Where...are...you? (Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Fury of Dracula, To Court the King)

Shemp and Bharmer were out this week, but in an email to us Shemp mentioned we should take this occasion to play Lord of the Rings: Sauron and Clue: The Great Museum Caper, since he hates them and he won't be there. I wanted to play Fury of Dracula, so I couldn't completely satisfy his request, but 1 out of 2 ain't bad, right?

Clue: The Great Museum Caper

I'm not sure why I keep bringing this one out, because it just doesn't seem to work. There's a part of me that really wants this to be a really good casual-friendly game (as it's described by many on BGG), but each session ends the same way... the thief didn't have a chance. I thought that playing with 3 players would be better balanced than with 4, and it was, but not probably enough. In our two games, the thief was caught easily before there was much danger of a successful escape with 3 paintings. Maybe rolling d6 for the detectives is too much or maybe the layout of the board is too restrictive. Fortunately (unfortunately ?), I got another glimmer of hope during the final few moves of my turn as the thief which will probably cause me to give it yet another go: I don't think I"ve been capitalising enough on the order of movement of the detectives. In other words, If I move between each detective's turn I am much safer running towards a player that just moved because I will get to move once or twice before that player gets another turn. I'm pretty sure I've been letting the location of the pawns and my objectives dictate my move, and possibly the game would be easier if the thief took greater advantage of the timing aspect.

Still, it's so easy to get backed into a corner by the detectives... I'll probably give it one last try at some point and then trade it away.

Fury of Dracula

Another game of hidden movement, but this one far more successful in design. Fury of Dracula is a game I really enjoy as a change of pace. It represents, to me, many of the great things "Ameritrash" games bring to the table (well integrated theme, mostly) but streamlined with eurogame sensibilities to make it a manageable and reasonably smooth experience.

Dracula was played by Kozure this time, so this was my first game ever on the hunters' side. Luch had Lord Godalming and Seward. I had Van Helsing and Mina. Kozure played an excellent game of cat and mouse, starting out in the east and snaking around us while convincing us that he was elsewhere (in fact, a lucky card draw revealed that his starting location was right next to us, and yet he managed to evade us and remain hidden most of the game). A well armed Van Helsing did manage to find and attack the count in Munich and inflict enormous damage with his stake and sacred bullets but he fell a few points short of sealing the deal... Dracula escaped and a hapless Mina soon wandered into a well protected catacomb where she died and gave Kozure the victory.

I'm curious how many Dracula victories are directly a result of Mina's death. Both of ours have been.

The reason I think this game succeeds so well is that the rules are fairly streamlined and the amount of dice rolling and modifiers which need to be kept track of a kept to a minimum. Also, the "hidden character" works because finding it is not the only goal... you also have to kill it. This means that the tension inherent in trying to pin down the count (or in evading the characters, if you're Dracula) doesn't operate in a straight line. You may have to find, fight and find again several times over the course of the game. I like it because it avoids the *cheap victory* feeling you get in Clue:TGMC (for example) when you accidentally land on the thief and win the game. My only complaint is that it takes too much space on the table for all the bits and character cards, that the game runs a little too long, and that the combat system is a little clunky (all the separate decks, the downtime it creates, the fruitless "loops" which can occur in combat). I'm not sure what system could have improved on these points without sacrificing flavor, but it would be interesting to come up with one.

To Court the King

Luch left us, so me and Kozure tried out To Court the King, a dice rolling game which seems to try to mash together Yahtzee and (insert random renaissance Italy themed euro... Louis XIV? Princes of Florence?).

Game play is simple enough. Roll three dice, set at least one aside, and roll again until all dice have been set aside. According to the result of the rolls (a pair, a full house, a straight), you may be able to purchase a card which will give you a special power towards all your subsequent rolls. Maybe you'll be able to roll and additional die, set the value of one of your dice, re-roll a die, etc, etc. The first player to roll 7 of a kind ends the game and then a final roll-off determines the winner.

Deciding which character cards to try to purchase, and then how to best use their powers, is fairly fun. I imagine for more than 3 players the downtime might get too high, and there is the real potential that the best choice will eventually become too easy to pick out, but it will take more games to know for sure. I wish there was a bit more tension in the choices, however. It would have been nice, for example, if collecting 1s somehow yielded powerful cards to offset the risk of going after such a weak suit. As it is, 6s are always better than 3s or 1s. Higher totals always win. Different viable strategies might have made it more engaging.

I can't really say that it grabbed me too much, but it certainly wasn't bad (I guess I'm just not sure in what circumstances I'd want to play it in the future... it's got too much going on for non-gamers, it's too long for filler and too random for a serious game). I think I'll prbably trade it sooner rather than later.

In the game we played, I made it to seven of a kind first, but the queen it gave me was not enough to let me win the game. Kozure took it with 8 (or 9?) of a kind.

Ouch (Nexus Ops, Ingenious, Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Jungle Speed + Expansion)

This post is quite late. The evening in question is Wednesday, September 28th (I wasn't around this week. From the emails, it's possible there was no gaming at all in my absence)

I chose to play the new games I received at the recent math trade (Nexus Ops, Ingenious and Jungle Speed + Expansion), along with one I received at the previous one (Clue: The Great Museum Caper).

Nexus Ops

Nexus Ops is a game from Avalon Hill's recent attempt to make a comeback in boardgaming. While the line in general didn't see much success (or so I hear), Nexus Ops was one of only two games to get any sort of positive recognition (the other was Vegas Showdown). Billed as a sort of "Risk done right", I thought it might fill a niche in my collection.

The concept is a little forced: It's the future and a new planet has been discovered which seems to be rich in Rubium. Each player represents a corporation which wants to mine the planet for all it's worth. To this end, it sends in soldiers and enlists creatures on the planet to help. In practice, it's an excuse to get a bunch of armies together and fight.

The board consists of a number of hexogonal tiles, layed in a circular pattern just like Settlers of Catan, except that the center is an elevated platform. Each player has a base at one edge where units are deployed. After the initial setup, the game consists purely of deploying units, fighting and collecting income based on the mines the player controls at the end of a turn. It sounds simple, and it is, but the designers have slipped in there a few nice ideas which make this game work where others might have failed:

1) The victory condition is acheiving 12 victory points. Victory points are almost exclusively gained by winning battles. This small decision ensures that the game keeps moving and never results in turtling.

2) Players gain secret missions at the end of every turn. These are normally to win a battle in a certain place, with a certain unit or under certain conditions. Players will normally alter their play to attempt to satisfy the conditions, which allows the game to feel a little less repetitive than it otherwise would.

3) If a player wins a battle, he/she is allowed to play mission cards to gain victory points. However, if this occurs the losing player gets to draw an "energize" card, which will grant him an advantage in the future (such as rolling additional dice, destroying units, etc). This is a nice, simple way to keep losing players in the running.

4) The creatures seem well balanced. The expensive ones are worth more, due to the powers they get and their superior ability in battle. Still, they are risky because a well coordinated attack by several smaller units. Even with lots of money, it's never obvious which units a player should buy.

I had fun with Nexus Ops. Though the overall visual impression of the game is ridiculously tacky, the component quality is generally quite good (the only excpetion would be the cardboard center obelisk, which seems too cheap for the rest of the game). The brightly coloured creatures are kinda cool, though in a few instances they could have been better differentiated.

I think it will do just fine in my collection... there for those sessions were I just want to beat stuff up.

Session Report

Not knowing how to play the game, I opened with just 2 units... a soldier and a rock spider. I discovered another rock spider but was unable to man any of my starting mines (leaving me with little income for the next turn). Having observed the weakness of my opening move, the other players purchased more cheaper units and spread out while keeping people behind to generate income. A few turns in, things were looking grim. Shemp, Luch and Kozure had lots of units on the board... my only saving grace was that I managed to get 2 rock spiders on the monolith and enjoyed the energize card bonus for many rounds before the others got fed up with exploring the board and purchasing reinforcements. Kozure started moving into my home base and I could do very little to fight back (Kozure was the USSR of this game, with nearly half the board under his control). Luch was taking the lion's share of the VPs by succesfully battling Shemp and Kozure. My stash of cards was difficult to use because I had so few units, but I managed to focus on a few easy battles and accumulated a pretty good score considering. Shemp couldn't roll a winning die to save his life, and Kozure wasn't fighting very much at all which meant his VP total didn't really reflect his dominance of so much territory.

Entering what was our last round, Luch and I were both in a position to potentially win on our turns. Difference was, I needed to get lucky, and he was so strong that it was almost inconceivable that he would'nt win.

He did.

Ingenious

Ingenious is a kind of variant on dominos which also reminds me of Blokus for it's relative simplicity. There's not much to it (you place a tile which has two symbols on it and score points according to how well it matches with what's already on the board) but the Tigris and Euphrates style scoring and the fact that it plays well with 2, 3 or 4 players make it a much better game in my opinion (I also like Blokus, but the base set only really plays well with 4).

I think everyone liked it, but to be fair I mostly got this one to play with non-gamers at home.

Clue: The Great Museum Caper

This was a game I picked up at the last math trade. When we played it, it seemed like fun but I couldn't understand how it was possible for the thief to win. I almost traded it away at this math trade because the box is SO big, and the game seemed SO unbalanced, that I figured it wouldn't get much play. Having failed to trade it, I figured I'd give it another shot.

The balance seemed even worse than before. Utterly impossible, in fact. I've checked BGG, I can't see anything we are doing wrong. I'm guessing that 2-3 players would work better, but I'm not sure I'll ever find out...

(oh, and Shemp said at the end of the game that he couldn't decide whether he would rate this above or below Lord of the Rings: Sauron. Considering how much he hates that game, I was quite surprised. Sure, it's not working very well...but it's not a game that stands out enough that it would even occur to me that it would be worthy of hating. And this from a guy who likes Scotland Yard, so I thought he might really go for this)

Back to the trade pile.

Jungle Speed + Expansion

Not much to say, except that if you've ever played this before and thought that it made your head hurt... you ain't seen nothing yet. The new cards provided are not all new patterns. They are further variations on the existing ones! There are subtle changes which are not easy to process, and the whole thing is very headache inducing.

I LOVE it.

(note: I don't recommend playing with the full deck with 4 people. Our game did end (I won), but it could have gone on for a long time. )

A Toronto Area Math Trade Tribute Session (Mr. Jack/ LOTR: Confrontation, Clue: The Great Museum Caper, Palazzo)

I recently participated in a Toronto Area Math trade. First off, i'd like to thank Willy the Snitch and Belash for organizing it, and for all the participants for making it a successful trade.

I wound up with quite a few traded games, and decided to make this evening my opportunity to give a few a whirl.

Mr. Jack and LOTR: Confrontation

Luch and I started off by playing Mr. Jack while Bharmer and Kozure played LOTR: Confrontation. The idea was to give everyone an opportunity to play both sides, as they are asymmetrical games. In practice, it didn't work out due to the different lengths of the games. In the end, Luch and I played 3 games of Mr. Jack and one very quick game of LOTR. Bharmer and Kozure played a single game of each.

Mr. Jack was a very interesting experience. The game features 8 characters wandering the streets of whitechapel trying to find Jack the Ripper. The catch is that one of them IS Jack. Predictably, one player plays Mr. Jack and his/her goal is to escape the neighbourhood or at least avoid getting caught for 8 rounds. The other player is trying to figure out which character is Mr. Jack and then to nab him.

8 cards represent the 8 characters, and on the first round 4 of the 8 cards are placed face up. The players take turns choosing an available card and controlling that character. In the second round, the second set of 4 are revealed... and so on. The deduction mechanic revolves around light. At the end of each round, the good player asks if Mr. Jack is in the light (near a lit lamp post or beside another character). If yes, all the characters which are "in the shadows" are eliminated as suspects. If no, the opposite happens. In this way, the good character will try to eventually narrow down the suspects.

Having read the rules, I didn't understand how Mr. Jack could be prevented from winning every time. How hard could it be to simply escape the neighborhood? I was wondering if it would be a case similar to the military victory in Lord of the Rings Friends and Foes, where you simply ignore that potential victory condition because it makes the game too easy. I shouldn't have worried... winning according to ANY victory conditions as Mr. Jack is very hard.

Why? Well, first of all the card selection mechanic prevents any individual character from moving more than 4 times in the entire game. Also, since the order in which the characters are chosen varies from round to round, there is no garantee that Mr. Jack will actually get to play his own character! Most difficult (and clever) of all: the rules stipulate that Mr. Jack can only exit the board if he finished the last round "in the shadows"... problem is the starting board heavily favours gathering in the light.

Luch and I alternated as Mr. Jack in our two first games. We were both terrible in that role, getting caught rather easily by the fourth round. Lucky for me, in my second turn as the bad guy I managed to avoid detection until the end. Still, it was extremely close as Luch was forced to make a 50-50 guess on his last turn, and guessed wrong.

I had a good time. It's a rather clever game of suspect elimination and positioning, though I'd hesitate to call it a "deduction" game. It's short, with most of our games lasting between 15-25 minutes. One note regarding the components... they are of very high quality and the art is very nice, but the package as a whole is substantially undone by the fact that it's entirely inapropriate to the grim theme: who decides to make a game about catching a serial killer in such a cartoony aesthetic? Seriously, the cat and mouse search comes through very well but the Jack the Ripper theme is completely lost. Oh well, can't have everything.

Clue: The Great museum Caper

Next up, we played Clue: The Great Museume Caper. This is an old game from the early '90s which bears very little resemblance to it's namesake other than the theme. Inside one of the most enormous boxes in my collection, you'll find a 3D map of a mansion. Inside the mansion, the up to 3 players place their pawns, the owner's prized paintings and several security cameras. Meanwhile, one player plays the "thief" who runs around the mansion in secret trying to snatch as many paintings as possible without getting caught (using hidden movement). The detectives will take turns moving and asking questions like "can camera 3 see you?" "Can my pawn see you?" "Are you in the red room?" in order to locate the thief. Ultimately, the biggest clue the thief will leave is that one turn after he has stolen a painting, it is removed from the board. Thus, the detectives know roughly where the thief is, but not exactly. Can the thief slip through the detective's fingers and attempt to get another painting? Or should he bail and try to flee the mansion through an unlocked door or window?

You know what? This was a fun game. It's extremely short... short enough that every player can have a turn as the thief in the amount of time a regular game would take. Of course, the games might take longer if anyone could avoid getting caught as the thief! Of the 4 of us, one didn't get any paintings, 2 snatched one painting and I managed to get two before getting caught (though they were side by side, so it's essentially no better than the others). None of of us managed to get the minimum three paintings we needed before attempting an escape. Since there are roughly 10 paintings on the board, I was originally thinking that the fun would be in seeing if HOW MANY of the paintings the thief would steal, in pushing our luck and sneaking under the detective's noses. Now, I'd be happy just to grab the 3 and get out! I do suspect we played one rule wrong: I think that if the thief simply crosses a security camera it should be deactivated. Either way, we'll see if experience with the game leads to more thief victories.

Most memorable moment: Bharmer location is found out on the first turn by a very lucky guess by Luch! To Bharmer's credit, he still managed to elude us for quite some time after that.

Oh, and the 3D aspect of the board is purely an aesthetic choice which has no impact on the gameplay (though it has a significant impact on my game closet)

Palazzo

We finished up with a game of Palazzo. Palazzo is a small box ALEA game by Reiner Knizia, which involves building beautiful buildings in Florence (I think).

Players will, through various mechanics, attempt to build tall buildings with as amny doors and windows as possible. Buildings entirely constructed of a single material are worth more points, but are harder to build. Small buildings count against the player, so it's crucial not to bite off more than you can chew.

In my first playing of the game, I bit off more than I can chew.

Things were going well at first. I had two three storey single material palazzos going. however, I kept running out of money and I kept having to use the currency option (which gives me AND the other players money). I'm guessing that my actions kept the others afloat. Then, heading into the final rounds, I made a very unwise purchase which resulted in a minor benefit to one of my palazzos and forced me to start two more single storey palazzos (with level 5 tiles!!!). I followed this unwise move with a another similarly unwise purchase, and found myself nearing the end with several negative scoring buildings. Bharmer, on the other hand, had a very tall, very windowed, very stucco building which gave him lots of points and won him the game.

Palazzo has got a lot of the eurogames checklist covered: It's got auctions, controlled luck, set collection, short playing time, and little direct interaction. It's also got enough odd little rules (which I suspect are thrown in as balancing mechanisms), that make the game a bit of a chore to explain (such as the way monies of different currencies can be combined, or the fact that auctions turn into a simple distribution of tiles when the stack exceeds 4 tiles). Also, as Luch pointed out the board components are both uninspired AND of questionable design (why the 5 pieces if they don't scale according to the number of players?). It all comes together into a game which works and is pleasant enough, but didn't really excite me either. I think I like it better than the deeply odd Tower of babel, which I traded it for, so at least there's that. It's also approachable enough that it might make a good game to introduce players to this type of game.