Still three players.
Pandemic
Since Pandemic was dropped from the lineup last week, I brought it again. Shemp picked it as our first game and we went with the mutation challenge (a.k.a. purple cube expansion). We had the dispatcher, the troubleshooter and the researcher.
Side note: Troubleshooter= awesome.
Things started out pretty leisurely, actually. Red was cured quickly and blue followed. The troubleshooter's ability to see where problems are going to be and then go there is very powerful. Suddenly, things started getting hairy and we were struggling to stay on top. We managed to get the four basic cures done, but purple still eluded us. I had five cards to spend to cure it, but none featured cities infected by purple, so I couldn't finish it. We drew the action card that allowed us to fish into the discard and drew what we needed to finish the game. After we won, I checked the infection cards to see what I would have drawn at the end of my turn... we would have lost the game because of an outbreak of Yellow in Johannesburg.
Close. Fun.
Beowulf
Beowulf made a rare repeat appearance. After last week's experiment to see if it played well with three (it did), it was nice to play it again. I unfortunately was unable to repeat last week's win, however. As the game was coming to a conclusion, I felt confident I would win the "battle with the dragon" episode. Kozure had pulled out, and it was me and Shemp left. I had the "All Iron Shield" (4 swords) and "Sword Hrunting" (3 swords), plus a few others. I lost. We had a good laugh at the odd turn of events, and it cost me a significant amount of points, but Shemp had a commanding lead regardless and it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game.
As usual, this was a lot of fun. It's a nice mix of card management and luck.
Dominion: Intrigue
The closer for the evening was an all-intrigue Dominion. Shemp selected a deck called "Secrets and betrayal" (or something like that). All the cards with names like "Saboteur", "Shanty Town", etc, were in the deck. I won the game, so I hate saying that I played semi-randomly, but that's what happened. There was a memorable round where I drew my wishing well and wished for a "gold" treasure and drew it (remarkable because I only had one). I purchased a province and then immediately had to trash it as Shemp played his saboteur and my newly shuffled deck happened to have it on top. Easy come, easy go, I guess. I narrowly beat Kozure and we had a discussion afterwards about the danger of buying the Harem cards (2 VPs/ 2 treasure) near the end of the game... Duchies are worth 3 VPs for the same price but are dead weight. I had been buying them for some time, thinking the game was ending but it took longer than I thought and my deck was becoming inefficient (Shemp mentioned that the same thing was happening to him).
I've heard good things about the upcoming Prosperity expansion. We'll have to see how that plays out.
Showing posts with label Pandemic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pandemic. Show all posts
Friday, October 08, 2010
Friday, June 19, 2009
Give me the Black Karachi (Taj Mahal, Pandemic x2)
It was my turn to pick once more, so I selected an old and new favorite... Taj Mahal and Pandemic.
Taj Mahal
Sessions of this game don't lend themselves very well to description, so I won't bother. Suffice it to say that I pulled ahead of the pack about halfway through the game and ended up with a huge lead by the time it was over. Not a very exciting game, though at least Kozure and Shemp were neck and neck for 2nd place (they ended the game tied). I still really enjoy this one, despite the anticlimactic session. I've found in the past that this is best with 4, so maybe that was part of the problem.
Kozure mentioned that he felt the "pacing" was very important in order to do well in Taj Mahal. I absolutely agree.
1) Don't spend too many cards to get your second character chit if several other players are on the verge of getting that same chit. You'll spend your cards and lose the character ability next round as the others claim it.
2) Keep an eye on the connections you need on the board (for chains) and the goods available for winning the upcoming provinces. If the thing you really want is coming up in the next province, don't fight too hard in the current one.
3) If your priority is to place on the board to set up connections, it often pays to lead with a double noble card and then pull out early. You might get more stuff by staying in longer, but the space you need is probably taken. Alternatively, fight for the king.
4) Keep an eye on the suits other players have in front of them. If you avoid what has been played, you will be allowing the other players to get what they want, but if you cancel out another player's entire set you are encouraging them to fight back (in other words, if you cancel one of two things another player is going for, there is a chance they will pull out with what they have. If you cancel all the leads they had, they will surely play more cards in order to avoid coming away with nothing. Problem is, that other card they play might come in conflict with a suit you are going for)
*Edit* 5) It's easy to forget that the goal is to collect VPs, not nobles. Collecting nobles for their own sake will get you nowhere, and you will find yourself getting a single VP per round far too often. Make sure that you keep your goals focussed on collecting sets of goods or creating chains on the board, and seeing how the nobles can help you get there.
Pandemic
An expansion should be coming out soon for Pandemic, so I wanted to get a few games in of the basic set. I was worried that Shemp would reverse his positive rating on the game after playing it again (not because it's a bad game, but because Shemp typically dislikes cooperative games. Luckily, he came away from two back to back games still liking it, and I have to admit I feel the same.
I feel at three we did a great job of cooperating our abilities and cards. Rules I had not seen played often where being used frequently, such as the trading mechanics. We won both games on the regular difficulty, first as the Medic/ Scientist/ Dispatcher and second as the Medic/ Ops Expert/ Dispatcher. In the session there was only one outbreak all game, but in the second the last turn yielded a number of outbreaks which threatened the game. I think we are now ready to try the expert level of difficulty... and/or the expansion!
Taj Mahal
Sessions of this game don't lend themselves very well to description, so I won't bother. Suffice it to say that I pulled ahead of the pack about halfway through the game and ended up with a huge lead by the time it was over. Not a very exciting game, though at least Kozure and Shemp were neck and neck for 2nd place (they ended the game tied). I still really enjoy this one, despite the anticlimactic session. I've found in the past that this is best with 4, so maybe that was part of the problem.
Kozure mentioned that he felt the "pacing" was very important in order to do well in Taj Mahal. I absolutely agree.
1) Don't spend too many cards to get your second character chit if several other players are on the verge of getting that same chit. You'll spend your cards and lose the character ability next round as the others claim it.
2) Keep an eye on the connections you need on the board (for chains) and the goods available for winning the upcoming provinces. If the thing you really want is coming up in the next province, don't fight too hard in the current one.
3) If your priority is to place on the board to set up connections, it often pays to lead with a double noble card and then pull out early. You might get more stuff by staying in longer, but the space you need is probably taken. Alternatively, fight for the king.
4) Keep an eye on the suits other players have in front of them. If you avoid what has been played, you will be allowing the other players to get what they want, but if you cancel out another player's entire set you are encouraging them to fight back (in other words, if you cancel one of two things another player is going for, there is a chance they will pull out with what they have. If you cancel all the leads they had, they will surely play more cards in order to avoid coming away with nothing. Problem is, that other card they play might come in conflict with a suit you are going for)
*Edit* 5) It's easy to forget that the goal is to collect VPs, not nobles. Collecting nobles for their own sake will get you nowhere, and you will find yourself getting a single VP per round far too often. Make sure that you keep your goals focussed on collecting sets of goods or creating chains on the board, and seeing how the nobles can help you get there.
Pandemic
An expansion should be coming out soon for Pandemic, so I wanted to get a few games in of the basic set. I was worried that Shemp would reverse his positive rating on the game after playing it again (not because it's a bad game, but because Shemp typically dislikes cooperative games. Luckily, he came away from two back to back games still liking it, and I have to admit I feel the same.
I feel at three we did a great job of cooperating our abilities and cards. Rules I had not seen played often where being used frequently, such as the trading mechanics. We won both games on the regular difficulty, first as the Medic/ Scientist/ Dispatcher and second as the Medic/ Ops Expert/ Dispatcher. In the session there was only one outbreak all game, but in the second the last turn yielded a number of outbreaks which threatened the game. I think we are now ready to try the expert level of difficulty... and/or the expansion!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
It's O.K. father Joseph, it's the next world that matters (Last Night on Earth: The Zombie game x2, Pandemic)
I have to admit, if you had told me last year that it would take until now to play Last Night on Earth again, I would have been surprised. It's not the type of game that we usually play, but what it's trying to do it does it well. I'm glad Shemp was in the Halloween spirit and chose it this week.
We chose to play the online scenario "We have to go back!". It's an unusual setup that requires all 6 boards, where the heroes need to go into a village to look for two bio-canisters that are required to cure the zombie plague.
Shemp and Luch started as the zombies while Kozure played Father Joseph and Billy and I played Sheriff Anderson and Jake Cartwright.
Things didn't start off well as both Luch and Shemp rolled the maximum number of starting zombies AND they started with an "overrun" token on on of the buildings that potentially had a biocanister (overrun buildings can't be entered). We set about searching the other potential sites. Lucky for us, they were elsewhere and we managed to both find and escape with the two before sundown. I don't exactly recall, but I think we managed to do it without any casualties.
The game went quite quickly, so we played again. This time, Kozure and I played the zombies, Luch was Johnny and Becky and Shemp was Jenny and Sally.
As the zombies, we didn't start with nearly as many zombies as the Luch and Shemp did but we did have one major advantage... when we played the heroes THEY MOVED FASTER THAN THE ZOMBIES DID. It was very bizarre, but Luch and Shemp had the slowest moving heroes I've ever seen. Rolling higher than 1 or 2 was exceptional, it seemed. Oh, and then it rained, so they moved slower still. The zombies didn't shamble once, but they did manage to surround and then chomp on the heroes quite frequently. Becky ran around with an infection of some sort that would make her a zombie if she got hit again, and then Johnny and becky bit the dust and became zombie heroes. There was some fancy maneuvering on the part of team "Go Girl!", with a highly successful dynamite explosion being particularly effective, but ultimately they ran out of time and lost. Shemp was visibly perturbed when Luch's replacement hero Jake Cartwright spent a long time searching for items just as time was running out, but Jake did come out swinging and nearly saved the day (it came down to one roll against my zombie, and I got a 6). The zombies did not go hungry. There was no cure.
We closed the evening with a game of Pandemic. We decided that the black cubes were areas of zombie infestation, and that we were now witnessing on a macro scale the effect of the zombie plague we had just battled in Last Night on Earth (the micro scale).
We played at medium difficulty (5 epidemic cards) despite the fact that Shemp hadn't played before. We worked together pretty well, and things seemed very doable for most of the game. Our biggest problem was that we didn't have the medic, but I was playing the logistics character and discovered that the ability to move other players on my turn was very valuable indeed.
The early scares were zombie infestations, but yellow fever was equally problematic. A few turns in, scarlett fever showed up in spades throughout asia and much of our resources were consumed putting out that fire. We had discovered two of the cures, and had what we needed to cure the last two if the game could just get to me one last time (Luch had cure #3, and I had cure #4). As is often the case in Pandemic, the we ran out of time just before we could wrap it up. A final epidemic in Johannesburg finished us off.
Apparently, zombies should not have been our primary concern.
We chose to play the online scenario "We have to go back!". It's an unusual setup that requires all 6 boards, where the heroes need to go into a village to look for two bio-canisters that are required to cure the zombie plague.
Shemp and Luch started as the zombies while Kozure played Father Joseph and Billy and I played Sheriff Anderson and Jake Cartwright.
Things didn't start off well as both Luch and Shemp rolled the maximum number of starting zombies AND they started with an "overrun" token on on of the buildings that potentially had a biocanister (overrun buildings can't be entered). We set about searching the other potential sites. Lucky for us, they were elsewhere and we managed to both find and escape with the two before sundown. I don't exactly recall, but I think we managed to do it without any casualties.
The game went quite quickly, so we played again. This time, Kozure and I played the zombies, Luch was Johnny and Becky and Shemp was Jenny and Sally.
As the zombies, we didn't start with nearly as many zombies as the Luch and Shemp did but we did have one major advantage... when we played the heroes THEY MOVED FASTER THAN THE ZOMBIES DID. It was very bizarre, but Luch and Shemp had the slowest moving heroes I've ever seen. Rolling higher than 1 or 2 was exceptional, it seemed. Oh, and then it rained, so they moved slower still. The zombies didn't shamble once, but they did manage to surround and then chomp on the heroes quite frequently. Becky ran around with an infection of some sort that would make her a zombie if she got hit again, and then Johnny and becky bit the dust and became zombie heroes. There was some fancy maneuvering on the part of team "Go Girl!", with a highly successful dynamite explosion being particularly effective, but ultimately they ran out of time and lost. Shemp was visibly perturbed when Luch's replacement hero Jake Cartwright spent a long time searching for items just as time was running out, but Jake did come out swinging and nearly saved the day (it came down to one roll against my zombie, and I got a 6). The zombies did not go hungry. There was no cure.
We closed the evening with a game of Pandemic. We decided that the black cubes were areas of zombie infestation, and that we were now witnessing on a macro scale the effect of the zombie plague we had just battled in Last Night on Earth (the micro scale).
We played at medium difficulty (5 epidemic cards) despite the fact that Shemp hadn't played before. We worked together pretty well, and things seemed very doable for most of the game. Our biggest problem was that we didn't have the medic, but I was playing the logistics character and discovered that the ability to move other players on my turn was very valuable indeed.
The early scares were zombie infestations, but yellow fever was equally problematic. A few turns in, scarlett fever showed up in spades throughout asia and much of our resources were consumed putting out that fire. We had discovered two of the cures, and had what we needed to cure the last two if the game could just get to me one last time (Luch had cure #3, and I had cure #4). As is often the case in Pandemic, the we ran out of time just before we could wrap it up. A final epidemic in Johannesburg finished us off.
Apparently, zombies should not have been our primary concern.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
The men who saved, and then sold, the world (Fairy Tale, Pandemic, Traders of Genoa)
Remember Fairy Tale? We played it almost exactly three years ago when Jaywowzer brought over his copy. I felt it was a good game, but nothing spectacular. I recently received it as part of my last math trade, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. Guess what? Nothing's changed. It's decent.
Next, we played Pandemic. Reinforcing my theory that the luck of the draw is a rather overwhelming factor in the game, we followed a two game losing streak (6 if you count Kozure and Tili's games at Tabscon) with a rather easy win tonight. It didn't start off well, as Bharmer's first player card was once again an epidemic card. Lucky for us, however, we had very little difficulty getting sets together for cures, and the pandemics never really got into chain reaction territory. It was great finally registering a win, though, so I'm not complaining. Lots of fun.
We finished the evening with a game of the venerable Traders of Genoa. Predictably, I went with an ownership marker strategy. I managed to get one on the cathedral (ownership markers), the post office (messages) and all four goods buildings. They paid off.
Thankfully, too, because other than delivering messages I wasn't accomplishing too much. As the game wore on, I felt that I was quickly losing the lead my marker business had given me. I decided to use a "start anywhere" marker to start in the middle of the board and therefore shorten the game by a round. I did win, but it was very close (795, 770, 720, 695).
Luch has to win a prize for most complex turns. He managed to play the entire tower on a couple of occasions by playing a flurry of additional action chips.
Ironically, Glory to Rome was the game we had all picked as the carry-over game from last week. It didn't make it on the table this week, but maybe next week?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Well. that's better. (Glory to Rome, Princes of Florence, Pandemic)
After last week's embarrassing session of Princes of Florence, we felt we needed to redeem ourselves by playing again correctly. However, I had just picked up Glory to Rome and Pandemic, so I wanted to play those as well. From what I had read, trying to learn Glory to Rome late at night can make your head explode... so we started with that instead.
Glory to Rome
San Juan should be pretty flattered. Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome are both very close cousins to the card game implementation of Puerto Rico. Whereas Race is pretty much a more complicated version of San Juan, Glory to Rome uses a similar basic system but strays a bit further in terms of gameplay.
Let's get some first impressions out of the way: the art on the cards is pretty bad. Really pretty bad. It's a kind of cartoony art that seems like something out of Munchkin. It's odd, too, because the actual layout of the cards is quite thoughtful, so someone was clearly thinking about presentation. Part of the problem with the art is that it gives the impression the game is going to be funny or light. It is isn't either. The only argument I can think of in favour of the comic style is the fact that the game features real, live, direct player interaction (sometimes referred to as "screwage"), which is often not welcome in the more serious euros.
Like San Juan, the basic system involves choosing from various roles in an effort to build various buildings, each of which confers special abilities to the player once built. Most VPs wins. The execution is pretty different, though. Whereas San Juan is balanced, elegant and peaceful, Glory to Rome is complex, unbalanced and interactive. That's neither good or bad, it's just different. An indication of the differences can be seen in the basic roles... There's gathering materials, there's building buildings. There's also stealing materials from other players and hiding goods meant for the reconstruction of Rome in your vault. The buildings add further chaos by providing different ways to mess with the other players' games and altering the rules in pretty powerful ways. The game also introduces a new kind of resource, "clients", which allow a player to do the action of the chosen role as many times as they have of the correct client. This means that a player could conceivably set themselves up to take many times more turns than the other players.
Our first game went remarkably well. Considering everything going on, the game plays smoothly and logically. Kozure built the Forum about mid-game, which gives him instant victory if he can manage to gather one of each type of client. All he needed was a merchant, but we all worked together to prevent one from coming up. In the meantime, Bharmer built a Basilica which allowed him to steal cards to his vault directly from his hand. Let's just say we were all so focussed on preventing Kozure's automatic win that we didn't notice how many points Bharmer was stowing away. He won the game by a significant margin.
Our initial reaction to the Forum was that it was too powerful. Turns out we might have been wrong after all. We've only played one game, but I suspect we will get to see many cards and combos that seem too powerful, only to then find the antidote. Glory to Rome manages to be fun, thematic and strategic despite it's appearance. It should be a fun ride getting to know this one.
Princes of Florence
We played correctly this week. It's such a wonderful game when things are working! It was quite a close finish. Luch was ahead for the entire game, but he had no Prestige cards. On the final round, Bharmer and I tied him. Unfortunately for them, I did have some prestige VPs left to score (though I only completed one of my two cards successfully). I won by a slim margin.
Pandemic
Pandemic was the second new game of the evening. I played a few rounds a couple of days before, and the whole thing seemed pretty easy to pick up. Seemed perfect for the final game of the evening.
Turns out "easy to pick up" doesn't equal "easy to win at".
Pandemic is a cooperative game where players work together to cure 4 major diseases spreading like wildfire across the globe. Each player takes on the role of a specialist (a medic, a scientist, etc). Cubes in four colours are seeded at the beginning of the game to start things off and right away the pressure is on to do some damage control. Each player's turn, the infection spreads (cubes are added to the board). When a cube would normally be added to a city that already has three, cubes are instead placed in each adjacent city. In the meantime, players try to accumulate 5 cards of each colour to find the cures and eradicate the diseases. One of the most innovative mechanics in the game is that the cards which are flipped to determine the spread of disease are shuffled and placed back on top of the deck everytime an "epidemic" card is drawn. In other words, the sick places get sicker. And fast.
Our first game started poorly. The first card drawn was an "epidemic" card, so the board got ugly pretty quick. Our inexperience led to an out of control epidemic within a few turns and we lost pretty decisively. We immediately wanted to play a second game, however (good sign), so we tried again. Although the second game also felt pretty rocky, we seemed to be holding our own (though the experience quickly and frequently careens from cautiously optimistic to nearly hopeless). Coming down to the wire, we had cured the red, yellow and blue disease. Black was left but we were one turn away from curing it as well, for the win. It came down to the draw of Bharmer's last card. There were only three left, and one was an epidemic. He drew the epidemic. If memory serves, Moscow was the last city to pop, ending the game.
Playing Pandemic felt a little like playing an old 80s video game, like Arkanoid or Berserk. You try to act fast, try to respond to what is being thrown at you. It doesn't feel terribly deep and there's lots of luck, but you can definitely hone your skills and improve. Also, it's fun.
I like that players truly have to work together to succeed. I like that it's not easy to win (we were playing on the normal difficulty with 4 players. I'm told it's easier with fewer players, and obviously if we had played the introductory difficulty we might have won in our first games). I also like that it's pretty short and simple to teach. Another good game.
Glory to Rome
San Juan should be pretty flattered. Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome are both very close cousins to the card game implementation of Puerto Rico. Whereas Race is pretty much a more complicated version of San Juan, Glory to Rome uses a similar basic system but strays a bit further in terms of gameplay.
Let's get some first impressions out of the way: the art on the cards is pretty bad. Really pretty bad. It's a kind of cartoony art that seems like something out of Munchkin. It's odd, too, because the actual layout of the cards is quite thoughtful, so someone was clearly thinking about presentation. Part of the problem with the art is that it gives the impression the game is going to be funny or light. It is isn't either. The only argument I can think of in favour of the comic style is the fact that the game features real, live, direct player interaction (sometimes referred to as "screwage"), which is often not welcome in the more serious euros.
Like San Juan, the basic system involves choosing from various roles in an effort to build various buildings, each of which confers special abilities to the player once built. Most VPs wins. The execution is pretty different, though. Whereas San Juan is balanced, elegant and peaceful, Glory to Rome is complex, unbalanced and interactive. That's neither good or bad, it's just different. An indication of the differences can be seen in the basic roles... There's gathering materials, there's building buildings. There's also stealing materials from other players and hiding goods meant for the reconstruction of Rome in your vault. The buildings add further chaos by providing different ways to mess with the other players' games and altering the rules in pretty powerful ways. The game also introduces a new kind of resource, "clients", which allow a player to do the action of the chosen role as many times as they have of the correct client. This means that a player could conceivably set themselves up to take many times more turns than the other players.
Our first game went remarkably well. Considering everything going on, the game plays smoothly and logically. Kozure built the Forum about mid-game, which gives him instant victory if he can manage to gather one of each type of client. All he needed was a merchant, but we all worked together to prevent one from coming up. In the meantime, Bharmer built a Basilica which allowed him to steal cards to his vault directly from his hand. Let's just say we were all so focussed on preventing Kozure's automatic win that we didn't notice how many points Bharmer was stowing away. He won the game by a significant margin.
Our initial reaction to the Forum was that it was too powerful. Turns out we might have been wrong after all. We've only played one game, but I suspect we will get to see many cards and combos that seem too powerful, only to then find the antidote. Glory to Rome manages to be fun, thematic and strategic despite it's appearance. It should be a fun ride getting to know this one.
Princes of Florence
We played correctly this week. It's such a wonderful game when things are working! It was quite a close finish. Luch was ahead for the entire game, but he had no Prestige cards. On the final round, Bharmer and I tied him. Unfortunately for them, I did have some prestige VPs left to score (though I only completed one of my two cards successfully). I won by a slim margin.
Pandemic
Pandemic was the second new game of the evening. I played a few rounds a couple of days before, and the whole thing seemed pretty easy to pick up. Seemed perfect for the final game of the evening.
Turns out "easy to pick up" doesn't equal "easy to win at".
Pandemic is a cooperative game where players work together to cure 4 major diseases spreading like wildfire across the globe. Each player takes on the role of a specialist (a medic, a scientist, etc). Cubes in four colours are seeded at the beginning of the game to start things off and right away the pressure is on to do some damage control. Each player's turn, the infection spreads (cubes are added to the board). When a cube would normally be added to a city that already has three, cubes are instead placed in each adjacent city. In the meantime, players try to accumulate 5 cards of each colour to find the cures and eradicate the diseases. One of the most innovative mechanics in the game is that the cards which are flipped to determine the spread of disease are shuffled and placed back on top of the deck everytime an "epidemic" card is drawn. In other words, the sick places get sicker. And fast.
Our first game started poorly. The first card drawn was an "epidemic" card, so the board got ugly pretty quick. Our inexperience led to an out of control epidemic within a few turns and we lost pretty decisively. We immediately wanted to play a second game, however (good sign), so we tried again. Although the second game also felt pretty rocky, we seemed to be holding our own (though the experience quickly and frequently careens from cautiously optimistic to nearly hopeless). Coming down to the wire, we had cured the red, yellow and blue disease. Black was left but we were one turn away from curing it as well, for the win. It came down to the draw of Bharmer's last card. There were only three left, and one was an epidemic. He drew the epidemic. If memory serves, Moscow was the last city to pop, ending the game.
Playing Pandemic felt a little like playing an old 80s video game, like Arkanoid or Berserk. You try to act fast, try to respond to what is being thrown at you. It doesn't feel terribly deep and there's lots of luck, but you can definitely hone your skills and improve. Also, it's fun.
I like that players truly have to work together to succeed. I like that it's not easy to win (we were playing on the normal difficulty with 4 players. I'm told it's easier with fewer players, and obviously if we had played the introductory difficulty we might have won in our first games). I also like that it's pretty short and simple to teach. Another good game.
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