, and the whole thing (drafting of cards, etc) happens 4 times, for a toal of 12 cards layed.
At the end, each player counts up to see how many points they've made. Many cards are simply worth the amount printed on them. Others act as multipliers for themselves (if you have 1, it's worth 1 point. If you have 2, they are each worth 2. Etc) Others are "friends" of another card, and are worth 3 times as many of the "friend card" which you have managed to accumulate.
In the first of our two games, we didn't do too badly considering we didn't really grasp the way the cards worked just yet. Kozure won it, I think. The second game saw us all trying a few strategies, with the most impressive being Shemp's, who managed to get all but one of his baby dragons, resulting in 6x6 points=36. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that wasn't enought to win... My hand of "Friend" cards and individual points nudged slightly ahead of Kozure's version of the same.
All in all, a great filler game which only takes 20-30 mintues to play and was lots of fun. It's a shame it's such a hard one to find!
Anyway, JayWowser (if you are reading this) it was nice having you again, and we look forward to another!
Powergrid: 8.5
Fairy Tale:8
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Big Drunken Tiger Kickboxer : Fatal Killer
It's a semi random title, and although it was actually the name of our hand of "Kung Fu Samurai", it appropriately sums up the theme of the evening: Frankenstein creations.
The bulk of the evening was spent playing an unholy union of HeroClix and Robo Rally (RoboClix? HeroRally?). Essesntially, we formed teams, as usual, but played on the RoboRally boards. To make up for the relative freedom of movement alloed to us by ditching the programming cards, we made the course pretty long... 4 boards, start flag int he center and the next 4 flags in the corners (in such a way that the board needed to be crossed diagonally between flags). In RoboRally, that would be a recipe for a 16 hour game, in Robo-Clix (Henceforth christened) it took about 1 1/2. Since I'm a HeroClix dummy (I'm not a comic book fan, and therefore can't really tell the superheros apart, or know what they are supposed to do), I picked my team based on cool figurines. I wound up with Iceman, Doc Oc and a sniper. I don't really recall the other teams that well, but here goes: Luch had Blade, Daredevil and a blue/orange guy with a gun; Kozure had Captain America, Storm and another girl, Shemp had Jeanne Gray, Toad and Rogue.
Either way, random beat out knowledgeable this night, as I somehow cruised to victory. Doc Oc seems to be the ultimate RoboClix character, since his combination of leadership (which potentially allows a second action), Willpower (which allows pushing without damage) and climbing (which allows him to break away without rolling, and otherwise ignore character and terrain hindrances) proved extremely powerful. Iceman, with his ability to put up barriers, could also have been very useful... (Side note: My original plan was to put up barriers around the flags and have Doc Oc climb in and out on successive actions... I wasn't really able to get the timing right. Oh, and Ice Man died).
Other MVPs:
Kozure's Captain America, since he was in second place
Shemp's Jeanne Gray, for throwing many a character into a pit.
Luch's Blade, for taking a lickin' and keepin' on tickin'
All in all, a fun game. It improves on HeroClix by making the terrain an important feature, and for giving direction to an otherwise random fight-fest. I'm still a little uncomfortable with the rules (esp. the move OR fight rule, which gives an ENORMOUS advantage to the few characters who can do both... like the magneto clan). Also, I realized that if I had been killed, I would have been twiddling my thumbs for an hour or so until the game ended (since everyone else had pretty much abandoned chasing the flag in order to take me down). I think that Kozure's suggestion was a good one: Take the team to 200 points, so that more actions can be undertaken concurrently (chase the flag AND kill the leader).
Next up was Kung-Fu Samurai, a silly card game involving making a movie and sending your protagonists and antagonists to fight the characters of other movies... or something. Either way, the game was fun (and funny). This one is firmly entrenched in the Star Munchkin/ Chez Geek "play to have a good time" type game. Strategy is pretty much nil, it's mostly about having a chuckle at the cards and seeing how the whole thing plays out (oh yeah, and you get to make up a kung fu movie title at the beginning, too!). Draw cards, fortify yourself, screw yer neighbour, end your turn. Draw cards, fortify yourself, screw yer neighbour, end your turn. That type of thing. More than Star Munchkin or Chez Geek, there is quite a bit of text to read, and more cards in your hand each turn, which slows things down a bit more than the others. It's probably my least favorite of the three, but still fun for what it is.
RoboClix: 6.5
Kung Fu Samurai: 5.5
The bulk of the evening was spent playing an unholy union of HeroClix and Robo Rally (RoboClix? HeroRally?). Essesntially, we formed teams, as usual, but played on the RoboRally boards. To make up for the relative freedom of movement alloed to us by ditching the programming cards, we made the course pretty long... 4 boards, start flag int he center and the next 4 flags in the corners (in such a way that the board needed to be crossed diagonally between flags). In RoboRally, that would be a recipe for a 16 hour game, in Robo-Clix (Henceforth christened) it took about 1 1/2. Since I'm a HeroClix dummy (I'm not a comic book fan, and therefore can't really tell the superheros apart, or know what they are supposed to do), I picked my team based on cool figurines. I wound up with Iceman, Doc Oc and a sniper. I don't really recall the other teams that well, but here goes: Luch had Blade, Daredevil and a blue/orange guy with a gun; Kozure had Captain America, Storm and another girl, Shemp had Jeanne Gray, Toad and Rogue.
Either way, random beat out knowledgeable this night, as I somehow cruised to victory. Doc Oc seems to be the ultimate RoboClix character, since his combination of leadership (which potentially allows a second action), Willpower (which allows pushing without damage) and climbing (which allows him to break away without rolling, and otherwise ignore character and terrain hindrances) proved extremely powerful. Iceman, with his ability to put up barriers, could also have been very useful... (Side note: My original plan was to put up barriers around the flags and have Doc Oc climb in and out on successive actions... I wasn't really able to get the timing right. Oh, and Ice Man died).
Other MVPs:
Kozure's Captain America, since he was in second place
Shemp's Jeanne Gray, for throwing many a character into a pit.
Luch's Blade, for taking a lickin' and keepin' on tickin'
All in all, a fun game. It improves on HeroClix by making the terrain an important feature, and for giving direction to an otherwise random fight-fest. I'm still a little uncomfortable with the rules (esp. the move OR fight rule, which gives an ENORMOUS advantage to the few characters who can do both... like the magneto clan). Also, I realized that if I had been killed, I would have been twiddling my thumbs for an hour or so until the game ended (since everyone else had pretty much abandoned chasing the flag in order to take me down). I think that Kozure's suggestion was a good one: Take the team to 200 points, so that more actions can be undertaken concurrently (chase the flag AND kill the leader).
Next up was Kung-Fu Samurai, a silly card game involving making a movie and sending your protagonists and antagonists to fight the characters of other movies... or something. Either way, the game was fun (and funny). This one is firmly entrenched in the Star Munchkin/ Chez Geek "play to have a good time" type game. Strategy is pretty much nil, it's mostly about having a chuckle at the cards and seeing how the whole thing plays out (oh yeah, and you get to make up a kung fu movie title at the beginning, too!). Draw cards, fortify yourself, screw yer neighbour, end your turn. Draw cards, fortify yourself, screw yer neighbour, end your turn. That type of thing. More than Star Munchkin or Chez Geek, there is quite a bit of text to read, and more cards in your hand each turn, which slows things down a bit more than the others. It's probably my least favorite of the three, but still fun for what it is.
RoboClix: 6.5
Kung Fu Samurai: 5.5
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