Bilkis' sacks of sand (Roma 2: Arena, Macao, 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion x2)

Roma 2: Arena

When I purchased Roma, I actually thought I was purchasing Roma 2: Arena. I remembered reading that one had text instead of icons, and that the same one had more paths to victory, but I didn't know which was which. When I saw Roma at j&j cards in Waterloo, I looked at the back and saw that the cards were text based, not icons, and purchased it. Unfortunately, the picture on the back of the box is of the German version, which uses text, but the north American version of Roma 1 uses icons. I purchased the wrong one. Anyway, figuring it couldn't matter that much, I opened it and we played it anyway. As it turns out, me and Shemp liked it quite a bit. Sure, many games are lopsided and the only likely path to victory is having Forums, but it was quick and enjoyable. Shemp decided to purchase Roma 2, figuring that at the very least we could try the variant where the decks from both games are pitted against each other. This week, we got a chance to fruit out (the base game, not pitting the decks against each other). It's good. There are definitely more paths to victory, and the game seems less fragile (less games will end because they couldn't get their engine going before they went broke), but the tradeoff seems to be a significantly longer game. I'd say I did like it better than Roma 1, but not by a wide margin.

Shemp won the game by emptying the vp pile, scoring one "phantom point" (I.e. The vp pile was exhausted, but the bank owed him one more vp). The phantom point broke the tie, making the game 19 to 18. Well played.

Macao

I was in the mood to play Macao again, just to see if Shemp's streak is truly over. In short, it is. The game was very close, between me and Kozure, though. A miscalculation left Shemp 1 cube short of scoring big,leaving him behind. Between me andKozure, it came down to the bonus end game points, and I had more.

About 4 rounds in, I activated the artisan. This card allows you to activate one card per turn without spending the cubes (as long as you have the necessary cubes in your supply). Between that card and the various mistressesthatgaveme a free cube in their co our every turn, I was flush with goods cubes. I either played very poorly or Kozure played extremely well, because I should have killed the other two with that combo so early in the game.

7 Wonders: Leaders expansion

We capped of the evening with 2 sessions of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. It's a simple expansion that introduces a new deck of cards representing famous leaders throughout history. There is a pre game draft to deal each player 4 leader cards and before each age players choose which leader, if any, players want to pay to put in play.

The end result is not terribly different from the base game. The leaders allow a little more long term strategy, which is nice, that's pretty much it. Shemp commented that the downside to having these leaders is that it predetermines a strategy for you and reduces the interaction as players concentrate on their cards instead of blocking opponents.

The art continues to be very nice, and the game remains a very fun and fluid despite the additions. I'll probably keep playing with the addition in future sessions but I'm sure I won't really miss it if I play someone else's copy.

I won the first game using a combination military and science victory (as Rome, led by Ceasar, the guy from 300 and Alexandre the Great). Kozure won the second with a more focussed military strategy that apparently also involved burying all the brick in order to prevent others from building.

That was then, this is now (Macao)

or "Shemp's 100% win record with Macao is *so* 2010"

We had a late start, so only time for one game. When I suggested Macao, Kozure's reaction was "what, you want to pad Shemp's record even more?"

No. That's not what I meant to do.

Things did not start well. I had a couple of baronesses and a few cards that gave me additional gold, but I was falling behind. Shemp and Kozure where ahead, but I was accumulating more end game bonus cards. When all was said and done, I finally managed to break Shemp's perfect streak with a squeaker of a win.

Great game.

Let me guess, you're in the light (Macao, Mr. Jack x3)

It was just Shemp and I this week. I brought a bag of two player compatible games, and ultimately we decided to give Macao another go and revisit Mr. Jack.

Macao

Surely this would be the session where I would manage to break Shemp's 100% win streak, right? Wrong. It was close, though. I had many delivery doublers, and a fantastic card that allowed me to get an additional cube in each colour I drew that round (powerful near the end when everyone else is just drawing 1 cube). My downfall was an inability to connect city spaces, because otherwise I felt like I was doing ok. I lost by 2 points or so, meaning it was tense even through end-game scoring.

The flow of the game was odd: Some numbers weren't coming up so we both were navigating with windroses that had a number of empty spaces. Conversely, this led to turns with large numbers of cubes (we saw a couple of occasions where full player boards were emptied in a single turn).

This is a great game for 2!

Mr. Jack

We played three sessions. In each case, the player playing the cops won, but a few were pretty close. One game was aborted early as Shemp, playing Mr. Jack, moved all but one piece in the light. I remarked sarcastically "Let me guess, you're in the light" and then he slapped his forehead. He answered that he was in the dark. Having been bused so early, we aborted and started again.

Mr. Jack is consistently enjoyable as a two player game. It seems much harder to win as Mr. Jack, but the chase is still a lot of fun!

An evening with Stephen Feld (Macao, In the Year of the Dragon, Jungle Speed x2)

This is a couple of weeks late, but we've moved recently and I haven't had the time to write. This week we had Bharmer back, making it a foursome.

As Kozure mentioned in his recent post, we played Macao, In the Year of the Dragon and Jungle Speed. I wanted to play both Feld games because I really admire him as a designer, depsite his inability to choose compelling themes. The combination of strategy, interesting mechanisms and ... pain, have produced two games I like very much (I haven't tried any of his other designs).

Macao

Kozure was determined to improve on his past showings in this game, and early on it looked like he would achieve his goal with a win. He had a commanding lead, but as is customary with this game Shemp came from behind and stole the win (this time, beating Kozure by a single point). I don't exactly understand how a game like this can be so dominated by a single player, but so far Shemp's record stands at 100% after +/- 5 plays. Bharmer had just learned the game and therefore came in last, but this is the kind of game where that is expected. Not sure how to explain my poor showing, though!

In the Year of the Dragon

Finally got this second game by Stephan Feld to the table. Another great title, but significantly more compact in it's playtime. This is the epitome of a great euro in my book: short play time, high strategy, low luck. Feld has a hard time coming up with compelling themes, but the gameplay is top notch. I won this one by keeping my end of turn points high and making sure to dominate the fireworks points. For some reason, I tend to do very well at this one contrary to my winless streak at Macao.

Jungle Speed

I had hoped to play Pandemic as the last game of the evening. We didn't have time, and I'll admit I was disappointed at first. That is, I was disappointed until Kozure suggest we play Jungle Speed. We played twice and had a blast as usual. What a fun game.

Undefeated

Well, Shemp pulled off another come-from-behind win in Macao, which makes it 5 wins for 5 plays for him. 100%. Undefeated.

Impressive... most impressive.

We also played In the Year of the Dragon (Easy won) and Jungle Speed (Bharmer and Easy won one each).

I had to content myself with two (close) second place finishes in the non-filler games.

Which brings me to the interesting question... which games are we, as members of this group, good at?

There are many games which I enjoy but I'm not necessarily good at. Power Grid, for example, I usually come in the middle of the pack (used to be middle-high end, but recent plays have left me lower than usual). Conversely, one of the games which I almost put in the "will not play willingly" category, Phoenicia, I actually had my own personal highest win rate for. What does it say about me that the game I win most often I happen to dislike? Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately for my win record), Phoenicia has been traded away.

I think I've got a reasonably good win rate at Railroad Tycoon. I enjoy it, which usually assists in getting me to play better. I'm also usually pretty decent at Tikal.

As mentioned in previous entries, when El Grande was introduced to the group, I had a fairly high win ratio. Over time, that edge has been lost and now I'm frequently middling.

Shemp, as mentioned, is trending high wins at Macao.

This weekend, at TABSCON, I had the opportunity to play Race for the Galaxy with two people who play it a lot. I was creamed. Seriously creamed, twice in a row. Point spreads of something like 70 or 80 to my 30-ish. I felt like... well, I'd use some sports analogy here but I don't know sports teams well enough... the Nigerian Woman's Hockey Team up against Canada... or Canada's soccer team up against Spain. I thought I was not bad at RftG, but either I just had two seriously bad runs of luck, or those guys are super-geniuses. Now, granted, we were playing with two expansions, one of which I hadn't played before, but I was not in the running here.

One nice thing about going to places like TABSCON, it exposes you to playing skill levels outside your "regular" group. Generally I've found, much to my satisfaction, I do pretty well against other groups, save in games where it's obvious they play a particular game a lot.

I think it's clear, if you're a regular reader, that I'm not a "play only for the win" kinda guy. I try to win, for sure, but for me, it's the social atmosphere, friendly competition and sense of thematic engagement that draws me to board gaming.

But sometimes... sometimes... I just want that first place finish, dang it!

Hey WAGsters (or readers), what are the games that you're good at?

Ships & Shipping (Cyclades, Macao)

Very late on this one.

We played Cyclades and Macao.

Cyclades

I take back everything I said about Cyclades and Risk. I hope no one actually read this and used that comparison to make a purchasing decision (highly unlikely, I know). I was trying to communicate that it was an approachable and simple conquest game but I took the comparison too far. The game is simple enough, there is rolling of dice and the theme is conquest, but the gameplay is all about auctions, timing and combos.

We've now played three times, and have each tried the three different starting positions. They seem balanced enough. Kozure surprised us all and was within one round of winning quite quickly (having built a metropolis and owning three philosopher cards). He won the bid for Athena and built the last metropolis... but could he make it to the end of the round intact?

No.

Shemp won Mars and swept in to steal one of Kozure's metropolises. In a subsequent turn, I stole the other (leaving Kozure with none). I was able to sneak in and build my last building for the win.. Since I was last, no one could stop me and won.

This is a great game. For the first half, players are trying to get their income going and get into position. Then, suddenly everyone is on the verge of winning and all players must carefully keep an eye on each other, the order that the gods are coming up and the creatures which are available. Some pretty crafty sequences can be pulled off, and much of the fun I have with the game is derived from this aspect. As an example, this is how I played my last turn for the win (more or less, it's been a while):

I had no metropolises, and only three buildings. I bid on Aries. I purchased the Griffon to steal half of Shemp's gold (which was a lot), I then used Polyphemus to "scare" my boats away from an island, allowing me to create a chain of ships to an island containing a metropolis. I purchased a number of units, crossed to the other island and conquered it. I purchased the red building, but it was not the one I needed to get my second metropolis so I used the Chimera to activate Cyclops's ability to change a building's colour, giving me the second metropolis for the win. That was fun.

Macao

Another game about timing and combos, Macao has seen a lot of table time recently (which is fine by me). I snagged a couple of ware doublers early on and made it my goal to gain the lion's share of my points this way. I was a distant first place for much of the game, but I suffered a late game stall as I ran out of things to deliver. I only had a few other activated buildings, a couple of baronesses, so I was not sure what to do. Shemp was coming on strong and on my last turn I simply took a quick delivery and the game was over. As bonus points were tallied, Shemp overtook me by +/- 10 points for the win (AGAIN). He then pointed out that a different move would have won me the game! (I could have built a different building, thus given me a different ware, which would have truncated his chain in the city and robbed him of some points in his last delivery. I guess he got me back for pointing out a similar missed opportunity in Cyclades a few months ago!

Another great game. This and Cyclades could very well be my picks for best games this year.

More More Martin and Macao (Steam, Macao)

I've signed up to playtest some new Steam maps, and this week I brought a new three player map to the group. I also brought along Macao, since I'm finding that game quite intriguing at the moment.

In an email exchange prior to games night, I discovered that Kozure wasn't particularly enamoured with the game. Shemp also confessed that his enitial enthusiasm for the game had waned. I was pretty surprised, because I still love the game. It pushes many of the same buttons as El Grande (the puzzle aspect of most effectively pushing wooden cubes around) but it plays with a wider number of players and has lots of expansions to keep it fresh. Shemp mentioned he wasn't thrilled with all the quirky new rules that come along with each expansion board, and Kozure prefers Railroad Tycoon's more forgiving and less constrained feel. Both said they like it enough to play it, but there was definitely little actual enthusiasm.

Isn't it funny how differently players can feel about games. We've been playing together for over 6 years and although we all enjoy a broad section of games together, I wonder if we were to make top 10 lists how many games would end up on all three.

I won't dwell long on how the games played. The Steam map played very well for three players, which is not really the case with the boards included with the game. I consider it a success and would choose to play this one again if we were three. Macao was characterized by dice that rolled very high, all the time. I recovered from a shaky start and managed to come within ONE POINT of Shemp. So. Close.

Kozure does not appear to be terribly enamoured with Macao either (though he says he thinks it's a good game, just not one of his favorited). I'll certainly grant that the theme is rather weak in this one (though still better than some). Probably on par with Puerto Rico theme-wise. I continue to be very interested in the way you have to plan ahead, all the while behaving tactically every turn and trying to get combos going. Very engaging.

Play to yer strengths (Macao, Cutthroat Caverns, Roll Through the Ages)

We were three this week. I was looking forward to introducing Macao to Kozure, and decided I'd like to take Cutthroat Caverns for a spin.

Macao

This was our second play at WAGS, though I've also played a third game solo. I am very much enjoying this game, though as Shemp pointed out it really doesn't play to my strengths.

I've compared Macao to Taj Mahal, and I still believe that it's an accurate comparison in many ways, but it's in the differences that I get caught. In Taj Mahal, you are trying to manage the chaos introduced by the cards while balancing the short and long term goals of the game. Macao does much the same thing, but it is both denser (due to more simultaneous options) and more tactical (due to the impossibility of carrying cubes from one round to the next). I don't tend to do well in tactical games. I also tend to fare poorly in games where things need to be converted into other things (which is why a game like Le Havre is tough for me). Macao is very much about quickly ascertaining which of the cards that come up will create the best synergy with your plans. Since you get many cards, and there are various board elements as well, the player who can string together combos will be most successful. I'm not good at this. Not here, not in Dominion, not in Race for the Galaxy. Oh well, I still enjoy the challenge of this type of game and I am very much loving this one right now.

For a while this session I thought I had figured the game out. I was staying on top of my cards, making sure that I was activating cards fast enough to avoid getting penalties at the end. I had a card that allowed me to trade two cubes of one colour for any one other cube... which made activating 4 colour cube cards much easier. I managed to ship all three silk goods with a card that doubled the points. I was making some big purchases for VPs. I was way in the lead.

... but then Shemp started catching up. Then he was on my heels. Then he had baronesses so he leapt out in front. He won in distant first. Kozure did very well for his first game. He came in last, but not far behind me (and he would have done better if he hadn't been stuck with a number of cards on his tableau).

Cutthroat caverns

I picked up this game recently in a math trade, somewhat by accident. I thought this was along the lines of Heroquest... a kind of childish dungeon romp. Turns out, it's not that.

Cutthroat Caverns is more of a take that game than anything. There are nine monsters to defeat, and players must play cards to destroy them in order. The trick is that only the player that actually lands the killing blow gets the VPs. In other words, players are all "working together" to defeat the creature, but simultaneously trying to work it out so that they kill the baddie and get the points. Towards this end, the players get a hand of cards. Many are simple numerical values used to do damage to the creature. Others are effects that do tricky things like make other players miss, lose turns or other effects. To add further variety, there is a large deck of creatures, each with their own special powers, and only nine show up in a given game.

I don't know. As a take that game, I liked it well enough. It goes too long for what it is, but I could definitely see enjoying it if it was cut in half, which would be easy enough. It was funny trying to mess up the others, and we did laugh a fair bit. Shemp didn't seem too enthused, but I think Kozure liked it OK. I might try it again, or I might just save it for another group. We'll see.

For the record, I was winning this one too. Then Kozure stole one of my big kills and won the game. See a trend?

Roll Through the Ages

We had a few minutes left, so we played a game of Roll Through the Ages to finish. I rushed to a quick 5 techs and the others didn't see the end coming. This victory was not stolen from me.

Hah!

Remember Alea? (Macao, 1960: The Making of the President)

Circumstances conspired to give me and Shemp another 2 player game night. I thought it would be a good opportunity to play Macao and 1960: The Making of the President.

Macao

Many eurogamers say they really like Alea games. I am one of them. Scan my top games list, and you will see quite a few of them (Ra, Taj Mahal, Princes of Florence, In the Year of the Dragon, Puerto Rico, Traders of Genoa, etc). Still, with the exception of Ra they rarely get played anymore. I can't be sure why, but I feel like the plethora of game releases has led me to search out games whose theme excite me as much as the underlying game mechanics. Alea games, though they typically provide excellent gameplay, often have very thin themes and for a couple of years this type of game wasn't really appealing to me (of course, Alea went on a pretty weak streak for a while there, which didn't help their cause). Last year they released Stephen Feld's In the Year of the Dragon, which I really liked and we've played a fair bit. Now Alea has collaborated with Stephen Feld again for Macao and I wanted to give it a try despite the particularly humdrum theme of the game.

Macao is yet another euro game about gathering resources, delivering goods and building buildings in a random distant location (in this case, a portuguese colony in China). It also jumps on a number of recent eurogame bandwagons by including dice and many, many cards with text that give various special abilities. Excited yet?

However, as I've often said it's how things come together than matters. Macao is a fantastic example of this. In playing Macao, I felt like this was a very unique and engaging game, despite how bland most of the component parts are. Oh, and challenging. Definitely challenging. Feld appears to like to add a dose of punishment to his games, if In the Year of the Dragon and Macao are any indication, and this appears to raise the stakes a little bit when playing his games.

At it's heart, Macao is a game where players must struggle to plan amidst randomness. It's hard to describe, but you have to think strategically as you act tactically.

Each round, a player rolls 6 differently coloured dice. Each player chooses two of the results and receives cubes in number and colour according to the chosen dice. The big trick is that the larger the number on the die, the longer it will take before you can actually USE the cubes. For example: if you choose the red dice showing a 4, you will get 4 red cubes in 4 turns. These cubes will be used to purchase cards and buildings later on, but cubes don't carry over from turn to turn so in order to buy something that requires a particular combination of cubes you need to plan ahead and make sure you coordinate the dice you choose so that you will receive the combination you want together on a given turn. This isn't as hard as it sounds but it does require forward planning... over several turns you know that at least one cube of every colour will be produced and it's up to you to select them if you need them. Most times, the choice is between few resources now or many resources later. Where things get, err, dicey, is when you decide you need to build or purchase something fast and really need certain combinations to come up.

What are the cubes used for? You can build buildings in the city to gain goods, you can sail your ship to deliver said goods, you can pay for cards which will give you special powers and you can jockey for turn order. Deciding which resources to go for, which cards and buildings to purchase in the coming turns, etc, is already enough to require some serious think. Planning for these costs while faced with the pressures of other players competing for the same resources and in the face of the randomness of the dice makes it feel even more challenging. Don't play this game while drinking... it can melt your brain a little bit.

While the randomness makes the forward planning difficult, it also makes it a little less of a brain burner than it might have been if everything was open and perfect forward planning was possible. You don't know how many cubes of various colours are coming, and you don't know what card powers will be available. You have to go with the flow to a certain extent. That being said, you also need to plan ahead quite a lot. If you don't put effort to filling your future turns with cube combinations that work to purchase the cards and buildings you need, it will NOT happen on it's own and you will spend the whole game accomplishing nothing.

The card powers available in the game are very interesting, and really impact the flavour of the game. Spying the cards that come up that will enhance your engine is key to winning the game (and manipulating turn order so that you are free to pick those cards before other players is therefore also very important). On the other hand, you will be frustrated if you attempt to do the reverse and play the game hoping to make specific card combinations from the start... there are too many factors that prevent this from working (only about half the cards come up in any given game, and many of those will get discarded and therefore be inaccessible to players).

On the surface, the only two ways of ultimately getting VPs are delivering goods and purchasing VPs (some VPs can be gained through purchasing cards and making lines of buildings, but these seem to be small amounts). That said, developing your engine through the various cards that come up will require players to play differently each time. I've only played once, but it seems like there would be huge variety in the way the game would play out between games.

I can't help but compare the game to Agricola in that aspect, but I would say that I found that the card effects in this game were more interesting and had a more pronounced impact on the game. Also, since the cards come out over the course of the game, they aren't as initially overwhelming either. On the whole, however, the feel of the game reminds me mostly of Taj Mahal. That too is a game that has been accused by some as being too random or tactical because of the card draws, but in actuality the player who can plan ahead and use the tools available to mitigate the randomness will win almost every time.

The game is probably best played with 2 or 3, because AP could certainly cause it to go too long with 4 players. With 2 players, I certainly liked it a lot.

We stumbled through the first half not really succeeding to do very much. I selected cards which allowed me to build twice in the city every turn and then earn gold based on the number of cities I had there. It seemed like a good combo I could profit from, but then I got distracted by other things and didn't make it happen early enough. Meanwhile, I managed to acquire all the rice and tea so in a final turn mad dash I spent nearly 10 cubes just crossing the board to make 20 points in deliveries. Shemp, for his part, was purchasing cards which allowed him free cubes and cube conversions. He managed to purchase many more cards than I could because of this advantage, and ended up winning by about 5 points.

1960: The Making of the President

This is a great example of those thematic games that have caught my attention over the years, but since it's only two players I've never had the opportunity to play until now. It's a game about the Kennedy vs Nixon election which uses a "card driven wargame" system similar to many popular wargames (We the People, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, Twilight Struggle, etc).

Because it's a game about elections, it's unsurprising that they chose an area control system to represent the success of the two candidates. Cubes in each player's colour are placed in a state to represent who is leading or carrying that state. In addition to this, cubes can be placed to show who has the "media support" in each region, and cubes can be placed on the three issues to indicate who leads in each of them.

Each player has a hand of cards which are used either as action points (to move the candidate around the country placing cubes to show support, to add influence on issues, etc) or as events (historical events which have a game effect, such as displacing cubes or adding new ones). There is a special turn where normal play is suspended and a new subsystem is introduced to represent the "debates" and at the end the votes are tallied and the winner is elected.

Although I liked it well enough, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed in the game. There are a few reasons for this:

1) The "area majority" mechanic felt somewhat arbitrary because the board changed so drastically between turns that it sometimes felt futile, or simply an exercise in outlasting the opponent.

2) The events on the cards were almost always more powerful than the number of action points on the card, so there was actually not much of a choice to be made when selecting them. If the event was for your side, you picked it. If it's for the other side, you used the action points. In Hannibal and Wilderness War, other card driven wargames I've played, the choices seemed more difficult... in a good way.

3) For all the uncertainty involved in gaining media support, it didn't seem to matter much.

4) The "rest" mechanic was odd. There would seem to be a tradeoff between playing high AP cards and getting little rest or vice-versa. The thing is, you have to play every card in your hand except one, so ultimately there is no tradeoff... you just get what you were dealt. Also, I kept forgetting to grab the rest cubes, which was annoying.

5) Having to read each event card to the other player in case they wanted to activate the event was a little annoying.

6) The translation of the historical events to actions in the game didn't work for me very well, which lessened the theme for me.

Anyway, it was okay but not a home run. I certainly wouldn't mind playing again. Of course, my opinion may be influenced by the fact that I won...

(truth be told, Shemp was crushing me leading into the debates. At the debates, we both realized that we had kept poor cards for the job, but he fared worse than I did. In the final two turns I managed to grab quite a few seats and won the game).