Five years, man. Also, five weeks.

All right, this is really rough, but at least a record of what got played in Early Fall 2012. Maybe I'll fill in a bit later, or someone else will in the comments.

This week I selected Traders of Genoa for our game, since, as I repeatedly stated, "It's been FIVE YEARS!"

Well, it wasn't five. It was four, so mea culpa on that. Still, a long time to go between plays.

PREVIOUSLY : Last week was 2 rounds of Smash-Ups, one w/ 3 players + 1 w/ 4. Also, Bios Megafauna.and For Sale!

PREVIOUSLIER : Game of Thrones Storm of Swords, yo. My wife thinks Storm of Swords is the nerdliest boardgame title possible. Feel free to suggest nerdlier possible titles in the comments.

EVEN PREVIOUSLIER : Roma, followed by Lord$ of Vega$, and I think a 3 of Vikings

PREVIOUSLIEST UNDER CONSIDERATION IN THIS ENTRY : Battlestar Galactica!

The King with Wings (Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena x2, Lords of Vegas, King of Tokyo x2)

Kozure, Shemp and I gathered this week to play an evening of Vegas games. It didn't work out due to a lack of available time, but what can you do.

Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena

As Kozure was in charge of his lads that evening, Shemp and I played two rounds of Roma. We pitted the two decks against each other to see how that went. We'll certainly have to play several more times to really know if one is stronger than the other, but it certainly seems to me that the original Roma is a swingier deck, with more opportunity to score big points when things work and potential to get none at all if things don't. Roma 2 seems smoother, with better odds of getting useful cards but a slower overall pace.

In our first game, I was getting creamed because I couldn't get any VP generation going. I was down to one vp if i'm not mistaken. Luckily, Shemp lost all ability to roll the dice he needed, consistently failing rolls that had a 5 in 6 chance of working. I didn't lose that last point and in fact landed two forums and started reaping the rewards. A few short rounds later I bounced back and won the game. I did realize one thing, though... Once the opponent is close to winning, getting VPs can be a bad move if it ends the game before you have more than the othe player. It was necessary to bleed out VPs from Shemp before claiming them. Tricky.

Our second game was more even, and I don't remember who won.

Still enjoying this two player game. Long live Herr Feld!

Lords of Vegas

With the kids in bed, we started our game of Lords of Vegas. As the game developed, a few patterns emerged...

1) I once again started growing a large casino in the big center-left block. I seem to do this every game.
2) Kozure once again received a disproportionate amount of disjointed properties.
3) I got into a war over a casino with Kozure. Normally, this happens between me and Shemp. Although in the end I managed to wrest control from Kozure and end the game with two decent casinos, the constant re-rolling of the casino dice drained both our money and made it hard to stay competitive with Shemp.

There wasn't a huge amount of trading this game. Not sure why... The opportunities seemed harder to find (though Shemp tried his best!).

Shemp won by quite a large margin. Kozure and I were in a tight race for second.

King of Tokyo

Tom Vassel and Michael Barnes have both recently talked up King of Tokyo and so when I saw it I thought i'd give it a try. It's a very simple and mostly silly game about competing monsters trying to destroy Tokyo and each other. Although there aren't a ton of games with this theme, it's also not really particularly original. What sets this game apart is the simplicity and focus of the design. You are either a creature in Tokyo, dealing damage to all the monsters outside of Tokyo OR you are a creature outside of Tokyo dealing damage to the monster currently in Tokyo. Since the monster inside Tokyo cannot heal, it creates a natural cycle of monsters entering Tokyo, trying to stay as long as possible, and then leaving to lick it's wounds. The game is won by either accumulating 20vps or being last monster standing. It's a dice rolling game where you can either roll wounds, healing, VPs or victory points. Each player rolls three times, hoping to get dice in the combination they are trying to achieve, yada, yada, yada. A deck of cards representing upgrades spices things up as players can save up energy to purchase them and slowly transform their creature from, for example, a simple giant dinosaur to A GIANT DINOSAUR WITH TWO HEADS, WINGS AND ALIEN METABOLISM!!!. It's easy to teach, it's short and a lot of fun to play. Big thumbs up from me and easily the best boardgames Richard Garfield has done since Robo-rally.

In our first session, Shemp dominated Tokyo for nearly the whole game because he managed to snag the "wings" upgrade early, which allowed him to spend energy to ignore damage. I think Kozure won the second game, but I'm not sure.

The strip is a harsh mistress (Lords of Vegas, Dominion x2)

this week marked the triumphant return of our good friend Bharmer. He had abandoned us briefly in a quest to gather "knowledge". We roundly criticized him, and then got started.

Lords of Vegas

I was really happy to be able to play this with 4, as I was very curious if the dealmaking possibilities would open up even further. Also, I was hoping that a game played without the game being messed up by spectacularly bad shuffling on my part would go.

In the end, I didn't note much difference as far as deal making. This game seemed to have less, if anything. The properties ended up clumping earlier than normal, which probably contributed. Kozure was the victim of poor luck on a couple of occasions (he should have known he was in for a rough ride when he sprawled and drew that tile on the next turn...). For my part, I once again ended up with a large casino in the center left of the board but there was quite a nail biter in the final rounds because Shemp owned the 6 property adjacent to me and my large casino had no sixes in it. Lucky for me, no casino tiles of the right colour remained. Unlucky for me, Kozure was about to renovate one of his casinos which would have put three back in circulation... I was out of contention by that point, but for Shemp it could have meant winning the game, the only worry was that the game was going to end any turn now and he was afraid he wouldn't get to act. On his turn, he drew the game end tile and missed out! Actually, Bharmer had made a bargain with me that would have made it difficult for Shemp to win anyway, but that's just details. It was a memorable ending.

Must admit I wouldn't have predicted Bharmer winning, though!

Dominion

we finished up by playing two hands of a random setup from the basic dominion cards. We ended up with a whole tableau of cards that allow the trashing of one card to get another. The end result was a setup which led to very lean decks and huge trash piles. It also led to me clearly forgetting how to play the game because not only did I come in last in both games, but DEAD last. I had ridiculously low scores. I think Shemp won the first one through a tiebreaker, and Bharmer the second (though my memory is hazy).

Next time, you shuffle (Dominant Species, Lords of Vegas)

We had a longer than usual game night this week. Toronto braced itself for a huge snowstorm and everything was closed. All the schools, etc. Turns out that it wasn't much of a storm. Still, it led to me being off early, Kozure being off early and Shemp's wife not working hence Shemp being available early. Unfortunately, Bharmer couldn't join us due to illness and he'll be unavailable for quite some time so it's three player sessions for us!

Dominant Species

We decided to take advantage of the longer than usual session and play Dominant Species again. We still shortened the game by 10 cards, just to make sure it wouldn't go all night. I played the birds, Shemp played the arachnids and Kozure played the reptiles. We actually played 3/4 of the game with a major rules error (scoring points based on dominance instead of numbers of animals) but came to the conclusion that results wouldn't have differed greatly anyway. Kozure was looking for a win after a losing streak with this game (not all at WAGS) and early on it looked like his wish would come to be. I felt like I was making blunder after blunder (maybe everyone felt the same?), but luckily I was still holding my own. Let's face it, there are so many choices that it's probably inevitable that really good moves go unnoticed until it's too late. Kozure did crush us, and his last turn near complete domination of the island only distanced him further. His wish was granted!

Although I think the full game would be too long, removing 10 cards felt like too many. Probably next time we'll take out 5.

My feelings towards the game haven't changed. It's like a super charged El Grande. Fun, quite engrossing, but longer/ more complicated isn't in and of itself better. One advantage it has it that it plays quite well with 3 and 4 players. For 5 players, I think I would pick El Grande every time, however.

One other thing that I hadn't considered the first time: As the game progresses, the scoring increments for certain types of actions get larger, particularly the tundra scoring. In the games we've had the tundra scoring on the last turn has seemed really large but still probably balanced. I just realized that if we played to the end of the full game these swings would get that much larger! That might seem game breaking. We'll see.

Lords of Vegas

We played this session with a variant where the deck is split in thirds instead of fourths when seeding the game end card. This was meant to eliminate the problem we had last game where we ran out of dice. Unfortunately, I shuffled the property cards REALLY poorly and the colours stayed clumped. This led to a very weird game where the player who just happened to bet on the right horse did well and the others did not. I was the beneficiary of the luck, and won by a significant margin. One of the colours was entirely under the game end card, so it provided no points to Shemp and Kozure who had seen none were out and figured it was inevitable that they would come.

Shemp continues to display his negotiating skills. There is a lot of room for trading and deal-making in this game and Shemp came up with a few interesting angles again this game (convincing another player to build a section of casino for him so that he gets cash payouts but is no threat to being casino boss, for ex). I had a lucrative casino growing where Shemp owned half of the 6 dice. His constant threat to re-roll the dice defined much of the game for me. I ultimately agreed to a massively one-sided deal where he promised to not re-roll the dice in my casino if I gave him just about every unbuilt property I had. It was risky, but the endgame came before Shemp could capitalize on all the new money. I won.



I still think this is a great game, I just hope someone else shuffles the property deck next time!

Vegas Baby!, Yeah! (Lords of Vegas, Boomtown)

I'm always searching for a great negotiation game. Although Monopoly has it's flaws, I still haven't found a game that I think does negotiation better. I think that ultimately it boils down to the fact that I find negotiating more fun when there is latitude to deal and returns are based on speculation. This means that I inherently prefer negotiation games that have an element of luck, games where a calculated risk can pay off or go bad. The problems with Monopoly are numerous, but unfortunately all the euro games I've played since starting this hobby solve many of the mechanical problems but also strip the negotiation aspect of much of it's interest.

The three games that I have played that came closest where Traders of Genoa, Chinatown and I'm the Boss!. ToG is a great strategy/ negotiation game but it's too heavy for most and there is little financial latitude in most cases. Chinatown is a nice, pure negotiation game but the value of a trade can be calculated and that sucks some of the fun out of it. I'm the Boss is a lot of fun, but it's almost a party game.

So, how does Lords of Vegas fare in the field? First impressions are quite good.

Lords of Vegas

Lords of Vegas has a few surface similarities to Chinatown. Both feature a gameboard showing city blocks that are organized into labelled grids. Both see players drawing lots at random, thus seeding the board and giving everyone a starting point for negotiation. Of course, this is a vegas game, so it makes sense that risk and reward figure prominently in how the game actually plays out. And dice. Lords of Vegas has lots of dice.

Each turn, after a player draws his/ her random lot, the game pays out a small amount to anyone who has unbuilt lots in play and a larger amount to anyone who has built portions of casinos matching the colour of the drawn card. Next, victory points are scored by the players who are "the boss" of the casinos that paid out. Clearly, the aim of the game is to be the beneficiary of as many pay outs as possible and be the boss of casinos that will generate victory points!

With the unbuilt lots as a starting point, players have the following options:

1) Build casinos on lots: Players choose to build a section of a casino on a lot he owns. There are several colours of casinos that can be built. The colour is completely up to the player (as long as pieces are available). The choice of colours depends on two things; a) two casinos of the same colour that grow into each other merge, and b) you can see which casino cards have been drawn so far and therefore which casino colours are likely to pay out in the future (there are only 9 of each colour). The lot will have a picture of a die with a number on it. The player will take one of his dice and place it on the space with the appropriate number facing up. This is important because if two casinos merge, the player with the highest number is the boss.

2) Sprawl: Players can expand an existing casino into an adjacent lot. This is beneficial because casinos generate VPs based on size. This is risky because if a player later draws that lot, he immediately becomes the owner. Not all cards come out, though, so it's a gamble.

3) Renovate: Change the colour of a casino. This can be a defensive move to prevent a merger or an offensive move to create one.

4) Reorganize: Any player that owns at least one section of a casino can "shake up the establishement" by re-rolling all the dice in that casino. Whoever has the highest numbered die after the re-roll is the new boss. Obviously, this costs money so it can't be done on a whim, but it is a way for a player to take a risk and try to take over a casino that was previously someone else's.

5) Gamble: Any player can go to someone else's casino and gamble. They place a sum of money on the line and roll the dice. If the roll the right numbers, they double (or triple!) their money FROM THAT PLAYER'S MONEY. If they fail, they give the player the money.

In addition to all this, players are encouraged to negotiate at all times. Don't like the lot you drew? Trade it with someone else. Create a deal to free up some yellow tiles so you can renovate your casino and merge with the one next to you, becoming the boss in the process. There are a lot of possibilities.

The fact that so much of this is dependent on speculation is just icing on the cake. You can expand you casino to increase you VPs, but how long will that investment pay off before it's taken away from you? You can pay a princely sum to get that last red casino tile and anticipate scoring big when it comes up, but what if it doesn't?

The one last item I didn't mention is that players MUST be bosses of ever growing casinos in order to win, because the VP track does an interesting thing where bigger and bigger casino VPs are required to advance a single step. This single design decision provides all the incentive necessary to keep players from sitting on single tile casinos forever.

Overall, Lords of Vegas does everything I wish a trading/ negotiation game did. In our first play I had some concerns about the pacing (due to all the options available on a player's turn, even a quick player can take a little while). Chinatown definitely has the edge as far as feeling like a pure negotiation game, but I see this one having longer legs because it merges interesting boardplay with negotiation and speculation. We'll see after a few plays.

In our game, we started trading early and I was able to consolidate a couple of casinos early. Before long, I had a large one developing in the center of the board and Shemp and Chris found it difficult to stop me. I think in future games, we will all be hanging onto our lots a little more strongly! Along the way, there were some interesting upsets through reorganizations, and a couple of critical merges that swung control of the casinos involved. We also gambled a lot, and it was observed that gambling has strategic opportunities as well by reducing that player's ability to do actions on his turn.

Chinatown should start sweating right about now...

Boomtown

I won't go into much detail, but Boomtown is a card game that mixes auctions with the resource production of Settlers of Catan and cards that are reminiscent of Bang! You have to bid for mining prospects in order to generate money, or try to get cards that can help you or hinder you opponent. One clever mechanism I hadn't seen before was that whoever won the auction picked first and selection proceeded clockwise but the winning bid was distributed to players counter-clockwise. In other words, if you got last pick, you got more money. It's an interesting balancing mechanism.

I enjoyed the game, but it's not stellar. I'll try it again with a different crowd and see how it goes. My only concern is that auction games don't tend to fare well with people who don't game enough to be able to evaluate such things.