Luch wanted to play lots of really short games. To that effect, we managed to play Hey! That's my Fish!, Liar's Dice, Bohnanza, Mama Mia!, Wheedle, Set, Jungle Speed. Surely, this is a record for most DIFFERENT games played in an evening, and maybe most games too.
Missing the cut were: Falling!, Cash n' Guns and Can't Stop.
Bohnanza
I learned that Kozure is not a big fan of Bohnanza. Myself, I like the game, though I agree that three rounds is too long. The biggest problem, though, is how deeply counter-intuitive some of the mechanics are. The cards cannot be sorted or moved in your hand (I'm looking at you, Bharmer!). The three phases in each round always take a read through of the rules to remember. Whatever, it's a fun game once it gets rolling. Luch won, which was not surprising because he was clearly the best at setting up trades in his favour (my favorite was when he refused to take a card Kozure was offering him until he agreed to give him both, knowing Kozure could not afford to keep both cards)
Mama Mia!
I cleaned up at this game. Apparently, it's hard to complete all your orders by the third round but I had all but one done in the second. Throughout, it seemed like everyone else was playing for my benefit (if I had an order for 3 olives and a pepperoni, the other players would play 3 olives leading to my turn, and I would complete the order). I don't expect to see luck like that again for a loooong time.
Wheedle
When I last played this game, I rocked. This time, not so much. Out of four rounds, I called three and made errors in all of them. My score at the end was -10. The others seemed to be doing quite well, so I apologize to all for repeatedly making potentially good hands redundant.
Set
Set seems to be a board game version of Wii's Big Brain Academy. Find patterns in a set of tiles before the other players do. The patterns have to be pretty specific, though: The image on each card has four characteristics (colour, shape, number and fill). To make a pattern, every characteristic has to be THE SAME or DIFFERENT on all three cards. It's pretty hard to do (and to explain), but Kozure was clearly much better at it than us. He CRUSHED us. Big Brain indeed.
Jungle Speed
This was a lot of fun when we last played with guest Wagster Sonja. I'm happy to say that it was just as much fun last night. There was a lot of laughter, twitchyness and bruised fingers to show for it. Once more, Kozure displayed his affinity for pattern recognition by winning 2 of the 3 games rather comfortably, with Luch winning the third. Me? On a couple of occasions I felt like I was on fire and doing really well. Then Kozure would win, and I would realize that I am old, slow and not good at pattern recognition. Sigh. Anyway, this is lots of fun and I hope it becomes a semi-regular evening closer. Back to the Big Brain Academy for me... I will avenge these losses!
Showing posts with label Mama Mia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mama Mia. Show all posts
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Homebrew Settlers Variants, & There We Go Again.
The silent WAG was dictator last night, selecting two rounds of a Settlers of Catan variant and pizza for dinner. This weeks dictator gets a 10 for Dictating Style, but only a 4 for actual Dictator behaviour. A little too wishy-washy, dig?
Anyhow, the first game that we tried was with two varations from the basic rules. The first involved randomly distributing the numbers onto the hex areas, and the second was that whenever the robber moves to a new hex, the number from that area moves to the robber's previous position. As you can imagine, this affected strategy quite a bit - when deciding where to place your initial roads and villages, you were not assured as to the probablility of return in the same way that you would be in a standard game. Also, Kozure's cunning revealed that sometimes it could be advantageous to move the robber against YOURSELF, in order to eliminate a low probability number tag from an area you would be harvesting from. The variation was fun, but this version suffered from a fatal flaw in my opinion: without the probabilities being carefully distributed around the board, one player can have an overwhelming location-based advantage. That was the case here; Kozure smoked the rest of us in a 5-player game.
Our second round of Catan had 4-players, used the standard starting positions for number tags, and retained the robber/roving number tag rule from the first game. I personally found this to solve the previous games problem, and it resulted in my most enjoyable game of Catan yet. Whether that was because of the rule switch, or because I finally managed to implement a decent strategy, though, I am unsure. One interesting thing to note is that there are only a total of 5 victory points available from the development cards in a 4 player game. Not knowing this, I continued going to the development card well in a desperate attempt to win, when the victory points available had already been exhausted. All wasn't lost however - I think that my army ended up 9 soldier cards strong. Crazy stuff. The result of this game was that the Silent Dictator pulled out a win with the Longest Road, 3 Victory Points, and very little else. Kudos to him, for winning a close game where everyone hovered around 7-9 points for several turns.
Another interesting thing was the difference in play that results from the "special builder" phase that is included in the 5 player game. Without using "special builder" in the 4 person game, we all ended up with mittfulls of cards (seven or more) fairly frequently.
After Settlers, it was time for a quick round of Mamma Mia!, a goofy little card game of pizza making that this guy explains pretty well. I do disagree with his assessment of the playing time, though at least as it pertains to a five-player game. I think we were done in about 20 minutes, initial explaining of rules included. I think this is another perfectly fine "palate cleanser" type of game, fulfilling that role much better than, oh, Falling!, for instance. Quick pace, some luck, some strategy, some skill, and no room for discouragement or hard feelings, as far as I can see. Also seems to be a game that would be fair across quite a range of gaming abilities and aptitudes - ie., you could play w. your little cousins, and not have to "let" them win at all. IMHO, a 7, for achieving what it tries to be.
Lastly, while looking for links, I came across this guy's site - he had a few games I haven't heard of listed, so I might try to track a couple of them down, since good ol' Jim seems to be as game-obsessed as we are, or at least in the same neighborhood.
'Til next week, Over and Out.
Anyhow, the first game that we tried was with two varations from the basic rules. The first involved randomly distributing the numbers onto the hex areas, and the second was that whenever the robber moves to a new hex, the number from that area moves to the robber's previous position. As you can imagine, this affected strategy quite a bit - when deciding where to place your initial roads and villages, you were not assured as to the probablility of return in the same way that you would be in a standard game. Also, Kozure's cunning revealed that sometimes it could be advantageous to move the robber against YOURSELF, in order to eliminate a low probability number tag from an area you would be harvesting from. The variation was fun, but this version suffered from a fatal flaw in my opinion: without the probabilities being carefully distributed around the board, one player can have an overwhelming location-based advantage. That was the case here; Kozure smoked the rest of us in a 5-player game.
Our second round of Catan had 4-players, used the standard starting positions for number tags, and retained the robber/roving number tag rule from the first game. I personally found this to solve the previous games problem, and it resulted in my most enjoyable game of Catan yet. Whether that was because of the rule switch, or because I finally managed to implement a decent strategy, though, I am unsure. One interesting thing to note is that there are only a total of 5 victory points available from the development cards in a 4 player game. Not knowing this, I continued going to the development card well in a desperate attempt to win, when the victory points available had already been exhausted. All wasn't lost however - I think that my army ended up 9 soldier cards strong. Crazy stuff. The result of this game was that the Silent Dictator pulled out a win with the Longest Road, 3 Victory Points, and very little else. Kudos to him, for winning a close game where everyone hovered around 7-9 points for several turns.
Another interesting thing was the difference in play that results from the "special builder" phase that is included in the 5 player game. Without using "special builder" in the 4 person game, we all ended up with mittfulls of cards (seven or more) fairly frequently.
After Settlers, it was time for a quick round of Mamma Mia!, a goofy little card game of pizza making that this guy explains pretty well. I do disagree with his assessment of the playing time, though at least as it pertains to a five-player game. I think we were done in about 20 minutes, initial explaining of rules included. I think this is another perfectly fine "palate cleanser" type of game, fulfilling that role much better than, oh, Falling!, for instance. Quick pace, some luck, some strategy, some skill, and no room for discouragement or hard feelings, as far as I can see. Also seems to be a game that would be fair across quite a range of gaming abilities and aptitudes - ie., you could play w. your little cousins, and not have to "let" them win at all. IMHO, a 7, for achieving what it tries to be.
Lastly, while looking for links, I came across this guy's site - he had a few games I haven't heard of listed, so I might try to track a couple of them down, since good ol' Jim seems to be as game-obsessed as we are, or at least in the same neighborhood.
'Til next week, Over and Out.
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