You don't see the fast trolls too often (Dungeon Twister, Roma x3, Dvonn)

Work and life schedules are getting busier and busier... Kozure wasn't able to join us this week and I've been out for a few weeks myself. Shemp and I convened for an evening of two player games, determined to keep the WAGS torch burning.

Dungeon Twister

We started with Dungeon Twister, using the basic tiles and characters. Very early on in the game, the tile at Shemp's end of the board was revealed showing my troll and the speed potion. An unusually speedy troll sprinted to the finish line one turn later. Otherwise, it was fairly tit for tat as the game progressed... Shemp scoring a point, then me scoring a point. Then, suddenly, Shemp was in position to win because he was able to get the two points he needed. I strategized and came up with a way to frustrate his plan, but alas a third way was open to him to score the last point he needed and that was the game (He had wounded a character previously and so he went and finished him off). Score 1 for Shemp, 0 for Easy.

Roma

I've been really enjoying Stephen Feld's games recently (Macao and In the Year of the Dragon), and thought I'd look into some of his back catalogue. Roma seemed like an interesting two player game so I gave it a shot. Actually, I meant to purchase Arena: Roma 2, but somehow I got the wrong one. Don't ask.

Roma is a short and relatively simple card game that relies on rolling dice to activate cards. Players start with 10 VP and the game ends when a player's VPs run out or when the central pool runs out. This leads to two distinctly different strategies... run the other player down or try to score points for yourself.

In our game, the first 3/4 of the game is about avoiding bankruptcy and staying afloat with VPs. This goes on until players start getting forums (the main bug VP earners) and then it's a race to finish the VP supply.

As with the other Feld games I've played, the theme is weak and weakly implemented but the gameplay is interesting and fun. It seems like luck plays a huge role in the game but clever play can definitely help you change your fortunes.

We played three times, and I lost all three. In the last game, I was pleased to have set up a combination between the Forum and the Crane... If I could activate the crane, I could move the Forum to whatever numbers I had rolled and score VPs easily. It was a good move, but clearly not enough! It's a really good game, and judging from Shemp's enthusiasm I'm betting we'll see it again.

Shemp 4, Easy 0
Dvonn

I discovered that I am missing a regular Dvonn piece from my set. Luckily, a piece of checkers worked reasonably well.

We set up randomly and got going. I felt like I was playing well, but when it was all said and done Shemp and I were perfectly tied! Little known fact:There is no tie-breaker rule in Dvonn.

So, no wins for me tonight. Oh well!

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

A little late, but here it is.

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

Dungeon Twister

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

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

Carcassonne: The City

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

Mr. Jack

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

We Hates it, My Precious... We HATES it.

In the blog entry below this one, Agent Easy mentions some games which he indicates that I dislike. I should clarify that I don't really dislike Carcassonne; I just don't feel it offers much challenge, strategically or tactically, once you've played it often enough. I started this post as a comment in response to that post, but I realized it could be of more value as an actual entry.

Since challenge is part of the fun for me in boardgaming, I don't specifically choose Carcassonne when picking for WAGS; however, I will definitely hold onto it for playing with my kids as they grow up. Once they're past... I dunno... eight or so, I'll probably trade it or give it to a relative's family with school-age children.

I can't really think of any games that I hate off-hand.

What I can do is list games which I don't look forward to playing, but often enjoy while actually playing (I'll call them "Daunting Games"), and then games which I neither look forward to and don't particularly enjoy ("Onerous Games").

I should be very clear that just because I list a game as "Daunting", doesn't mean that I hate it, just that I tend not to want to pick it personally, especially for WAGS. Sometimes they are actually games that I feel I should play (because they are good games or because they would improve my strategic abilities) but just don't feel like playing.

Daunting Games (Don't Look Forward to, Do enjoy playing - generally)

• El Grande
• Tigris and Euphrates
• Age of Steam
• Paths of Glory
• Advanced Squad Leader
• Dungeon Twister
• OCS-series wargames (eg. Burma)
• Diplomacy
• Empire of the Sun
  

Onerous Games (Don't Look Forward To, Don't Enjoy Playing - generally)

• Yinsh (... and Dvonn, and other abstracts in this line) - too abstract
  
• Maharajah - can't seem to win against Bharmer. (I kid... but I don't like this game)
  
• Bohnanza - random, tedious, negotiation-heavy
  
• Atlantic Star - dry, theme is badly suited and counter-intuitive
  
• Phoenicia - major run-away leader issues
  
• Kill Doctor Lucky - kill the leader, almost exclusively
  
• Naval Battles - kill the leader, almost exclusively
  
• 1856 - complex, fiddly, overlong
  
• Aladdin's Dragons - random, some cards overpowered to the point of game-breaking
  
• Blue Moon City - ugly, strange theme. actually a decent game, but theme and appearance kill it for me.
  
• Mille Bornes - random, overlong, kill the leader issues.
  
• Fluxx - generally, not enough game, not enough challenge, kill the leader issues
  
• Air War - way too fiddly/complex for the sort of action it purports to try to evoke.
  
• EastFront - strategically too much to consider
  
• Space Alert - random, too easily foiled, crew feel like moronic automatons
  

Note to Agent Easy: I know you don't take it personally that I dislike a number of games that you own - the only real contributing factor is that you own a lot of games and I'm bound to dislike some of them.

Looking through the worst ranked games at BGG, I can't really find too many I would refuse to play with their age group (for example, though I wouldn't play Candyland or Hungry Hungry Hippos with adults, I wouldn't mind playing it with kids)

Some games I just won't play willingly for one reason or another:

Doctor Who: CCG, which I don't really hate... more just feel sorry for. It's just baaaad. Bad art, bad mechanics, bad gameplay.

Lone Wolf and Cub: This game is random, too tough at times and too easy at others, and downright broken in combat. I dislike it additionally because its theme is one I particularly like and they went and made a crappy game of it.

Dante's Inferno: Overlong, fiddly and boring.

Zombies!!!: Overlong and wastes the theme.

Chainsaw Warrior: Overlong, virtually no significant decisions, too difficult. Feels futile.

Mastermind: I have no interest in playing this game. For some reason, the logic of it (simple as I understand it to be) goes off like a bomb in my head and leaves me with frustration headache. One day I will sit down and figure out why I have so much trouble with it... bad mental wiring for that sort of thinking, I guess.

Finally, there is one special "dislike" category that is pretty specific, games which I enjoy playing but really dislike the artwork. For lack of a more precise term, I call them "Ugly but Lovable Games".

Ugly but Lovable Games

• Glory to Rome
• Galaxy Trucker
• Ideology

I like playing these games but every time I do, I find myself wincing at the artwork or components. Glory to Rome is especially, especially painful to me as it is a really fun game otherwise.

Then there are games which are just... plain... ugly. Neither enjoyable (to me) nor attractive.

Just Plain Ugly Games

• Blue Moon City

Anyhow... there are movies (Pearl Harbour, Space Buddies) and TV shows (almost any reality show) which I hate, but I haven't actually played a board game that I hate. Probably because I've avoided playing games which I anticipated hating (most TV-themed board games).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled smiles-and-sunshine-filled WAGS postings.

Potluck! (Yspahan, Dungeon Twister, Louis XIV, Jungle Speed) 8169

I had everyone bring a game they owned tonight.

Yspahan

Yspahan is a game I'd heard much about recently, but what I heard hadn't intrigued me very much. Having played it, I'm happy Bharmer took the plunge... it's a very good game.

It's a game about trading in the middle east, but the theme is thinly applied. This falls squarely in the category of games where theme could be just about anything (not to imply that the theme isn't appropriate or welcome, just that it's somewhat irrelevant). Really, it's just one in a long line of euros where the goal is to get as many victory points as possible by managing your resources and making tough choices along the way. What sets this game apart for me (after one play, mind you) is that there seems to be several legitimate avenues to success and the level and type of confrontation feels just about perfect. All this, and the game is very short at 45min. to an hour!

Each turn. players must choose between claiming souks for points, building buildings (for points and special powers), claiming spots on the "camel track" and gaining money or camels (a form of currency in the game). One of the most interesting aspecs of the game is the dice mechanic which generates these choices: the starting player rolls eight dice. The dice are then spread on a board with 6 fields. All the dice showing the highest number rolled get placed in the "generate money" field. The dice showing the lowest value is placed in the "generate camels" field. The rest of the dice are spread out according to the value shown on the fields in between in ascending order. Example:

Roll=1,2,2,2,4,6,6,6.
Result=Place the die with the 1 on the camel field, the three dice with 2s on them on the second field, the die with the 4 on the third field and the three 6s on the highest field (because no 3s or 5s were rolled, this leaves the fourth and fifth field empty).

The fields with dice on them determine the choices available to the players. 3 dice on the camels would allow a player to take three camels. 3 dice on the second field allows a player to place three cubes on the sooks of a particular region (among other things). Etc, etc. In this way, the choices are constantly changing, and depending on the situation a player might want to choose something to advance his strategy, or to prevent another player from doing something advantageous to them.

My biggest complaint about the game would be that for such a quick and light game, there are a lot of rules. Once learned, it's easy to ignore this criticism, but I would consider it a barrier to teaching it to some people I think would otherwise enjoy this level of game. On the other hand, rules density shouldn't be a surprise considering one of the main strengths of the game is that many viable strategies are available.

Bharmer won. I came in a reasonably close second and Tilli was third.

Dungeon Twister

Luch arrived and we set up to play Dungeon Twister. Rather than attempt a four player game, we played two simultaneous 2 player games. I really enjoy the game for the balance it brings between strategy and chaos, and the theme helps releive it of some of the dryness it could have had otherwise. The rest of the group isn't enamoured with it, sadly, so I might not get to play much until I find someone who likes it as much as I do.

I won against Kozure 5-0, and Luch won against Bharmer 5-4.

Louis XIV

Another game I like very much, Louis XIV is another example of a very nice strategy game that packs a lot of punch in a short timeframe (and a small box). Now that I think about it, it's also pretty rules heavy. Goes with the territory, I suppose.

Things went very well for me. I was able to get almost all the goods I needed, when I needed them. I completed the mission which gives you a free cube where Louis is every turn... I think that one is very powerful. With it, I managed to fulfill 7 missions over the course of the game, giving me a victory (Bharmer was a close second). Very good game.

We finished off with two rounds of my favorite closer of all time, Jungle Speed . Good times.

(Louis XIV, Tower of Babel, Dungeon Twister)

My pick this week.

Louis XIV

It's been a while since I've been able to play Louis XIV, so I was very happy to have the occasion to give it another go. This was my third game, but the first two were in the same evening a long, long time ago, so a solid refresher was in order. Meanwhile, Bharmer had never played.

This is a very good game! It's got all the usual Dorn signature elements (the tower movement, additional actions, end game bonus points, multiple paths to victory and a generally dense set of rules... despite not feeling too difficult in actual play).

Bharmer, in his first time out, managed to complete two missions per round for the whole game while the rest of us managed that only 50% of the time. He was very focused on winning the tile where Louis was present, and it seemed to be paying off. I decided to go for shields and managed to accumulate quite a bit while still managing 6 missions.

Ultimately, it seemed obvious that Bharmer was going to win. However, in the final calculation all those little endgame points really added up, giving me a surprise victory! I have to admit I got very lucky with the shields, netting me about half a dozen points for majorities.

Tower of Babel

Next, we played Tower of Babel. I'm planning on trading this, but before I did I thought I'd follow some recommendations I found on BGG and eliminate the bonus cards (supposedly, that was how Knizia designed it). As I never really liked those anyway, it didn't feel like much of a loss! In the end, I think I preferred the game without the bonus but not enough to want to keep it. Bharmer won the game, thanks to a set of 4 building disks in addition to winning his share of the wonders points.

Dungeon Twister

We didn't have an enourmous amount of time left, so we weren't sure whether we should attempt Dungeon Twister. Ultimately, a second game of Louis XIV might have been more wise, but we tried it anyway.

I discovered a few things:

1) I thought I was being really clever when I bought the game. I purchased only the 3/4 player and the Paladins and Dragons expansions... not the base set I thought that rather than getting the same set of characters 4 times, that this way I would get two sets of different characters and also have the flexibility of playing from 2-4 players. It seemed like I would only be missing the rulebook, and that wasn't a huge deal. Obviously, I overlooked something important: I only had 2 sets of Jump/Action/Combat cards! So, after having set up the game, we scrounged through Louis XIV and substituted other cards to compensate and played anyway. I'll have to make up my own for the next game, or cave and buy the base set.

2) It's hard to say since we played an incomplete game under unrealistic time pressures, but Dungeon Twister seemed to work better as a 2 player game. At 2 players, there is something very satisfying (for me) in figuring out a clever set of moves and making them happen. With 4 players, it's nearly impossible to plan ahead since so much could change by the time your turn comes around. Clever move combinations were possible, and I'd say there were a few, but you really can't think about it too long or else turns would take forever. I'd also say that the rather focused two player game feels more like a free-for-all with 4 players. This feels particularly apparent when revealing tiles: with 2 players, choosing the right location for your opponent's items can be crucial. In contrast, with 4 players the location you place things is less meaningful (SOMEONE can surely get to them...).

Anyway, although I think this has the potential to be fun with 3 or 4 players but Dungeon Twister's real strength seems to be 2 player.

I don't really know who won the game, but I think it was Kozure.

Thoughts on some new (to me) games (Dungeon Twister, Hey! That's my Fish!, San Juan, Blue Moon City, Goa)

I won a gift certificate at Thought Hammer recently, and purchased a pile of game as a result. Very few of these are likely to see much play at WAGS, since they are all 2-4 player games, but I think friends and family will enjoy many of them. Luckily, I was able to play all of them with some high school friends which came to visit, and I'm glad to say there isn't a bad game in the bunch.

Dungeon Twister

The idea:
A twisted wizard has created a dungeon and pitted two teams of characters against each other. The first team to escape out of the opposite end of the dungeon, or to eliminate enough enemy characters, wins.

The mechanics
8 tiles, each depicting a section of a maze (complete with walls, doors, traps and miscellaneous other features) is layed out in a 2x4 grid. Each player starts the game with 8 characters and a number of items (rope, speed potion, treasure, etc). Some are chosen as starting characters, and the rest are layed face down on the dungeon tiles and are revealed later. Players are also given 3 "jump" tokens (allowing 3 jumps over pit traps over the course of the game), a set of action cards and a set of combat cards. Every round, a player must choose an action card to play which will determine how many actions he will get that round (2-5). The trick is that the player will only get his cards back once he has played them all, so choosing when to play the high value cards vs the low value cards becomes a a critical aspect of the game. When characters engage in combat, players must choose a combat card from their hand (value 0-6) to add to the combat value of the creature. The highest total wins, but the catch in this instance is that all cards except the "0" can only be used ONCE in the game (if you've played Lord of the Rings: Confrontation, you've seen this system before). The "Twister" gimmick referred to in the title of the game is that each dungeon tile has a "twister mechanism" space which allows a character standing there to rotate the dungeon tile (or a second matching tile elsewhere in the dungeon).

Thoughts:
I was intrigued by this title the moment I heard about it. As an ex-Dungeons and Dragons player, the theme has obvious appeal. However, I have not really been interested in other games of this type (such as Descent, etc) for whatever reason. I think it's because those games are about the dungeon crawl/ combat aspect of rpgs, and have often resulted in long fiddly hack n' slash fests. Dungeon Twister, on the other hand, uses the theme to liven up what is essentially an elaborate game of chess. A player needs to plan ahead to either meet his opponent's characters on his own terms or to successfully escape out of the dungeon. He must therefore carefully manage his resources and create synergy between his characters, items and dungeon tiles. Obviously, this type of game would be horrible to play against analysis paralysis prone players, but barring that I really enjoyed the game. As an added benefit, the game publisher (Asmodee) is releasing a stream of expansions ensuring a wide variety of dungeon tiles, characters and scenarios to keep the game fresh. In fact, one of the expansions is a 3-4 player expansion (which I've purchased, but I haven't yet played a game with more than 2 players). Anyway, I really enjoy this game.

As an aside, I used to rate Duel of Ages in my top 10 games, but it was mostly because I hadn't yet played a better game of that type (team of characters, variable terrain, missions, equipment). Problem is, Duel of Ages has it's fair share of issues. I still enjoy it, and it's wargame-lite character makes it different enough to warrant keeping both, but Dungeon Twister is shorter, looks better and plays cleaner. Looks like Duel of Ages lost it's spot.

Hey! That's my Fish!

The idea:
There penguins on ice floes looking to gather as much fish as they can before the ice dissapears.

The mechanics
Players get 3 or 4 penguins (depending on the number of players) and place them on a modular board (+/- 75 tiles). Each tile shows 1-3 fish. Basically, when you move your penguin you pick up the tile you were standing on, so the board gets smaller with every move. A penguin can go as far as it wants in a straight line, as long as it doesn't go over empty spaces. When all the penguins are unable to move, the game ends and the player who picked up the most fish wins.

Thoughts:
This is a simple and fast abstract game which benefits greatly from it's theme. The exact same game could have belonged to the GIPF series and not been nearly so approachable. Easy to teach, fun to play and supports up to 4 players. Very good game.

San Juan

The idea:
Players are developping the city of San Juan in this card game variation on Puerto Rico.

The mechanics
Much like Puerto Rico, the heart of the game involves choosing from a set of roles every round. Each role is associated with a specific action, such as building, that every player gets to do (though the choosing player gets some type of advantage, such as a reduced cost, etc). However, since this is a card game much of the mechanics have been streamlined and simplified. Building costs are payed by spending cards from your hand. Production buildings produce goods, represented by a face down card, and that card can be sold to draw a number of cards into your hand. The buildings' special powers are similarly all repurposed to be hand management related. The game ends once someone builds his 12th building, at which point everyone counts up their victory points to determine the winner.

Thoughts:
Puerto Rico is a very good game which has always bothered me due to the needlessly tedious setup and finicky rules. Honestly, the game requires me to count out two stacks of tokens which are up to 70-100 pieces EACH, on top of sorting out a large supply of counters and chits. And you can't prepare in advance, because it's all very different according to the number of players! I like it, but if I'm choosing I'll likely go elsewhere. Along comes this neat little card game, and it seems like I might not need to play it's big brother any more. My only worry is that in Puerto Rico, I felt I had more opportunity to passive-aggressively affect the other players. In San Juan, my first few games have not felt very interactive. Time will tell.

Blue Moon City

The idea:
Players are rebuilding Blue Moon City following a great war between the various races of the Blue Moon universe.

The mechanics
This is a hand management game. The cards come in various suits, and each can be played two ways: they have a numbered value which can be used to make donations, and most of them have a special power that can be used instead (the 1 point cards have powers, the 2s have weaker powers and the 3s have none). Essentially, the game is designed so that your hand can almost always be used to do something useful, if not exactly what you had planned. The "board" consists of 16 tiles depicting the blueprints of key buildings semi-randomly distributed in a "+" shape. Each building has 1-4 spaces for "contributions" of different colours. Players move around the board making such contributions, and the building are flipped to show that they are complete once all the "contribution" spaces are filled. When this happens, the player who made the most donations gets a reward, and everyone else who made at least a single donation gets a smaller one. The "twist" here is that neighboring completed buildings give bonus rewards as well, so making a very small donation to the right building in a built up district can yield big rewards. The most common payout is crystals, and these are accumulated and ultimately sacrificed to the obelisk in the center of the board. The first player to make a certain number of offerings is the winner.

Thoughts:
As with many recent Knizia middleweight games, opinions on this one were mixed. I was happy to discover that I really enjoyed it! Once you get a handle on the various special powers of the cards, gameplay is very straightforward (unlike the mindbending Tower of Babel). Coming up with clever uses for your cards is very satisfying, and the game moves pretty quickly. If I had to knock it, I'd say that it could have been livened up a bit with building powers, or something along those lines, to reinforce that it's a city the players are rebuilding. It might have been interesting if the game rules were altered every time a building was constructed, or that the biggest contributer received a new ability related to the building when it is completed. Maybe these are opportunities for expansions...

Goa

The idea:
Trader barons are setting up shop in Goa. By efficiently aquiring goods, making money, founding colonies, etc, players hope to establish themselves as the winner.

The mechanics
The game has 8 turns, and each one starts with an auction. Following the auction, each player has a series of "actions" where they can either found colonies, build ships, tax, produce goods or draw development cards (one last option is to improve an attribute of the colony, allowing to build more ships, make more money taxing, etc). At the end of the game, points are awarded for the number of founded colonies, the level of advancements, etc.

Thoughts:
Goa is a complex game. It's been compared to Princes of Florence by many people, because of the auction/ action game structure (that, and the fact that it's also a "multi-player solitaire" experience. Far moreso than PoF, in fact). I find that the game has a lot in common with Traders of Genoa (also by the same designer). Superficially, there is the trademark "tower". I've only played three Dorn games (Traders of Genoa, Goa and Louis XIV), but they all have used this mechanic! Here it's used to define which items among the grid of available items will be auctioned off. From a gameplay perspective, players must successfully orchestrate lots of disparate elements in order to succeed (plantations and new colonies must be founded in order to produce/ store goods, ships and population must be accumulated to pay for advancements, money must be raised for the auction, etc, etc, etc. ). more than anything, though, I find the games focus on additional actions, game-modifying powers, etc to be right up Dorn's alley. It also makes for a very different experience than PoF, as the powers and cards make for a lot more variety in play.

One thing I found dissapointing was the extreme dullness of the presentation. Unlike most games of this type, the mechanics translate pretty well thematically. If the boards had looked different, I bet the game would be a whole lot "friendlier" (as it is, it looks like accounting). The auctions occur at the shipping yards, money changes hands as the buyers walk amonsgt the crates. Players plant fields for resources, but also go to sea and found colonies (an inherently risky proposition). Boards depicting these scenarios would have been simple to produce, and would have served to ground the game. It's especially a shame since this game brings out a feeling of "civ-building" which few of these types of game can pull off.

Supposedly, this game works very well with 2,3 or 4. Since PoF effectively bottoms out at 4, it's great to have a heavy euro which can be played with fewer players. I really enjoyed my single playing so far.