Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield"? (Goa, China)

Strange story: I was listening to my "A Game of Thrones" audiobook as I arrived at Shemp's house. Shortly before I parked the car, a character says "Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield"? to John Snow after he goes into a rage during a practice duel. Upon entering Shemp's house, he tells me about how he had to yell at a guy in a car that almost ran him off the road on his bicycle. He mentioned that he had to yell "Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield" ? I don't know, to me it was weird.

We went "old skool" this week. I was hoping to get Goa, Puerto Rico and China played, but we only had time for Goa and China

Goa

Goa is a game that often gets put temporarily on the trade pile, but always comes off because it plays well from 2-4 and that's unusual for a game of this type. Also, it's theme is particularly uninspiring and therefore rarely gets off the shelf (it's been over two years...). Finally, and probably most damning, it's a good game but too bland to be very memorable amidst all the games we have (it's pretty close to playing a spreadsheet). Despite all this I enjoy it when it does comes out for the pure efficiency engine gameplay (though with auctions and an odd dash of luck introduced with the expeditions). I like it. It can stay.

Kozure seemed to be running away with the game, and Shemp clearly felt that he was doing very poorly throughout. In the end, Kozure did win, but Shemp and I were tied only 3 points behind.

China

Not much to say here. We are constantly surprised and impressed how much game there is here for the 30 minutes it takes. I pursued advisors more aggressively than Shemp and Kozure, and that won it for me.

Princes of *Teh Suck* (Goa, Princes of Florence)

It all started innocently enough...

Goa was the carry-over game from last week. I had mentioned last time that I would try to see what could be done by advancing the money and ships track, since I never seemed to use them much. With the extra money, I was able to make a couple of very strong bids. Of course, the money goes to another player, so I'm not convinced it's a good strategy in the long term.

It was a ridiculously close game. 35, 35, 35, 34. Kozure won the game with the most money as the tie-breaker.

Next we played Princes of Florence. Well, it may be more accurate to say we played some game using PoF game pieces. What it was we actually played is anyone's guess.

You see, we couldn't find the rulebook. PoF is one of m favorite games, and we've played it quite a few times as a group, so it shouldn't have been such an obstacle. Little details were hazy, though. We weren't sure what the starting money was. We figured it must have been roughly 1800 florin. We were wrong (it's 3500). Things went downhill from there.

In the first auction, everyone felt poor and Luch picked up his Jester for 200 florin. We should have packed up then and there, but we didn't.

During his second turn, Kozure realized he had made a mistake. He and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to reconstruct his previous turns, though in the end neither of us were really sure our conclusions were correct. Again, we should have just started over, but we didn't. Incidentally, we discovered later that our calculations were entirely off.

I normally do very well at PoF. This night I sucked. I was constantly having to spend prestige points to be able to afford my actions. I couldn't set myself for future actions to save my life. On the 5th round, I won a jester in an auction on purpose, just before I remembered that what I NEEDED was a park. That move meant I couldn't satisfy one of my prestige cards and couldn't complete more than one work over the next 2 rounds. I briefly calculated I lost 22 points.

Lastly, Bharmer realized (in a weird flurry of activity) that he was both miscalculating his prestige score AND scoring works as though he had features he didn't. It was at this point we came to the conclusion that the results of this session were entirely fictional and that it was impossible to determine the real winner. There was a fit of slightly maniacal laughter amongst the group as we tried to understand what had gone so wrong.

I *think* Luch played the whole game correctly, and so we declared his second place finish as the win.

We will be playing Princes again next week, if only to redeem ourselves.

Oh, and just to rub salt in the wounds we found the rules as we were putting away the game...

Give the man his camel (Goa, Aladdin's Dragons)

JayWowzer made his way up to our fair country once more. Meanwhile, a carpeting snafu kept Kozure out of action. That made us a foursome for the evening.

Goa

We started with Goa. Luch has been trying to get this on the table for quite some time, but something always seemed to come up. I'm glad we did get around to it... it's a great game. I have to admit that I find the auction a bit strange, though. I've never really been comfortable with auctions that have players exchanging money rather than paying to the bank (Modern Art does this as well). I'm not sure why, but there's a feeling of futility in there. Bidding a certain tile up hurts the bidders, but benefits the auctioneer. A player who spends all their money early in the round frequently gets it back during the auction because the money they spent goes to another player who, flush with money, will likely spend it on an upcoming tile. Anyway, it's a small detail because the game works despite this weirdness. The rest of the game may be multiplayer solitaire, but the decisions are interesting and the game never seems to play out the same way since the tiles you win during the auction combined with the expedition cards largely determine the most effective course of action. Another odd thing: I don't think I've EVER advanced the money track or ship track past the 2 step. Are there winning strategies which depend on money or ships? I suppose in my next game I'll have to try it, but off the top of my head I can't think of how it would go.

I won the game having maxed the expedition and production tracks, founded all four colonies and collected a triple in my expedition cards. Luch, frequently the winner at Goa, came in second.

Aladdin's Dragons

We've played Aladdin's Dragons a few times before, and I think I'm going to have to go back and read those session reports because I don't remember what we had said. I remember liking it, but I don't think I loved it. For whatever reason, this week's session was really good and I distinctly felt that it was a better game than I remembered. Clearly, there are a few things which could go wrong: Because the winner is the player with the most tiles, it can become mathematically impossible to win a few turns before the game is over. Also, the spell cards are fairly chaotic in their effect. Conversely, the counter-spell artifact feels at once too easy AND to difficult to play (and that essentially depends on whether you plan on using an artifact that round or not, because if you do you probably NEED to use that other artifact and therefore can't afford to waste that opportunity). Anyway, it may be just a case of having equally skilled players playing the game and balancing out the rough edges, but none of those "problems" really came up for me and ruined the game.

It's funny, too, because even though I won I constantly felt like I was losing. You simply can't win everything you want and so I was seeing all the opportunities I was missing as my blind bids proved to be too small or my guesses about what other players were going for proved false. I suppose the same thing was going on for everyone, though. Jeff seemed to be picking up a lot of artifacts, so I had him pegged as the winner. He also held the camel 80% of the time. I went more than one round without artifacts, but I picked up two on a couple of occasions.

The last round was the most memorable. There was only one artifact left, which obviously created a situation where everyone put everything they had onto the same space (with consideration to the gems they had to spend and those they hoped to win).
What threw a wrench into the whole thing was that the palace guard turned out to be a 10, so those of us without any "spare change" were eliminated from the running in the palace. In this case, JayWowzer SHOULD have been the the highest bidder and happy winner of the last artifact, but he ran out of money and Luch picked it up instead. That tile would have tied JayWowzer with me, and probably won him the game on the strength of the tie-breaker scrolls (I only had one, I think he had two).

Very close...

Random games (Blue Moon City, Goa, Transeuropa, Carcassonne)

With Bharmer and Kozure out this week, I was glad I had packed my bag with a number of games that were good at three.

Blue Moon City

I explained the rules to Shemp, and then he proceeded to show US how the game is played. Clearly, the man has a knack for the it because as much as luck has a big role in the game, strategy is very important and he really seemed like he knew what he was doing (he avoided wasting cards on getting scales when he couldn't win the majority, for example, wich is a very common mistake). In the final turns of the game, Shemp was one offering from winning with a pile of crystals in front of him. He skipped the obelisk and went to a building, so he obviously was just short one or two. I was also one offering away, but quite a bit short on crystals. Lucky for me, Luch forced the payout of scales on his turn and I was the big beneficiary. With my newfound wealth, I managed to swoop in for the win. Shemp should have won, but such is luck. This is my favorite middleweight game right now, always extremely enjoyable. Too bad it maxes out at 4 players.

Goa

And another fine game which is limited to 4. Shemp hadn't played this one either so we explained it and got underway (in record time, too). I couldn't really get things working right... always short one or two actions from doing what I wanted properly. Worst of all, Luch kept getting to level 4 in each track just before I would! He won quite handily, with all four islands discovered and a well advanced set of tracks. I'll have to look it up, but I think Luch creamed us last time we played this too. I guess everyone has a inclination for certain games.

Transeuropa

Since we had about 1/2 hour left, we brought out Shemp's copy of Transeuropa. I've played Transamerica quite often, but not this version. I can't say it felt substantially different, with the sole exception that some of the Nordic countries seem particularly hard to get to. Luch took a major dive on the first round, bringing him to within 1 point of losing. Then, as this game often does, things flipped pretty dramatically in the following rounds and I wound up losing big time (I think Shemp and Luch tied for the win)

Carcassonne

With 10 minutes left, we opted for speed Carcassonne. As soon as you play a tile, you grab your next one. As soon as it's your turn, you must play. This is one for the Conan brain, and apparently I don't have one... I SUCKED. I beleive I was lapped by both players. Oh well! (the end of the game comes REAL FAST with just the base tiles). I think Shemp won on the strength of his farmers. Game over in 10 minutes flat.

What Bharmer wants, bharmer gets (Pirate's Cove, Goa, Ra)

Bharmer felt like playing Pirate's Cove, Goa and Ra this week... so we did.

Kozure had to drop out at the last minute, leaving us with three players. Couldn't have happened on a better night, all these games work just fine at that number.

Pirate's Cove hadn't been played for a long time. I'd like to say that I won because I played so well, but the fact of the matter is that Luch and Bharmer were rolling like wusses. Yaaar, ya heard me, laddies! Wusses! Without exagerating, a battle between the two of them (which involved 3 or 4 dice per side) took 3 rounds apiece to register the first hit! I did manage to take down the legendary pirate, which also helped.

Goa was next. My success last time was not in the cards this evening. Bharmer was cruising along at breakneck speed, colonizing and increasing his skills extremely efficiently (he ended the game without a single plantation). He also received the lion's share of additional actions. Luch, meanwhile, was also doing a very good job of advancing his skills while he also tried to garner bonus point tiles. While the race was tight between the two of them, I was floundering. In the end, Bharmer won the game by three points (sadly, a poor choice in my last few moves affected the outcome in Bharmer's favour. Had I not overpayed for a tile on the last auction, Luch would have had the most money and tied for first). I'm happy to say that Goa continues to be a very fun optimisation type game which plays well at any number from 2 to 4... not a range of players typically found for this category (3-5 players is far more common, and 5 is usually the magic number)

Last, but not least, we played RA. Luch gathered a large series of monuments to win the game, but along the way had a very nice "push your luck" bit in the 1st era where he drew 5-6 tiles while facing down the last RA spot. It was fun to watch from the sidelines... I would have been far to chicken to draw that many in his situation!

One more time, with feeling! (Goa, Blue Moon City)

We played two games I personally had played once before, but were new to the rest of the group: Goa and Blue Moon City.

Goa worked very well in it's second outing. It was nice to see that turns went by very quickly and everyone caught on to the game system (which seems intimidating at first, but is actually fairly simple).

Near the end of the first half of the game, I came across a few opportunities to grab a number of discovery cards. Lo and behold, 5 of my 6 cards had the same symbol on them! I spent the second round of the game unable to draw or play discovery cards, and I was constantly wondering whether I would fall hopelessly behind because of it. In the end, the 15 points my set got me were the game winners, so I certainly can't complain!

I find the discovery cards somewhat awkward. I've read that many find this particular progress track to be too powerful, and I'm inclined to agree. Drawing cards not only significantly improves your chances of making a move at a greatly reduced price, but the cards themselves are worth MORE points at the end! It could be that familiarity will even out the game, or that every game will feature all players pushing hard on their discovery track.

Blue Moon City was next. I find myself really liking this one, though reaction from other tends to be lukewarm. Can't really explain it, but I do find it satisfying to look at my hand and to figure out my next move. The game moves ultra quickly, and the race for scales and crystals is engaging. It's a Ticket to Ride level strategy game, but this one seems tighter (even if the other is ultimately more approachable to non-gamers in rules complexity and theme).

I started out off on my own to see whether I could make a solo expedition work. The consensus seems to be that in order to win, you have to stay where the group is. There was a couple of single contribution buildings which looked like they might work for me. After a few turns, I gave in and joined the pack. It was a very tight race, with the last space of the obelisk determining the winner. On top of that, all but one building were constructed when it all ended.

Kozure won the game.

I found it interesting how the game evolves. At first, the possibilities for using your hand are rather endless. You need to pick a strategy and go. However, as the options narrow, the card draw becomes more important (so cycling thorugh cards until you get the ones you need becomes critical). Unlike Ticket to Ride, where waiting on the right cards starts pretty much right at the beginning, Blue Moon City allows you to make the best out of what you have for the first 2/3rds of the game.

I like it.

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.