Work prevented me from arriving on time last week, so I missed the first few games. The group was kind enough to play a number of short games until I arrived (Clans, Ra and even Scrabble Slam!) where played, though I do not know the details).
When I did get there, Bharmer perused the games I brought and selected the newly acquired "Innovation", casting aside Troyes and Junta- Vive el presidente! Shemp promptly added "Y'all have got too many games", and we were off.
Innovation
I read the rules. I reread the rules. I played a few hands. I still had no idea what was going on, or why. Mostly, I didn't know why. I was afraid that a four player game would lead to certain brain asplosions.
I really like the designer's previous game, Glory to Rome. It's a kind of managed chaos. Despite similarities to Race for the Galaxy, I doubt anybody would describe the experiences as similar. The game plays quite differently each game because of the variety of possible super combos that inevitably come out in the later game. Innovation has a similar barely contained chaos but the games are distinctly different.
Innovation is about the evolution of great ideas through different periods of history. It's a card game, and every single card represents a different idea. At the start of the game, all the cards are grouped by era and each stack is placed in a circle. All players are dealt two ideas from the prehistoric era and the game begins. Players get two actions per turn, which can be to draw a new idea, to play a new idea or to activate an existing idea. The meat of the game is in the activation if ideas... Each player's tableau of active idea cards will feature a number of icons, and each time a player activates an idea it's necessary to compare how many of the pertinent icon each player has. If it's a beneficial idea, any player with equal or m ore icons also get the effects. If it's an aggressive idea, players with equal or more icons are immune. One of the main, ahem, innovations of the game is the concept of "splaying" cards. An idea that permits the splaying of a stack of cards allows a player to slide all the cards in a stack to the right, left or top. This allows a number of icons from the cards below to be seen, and the revealed icons then count as forming part of the tableau... Very powerful.
So,it's a game about creating synergy between ideas. As expected, some of the powers become quite powerful and can create unexpected combos. One thing we hadn't expected was that some earlier ideas can become quite powerful if all other players move on. For example, Shemp discovered that in the beginning, when everyone has "plant" icons, a card based on them can be hard to pull off. However, as players move on and everyone else starts to shed their "plant" icons in favor of science and industry, it's much easier to dominate in that field. To win, one player has to claim a certain number of achievements (however there are cards in later ages that provide alternate win conditions, so if you are behind you could always make a rush for those).
Although there is some effort made to tie the card's powers to the idea it represents, between the abstraction and the bland cards it's hard to feel the theme in the game. Still, from a gameplay perspective I quite enjoyed it. Chaotic, definitely, but fun. Also, not nearly as hard to grasp or play as I had thought.
I will say for the record that Shemp destroyed as in both sessions. This is untrue, of course, because Kozure and I each won a game, but since I miss reported a few of his wins in previous weeks this will be my olive branch.
Showing posts with label Ra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ra. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Helping people is wrong (Survive!, Clans, Ra, Acquire)
After a significant period where we played at Shemp's house every week to accommodate my sons' swim schedules, we switched to Thursdays and played at Kozure's place. In addition to giving us a longer block of time to play games, we had a few additional players... Tilitumbleroo and Kozure Junior, the eldest (a very bright 6 year old).
Survive!
Our first game was Survive!, a classic game from the 80's recently resurrected by Stronghold games. This is a game of lighthearted nastiness where players try to get their people off a sinking island without getting eaten by sharks and sea monsters. It's very simple to play, so it's great for a wide audience, but it does have a mean streak because on a player's turn in addition to moving their people they must select an island tile to sink and move a monster... often leading to the fatalities of other player's pawns. Kozure Junior joined us for this game and made it a foursome. A few turns in, he asked if he was supposed to help or hinder the other players... to which we answered that helping people is wrong. Clearly, games teach important life lessons!
Many fatalities later, Kozure emerged victorious beating myself and Shemp by a single point! Kozure Junior finished just 2-3 points behind, so it was all very close.
Ra
Tilitumbleroo was hoping to play Acquire after she put the kids to bed, so as this was happening we started a game of Ra. Just to see what it was like, we opted to play on the Ipad instead of the physical game. Although Kozure amassed a large inventory of monuments, it was quite as much as he needed to surpass me. I was shocked when the score came up and I had won!
I play games frequently on my Iphone and I do quite enjoy it, however this was my first time playing in person against other players in this way. Although I think it would be dreadful on the Iphone, on the Ipad it's a decent experience. The obvious advantages of doing away with setup and takedown and of automatically tracking scores are nice but the tactile feeling is gone and the experience feels muted. In particular, the animations that they introduce to spice things up become annoying after a short time, even though they surely take less time than the physical actions used to take! Anyway, if I was going on a trip, this would be a great substitute for the real thing but I'll continue playing the boxed version for now.
Clans
We played Clans to finish up the time before our game of Acquire. I was green, but I played as red for a few turns (red being my normal colour when playing games). I recovered early enough that it didn't matter. We actually paused the game so that we could start Acquire and came back to it later, but for the sake of simplicity I won't break up the description. The green and red hut people both came within spitting distance of winning but in the end green (me) was triumphant. Go green!
Acquire
Acquire is the last of Shemp's Christmas buying spree. I had been looking forward to playing it for quite some time so this was definitely the highlight of the evening. It's a game from the 60s that, I had been told, still felt fresh today. Judging from the board, a grid of numbered spaces reminiscent of a battleship board, and the hotel chain building theme, I anticipated something in the same vein as Chinatown. It wasn't. Acquire is a business speculation game, not a negotiation game. It reminds me a bit of the casino growing aspect of Lords of Vegas, though far more streamlined.
In Acquire, players are investing in growing hotel chains. Players each have a screen hiding 6 random tiles that identify locations on the board. On a turn, a player must place one of these tiles.
If the placed tile created a grouping of two on the board, a hotel chain is formed. The player may now invest in this or any other
previously founded hotel chain by purchasing a total of 3 shares. The value of each share is determined by the current size of the chain (obviously, this means there is great incentive to invest early, before shares become too expensive).
Another possibility is that the placement of the tile joins two or more existing hotel chains. If so, the larger hotel subsumes the smaller one. Investors in the larger chain benefit because the larger size means higher share value. The investors in the smaller chain benefit because they get paid out. The largest and 2nd largest shareholders get a bonus and everybody can sell their shares at their current value. It's important to note that there is NO WAY to make money in this game unless a hotel chain you've invested in gets taken over. This means that after an initial buying spree, players start running out of money and are looking to have one of their chains absorbed into a larger one. In the end, though, being majority shareholder in the big chains will pay out huge returns so it's probably important not to focus exclusively on the smaller companies. It's quite a nice dynamic and I can see how many modern games could trace their mechanics back to those found here. Overall, although the gameplay felt quite abstract I found it to be a lot of fun and definitely able to stand up against current designs.
In our game, I benefited from the first take over and found myself with more cash than the other players which felt like a large advantage. Over the course of the game, I felt like I lost some ground and it seemed like Kozure was really taking off. Tilitumbleroo was also doing quite well. I felt that I had a very good stock portfolio, and that I might catch up in the endgame. At one point, I was playing an escalation war with all three other players as we were all purchasing shares to try to get a majority before merging some of the last available companies. The shares ran out and I was locked out. Kozure and Tili ended up as 1st and 2nd and did quite well. Kozure ended the game by merging the last company, but as the smaller one liquidated we all realized that Tili was able to convert shares to the larger one and this put here in the lead. When all the money was counted, her majority holding meant the difference and she won.
Lots of fun, very tense, great design.
Survive!
Our first game was Survive!, a classic game from the 80's recently resurrected by Stronghold games. This is a game of lighthearted nastiness where players try to get their people off a sinking island without getting eaten by sharks and sea monsters. It's very simple to play, so it's great for a wide audience, but it does have a mean streak because on a player's turn in addition to moving their people they must select an island tile to sink and move a monster... often leading to the fatalities of other player's pawns. Kozure Junior joined us for this game and made it a foursome. A few turns in, he asked if he was supposed to help or hinder the other players... to which we answered that helping people is wrong. Clearly, games teach important life lessons!
Many fatalities later, Kozure emerged victorious beating myself and Shemp by a single point! Kozure Junior finished just 2-3 points behind, so it was all very close.
Ra
Tilitumbleroo was hoping to play Acquire after she put the kids to bed, so as this was happening we started a game of Ra. Just to see what it was like, we opted to play on the Ipad instead of the physical game. Although Kozure amassed a large inventory of monuments, it was quite as much as he needed to surpass me. I was shocked when the score came up and I had won!
I play games frequently on my Iphone and I do quite enjoy it, however this was my first time playing in person against other players in this way. Although I think it would be dreadful on the Iphone, on the Ipad it's a decent experience. The obvious advantages of doing away with setup and takedown and of automatically tracking scores are nice but the tactile feeling is gone and the experience feels muted. In particular, the animations that they introduce to spice things up become annoying after a short time, even though they surely take less time than the physical actions used to take! Anyway, if I was going on a trip, this would be a great substitute for the real thing but I'll continue playing the boxed version for now.
Clans
We played Clans to finish up the time before our game of Acquire. I was green, but I played as red for a few turns (red being my normal colour when playing games). I recovered early enough that it didn't matter. We actually paused the game so that we could start Acquire and came back to it later, but for the sake of simplicity I won't break up the description. The green and red hut people both came within spitting distance of winning but in the end green (me) was triumphant. Go green!
Acquire
Acquire is the last of Shemp's Christmas buying spree. I had been looking forward to playing it for quite some time so this was definitely the highlight of the evening. It's a game from the 60s that, I had been told, still felt fresh today. Judging from the board, a grid of numbered spaces reminiscent of a battleship board, and the hotel chain building theme, I anticipated something in the same vein as Chinatown. It wasn't. Acquire is a business speculation game, not a negotiation game. It reminds me a bit of the casino growing aspect of Lords of Vegas, though far more streamlined.
In Acquire, players are investing in growing hotel chains. Players each have a screen hiding 6 random tiles that identify locations on the board. On a turn, a player must place one of these tiles.
If the placed tile created a grouping of two on the board, a hotel chain is formed. The player may now invest in this or any other
previously founded hotel chain by purchasing a total of 3 shares. The value of each share is determined by the current size of the chain (obviously, this means there is great incentive to invest early, before shares become too expensive).
Another possibility is that the placement of the tile joins two or more existing hotel chains. If so, the larger hotel subsumes the smaller one. Investors in the larger chain benefit because the larger size means higher share value. The investors in the smaller chain benefit because they get paid out. The largest and 2nd largest shareholders get a bonus and everybody can sell their shares at their current value. It's important to note that there is NO WAY to make money in this game unless a hotel chain you've invested in gets taken over. This means that after an initial buying spree, players start running out of money and are looking to have one of their chains absorbed into a larger one. In the end, though, being majority shareholder in the big chains will pay out huge returns so it's probably important not to focus exclusively on the smaller companies. It's quite a nice dynamic and I can see how many modern games could trace their mechanics back to those found here. Overall, although the gameplay felt quite abstract I found it to be a lot of fun and definitely able to stand up against current designs.
In our game, I benefited from the first take over and found myself with more cash than the other players which felt like a large advantage. Over the course of the game, I felt like I lost some ground and it seemed like Kozure was really taking off. Tilitumbleroo was also doing quite well. I felt that I had a very good stock portfolio, and that I might catch up in the endgame. At one point, I was playing an escalation war with all three other players as we were all purchasing shares to try to get a majority before merging some of the last available companies. The shares ran out and I was locked out. Kozure and Tili ended up as 1st and 2nd and did quite well. Kozure ended the game by merging the last company, but as the smaller one liquidated we all realized that Tili was able to convert shares to the larger one and this put here in the lead. When all the money was counted, her majority holding meant the difference and she won.
Lots of fun, very tense, great design.
Monday, September 06, 2010
Threeny Madness! (Ra, Glory to Rome, Beowulf, Dominion)
Shemp's pick this week, and he went for Threeny Madness (a play on "weeny madness", the name we used to give Magic decks that focussed on many small creatures). Turns out many of the games played aren't particularly "weeny", but what can you do?
Ra
First up was Ra, with Tilli playing instead of Kozure. Auction games are often subject to groupthink, and so I think everyone was somewhat surprised at how differently me and Shemp evaluated things compared to Tilli (who would typically play outside our group). In particular, it is my habit to purchase many smaller lots early rather than go long and hope for quantity. At first, it looked like it was a losing strategy... Tilli had a huge first round and Shemp and I scored very little. As the game wore on, Ra looked with dissaproval at those wanting quantity over quality and rewarded me with an enormous last round for the win.
Glory to Rome
Kozure stepped back in and Shemp chose perennial favorite Glory to Rome. I've often said that this game is characterized by a new "unbalanced" combo every game. Just to prove me wrong, this session didn't have that. We were all building away and minding our own business when suddenly all the building sites had been used and the game ended. Another odd thing: None of us had a single piece of material in the vault. Shemp thought he had me based on the influence I had gathered from building, but what he hadn't noticed was that I had built the ... (I don't recall the name, but it gives me 1 VP for each 2 materials in the stockpile). This sneakery allowed me to surpass Shemp by 1 and win the game.
Beowulf
A few weeks ago we were wondering if Beowulf with 3 would be any good. Having now played it, I must say that it is! Knizia distributed the episodic rewards very well so that there is as much interest in the 3 player auction as the 4 or 5 player.
In the early episodes, luck was shining on Shemp as he was making out quite well at all the risking challenges. Kozure also appeared to have a persistently large hand of cards. I struggled early in the game but game but found my footing about a third of the way. Through sheer dumb luck I won an episode with a single card from my hand. This reward allowed me to snowball my successes and soon I felt like I was doing really well. Going into the battle with the dragon, I had a hand of 10-15 cards ALL of which could be used in the battle (i.e. just fists and axes and wilds). I don't often do well at this game, but clearly this was my evening!
Dominion
We ended, as we often do, with Dominon. Shemp noticed that the was a themed deck called "Hand Madness!", so being unable to resist the tie in with the evening's theme he chose it. As you'd expect, it's a deck that has players manipulating the number of cards in their own and their opponent's hands quite a lot. Dominion is another game I typically don't do well in, but unfortunately this time the result was in line with the odds... I came in last after an unsuccessful attempt to pull off a bureaucrat + Council room combo. It didn't help that Shemp was constantly playing Militias to keep my handsize down. I unfortunately do not remember who actually did win, however.
Ra
First up was Ra, with Tilli playing instead of Kozure. Auction games are often subject to groupthink, and so I think everyone was somewhat surprised at how differently me and Shemp evaluated things compared to Tilli (who would typically play outside our group). In particular, it is my habit to purchase many smaller lots early rather than go long and hope for quantity. At first, it looked like it was a losing strategy... Tilli had a huge first round and Shemp and I scored very little. As the game wore on, Ra looked with dissaproval at those wanting quantity over quality and rewarded me with an enormous last round for the win.
Glory to Rome
Kozure stepped back in and Shemp chose perennial favorite Glory to Rome. I've often said that this game is characterized by a new "unbalanced" combo every game. Just to prove me wrong, this session didn't have that. We were all building away and minding our own business when suddenly all the building sites had been used and the game ended. Another odd thing: None of us had a single piece of material in the vault. Shemp thought he had me based on the influence I had gathered from building, but what he hadn't noticed was that I had built the ... (I don't recall the name, but it gives me 1 VP for each 2 materials in the stockpile). This sneakery allowed me to surpass Shemp by 1 and win the game.
Beowulf
A few weeks ago we were wondering if Beowulf with 3 would be any good. Having now played it, I must say that it is! Knizia distributed the episodic rewards very well so that there is as much interest in the 3 player auction as the 4 or 5 player.
In the early episodes, luck was shining on Shemp as he was making out quite well at all the risking challenges. Kozure also appeared to have a persistently large hand of cards. I struggled early in the game but game but found my footing about a third of the way. Through sheer dumb luck I won an episode with a single card from my hand. This reward allowed me to snowball my successes and soon I felt like I was doing really well. Going into the battle with the dragon, I had a hand of 10-15 cards ALL of which could be used in the battle (i.e. just fists and axes and wilds). I don't often do well at this game, but clearly this was my evening!
Dominion
We ended, as we often do, with Dominon. Shemp noticed that the was a themed deck called "Hand Madness!", so being unable to resist the tie in with the evening's theme he chose it. As you'd expect, it's a deck that has players manipulating the number of cards in their own and their opponent's hands quite a lot. Dominion is another game I typically don't do well in, but unfortunately this time the result was in line with the odds... I came in last after an unsuccessful attempt to pull off a bureaucrat + Council room combo. It didn't help that Shemp was constantly playing Militias to keep my handsize down. I unfortunately do not remember who actually did win, however.
Labels:
Beowulf,
Dominion,
Dominion: Intrigue,
Glory to Rome,
Ra
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Ra, Ra, Mexica! (Ra: The dice game, Mexica, Ra)
My sister's husband, Pablo, recently immigrated to Canada and since he enjoys boardgames we invited him to join us. Although he isn't familiar with many of our games, he had previously played and enjoyed Tikal and Memoir '44 so I felt he'd have no problem. Four players at WAGS? Fantastic!
Ra: The Dice Game
This was my second time playing this game, but for Shemp and Pablo it was a first. Still a fun game, but this is definitely a shallower experience than the original. I won on the strength of a game long dominance of Pharaohs and a huge score from pyramids.
Mexica
The first half of this session saw a far more structured development pattern than we've seen in recent games. The two extremities of the island where being planned with southern Ontario like regularity (rectangular zones, each stacked side by side). When the second stage began, good planning fell by the wayside... strange and impractical districts popped up and made movement very difficult. There was a large unfounded area on one side of the island that I seeded with a number of buildings, hoping for a points grab as other players would enclose them for me (i.e. the Shemp tactic). Unfortunately, my placement left much of the area undevelopable so the game ended with unplaced Calpuli tiles... a first for us. Shemp won by a significant margin, with Kozure in second place.
Ra
For the sake of compare and contrast, we ended with Ra. I often go for a quick grab of anything that looks valuable when playing with more than 3 players, so I found myself with a decent haul quickly in the first era. This left me with no bidding tiles before most had even spent one, but it worked... the other players did not manage to get much in the remaining time before the Ra tiles ended the era. I had a similarly successful second era and despite a weak third I won the game.
Pablo says he preferred the dice game. Personally, I feel the original has a lot more going for it and probably has much longer legs. That said, the dice version is certainly more accessible since auction games are typically not forgiving to new players who don't yet know how to evaluate the worth of each tile.
Ra: The Dice Game
This was my second time playing this game, but for Shemp and Pablo it was a first. Still a fun game, but this is definitely a shallower experience than the original. I won on the strength of a game long dominance of Pharaohs and a huge score from pyramids.
Mexica
The first half of this session saw a far more structured development pattern than we've seen in recent games. The two extremities of the island where being planned with southern Ontario like regularity (rectangular zones, each stacked side by side). When the second stage began, good planning fell by the wayside... strange and impractical districts popped up and made movement very difficult. There was a large unfounded area on one side of the island that I seeded with a number of buildings, hoping for a points grab as other players would enclose them for me (i.e. the Shemp tactic). Unfortunately, my placement left much of the area undevelopable so the game ended with unplaced Calpuli tiles... a first for us. Shemp won by a significant margin, with Kozure in second place.
Ra
For the sake of compare and contrast, we ended with Ra. I often go for a quick grab of anything that looks valuable when playing with more than 3 players, so I found myself with a decent haul quickly in the first era. This left me with no bidding tiles before most had even spent one, but it worked... the other players did not manage to get much in the remaining time before the Ra tiles ended the era. I had a similarly successful second era and despite a weak third I won the game.
Pablo says he preferred the dice game. Personally, I feel the original has a lot more going for it and probably has much longer legs. That said, the dice version is certainly more accessible since auction games are typically not forgiving to new players who don't yet know how to evaluate the worth of each tile.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
New Record Set!! (Battle Line, Dominion, Dominion:Intrigue, Race for the Galaxy
So, they were going to play Cyclades, which was Kozure's selection, as he was dictator this week.
Unfortunately, I didn't show up until 11pm. I was stuck at a function that should have been over at 9pm. Oh well.
Kozure and Shemp played Battle Line and Dominion/ Dominion: Intrigue, and from the sounds of it they played quite a few times.
(Shemp started this post, and I'm publishing it to keep them all in order. I presume his title refers to many games played)
When I arrived, we played another game of Dominion and then Kozure and I had a hand of Race for the Galaxy.
Sorry, not very interesting, but there it is.
Unfortunately, I didn't show up until 11pm. I was stuck at a function that should have been over at 9pm. Oh well.
Kozure and Shemp played Battle Line and Dominion/ Dominion: Intrigue, and from the sounds of it they played quite a few times.
(Shemp started this post, and I'm publishing it to keep them all in order. I presume his title refers to many games played)
When I arrived, we played another game of Dominion and then Kozure and I had a hand of Race for the Galaxy.
Sorry, not very interesting, but there it is.
Labels:
Battle Line,
Dominion,
Dominion: Intrigue,
Ra,
Race for the Galaxy
Friday, February 05, 2010
The Thunder-business (Dominion x2, Thunderstone, Ra)
It was Shemp's pick, but Shemp did not pick. So, we brought games, and we played some of those. Three players again (me, Shemp and Kozure).
Dominion
First up was Dominion, which I had never played before (although I've played Dominion:Intrigue a few times). When I had played the expansion, I was a little ambivalent... The games wants to be played quickly, but the cards were *just* complicated enough that I couldn't quite internalize what they all did or how they could be combined and still play fast. The result was that I just wasn't getting into it. The base game, on the other hand, is much easier to grasp quickly and I found it to be much more enjoyable. No doubt if I played enough I'd want the additional variety and interaction of Intrigue, but for now I'd pick this one every time.
We played two times. In the first, I focussed on mines, the bureaucrat and the cellar. I purchased coppers, upgraded them to silvers and then gold (or, alternatively, received silver from the bureaucrat and upgraded it to gold). My multiple cellars ensured that I had a copper or silver to upgrade whenever I had a mine in hand. I soon had many gold cards and purchasing provinces was relatively easy. The funny thing was that both Shemp and Kozure had a lot of thieves in their deck, and were repeatedly trying to steal from me... and not once did I turn over anything more than a copper! Luck was certainly on my side. I ended up winning... my first Dominion victory ever! In fact, it was my first non-dead last finish ever.
In our second game, the cards were strangely skewed to the high end. The only relatively inexpensive card was the moat (ironic, because there was only one attack action card available). I attempted a "garden" strategy by accumulating as many cheap cards as possible and as many gardens as possible. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until later that I should have focussed on cards that gave me more "buys" so that I could bulk up my deck even further. I didn't quite make it to 40 cards, so my gardens only scored 3 points each. It wasn't quite enough because Shemp's last minute purchase of the final garden card gave him just enough to get by me.
Thunderstone
I gave my son "The Adventurers: Escape fromt he temple of Chac" by AEG for christmas, and unfortunately after our very first play he gathered up all the cards (so he could figure out what was the highest possible score) and then sat them down on the couch. My other son was jumping on the couch. Within seconds, al the cards were bent and folded. Not great for a game where hidden information is essential. I wrote an email to AEG to ask if they sold the cards separately, and they offered to send me a whole new deck for free! Because of that great show of customer service, I decided to see what other games they sold and noticed Thunderstone. As I mentioned above, until today I hadn't particularly enjoyed Dominion but I did find the central mechanic interesting. This game seemed to have a bit more depth, a theme that actually was reflected in the gameplay and it was getting good reviews. I decided to go for it.
Our game group generally doesn't go for fantasy themed games. Shemp, in particular, voiced that his desire to play was low largely due to the theme and "me-too" gameplay. Luckily, the guys are good sports about trying out new purchases and Shemp proclaimed that we would follow up Dominion with "the Thunder-business".
There are a lot of similarities between the games. Cards in the middle of the table represent the village and are used in the same way as the cards in Dominion. The deck that players build over the course of the game are worth gold and depending on what you get in your hand you can purchase better cards. The main difference in the game is that players have a second option... cards have other symbols which indicate the kind of adventuring party that can be mustered for a dungeon crawl. To the side of the village, a dungeon awaits consisting of a deck of cars and three face up creatures. If a player decides to pit their party against a creature in the dungeon, then the strength of the attack is compared to the hit points of the creature and if defeated the creature goes to the player's discard pile (analogous to VP cards in Dominion). The game ends once the Thunderstone is unearthed from the near the bottom of the creature deck.
Although the dungeon represents the biggest departure from Dominion, many other aspects of the game have additional little modifications. There are hero cards that can be leveled up, heros have a strength rating and equipment can only be used by those that have enough strength. Fighting creatures in the dungeon requires light, and the deeper into the dungeon you go, the more light is necessary. There are other differences as well, but suffice it to say that the game is at once similar to Dominion and quite different from it.
My feelings on the game are mixed. The theme of the game is relatively well captured. Unlike Dominion, it doesn't feel like you are just acquiring cards for the sake of gathering VPs. The additional details add some interesting decisions and force players to balance more things at once (powerful heroes are good, but light is also necessary, and the dungeon can't be ignored too long as you build up your deck or else the other players will get all the VPs). There are downsides to these changes, however. In Dominion, each player determines which combos they are aiming for and nothing really constrains their actions except the common goal of gathering VPs. In Thunderstone, certain basic necessities are needed in order to achieve the overall goal , and each player needs to look after them to a minimum degree. For example, everyone needs to get light. Everyone needs to get heroes and upgrade them. Everyone will be going to the dungeon and fight the monsters. This may lead to an overall feeling of sameness even though the specifics of each game may be different. The variety is found within that context... the selection of heroes, the village cards purchased, the monsters encountered in the dungeon. Also, the larger number of factors that need to come together means that the decks are more prone to clumping.
Anyway, I'll need to play a few more times to make a final judgement. I'd say that I like it better than Dominion: Intrigue, but less than Dominion. I'm not a big fan of the way the game ends as written... it feels a little like kingmaking, but it's easy enough to fix it and say that the game ends as soon as the Thunderstone is revealed. I also think that there is a strange disconnect between the experience the game delivers and what we have come to expect from dungeon crawling games: usually the easy creatures come first and there is a build up to the big bosses at the end. The random distribution ensures that this won't be the case in Thunderstone, for better or worse. I suppose it would be possible to make a variant where the monsters were encountered in order of strength if it really bothers me later on.
I won the game because I managed a lot of dungeon victories early in the game. Later, my deck got clogged but I had a good enough lead that it didn't matter.
"Ok, Blink dog"
Ra
We finished up with Ra. Fun as always, I learned an interesting tidbit about Shemp... He told us that Ra is the game that makes him willing to keep playing games he is initially unimpressed with. At first he hated Ra, now he thinks it's great.
Kozure came from behind and won on the strength of a great haul from his monuments.
Dominion
First up was Dominion, which I had never played before (although I've played Dominion:Intrigue a few times). When I had played the expansion, I was a little ambivalent... The games wants to be played quickly, but the cards were *just* complicated enough that I couldn't quite internalize what they all did or how they could be combined and still play fast. The result was that I just wasn't getting into it. The base game, on the other hand, is much easier to grasp quickly and I found it to be much more enjoyable. No doubt if I played enough I'd want the additional variety and interaction of Intrigue, but for now I'd pick this one every time.
We played two times. In the first, I focussed on mines, the bureaucrat and the cellar. I purchased coppers, upgraded them to silvers and then gold (or, alternatively, received silver from the bureaucrat and upgraded it to gold). My multiple cellars ensured that I had a copper or silver to upgrade whenever I had a mine in hand. I soon had many gold cards and purchasing provinces was relatively easy. The funny thing was that both Shemp and Kozure had a lot of thieves in their deck, and were repeatedly trying to steal from me... and not once did I turn over anything more than a copper! Luck was certainly on my side. I ended up winning... my first Dominion victory ever! In fact, it was my first non-dead last finish ever.
In our second game, the cards were strangely skewed to the high end. The only relatively inexpensive card was the moat (ironic, because there was only one attack action card available). I attempted a "garden" strategy by accumulating as many cheap cards as possible and as many gardens as possible. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until later that I should have focussed on cards that gave me more "buys" so that I could bulk up my deck even further. I didn't quite make it to 40 cards, so my gardens only scored 3 points each. It wasn't quite enough because Shemp's last minute purchase of the final garden card gave him just enough to get by me.
Thunderstone
I gave my son "The Adventurers: Escape fromt he temple of Chac" by AEG for christmas, and unfortunately after our very first play he gathered up all the cards (so he could figure out what was the highest possible score) and then sat them down on the couch. My other son was jumping on the couch. Within seconds, al the cards were bent and folded. Not great for a game where hidden information is essential. I wrote an email to AEG to ask if they sold the cards separately, and they offered to send me a whole new deck for free! Because of that great show of customer service, I decided to see what other games they sold and noticed Thunderstone. As I mentioned above, until today I hadn't particularly enjoyed Dominion but I did find the central mechanic interesting. This game seemed to have a bit more depth, a theme that actually was reflected in the gameplay and it was getting good reviews. I decided to go for it.
Our game group generally doesn't go for fantasy themed games. Shemp, in particular, voiced that his desire to play was low largely due to the theme and "me-too" gameplay. Luckily, the guys are good sports about trying out new purchases and Shemp proclaimed that we would follow up Dominion with "the Thunder-business".
There are a lot of similarities between the games. Cards in the middle of the table represent the village and are used in the same way as the cards in Dominion. The deck that players build over the course of the game are worth gold and depending on what you get in your hand you can purchase better cards. The main difference in the game is that players have a second option... cards have other symbols which indicate the kind of adventuring party that can be mustered for a dungeon crawl. To the side of the village, a dungeon awaits consisting of a deck of cars and three face up creatures. If a player decides to pit their party against a creature in the dungeon, then the strength of the attack is compared to the hit points of the creature and if defeated the creature goes to the player's discard pile (analogous to VP cards in Dominion). The game ends once the Thunderstone is unearthed from the near the bottom of the creature deck.
Although the dungeon represents the biggest departure from Dominion, many other aspects of the game have additional little modifications. There are hero cards that can be leveled up, heros have a strength rating and equipment can only be used by those that have enough strength. Fighting creatures in the dungeon requires light, and the deeper into the dungeon you go, the more light is necessary. There are other differences as well, but suffice it to say that the game is at once similar to Dominion and quite different from it.
My feelings on the game are mixed. The theme of the game is relatively well captured. Unlike Dominion, it doesn't feel like you are just acquiring cards for the sake of gathering VPs. The additional details add some interesting decisions and force players to balance more things at once (powerful heroes are good, but light is also necessary, and the dungeon can't be ignored too long as you build up your deck or else the other players will get all the VPs). There are downsides to these changes, however. In Dominion, each player determines which combos they are aiming for and nothing really constrains their actions except the common goal of gathering VPs. In Thunderstone, certain basic necessities are needed in order to achieve the overall goal , and each player needs to look after them to a minimum degree. For example, everyone needs to get light. Everyone needs to get heroes and upgrade them. Everyone will be going to the dungeon and fight the monsters. This may lead to an overall feeling of sameness even though the specifics of each game may be different. The variety is found within that context... the selection of heroes, the village cards purchased, the monsters encountered in the dungeon. Also, the larger number of factors that need to come together means that the decks are more prone to clumping.
Anyway, I'll need to play a few more times to make a final judgement. I'd say that I like it better than Dominion: Intrigue, but less than Dominion. I'm not a big fan of the way the game ends as written... it feels a little like kingmaking, but it's easy enough to fix it and say that the game ends as soon as the Thunderstone is revealed. I also think that there is a strange disconnect between the experience the game delivers and what we have come to expect from dungeon crawling games: usually the easy creatures come first and there is a build up to the big bosses at the end. The random distribution ensures that this won't be the case in Thunderstone, for better or worse. I suppose it would be possible to make a variant where the monsters were encountered in order of strength if it really bothers me later on.
I won the game because I managed a lot of dungeon victories early in the game. Later, my deck got clogged but I had a good enough lead that it didn't matter.
"Ok, Blink dog"
Ra
We finished up with Ra. Fun as always, I learned an interesting tidbit about Shemp... He told us that Ra is the game that makes him willing to keep playing games he is initially unimpressed with. At first he hated Ra, now he thinks it's great.
Kozure came from behind and won on the strength of a great haul from his monuments.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Another game about classical Romans (Mare Nostrum, Ra, Dominion:Intrigue)
I've mentioned this a few times, but I've always been on the lookout for a good civ. type game that plays in a reasonable amount of time. I've tried a whole lot of them, and none have really satisfied. It's hard to cram politics, war, technologies, etc into one game that plays in roughly 3 hours, so it's understandable that most have dropped one or more of these facets.
Mare Nostrum has been on my watchlist since it's been released. It has had a much publicized falling from grace on BGG due to it's inability to live up to the Civ-lite hype, but I wanted to try it for myself because it has a very attractive presentation and an admirably simple ruleset. I received it and the mythology expansion at the most recent math trade, so I got my chance.
Mare Nostrum
Since we were only 4 players, and since it was our first game, we played with just the base game despite the fact that I've heard so many positive things about the expansion. We DID include the Greek blockade rule, and the revised heroes, etc. We set it up and got started. I was Carthage, Shemp was Rome, Kozure was Greece and Luch was Egypt.
There was a standoff brewing north of the Mediterranean between Rome and Greece. Meanwhile, on my side of the pond I focused 100% on producing resources. My sole, starting legion wandered eastward and attacked an undefended Cyranae. I was able to convert it and hold it for a few rounds, and during that time I had quickly amassed 2 heroes and a wonder. That last wonder seemed easy to get, but just then Luch managed to take back what was his. I was just a resource or two short of purchasing that last wonder/ hero, but by then the fleets and legions of Rome and Greece were heading southwards to make sure I wouldn't make it. Helen of Troy was doing her best to make my enemies love me, but it wasn't enough. I was decimated. Meanwhile, Shemp had managed to claim the military leader and the director of commerce roles and Rome was unstoppable. Despite a failed attempt to disrupt the Greek trireme chain to Carthage, which would have stranded many of Kozure's forces there, Shemp still managed to pull together enough resources to get the win.
We made a few rules errors: We forgot to carry over 2 tax cards from turn to turn, and during my reign as director of commerce I didn't know I was supposed to give a card from my hand to even out the trades if one player ended the trading period with one less card than the others. Given the difference a single resource card makes in this game, I'm glad I didn't win because I would have felt like I cheated.
All in all, it was a very fun game. The constant exchange of cards is irritating, but in most other respects there is a lot to like. The small number of... everything (legions, caravans, triremes, etc) keeps the game moving along, both in terms of forcing players to act aggressively in order to avoid getting shut out AND because there simply aren't huge numbers of units to consider. The heroes and wonders aren't really the same as a technology tree, but the impact (your civilization gains an advantage over the others) is quite similar. The combat mechanic is simple, but the fact that it integrates randomness keeps things unpredictable enough to be exciting. Lastly, the competition for resources and space makes a certain amount of alliances and deal making inevitable. Having players take on various roles to determine turn order and determining the trade limits is equally interesting aspect which also opens the door for a certain amount of diplomacy.
Speaking of trade limits, the trading mechanism in the game is very peculiar. The way it works is that the director of trade names a number of goods and every player HAS to put that many down and then the director chooses one of the available cards. That player can now choose an available card, and so on until all cards have been chosen. If you can't put down the number of cards, you can't participate. The reason this makes any sense is that the board very cleverly groups goods in various corners of the board, making most starting civs able to produce a couple units of a couple of different goods right from the start. The trick is that in order to use goods to purchase things, you need to make sets of DIFFERENT goods. This means that in the beginning, it is very easy to accumulate one or two sets of three different cards to purchase military units, caravans and influence markers, but getting sets of 6 or even 9 different goods requires some conquest and/or trading. The act of exchanging cards creates diversity without forcing players to take a province in each corner of the map, and simulates the actual exchange of goods that would take place in the world without taking the time necessary to actually barter between players. Already in our first game, certain strategies emerged. With four players, it's possible for three players to exchange amongst themselves and shut out the fourth player. This was used to good effect against me, forcing me to put all my doubles back into my hand, and thus not having the set of 9 needed to win before Luch started taking back provinces. Taxes seemed less popular than goods, but a few players started taking advantage of this and specifically targeted these easy to get cards (the rule that allows 2 tax cards to be carried over would make this even more attractive). I'm less sure how to make the most out of limiting trades to zero, unless the director of trade has more diversity than the others. I'm sure there is quite a lot more than we are seeing. I can also see that players looking for a traditional trading game could be disappointed, and that others might just not "get" this very important stage of the game and might dislike the experience because of the seeming uselessness of it all. Gladly, I thought it was quite interesting, and I think the whole group did, too.
I do have one big concern, however. Most games that revolve around resource gathering force players to build up their stockpiles over several rounds in order to afford bigger purchases. This makes it necessary to budget over time, and to weigh the short and long term benefits of the various items up for sale. In Mare Nostrum, players get resources every round, and must spend all of them that round. Then, the game makes the winning condition the purchase of 4 of the most expensive items, heroes and/or wonders. This means that a player who is able to generate 9 resources one round is also probably able to produce them the next round and the next round unless provinces are taken away or trading is shut down. Once a player gets to 9, the other players essentially have a two turn window to smack down that player or the game is over. So the first part of the problem for me is that I found this a little strange, that a player goes from nowhere to the verge of victory so quickly. The second part of the problem is that once the other players decide to take down a player, there probably isn't too much that player can do to stop them, and I don't see any reason why this process couldn't go on forever (one player rises up, others conspire to take him down). It reminds me of Ideology, another game where the leader can be bashed forever and the game can go on for much longer than it should because of it. I would have liked to see a kind of timer mechanism like end of the Triumvirate to ensure an end to the game after a set period of time. Anyway, with only a single game under my belt I have no idea if it will actually be a problem, but it is a concern that I have. Now that we've seen how the game can go, we will certainly be more wary of letting anyone get ahead... will it lead to a vicious cycle? Who knows.
So, ultimately Mare Nostrum is a world domination game more than a civ-lite game, but I am happy to say that it's an upper tier one. I look forward to playing it again, and to eventually including the mythology expansion.
Ra
We played a quick game of RA, which is always fun to play, and I'm glad we did... I won by healthy margin! (Ha!) I think I had the better part of the Nile sitting in front of me, and a fortunate grab gave me a number of monument points right at the end.
Dominion: Intrigue
Luch made up a semi random set of cards, and we quickly realized it was mainly composed of expensive cards and powers that screwed other players. For this reason, it took some time before anyone managed to get an engine going in order to start purchasing the 6 victory point cards. I never got there, but Luch starting grabbing them at an alarming pace. My saboteur robbed Kozure of 2x 6 point victory point cards, but otherwise I did very little in the game. I came in a distant last, Luch came in a distant first. A postgame recap revealed that Kozure would have narrowed the gap considerably if I hadn't made him lose those cards. Sorry, man.
It was an enjoyable game, though frustrating at times. I feel like I'm not very good at quickly processing the combos I need to get going. Like Race for the Galaxy, I enjoy the game despite not feeling like I'm any good at it. For me, the two occupy a very similar space... optimising random cards for VPs. Whereas Race for the Galaxy feels like a far more strategic optimization game with more options than Dominion, there is less direct interaction as well. I'd say I still like Race better, but I think I'm in the minority at WAGS.
One thing that clicked for me this game, however, is that you really want to do whatever it takes to draw as many cards as possible at all times. HAving multiple actions and buys is often useless if you are only holding five cards (or 4, as I was for much of the game due to Shemp's constant play of the torturer. Grrr.) Maybe I'll do better next time.
Mare Nostrum has been on my watchlist since it's been released. It has had a much publicized falling from grace on BGG due to it's inability to live up to the Civ-lite hype, but I wanted to try it for myself because it has a very attractive presentation and an admirably simple ruleset. I received it and the mythology expansion at the most recent math trade, so I got my chance.
Mare Nostrum
Since we were only 4 players, and since it was our first game, we played with just the base game despite the fact that I've heard so many positive things about the expansion. We DID include the Greek blockade rule, and the revised heroes, etc. We set it up and got started. I was Carthage, Shemp was Rome, Kozure was Greece and Luch was Egypt.
There was a standoff brewing north of the Mediterranean between Rome and Greece. Meanwhile, on my side of the pond I focused 100% on producing resources. My sole, starting legion wandered eastward and attacked an undefended Cyranae. I was able to convert it and hold it for a few rounds, and during that time I had quickly amassed 2 heroes and a wonder. That last wonder seemed easy to get, but just then Luch managed to take back what was his. I was just a resource or two short of purchasing that last wonder/ hero, but by then the fleets and legions of Rome and Greece were heading southwards to make sure I wouldn't make it. Helen of Troy was doing her best to make my enemies love me, but it wasn't enough. I was decimated. Meanwhile, Shemp had managed to claim the military leader and the director of commerce roles and Rome was unstoppable. Despite a failed attempt to disrupt the Greek trireme chain to Carthage, which would have stranded many of Kozure's forces there, Shemp still managed to pull together enough resources to get the win.
We made a few rules errors: We forgot to carry over 2 tax cards from turn to turn, and during my reign as director of commerce I didn't know I was supposed to give a card from my hand to even out the trades if one player ended the trading period with one less card than the others. Given the difference a single resource card makes in this game, I'm glad I didn't win because I would have felt like I cheated.
All in all, it was a very fun game. The constant exchange of cards is irritating, but in most other respects there is a lot to like. The small number of... everything (legions, caravans, triremes, etc) keeps the game moving along, both in terms of forcing players to act aggressively in order to avoid getting shut out AND because there simply aren't huge numbers of units to consider. The heroes and wonders aren't really the same as a technology tree, but the impact (your civilization gains an advantage over the others) is quite similar. The combat mechanic is simple, but the fact that it integrates randomness keeps things unpredictable enough to be exciting. Lastly, the competition for resources and space makes a certain amount of alliances and deal making inevitable. Having players take on various roles to determine turn order and determining the trade limits is equally interesting aspect which also opens the door for a certain amount of diplomacy.
Speaking of trade limits, the trading mechanism in the game is very peculiar. The way it works is that the director of trade names a number of goods and every player HAS to put that many down and then the director chooses one of the available cards. That player can now choose an available card, and so on until all cards have been chosen. If you can't put down the number of cards, you can't participate. The reason this makes any sense is that the board very cleverly groups goods in various corners of the board, making most starting civs able to produce a couple units of a couple of different goods right from the start. The trick is that in order to use goods to purchase things, you need to make sets of DIFFERENT goods. This means that in the beginning, it is very easy to accumulate one or two sets of three different cards to purchase military units, caravans and influence markers, but getting sets of 6 or even 9 different goods requires some conquest and/or trading. The act of exchanging cards creates diversity without forcing players to take a province in each corner of the map, and simulates the actual exchange of goods that would take place in the world without taking the time necessary to actually barter between players. Already in our first game, certain strategies emerged. With four players, it's possible for three players to exchange amongst themselves and shut out the fourth player. This was used to good effect against me, forcing me to put all my doubles back into my hand, and thus not having the set of 9 needed to win before Luch started taking back provinces. Taxes seemed less popular than goods, but a few players started taking advantage of this and specifically targeted these easy to get cards (the rule that allows 2 tax cards to be carried over would make this even more attractive). I'm less sure how to make the most out of limiting trades to zero, unless the director of trade has more diversity than the others. I'm sure there is quite a lot more than we are seeing. I can also see that players looking for a traditional trading game could be disappointed, and that others might just not "get" this very important stage of the game and might dislike the experience because of the seeming uselessness of it all. Gladly, I thought it was quite interesting, and I think the whole group did, too.
I do have one big concern, however. Most games that revolve around resource gathering force players to build up their stockpiles over several rounds in order to afford bigger purchases. This makes it necessary to budget over time, and to weigh the short and long term benefits of the various items up for sale. In Mare Nostrum, players get resources every round, and must spend all of them that round. Then, the game makes the winning condition the purchase of 4 of the most expensive items, heroes and/or wonders. This means that a player who is able to generate 9 resources one round is also probably able to produce them the next round and the next round unless provinces are taken away or trading is shut down. Once a player gets to 9, the other players essentially have a two turn window to smack down that player or the game is over. So the first part of the problem for me is that I found this a little strange, that a player goes from nowhere to the verge of victory so quickly. The second part of the problem is that once the other players decide to take down a player, there probably isn't too much that player can do to stop them, and I don't see any reason why this process couldn't go on forever (one player rises up, others conspire to take him down). It reminds me of Ideology, another game where the leader can be bashed forever and the game can go on for much longer than it should because of it. I would have liked to see a kind of timer mechanism like end of the Triumvirate to ensure an end to the game after a set period of time. Anyway, with only a single game under my belt I have no idea if it will actually be a problem, but it is a concern that I have. Now that we've seen how the game can go, we will certainly be more wary of letting anyone get ahead... will it lead to a vicious cycle? Who knows.
So, ultimately Mare Nostrum is a world domination game more than a civ-lite game, but I am happy to say that it's an upper tier one. I look forward to playing it again, and to eventually including the mythology expansion.
Ra
We played a quick game of RA, which is always fun to play, and I'm glad we did... I won by healthy margin! (Ha!) I think I had the better part of the Nile sitting in front of me, and a fortunate grab gave me a number of monument points right at the end.
Dominion: Intrigue
Luch made up a semi random set of cards, and we quickly realized it was mainly composed of expensive cards and powers that screwed other players. For this reason, it took some time before anyone managed to get an engine going in order to start purchasing the 6 victory point cards. I never got there, but Luch starting grabbing them at an alarming pace. My saboteur robbed Kozure of 2x 6 point victory point cards, but otherwise I did very little in the game. I came in a distant last, Luch came in a distant first. A postgame recap revealed that Kozure would have narrowed the gap considerably if I hadn't made him lose those cards. Sorry, man.
It was an enjoyable game, though frustrating at times. I feel like I'm not very good at quickly processing the combos I need to get going. Like Race for the Galaxy, I enjoy the game despite not feeling like I'm any good at it. For me, the two occupy a very similar space... optimising random cards for VPs. Whereas Race for the Galaxy feels like a far more strategic optimization game with more options than Dominion, there is less direct interaction as well. I'd say I still like Race better, but I think I'm in the minority at WAGS.
One thing that clicked for me this game, however, is that you really want to do whatever it takes to draw as many cards as possible at all times. HAving multiple actions and buys is often useless if you are only holding five cards (or 4, as I was for much of the game due to Shemp's constant play of the torturer. Grrr.) Maybe I'll do better next time.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Your face is in the way (Taj Mahal, Ra, Phoenicia)
Hmmm.
Taj Mahal
It was just me, Luch and Bharmer playing the first game. In this session, I tried to see if I could win Taj Mahal by focusing mainly on connecting provinces. The short answer is No.
It may be possible to do well at Taj with this strategy, but it would take a specific board layout. In this game, the numbers were very disconnected, so despite the fact I was very successfully placing the palaces I needed, the province chains just weren't that long. Sadly, the 3-4 points I was getting couldn't keep up with the points both Luch and Bharmer were getting from goods. When I finally connected the provinces in the middle, I had two successive turns netting me 10-14 points, but it was too little, too late. Bharmer and Luch were way ahead, and Bharmer won it.
Ra
Kozure and Kozure's Kuz (ahem) showed up just as we were putting away the board. We decided to play Ra, because, well, it's a great game. Not so much with 5, but still good. Anyway, as usual I spent the 2nd and 3rd round with very low suns (note to self: why does that always happen?). I therefore was an auction calling machine. It worked for me, and I managed a huge haul of pharaohs and rivers which won the game for me. Anyway, the Kuz seemed unimpressed for most of the game, but I think he was starting to like it near the end. We'll see if chooses to come back!
Phoenicia
It was do or die for Phoenicia tonight. It died.
Kozure once again managed a small lead by the second or third round and held it until the end. Obviously, he understands something about the game that eludes the rest of us, because as much as I believe seating order is important it can't be a coincidence that he keeps killing us. He always has the lead early, and never lets it go long.
Anyway, despite the fact that there is obviously skill involved, the whole thing feels scripted and boring. It's a short game, yet the winner seems obvious far too early. I don't know, it's just not that much fun for me.
To the trade pile!
Taj Mahal
It was just me, Luch and Bharmer playing the first game. In this session, I tried to see if I could win Taj Mahal by focusing mainly on connecting provinces. The short answer is No.
It may be possible to do well at Taj with this strategy, but it would take a specific board layout. In this game, the numbers were very disconnected, so despite the fact I was very successfully placing the palaces I needed, the province chains just weren't that long. Sadly, the 3-4 points I was getting couldn't keep up with the points both Luch and Bharmer were getting from goods. When I finally connected the provinces in the middle, I had two successive turns netting me 10-14 points, but it was too little, too late. Bharmer and Luch were way ahead, and Bharmer won it.
Ra
Kozure and Kozure's Kuz (ahem) showed up just as we were putting away the board. We decided to play Ra, because, well, it's a great game. Not so much with 5, but still good. Anyway, as usual I spent the 2nd and 3rd round with very low suns (note to self: why does that always happen?). I therefore was an auction calling machine. It worked for me, and I managed a huge haul of pharaohs and rivers which won the game for me. Anyway, the Kuz seemed unimpressed for most of the game, but I think he was starting to like it near the end. We'll see if chooses to come back!
Phoenicia
It was do or die for Phoenicia tonight. It died.
Kozure once again managed a small lead by the second or third round and held it until the end. Obviously, he understands something about the game that eludes the rest of us, because as much as I believe seating order is important it can't be a coincidence that he keeps killing us. He always has the lead early, and never lets it go long.
Anyway, despite the fact that there is obviously skill involved, the whole thing feels scripted and boring. It's a short game, yet the winner seems obvious far too early. I don't know, it's just not that much fun for me.
To the trade pile!
Friday, April 04, 2008
Man is the dumbest animal (Wildlife, Race for the Galaxy, Ra)
Only three tonight. Myself, Kozure and Bharmer.
Wildlife
Wildlife is one of Kozure's favorite games and since we hadn't played it in quite a while he picked it as the main course for the evening. It's odd that this game, designed by Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Princes of Florence, Tikal), seems to have flown completely under the radar on BGG.
Kozure was Man, I was the Eagles and Bharmer was the Bears.
In the beginning, the bears came across the forest and climbed up the mountains.
The eagles soared across all earthbound terrain.
Man dominated the plains.
It was then that Eagle learnt how to thrive in the water. There, it fought with Bear over the fluvial realm. Man could not be bothered with such trivialities as evolution, food or advanced intelligence. It spread out to the desert and the forest.
It was then that the Bear and Eagle were dethroned. Man cut the vast kingdom of the Eagle in half and learned much about aggression, defense and the importance of foodgathering. When all was said and done, man stood victorious.
It was a good game. It seems that Wildlife plays pretty well at three (though picking the wrong starting races could change that). We spent a good amount of actions simply exchanging the advancement cards, particularly the defense ones. If I had one complaint about the game is that those cards don't quite feel right in the game (too powerful?). Anyway, it's a small complaint. Wildlife is a good game.
Race for the Galaxy
This is a shoe-in for most played game this year. I once again tried a military strategy after being dealt New Sparta as my starting planet. I managed to place quite a few military planets down, but since my production was zero and I didn't manage to get the related "6" development out I came in a distant third.
Two funny stories:
1) I had a hand of 5 cards, and they were all planets. I was sure Kozure or Bharmer would pick development that round, so I chose Explore +5. Guess what, I drew 7 more planets.
2) In the final round, I skipped drawing cards in the explore phase since I knew I wanted to play a "6" development from my hand (capitalizing on the small amount of ALIEN technology I had). Just for fun, afterwards I looked at the cards I wold have drawn... the military "6" card I needed was the second one! Counting the difference it would have made in points, I would have tied for second instead of coming in 15 points behind second place! Bharmer won, but he made a mistake in his interpretation of one of his cards and made repeated "production" errors. I therefore declare his win null and void (Ha!).
Ra
Ahhhh, Ra. Nice to see you again.
Civilization tiles came hot and heavy in the first era (15 of 25 tiles, in fact). Bharmer ended the 1st with a huge stash of points (including 15 points for 5 civs). Despite the fact that Kozure and I had 2-3 suns left and 6-7 RA tiles left to draw before the era ended, we essentially wound up with nothing as RA after RA were drawn.
The 2nd era was kind to no one.
In the third, Bharmer sealed his victory with 30 points from buildings. Scores were closer than I expected, but he still won comfortably.
Wildlife
Wildlife is one of Kozure's favorite games and since we hadn't played it in quite a while he picked it as the main course for the evening. It's odd that this game, designed by Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Princes of Florence, Tikal), seems to have flown completely under the radar on BGG.
Kozure was Man, I was the Eagles and Bharmer was the Bears.
In the beginning, the bears came across the forest and climbed up the mountains.
The eagles soared across all earthbound terrain.
Man dominated the plains.
It was then that Eagle learnt how to thrive in the water. There, it fought with Bear over the fluvial realm. Man could not be bothered with such trivialities as evolution, food or advanced intelligence. It spread out to the desert and the forest.
It was then that the Bear and Eagle were dethroned. Man cut the vast kingdom of the Eagle in half and learned much about aggression, defense and the importance of foodgathering. When all was said and done, man stood victorious.
It was a good game. It seems that Wildlife plays pretty well at three (though picking the wrong starting races could change that). We spent a good amount of actions simply exchanging the advancement cards, particularly the defense ones. If I had one complaint about the game is that those cards don't quite feel right in the game (too powerful?). Anyway, it's a small complaint. Wildlife is a good game.
Race for the Galaxy
This is a shoe-in for most played game this year. I once again tried a military strategy after being dealt New Sparta as my starting planet. I managed to place quite a few military planets down, but since my production was zero and I didn't manage to get the related "6" development out I came in a distant third.
Two funny stories:
1) I had a hand of 5 cards, and they were all planets. I was sure Kozure or Bharmer would pick development that round, so I chose Explore +5. Guess what, I drew 7 more planets.
2) In the final round, I skipped drawing cards in the explore phase since I knew I wanted to play a "6" development from my hand (capitalizing on the small amount of ALIEN technology I had). Just for fun, afterwards I looked at the cards I wold have drawn... the military "6" card I needed was the second one! Counting the difference it would have made in points, I would have tied for second instead of coming in 15 points behind second place! Bharmer won, but he made a mistake in his interpretation of one of his cards and made repeated "production" errors. I therefore declare his win null and void (Ha!).
Ra
Ahhhh, Ra. Nice to see you again.
Civilization tiles came hot and heavy in the first era (15 of 25 tiles, in fact). Bharmer ended the 1st with a huge stash of points (including 15 points for 5 civs). Despite the fact that Kozure and I had 2-3 suns left and 6-7 RA tiles left to draw before the era ended, we essentially wound up with nothing as RA after RA were drawn.
The 2nd era was kind to no one.
In the third, Bharmer sealed his victory with 30 points from buildings. Scores were closer than I expected, but he still won comfortably.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
PREvenge (Zooloretto, Perikles, Beowulf, Ra)
PREvenge: The act of exacting revenge for something another player may do in the future.
A new year, another new term which should see much circulation amongst Wagsters in 2008 (2007 was unquestionably the year of "Bharmering", though "Swedish Betrayal" also made a strong showing).
Our first Wags gathering of 2008 was a very good one. We were able to start a little earlier than normal since most of us aren't working this week, so we were able to get a good number of games in.
Zooloretto
Zooloretto is the Spiel de Jares winner for last year. It's a game about building a zoo aimed squarely at a family audience. It's a simple exercise of drawing animal tiles and trying to fill your pens constrained by the fact that each one must be single species. There are various details which add some decision making, such as the fertility of some animals, currency which allows you to swap animals, purchase them from other players, etc. There are also vending stalls which add another method of scoring points. When I was playing it, I was sure it reminded me of something, but couldn't quite place it... Ra maybe? Not sure (I haven't played Coloretto, the card game Zooloretto is based on, so that's not it). The drafting and aquiring of tiles is similar: each round you essentially draw a tile and place it in a truck, or take all the tiles in a truck. You might therefore be tempted to take a truck before it's full just to get a particular tile you really need, or you might find yourself cursing because a tile you want is accompanied by one you don't.
It's a good family game. There are decisions to be made, it's not too complicated. and it's quite attractive (I especially like the box cover). I tried a three player game with my 4.5 year old son and he said he liked it, but it seemed to me to be a bit beyond him so I guess it's probably best suited for 5/6 and up. For a group of adult gamers, it's fun but not mindblowing.
Perikles
Perikles is a game by the same designer as Way Out West and Conquest of the Empire (as well as Age of Steam and many other games which we have not played as a group). His designs tend to be characterized by fairly lengthly play, moderately heavy rules/ strategy and intricate interelationships between the mechanics of the game. They also often walk the line between a german style game and an american style one. Perikles is no different.
Perikles is a game of politics and combat in Greece during the Peloponesian war. The rather sparse board shows 6 greek city states where players vie for political control (using an interesting twist on area majority where the win goes to the player who has the biggest presence AND has been nominated as leader there). Once the leaders of each city-state are determined, those players receive their armies and go to war. Each city-state's army has it's characteristics... Sparta has a powerful army, Athens has an enormous fleet, etc. Once the wars are resolved, players who won battles get VPs and then the leaders of all the city-states have statues erected in their honour. The trick is that every loss a city-state suffers reduces it's prestige, so the endgame VPs those statues give a player go down if it loses. Rinse and repeat 3 times. It all boils down to a game where each decision has an impact on many aspects of the game and, like Way Out West, most decisions that help you will often hurt you elsewhere. A couple of examples:
1) If you are elected leader of a city-state, your presence there will be severely weakened there for the next round.
2) If you were once the leader of a city state, your statue there gives you motivation to help defend it in the future even if it's not currently yours (to keep that city's prestige high)
In our game, the first round saw Luch lead his army to several victories so we were all weary of him as the early leader (my only army was thebes, and I was soundly crushed in three battles so that particular already unspectacular army became even worse). The second round was mostly "bash Athens" due to the battles we drew. By the end of the that round, it became clear that Shemp's many leaders on the board would net him many points unless those cities were handed a few defeats before the end of the game. We did what we could, but Shemp prevailed (and a key win in that last round with the odds slightly against him didn't help). PREvenge, the title of the blog, was used when Shemp decided to screw Luch through a political nomination in anticipation of a move he was sure Luch would do to him. Honestly, as much as we laughed about the concept of "PREvenge", I can't remember if his hunch was right.
The group loved this game... I was pretty unsure about the purchase after reading the rules (it was an impulse buy at the Fantasy Flight christmas sale for $10), so it was a bit of a relief to actually play it. Trying to piece together how to place your influence in the cities, where to nominate yourself, how to try and get weak opponents nominated against you, deciding which battles to fight, which to defend, etc, makes for a deep and satisfying puzzler that succesfully walks the line between euro strategy and wargame immersion. Personally, I was engrossed in a similar way that I tend to get with El Grande, but on a somewhat larger scale (that's a compliment). At 2-3 hours, we won't be playing that often, but I get the feeling we'll be seeing it again in the not too distant future.
We ended the evening with a game of Beowulf which Kozure won (man, oh man where the risks not on my side!). Looks like he may have regained the knack that allowed him to dominate us for the first few games... Despite my awful showing, I still really enjoy this game. I'm glad I ignored the negative hype and bought it.
Finally, we ended with a very fun session of Ra. Kozure also won this one after a lengthy drought.
A great beginning to the new year. Here's hoping it's a good one.
A new year, another new term which should see much circulation amongst Wagsters in 2008 (2007 was unquestionably the year of "Bharmering", though "Swedish Betrayal" also made a strong showing).
Our first Wags gathering of 2008 was a very good one. We were able to start a little earlier than normal since most of us aren't working this week, so we were able to get a good number of games in.
Zooloretto
Zooloretto is the Spiel de Jares winner for last year. It's a game about building a zoo aimed squarely at a family audience. It's a simple exercise of drawing animal tiles and trying to fill your pens constrained by the fact that each one must be single species. There are various details which add some decision making, such as the fertility of some animals, currency which allows you to swap animals, purchase them from other players, etc. There are also vending stalls which add another method of scoring points. When I was playing it, I was sure it reminded me of something, but couldn't quite place it... Ra maybe? Not sure (I haven't played Coloretto, the card game Zooloretto is based on, so that's not it). The drafting and aquiring of tiles is similar: each round you essentially draw a tile and place it in a truck, or take all the tiles in a truck. You might therefore be tempted to take a truck before it's full just to get a particular tile you really need, or you might find yourself cursing because a tile you want is accompanied by one you don't.
It's a good family game. There are decisions to be made, it's not too complicated. and it's quite attractive (I especially like the box cover). I tried a three player game with my 4.5 year old son and he said he liked it, but it seemed to me to be a bit beyond him so I guess it's probably best suited for 5/6 and up. For a group of adult gamers, it's fun but not mindblowing.
Perikles
Perikles is a game by the same designer as Way Out West and Conquest of the Empire (as well as Age of Steam and many other games which we have not played as a group). His designs tend to be characterized by fairly lengthly play, moderately heavy rules/ strategy and intricate interelationships between the mechanics of the game. They also often walk the line between a german style game and an american style one. Perikles is no different.
Perikles is a game of politics and combat in Greece during the Peloponesian war. The rather sparse board shows 6 greek city states where players vie for political control (using an interesting twist on area majority where the win goes to the player who has the biggest presence AND has been nominated as leader there). Once the leaders of each city-state are determined, those players receive their armies and go to war. Each city-state's army has it's characteristics... Sparta has a powerful army, Athens has an enormous fleet, etc. Once the wars are resolved, players who won battles get VPs and then the leaders of all the city-states have statues erected in their honour. The trick is that every loss a city-state suffers reduces it's prestige, so the endgame VPs those statues give a player go down if it loses. Rinse and repeat 3 times. It all boils down to a game where each decision has an impact on many aspects of the game and, like Way Out West, most decisions that help you will often hurt you elsewhere. A couple of examples:
1) If you are elected leader of a city-state, your presence there will be severely weakened there for the next round.
2) If you were once the leader of a city state, your statue there gives you motivation to help defend it in the future even if it's not currently yours (to keep that city's prestige high)
In our game, the first round saw Luch lead his army to several victories so we were all weary of him as the early leader (my only army was thebes, and I was soundly crushed in three battles so that particular already unspectacular army became even worse). The second round was mostly "bash Athens" due to the battles we drew. By the end of the that round, it became clear that Shemp's many leaders on the board would net him many points unless those cities were handed a few defeats before the end of the game. We did what we could, but Shemp prevailed (and a key win in that last round with the odds slightly against him didn't help). PREvenge, the title of the blog, was used when Shemp decided to screw Luch through a political nomination in anticipation of a move he was sure Luch would do to him. Honestly, as much as we laughed about the concept of "PREvenge", I can't remember if his hunch was right.
The group loved this game... I was pretty unsure about the purchase after reading the rules (it was an impulse buy at the Fantasy Flight christmas sale for $10), so it was a bit of a relief to actually play it. Trying to piece together how to place your influence in the cities, where to nominate yourself, how to try and get weak opponents nominated against you, deciding which battles to fight, which to defend, etc, makes for a deep and satisfying puzzler that succesfully walks the line between euro strategy and wargame immersion. Personally, I was engrossed in a similar way that I tend to get with El Grande, but on a somewhat larger scale (that's a compliment). At 2-3 hours, we won't be playing that often, but I get the feeling we'll be seeing it again in the not too distant future.
We ended the evening with a game of Beowulf which Kozure won (man, oh man where the risks not on my side!). Looks like he may have regained the knack that allowed him to dominate us for the first few games... Despite my awful showing, I still really enjoy this game. I'm glad I ignored the negative hype and bought it.
Finally, we ended with a very fun session of Ra. Kozure also won this one after a lengthy drought.
A great beginning to the new year. Here's hoping it's a good one.
Monday, December 24, 2007
The sun god hates us (Antike, Ra x2, Palazzo)
Last year, in early January, I talked about my favorite games of 2006. I'm sure I'll be doing it again for 2007, but i'll wait until the year is actually over. I mention it only because this week we played one of the two I had decided were my faves for that year, Antike, and I realized (with some sheepishness, that it was the first time since october 2006! (the other, Railroad Tycoon) hasn't been played since Dec. 2006). Do we have too many games if our FAVORITES from last year only get a single play?!!! Hmmm.
Anyway, Antike was up first. Still quite engaging for a chess-like civ builder. Turns are ridiculously snappy, and everything flows very well. I started in Italy, Shemp in the north and Luch in the east. As the early turns were devoted to expansion, I expanded slightly northward but concentrated on getting the triremes out. Luch also went north, leaving behind him an expanse of virgin territory (which he continued to plunder until the end of the game). This left Shemp in a tight spot because he was really forced to deal with possible conflict on two fronts early on. I drew first blood when I attacked Shemp about 2/3rds of the way through the game. That success netted me 2 cards (14th trireme and 15th city). A few more battles ensued, and I managed to win the game by snatching the last unclaimed advancement right from under Shemp's nose.
Next was two games of RA. The sun god was in a pissy mood that night, though. The tiles came out in strange combinations and any player who tried to go long was destined to fail. I entered the 3rd age of our first game with only the 10 points I started with... but fortune smiled on me and I took the game on a massive haul of buildings. In our second game, Luch found himself using only 1 or 2 of his 4 sun tiles in 2 consecutive eras...
We ended with Palazzo. This was a game on the list of "games which were introduced during Shemp's absence", so after a brief explanation we started (Shemp's eyes were glazed over, as everyone's eyes tend to glaze over when explaining the rules to this one. Seriously, for such a simple game the rules manage to sound both complicated and random no matter how hard I try). Shemp won by a large margin, due to two five story/ single material buildings. It seemed to be well received, though I personally am not sure that I like it very much.
Not sure if we'll have another session before the New Year. If not, have a happy holiday!
Anyway, Antike was up first. Still quite engaging for a chess-like civ builder. Turns are ridiculously snappy, and everything flows very well. I started in Italy, Shemp in the north and Luch in the east. As the early turns were devoted to expansion, I expanded slightly northward but concentrated on getting the triremes out. Luch also went north, leaving behind him an expanse of virgin territory (which he continued to plunder until the end of the game). This left Shemp in a tight spot because he was really forced to deal with possible conflict on two fronts early on. I drew first blood when I attacked Shemp about 2/3rds of the way through the game. That success netted me 2 cards (14th trireme and 15th city). A few more battles ensued, and I managed to win the game by snatching the last unclaimed advancement right from under Shemp's nose.
Next was two games of RA. The sun god was in a pissy mood that night, though. The tiles came out in strange combinations and any player who tried to go long was destined to fail. I entered the 3rd age of our first game with only the 10 points I started with... but fortune smiled on me and I took the game on a massive haul of buildings. In our second game, Luch found himself using only 1 or 2 of his 4 sun tiles in 2 consecutive eras...
We ended with Palazzo. This was a game on the list of "games which were introduced during Shemp's absence", so after a brief explanation we started (Shemp's eyes were glazed over, as everyone's eyes tend to glaze over when explaining the rules to this one. Seriously, for such a simple game the rules manage to sound both complicated and random no matter how hard I try). Shemp won by a large margin, due to two five story/ single material buildings. It seemed to be well received, though I personally am not sure that I like it very much.
Not sure if we'll have another session before the New Year. If not, have a happy holiday!
Monday, June 18, 2007
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!
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!
Friday, February 09, 2007
Lucrative Shizzle Coming Up!
This week LUCH! was the dictator; this week he also was on crack. Well, he definitely was the dictator -- the being on crack part is an assumption, albeit a well-founded one.
Our beloved dictator decreed that we would play RA, Wildlife, and Railroad Tycoon, in untried, previously undisclosed variant versions. Seeing as our typical game session is 4 hours, and the named games would not be playable in that period of time, we were all intrigued. Easy waggishly suggested that the Railroad Tycoon variant must be to not play it at all. I hypothesized that LUCH! was going to bring 20 giant eggtimers to the session, to better realize his mad variants! THEN, our dictator was late, further compressing things - how would this work?
Well, Agent Easy was correct. The Railroad Tycoon variant was, indeed, to not play it at all. Having said that, we still got a couple of rounds of Ra in, as well as a nice session of Wildlife.
The first round of Ra was 4 player, Bharmer/Easy/Tilli/Shemp, and did not vary from the standard rules of the game in any way. It was a fairly uneventful play; I had decided to call Ra everytime play came around to me and there were more than 3 tiles on the board before play started, and it payed off. In the first epoch I was the only one that was able to use all three of my sun tiles, and built up a fair lead. Tilli had a monster 3rd epoch, but it wasn't quite enough to catch up. I ended up winning w/ 59 points, which I only note for the purposes of comparison with the next game of Ra we played.
The next game of Ra we played was (drumroll ...) LUCH's variant. Players were Bharmer/Easy/Kozure/LUCH/Shemp. It was very confusing, and someone else will need to recap in comments. I didn't understand it. This is most assuredly because of my own lack of brainpower, but there it is. (Alternate explanation: LUCH IS ON CRACK.) The variant involved mummies and upkeep. Ra tiles were repeatedly drawn. In the whole first Epoch, I think a total of all players scores was less than ten. We were thinking that was OK - surely, a cruddy first age would result in even better subsequent ages, right? Of course! We were hyped for some LUCRATIVE SHIZZLE COMING UP!!. Only, it didn't. Not in the second epoch. Not in the third epoch. Somehow, nothing good was ever on the board when Ra was called. It seems impossible, but there it was. Wholly disappointing. Bharmer and I raced to the bottom, but disappointingly, neither of us finished at zero. Final scores were 12 for Bharmer and I, with LUCH! winning his own variant, with a score of something or other that was higher. Easy and Kozure had less than that, but more than 12. While we were packing up the game, the board attacked Bharmer. I think that may have tipped this over into the category of Most Farcical Session of Ra, EVAR. [ PLEASE NOTE: I don't think that necessarily condemns LUCH's variant. It was too weird to tell if it works out or not. Might need more crack. Or less. ]
On to a game of Wildlife, which we've played before. Second play of this for Human Easy and Eagle Bharmer; Third for Crocodile LUCH and Snake Shemp; Bear Kozure has played more frequently. I'm enjoying this game a lot - it feels very open ended, as if there are many possible strategies and tactics to pursue; as a group, we are clearly still crawling at this point. I don't think I'll get too much into the play by play, other than to note that the Snakes quickly evolved and were able to quickly create a large herd across four regions, opening up a large lead in the first scoring round. The other players remembered that there is no tunnel and took steps to prevent serpentine hegemony from winning out, while keeping a close eye on each other. End result? A three way tie for first until the final points for remaining food were scored, handing a narrow victory to the snakes, with eagles and humans close behind, and the crocodiles only a couple of additional points back. Very close!
I think the balancing mechanisms incorporated into the game are extremely clever, particularly the way that it becomes quite difficult for the player in the lead to hold on to advancements, which not only confer advantages in gameplay, but are also potentially worth points during scoring rounds. Some numbered points to ponder, hopefully to further our own evolution as players:
1. The Movement Ability: What would be an effective way to use this? What strategies need to be implemented?
2. How practical is it to co-ordinate actions between players to negate certain advantages? What level of "table talk" is acceptable? [ example: Player A holds a Defense ability. Player B steals the Defense ability. This is only useful if Player C, D, or E then attack A. ]
3. Roughly how many actions, total, occur before the game is completed? Does this vary to a greater or lesser degree? Would this information be useful in formulating a strategy?
4. To what extent would a strategy be useful in this game? Is it largely strategic or largely tactical?
5. Is this an area control game, or do the other methods of scoring turn this into something else? Rephrased, is there any real value in holding areas? Monopolies are worth only slightly more than leads, remember.
6. Should we change LUCH!'s name to Lucrative? I say yes.
7. What other factors in Wildlife could bear fruit if analyzed?
DISCUSS.
Our beloved dictator decreed that we would play RA, Wildlife, and Railroad Tycoon, in untried, previously undisclosed variant versions. Seeing as our typical game session is 4 hours, and the named games would not be playable in that period of time, we were all intrigued. Easy waggishly suggested that the Railroad Tycoon variant must be to not play it at all. I hypothesized that LUCH! was going to bring 20 giant eggtimers to the session, to better realize his mad variants! THEN, our dictator was late, further compressing things - how would this work?
Well, Agent Easy was correct. The Railroad Tycoon variant was, indeed, to not play it at all. Having said that, we still got a couple of rounds of Ra in, as well as a nice session of Wildlife.
The first round of Ra was 4 player, Bharmer/Easy/Tilli/Shemp, and did not vary from the standard rules of the game in any way. It was a fairly uneventful play; I had decided to call Ra everytime play came around to me and there were more than 3 tiles on the board before play started, and it payed off. In the first epoch I was the only one that was able to use all three of my sun tiles, and built up a fair lead. Tilli had a monster 3rd epoch, but it wasn't quite enough to catch up. I ended up winning w/ 59 points, which I only note for the purposes of comparison with the next game of Ra we played.
The next game of Ra we played was (drumroll ...) LUCH's variant. Players were Bharmer/Easy/Kozure/LUCH/Shemp. It was very confusing, and someone else will need to recap in comments. I didn't understand it. This is most assuredly because of my own lack of brainpower, but there it is. (Alternate explanation: LUCH IS ON CRACK.) The variant involved mummies and upkeep. Ra tiles were repeatedly drawn. In the whole first Epoch, I think a total of all players scores was less than ten. We were thinking that was OK - surely, a cruddy first age would result in even better subsequent ages, right? Of course! We were hyped for some LUCRATIVE SHIZZLE COMING UP!!. Only, it didn't. Not in the second epoch. Not in the third epoch. Somehow, nothing good was ever on the board when Ra was called. It seems impossible, but there it was. Wholly disappointing. Bharmer and I raced to the bottom, but disappointingly, neither of us finished at zero. Final scores were 12 for Bharmer and I, with LUCH! winning his own variant, with a score of something or other that was higher. Easy and Kozure had less than that, but more than 12. While we were packing up the game, the board attacked Bharmer. I think that may have tipped this over into the category of Most Farcical Session of Ra, EVAR. [ PLEASE NOTE: I don't think that necessarily condemns LUCH's variant. It was too weird to tell if it works out or not. Might need more crack. Or less. ]
On to a game of Wildlife, which we've played before. Second play of this for Human Easy and Eagle Bharmer; Third for Crocodile LUCH and Snake Shemp; Bear Kozure has played more frequently. I'm enjoying this game a lot - it feels very open ended, as if there are many possible strategies and tactics to pursue; as a group, we are clearly still crawling at this point. I don't think I'll get too much into the play by play, other than to note that the Snakes quickly evolved and were able to quickly create a large herd across four regions, opening up a large lead in the first scoring round. The other players remembered that there is no tunnel and took steps to prevent serpentine hegemony from winning out, while keeping a close eye on each other. End result? A three way tie for first until the final points for remaining food were scored, handing a narrow victory to the snakes, with eagles and humans close behind, and the crocodiles only a couple of additional points back. Very close!
I think the balancing mechanisms incorporated into the game are extremely clever, particularly the way that it becomes quite difficult for the player in the lead to hold on to advancements, which not only confer advantages in gameplay, but are also potentially worth points during scoring rounds. Some numbered points to ponder, hopefully to further our own evolution as players:
1. The Movement Ability: What would be an effective way to use this? What strategies need to be implemented?
2. How practical is it to co-ordinate actions between players to negate certain advantages? What level of "table talk" is acceptable? [ example: Player A holds a Defense ability. Player B steals the Defense ability. This is only useful if Player C, D, or E then attack A. ]
3. Roughly how many actions, total, occur before the game is completed? Does this vary to a greater or lesser degree? Would this information be useful in formulating a strategy?
4. To what extent would a strategy be useful in this game? Is it largely strategic or largely tactical?
5. Is this an area control game, or do the other methods of scoring turn this into something else? Rephrased, is there any real value in holding areas? Monopolies are worth only slightly more than leads, remember.
6. Should we change LUCH!'s name to Lucrative? I say yes.
7. What other factors in Wildlife could bear fruit if analyzed?
DISCUSS.
Friday, September 22, 2006
The art of the deal (Traders of Genoa, Ra)
A few returning favorites, this week.
Traders of Genoa saw it's first tabletime in quite a while. We were only four (Shemp, Kozure, Luch and myself). We all knew what we were doing, and it was pretty clear from the get-go that no one was going to be a pushover this time around. If you wanted something, you needed to make it worthwhile... or the acting player would end the turn. This is not new, of course, but it seemed like it was hapening a whole lot more often than it had in the past (and it started in the first round!). The game went long, but I found it to be extremely interesting. I wanted to try again the strategy I attempted unsuccessfully last time: collect 1:1 actions and convert them to privileges before that pile ran out. I spent the first few rounds collecting whatever goods came my way for cheap so I could trade them later on (1:1 trade markers aren't typically hot items in our group, either). I then traded 3 or 4 of them for privileges, bringing my total to 8. Obviously, with that number in hand, it was very hard to convince anyone to sell me theirs at any price, but unfortunately I did not have any big runs. I did eventually get 2 additional ones from Shemp, which fit in quite nicely and helped me out quite a bit in the end (side note: I almost didn't take one of them, because I mistakenly thought it didn't work very well with my cards!).
I had resisted playing the ownership marker game until the last few rounds (for whatever reason, I seem to gravitate to privileges and ownership markers every game!) By then I had concluded that Shemp was likely winning, so I picked up a number of them and started displacing his off the board (he had quite a few). Shemp immediately mentioned I might have handed Luch the victory by doing so, and I suddenly felt he might have been right. Then again, Kozure WAS fulfilling quite a number of large orders... maybe HE was winning. All I knew was that I mustered only a single large order and a single small order, so my privileges would have to carry me. I didn't think it was likely, though.
I did win. By 30 ducats. The ownership markers were the difference!
Next up was RA. We played two rounds, and both wound up being rather odd in their own way:
1) The first game, I went short. I always find that the more players there are, the more important it is to snag whatever you can and get out fast. With 4, the strategy is borderline, but I went with it anyway. I was often out before some players had played a single bid! The odd thing was that in the first round, the era lasted a LOOOONG time after I was done. The way things played out, the 2nd and 3rd era looked to be choked with RAs, so even though it burned me in the first round I stuck with my strategy. It worked for me, too... The horde of RAs which came out afterwards left Shemp, Luch and Kozure unable to aquire the temples or floods they were trying to collect and I reached the end in first place on the strength of my pharoahs and the gold+civ points I grabbed when I could.
2) The second game, I lost the pharoah struggle early. the other three seemed to be making a point of gathering them, so I decided to leave that alone and concentrate on rivers, civs or monuments. However, right up to the end of the game, virtually no monuments were drawn! It almost seems mathematically impossible that 3 eras could go by with so few monuments pulled, but there it was. I managed to get 7 different ones, and a mid sized river going, but it wasn't enough to stop Shemp, who won by 3 points.
... good times.
Traders of Genoa saw it's first tabletime in quite a while. We were only four (Shemp, Kozure, Luch and myself). We all knew what we were doing, and it was pretty clear from the get-go that no one was going to be a pushover this time around. If you wanted something, you needed to make it worthwhile... or the acting player would end the turn. This is not new, of course, but it seemed like it was hapening a whole lot more often than it had in the past (and it started in the first round!). The game went long, but I found it to be extremely interesting. I wanted to try again the strategy I attempted unsuccessfully last time: collect 1:1 actions and convert them to privileges before that pile ran out. I spent the first few rounds collecting whatever goods came my way for cheap so I could trade them later on (1:1 trade markers aren't typically hot items in our group, either). I then traded 3 or 4 of them for privileges, bringing my total to 8. Obviously, with that number in hand, it was very hard to convince anyone to sell me theirs at any price, but unfortunately I did not have any big runs. I did eventually get 2 additional ones from Shemp, which fit in quite nicely and helped me out quite a bit in the end (side note: I almost didn't take one of them, because I mistakenly thought it didn't work very well with my cards!).
I had resisted playing the ownership marker game until the last few rounds (for whatever reason, I seem to gravitate to privileges and ownership markers every game!) By then I had concluded that Shemp was likely winning, so I picked up a number of them and started displacing his off the board (he had quite a few). Shemp immediately mentioned I might have handed Luch the victory by doing so, and I suddenly felt he might have been right. Then again, Kozure WAS fulfilling quite a number of large orders... maybe HE was winning. All I knew was that I mustered only a single large order and a single small order, so my privileges would have to carry me. I didn't think it was likely, though.
I did win. By 30 ducats. The ownership markers were the difference!
Next up was RA. We played two rounds, and both wound up being rather odd in their own way:
1) The first game, I went short. I always find that the more players there are, the more important it is to snag whatever you can and get out fast. With 4, the strategy is borderline, but I went with it anyway. I was often out before some players had played a single bid! The odd thing was that in the first round, the era lasted a LOOOONG time after I was done. The way things played out, the 2nd and 3rd era looked to be choked with RAs, so even though it burned me in the first round I stuck with my strategy. It worked for me, too... The horde of RAs which came out afterwards left Shemp, Luch and Kozure unable to aquire the temples or floods they were trying to collect and I reached the end in first place on the strength of my pharoahs and the gold+civ points I grabbed when I could.
2) The second game, I lost the pharoah struggle early. the other three seemed to be making a point of gathering them, so I decided to leave that alone and concentrate on rivers, civs or monuments. However, right up to the end of the game, virtually no monuments were drawn! It almost seems mathematically impossible that 3 eras could go by with so few monuments pulled, but there it was. I managed to get 7 different ones, and a mid sized river going, but it wasn't enough to stop Shemp, who won by 3 points.
... good times.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Russia's Greatest Love Machine.
This week!
There was no EASY, hey!
But there was SHAMUS! Wow! And TILI! played also! Hey!
So we were four and five players for RA! and RA! and then RA!! (but played by the correct rules this time)
And Then Colossal Arena!! Wow!
Please forgive the jarring nature of the above. My brain has spent the last couple of weeks running out of my ear, slowly, and that is impacting both the quality of this report and the quality of game choice for this week, since I, Shemp, was dictating. (The quality of my grammar and sentence structure is also affected, apparently.)
We ordered Pizza and jumped right in to teaching Shamus how to play RA! Foolishly, we trusted Luch! to do the explainening, "reasoning" that he would know the rules inside out as a result of playing RA! Fifty Thousand Times! a! Day! on Brettspielwelt, Hey!
Should we have known better? Yes! We should have known better! HEY!!
But we didn't. SO, the first couple of games of Ra (one four player, one five) were played such that any player could draw a tile AND call Ra or draw a tile and play a God. So things were a little wackier than usual, and a little higher scoring, I think. It's difficult to say! Wow! I should leave the answer open to more frequent players! Wow! I think!
Then we played again, the right way, with Kozure holding the rule hammer, and things settled down. Lots of RA! leading to a sparse first couple of ages, and a lot of PRESS! YOUR! LUCK! type action in the last age.
When Tili was playing, she often heard "Do it! It's TOTALLY WORTH IT!" Whether it was worth it or not ~ she was remarkably tolerant of this.
Final Analysis: FUN! CLOSE! & I believe that Shamus enjoyed his introduction to this game, despite a rough first play. (I said that everyone has a first rough play? Is it true? I definitely did. Mos Def)
AND THEN: Some Colossal Arena to fill out the evening. I wasn't quite feeling it.
Not sure why! Hey!
Overall, Easy's goal was to come a distant fourth! Unachieved! Sixth for him!
But there will be further chances for redemption! Hey!
WAGS next Week? Sans Easy? Sans Shemp? HEY! Stay tuned and find out! True believers!!
Wow!
Comment if you can and dare to.
(This is why we let Easy post usually. All of this.)
There was no EASY, hey!
But there was SHAMUS! Wow! And TILI! played also! Hey!
So we were four and five players for RA! and RA! and then RA!! (but played by the correct rules this time)
And Then Colossal Arena!! Wow!
Please forgive the jarring nature of the above. My brain has spent the last couple of weeks running out of my ear, slowly, and that is impacting both the quality of this report and the quality of game choice for this week, since I, Shemp, was dictating. (The quality of my grammar and sentence structure is also affected, apparently.)
We ordered Pizza and jumped right in to teaching Shamus how to play RA! Foolishly, we trusted Luch! to do the explainening, "reasoning" that he would know the rules inside out as a result of playing RA! Fifty Thousand Times! a! Day! on Brettspielwelt, Hey!
Should we have known better? Yes! We should have known better! HEY!!
But we didn't. SO, the first couple of games of Ra (one four player, one five) were played such that any player could draw a tile AND call Ra or draw a tile and play a God. So things were a little wackier than usual, and a little higher scoring, I think. It's difficult to say! Wow! I should leave the answer open to more frequent players! Wow! I think!
Then we played again, the right way, with Kozure holding the rule hammer, and things settled down. Lots of RA! leading to a sparse first couple of ages, and a lot of PRESS! YOUR! LUCK! type action in the last age.
When Tili was playing, she often heard "Do it! It's TOTALLY WORTH IT!" Whether it was worth it or not ~ she was remarkably tolerant of this.
Final Analysis: FUN! CLOSE! & I believe that Shamus enjoyed his introduction to this game, despite a rough first play. (I said that everyone has a first rough play? Is it true? I definitely did. Mos Def)
AND THEN: Some Colossal Arena to fill out the evening. I wasn't quite feeling it.
Not sure why! Hey!
Overall, Easy's goal was to come a distant fourth! Unachieved! Sixth for him!
But there will be further chances for redemption! Hey!
WAGS next Week? Sans Easy? Sans Shemp? HEY! Stay tuned and find out! True believers!!
Wow!
Comment if you can and dare to.
(This is why we let Easy post usually. All of this.)
Friday, November 18, 2005
All Hail the Idiot King!
This week's directive from the dictator was interesting:
1. Venue is chzczo?~?~
2. Games is Conspiracy, traders of genoa, and some fillery thing or stuff.
3. me brain no work gud.
4. food~! TBD
5. Snazx bring
6. didn' t i tel you AD cance3lled last wk/
?
idoitkingS
Among other things, Shemp acknowledges existence of (and enthusiasm for) food. More importantly, he declared himself "The Idiot King".
Sadly, I managed to mess up half of the only lucid thing he said... In packing my bag of games for the evening, I got too caught up trying to choose "fillery" games and forgot Conspiracy. The rule of Shemp was denied (or, as he rebutted, "differently realized"). Oh well.
I arrived a little early, so after chatting a little Kozure, Tili and I started a 3 way game of For Sale! until the others arrived. They hadn't played before, but as you can imagine they caught on quickly. Baby Boy was along as spectator, and I think all 3.5 of us enjoyed it.
As Shemp and Luch arrived, we cleared the table and got ready for Traders of Genoa. Shemp reaffirmed that he was the Idiot King, and explained that doing other people's paperwork was slowly making him unable to think. He's right... the only thing that sucks more than paperwork is OTHER PEOPLE's paperwork.
4 player Traders of Genoa. Wow. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. And a little stingy besides. Deals, probably 75% of them, never exceeded $5. Sharing in the benefits of the action (i.e. splitting the 2 goods), was just about the only common method used to sweetent he pot beyond that. Offering $15 or more for an action virtually ensured you WOULDN'T get it (a suspicious lot, we are). Shemp and Kozure traded privileges, I concentrated on fulfilling orders and dominating the ownership markers and Luch routinely sacrificed cash by ending turns early to deny players any actions. I've done the ownership marker strategy before, but on the other hand I don't think I normally do well at this game, so I'm not sure why I keep trying it. Lucky for me, it worked out this time... I RAKED in cash from my markers and also managed many orders of all types, and won the game just a touch ahead of Kozure (who himself had a fantastic run of large orders and privileges). It was a good game.
Does anyone else feel that the latitude for deal making isn't as wide as it should be? It might be a result of our frugal attitudes, but i'd love to think of a way to find different angles for negotiating (Shemp and Kozure were making interesting trades with their privileges, though). Shemp also introduced the notion of "future consideration", something he once had good success with in Monopoly. In a way, I think the miniscule value of most goods, compared with the undefined value of the action cards and the perceived enormous value of ownership markers and privilege cards makes them hard to trade for one another. It occurs to me now that a clever trade might be to offer a card for which you don't have the appropriate good(s) but the acting player does. Thoughts?
The Idiot King's next proclamation was that he was hoping that others would make game choices for him, and then make it seem like it was his decision all along. So, we reminded him he wanted to play RA.
The first time I played this game, I loved it. That was way back in April, in Jay Wowzer's inaugural session. Others were more lukewarm, but I actively sought after it and eagerly anticipated Uberplay's re-release so I could buy a copy for myself. In the meantime, I taught myself the BSW interface in order to play online. I then enlisted Luch, and I think he now shares my enthusiasm for the game. Lately, Kozure and Tili have joined us occasionally online and, again, I think they really like it (they certainly both showed a knack for the game, beating both me and Luch one most of the games they've played against us).
So... Shemp was the last frontier.
First, a few notes on the new version. I'm working from memory, but I beleive the board and tiles are roughly 30% bigger than the original. That's not a change I appreciate, because the tiles take up room to sort in front of you in addition to the larger board (and creating a player mat to help new players will be challenging unless 11"x17" paper is used). Since there is no advantage to having them larger, the inconvenience is annoying, slight as it is. The new bag is a nice touch, though it barely fits all the tiles. The tiles which remain as players go from one epoch to another are marked with a small red "X", which is nice (but wouldn't the reverse have been more intuitive?). The board has a summary of the scoring and tile distribution, which is also nice (though, again, it could have been done more intuitively... for example, the distribution for the river tile is marked 25/12(2). THis denotes 25 rivers, 12 floods and 2 droughts, but that's not explained anywhere) To make matters worse (and this is a little unbeleivable), the board isn't represented, explained or even talked about in the entire rule book! This will be confusing to new players for sure.
All in all, the reprint is very good but not great (I'm talking component quality, gameplay is identical to the original). It's still very attractive, because the pieces are all of very high quality, but a few design issues could have been done better. To be honest, though, I'm just glad to own it.
The 5 player game started well for me. I managed quite a few points with a good Civilization set, some gold and a God tile. The others were locked in a pharoah war... I thought I might have an advantage not competing in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any river or monument strategy working and I ended the game with essentially the same set I had at the end of round 1. I think my familiarity with the game hurt me, though... New players are far more likely to let the pot grow to 7-8 tiles than experienced ones, so my strategy of "get in, grab what you can and get out" which normally works well with 5 players worked against me (my meager aquisitions would have lost me the game under any circumstances, but with this group the disparaty was shameful!!!). Shemp played very well for a first timer, appearing to be the leader for the first few rounds before being passed by Tili and Luch. In the end, Luch garnered many points for multiple monument sets... beating out Tili's impressive reign of Pharoahs and HUGE river.
I think Shemp liked it too.
We finished off with a few more rounds of For Sale! Lots of laughing and groaning. Kozure decided he sucked at the game. I can't remember who won, but it was a nice way to finish off the evening.
1. Venue is chzczo?~?~
2. Games is Conspiracy, traders of genoa, and some fillery thing or stuff.
3. me brain no work gud.
4. food~! TBD
5. Snazx bring
6. didn' t i tel you AD cance3lled last wk/
?
idoitkingS
Among other things, Shemp acknowledges existence of (and enthusiasm for) food. More importantly, he declared himself "The Idiot King".
Sadly, I managed to mess up half of the only lucid thing he said... In packing my bag of games for the evening, I got too caught up trying to choose "fillery" games and forgot Conspiracy. The rule of Shemp was denied (or, as he rebutted, "differently realized"). Oh well.
I arrived a little early, so after chatting a little Kozure, Tili and I started a 3 way game of For Sale! until the others arrived. They hadn't played before, but as you can imagine they caught on quickly. Baby Boy was along as spectator, and I think all 3.5 of us enjoyed it.
As Shemp and Luch arrived, we cleared the table and got ready for Traders of Genoa. Shemp reaffirmed that he was the Idiot King, and explained that doing other people's paperwork was slowly making him unable to think. He's right... the only thing that sucks more than paperwork is OTHER PEOPLE's paperwork.
4 player Traders of Genoa. Wow. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. And a little stingy besides. Deals, probably 75% of them, never exceeded $5. Sharing in the benefits of the action (i.e. splitting the 2 goods), was just about the only common method used to sweetent he pot beyond that. Offering $15 or more for an action virtually ensured you WOULDN'T get it (a suspicious lot, we are). Shemp and Kozure traded privileges, I concentrated on fulfilling orders and dominating the ownership markers and Luch routinely sacrificed cash by ending turns early to deny players any actions. I've done the ownership marker strategy before, but on the other hand I don't think I normally do well at this game, so I'm not sure why I keep trying it. Lucky for me, it worked out this time... I RAKED in cash from my markers and also managed many orders of all types, and won the game just a touch ahead of Kozure (who himself had a fantastic run of large orders and privileges). It was a good game.
Does anyone else feel that the latitude for deal making isn't as wide as it should be? It might be a result of our frugal attitudes, but i'd love to think of a way to find different angles for negotiating (Shemp and Kozure were making interesting trades with their privileges, though). Shemp also introduced the notion of "future consideration", something he once had good success with in Monopoly. In a way, I think the miniscule value of most goods, compared with the undefined value of the action cards and the perceived enormous value of ownership markers and privilege cards makes them hard to trade for one another. It occurs to me now that a clever trade might be to offer a card for which you don't have the appropriate good(s) but the acting player does. Thoughts?
The Idiot King's next proclamation was that he was hoping that others would make game choices for him, and then make it seem like it was his decision all along. So, we reminded him he wanted to play RA.
The first time I played this game, I loved it. That was way back in April, in Jay Wowzer's inaugural session. Others were more lukewarm, but I actively sought after it and eagerly anticipated Uberplay's re-release so I could buy a copy for myself. In the meantime, I taught myself the BSW interface in order to play online. I then enlisted Luch, and I think he now shares my enthusiasm for the game. Lately, Kozure and Tili have joined us occasionally online and, again, I think they really like it (they certainly both showed a knack for the game, beating both me and Luch one most of the games they've played against us).
So... Shemp was the last frontier.
First, a few notes on the new version. I'm working from memory, but I beleive the board and tiles are roughly 30% bigger than the original. That's not a change I appreciate, because the tiles take up room to sort in front of you in addition to the larger board (and creating a player mat to help new players will be challenging unless 11"x17" paper is used). Since there is no advantage to having them larger, the inconvenience is annoying, slight as it is. The new bag is a nice touch, though it barely fits all the tiles. The tiles which remain as players go from one epoch to another are marked with a small red "X", which is nice (but wouldn't the reverse have been more intuitive?). The board has a summary of the scoring and tile distribution, which is also nice (though, again, it could have been done more intuitively... for example, the distribution for the river tile is marked 25/12(2). THis denotes 25 rivers, 12 floods and 2 droughts, but that's not explained anywhere) To make matters worse (and this is a little unbeleivable), the board isn't represented, explained or even talked about in the entire rule book! This will be confusing to new players for sure.
All in all, the reprint is very good but not great (I'm talking component quality, gameplay is identical to the original). It's still very attractive, because the pieces are all of very high quality, but a few design issues could have been done better. To be honest, though, I'm just glad to own it.
The 5 player game started well for me. I managed quite a few points with a good Civilization set, some gold and a God tile. The others were locked in a pharoah war... I thought I might have an advantage not competing in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any river or monument strategy working and I ended the game with essentially the same set I had at the end of round 1. I think my familiarity with the game hurt me, though... New players are far more likely to let the pot grow to 7-8 tiles than experienced ones, so my strategy of "get in, grab what you can and get out" which normally works well with 5 players worked against me (my meager aquisitions would have lost me the game under any circumstances, but with this group the disparaty was shameful!!!). Shemp played very well for a first timer, appearing to be the leader for the first few rounds before being passed by Tili and Luch. In the end, Luch garnered many points for multiple monument sets... beating out Tili's impressive reign of Pharoahs and HUGE river.
I think Shemp liked it too.
We finished off with a few more rounds of For Sale! Lots of laughing and groaning. Kozure decided he sucked at the game. I can't remember who won, but it was a nice way to finish off the evening.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
New
This week we celebrated the new.
We ate food we've never had before (Lamacun, which is turkish pizza which turns out to be both very cheap and pretty good).
We had snacks we've never eaten before (the latest sprite concoction, Dill Pickle Doritos).
We were introduced to Ian, Kozure and Tili's new baby boy
We played with people we've never had at WAGS before ("Agent Oral", a university friend, and "Jaywowzer", a new aquaintance I met through Boardgamegeek).
We played two new games (Witch Trial and Ra)
First off, I'd like to point out that Jaywowzer is a madman. And he is very dedicated to gaming. Despite a flight arriving in Toronto at 7:30pm, he made it to his hotel and found Kozure's place in less than 1:30 hours... we hadn't even made it through our first game! Nice that he came though, it was a pleasure meeting him and I look forward to having him come again!
On to the games... Witch Trial was first up. This is another Cheap Ass game from Kozure's seemingly endless collection of them. As with most of these games, the game is humourous and relies on players involvement to really work. In this case, you have the Salem witch trials as a theme. Players all play lawyers trying to get as rich as possible by trying or defending a series of suspects on various charges. It's a card game, with everyone managing a hand of cards representing suspects, charges, motions, evidence, etc. There is a series of face up cards on the table, and players must choose to either draw one, pair a suspect or charge from their hand with it's counterpart from the face up cards, or take a case to trial. A trial basically comes down to adding up the "suspicion level" of the accused with the "likelihood" of the charge to get a number from 1 to 12. Then players alternate adding evidence and motions to increase or decrease that number in their favour. Once all cards are played, the dice are rolled and the result is added to the total. If the result is over 12, the prosecution wins. We all got into it, making an effort to "present" our cases, reading the card texts and generally haming it up. Bluffing can be usefull, but the bulk of the strategy seemed to revolve around timing you cases such that no one is in a position to defend it properly (negotiation skills are also usefull if you want to make a plea bargain to split the settlement without getting a verdict). Also, since the defending lawyer always gets a minimum retainer whether he wins the case or not, it doesn't really hurt to do a lot of that, too (as long as you don't use up lots of otherwise good cards trying to defend a hopeless case). I won the game, but as with most first attempts at a game, it was entirely luck. It was pretty fun, and I think that the game mechanic is strong enough that this one would be fun for quite a few more plays (even moreso than unexploded cow, which I also liked).
Next up was Ra. Since this is only a 3-5 player game, we split out into two game groups (4 and 2). I played Ra with JayWowzer, Agent Oral and Luch, while shemp and kozure played "Lost cities".
Ra was excellent. I really enjoyed this one, and I'm really sad it's out of print. This is an auction game set in Egypt. Each player is trying to build the most impressive dynasty by accumulating the most pharoahs, the best civilizations, the most temples, etc. Over the course of three "epochs" (rounds), players take turns either drawing from the pile of tiles to add to the board, or to call an auction to see who gets to keep the tiles which have been drawn so far. There is a clever mechanism for the auctions, though: The players start the game with three "sun" markers with number on them (2-16, no two are the same). and a value 1 sun tile is placed on the board. Whenever an auction occurs, players can choose to offer up one of their numbered tiles for the lot, and the highest bid takes them. There are three tricks, though! 1) Because of the unique scoring mechanism, the same face up tiles will be worth differently to different players 2) disaster tiles can turn up which actually destroys existing tiles if you win the auction, and this can make an otherwise desirable lot much less attractive if you hold the type of tiles which will be destroyed, and 3) one you've won an auction, you have to trade in your sun tile and take the one present on the table. The sun tiles you take are the ones you'll use to bid in the auctions on the next epoch, so you have to carefully consider the tile you'll be aquiring as part of the auction when bidding. There are two other ways an auction can happen... if the board fills up or if a player draws a tile and gets a "Ra" tile, an auction is immediately called on whatever is on the table. Each "Epoch" ends once all players have used up their bids or once a preset number of "Ra" tiles turns up. This can lead to some real tension as players try to turn up the tiles they need to complete their sets, but debate whether they should just bite the bullet and bid on what's there so that the round doesn't end before they get the chance to aquire anything. the scoring seems a little finisky at first, there are a lot of case like "you get this many points if you have the most pharoahs, and you loose this many if you have the least" or "you get one point for each river tile, so long as you have at least one flood, otherwise they are wortless". Plus, some items are scored every round, others only at the end of the game. Some tiles are thrown out at the end of the round, others go to the end. Still, a logic quickly emerges and it soon becomes pretty smooth. A cheat sheet which Jaywowzer printed out from Boargamegeek really helped visually organizing the sets, their scoring, etc.
All in all, I found the game moved quickly, had a nice balance of randomness and looked great. I'd put it right up there with my favorites, if i could get my hands on a copy!
for the record, JayWowzer creamed us on the first go around, and in the second game (with Kozure and Shemp in, but with Agent Oral out playing Lost cities with Tili), Kozure beat me by a nose through a consistent lead in the pharoahs in each epoch. JayWowzer played chicken with Ra and lost on a couple of occasions in the second game, accounting for his loss.
Ratings:
Witch Trial : 7
Ra: 9
We ate food we've never had before (Lamacun, which is turkish pizza which turns out to be both very cheap and pretty good).
We had snacks we've never eaten before (the latest sprite concoction, Dill Pickle Doritos).
We were introduced to Ian, Kozure and Tili's new baby boy
We played with people we've never had at WAGS before ("Agent Oral", a university friend, and "Jaywowzer", a new aquaintance I met through Boardgamegeek).
We played two new games (Witch Trial and Ra)
First off, I'd like to point out that Jaywowzer is a madman. And he is very dedicated to gaming. Despite a flight arriving in Toronto at 7:30pm, he made it to his hotel and found Kozure's place in less than 1:30 hours... we hadn't even made it through our first game! Nice that he came though, it was a pleasure meeting him and I look forward to having him come again!
On to the games... Witch Trial was first up. This is another Cheap Ass game from Kozure's seemingly endless collection of them. As with most of these games, the game is humourous and relies on players involvement to really work. In this case, you have the Salem witch trials as a theme. Players all play lawyers trying to get as rich as possible by trying or defending a series of suspects on various charges. It's a card game, with everyone managing a hand of cards representing suspects, charges, motions, evidence, etc. There is a series of face up cards on the table, and players must choose to either draw one, pair a suspect or charge from their hand with it's counterpart from the face up cards, or take a case to trial. A trial basically comes down to adding up the "suspicion level" of the accused with the "likelihood" of the charge to get a number from 1 to 12. Then players alternate adding evidence and motions to increase or decrease that number in their favour. Once all cards are played, the dice are rolled and the result is added to the total. If the result is over 12, the prosecution wins. We all got into it, making an effort to "present" our cases, reading the card texts and generally haming it up. Bluffing can be usefull, but the bulk of the strategy seemed to revolve around timing you cases such that no one is in a position to defend it properly (negotiation skills are also usefull if you want to make a plea bargain to split the settlement without getting a verdict). Also, since the defending lawyer always gets a minimum retainer whether he wins the case or not, it doesn't really hurt to do a lot of that, too (as long as you don't use up lots of otherwise good cards trying to defend a hopeless case). I won the game, but as with most first attempts at a game, it was entirely luck. It was pretty fun, and I think that the game mechanic is strong enough that this one would be fun for quite a few more plays (even moreso than unexploded cow, which I also liked).
Next up was Ra. Since this is only a 3-5 player game, we split out into two game groups (4 and 2). I played Ra with JayWowzer, Agent Oral and Luch, while shemp and kozure played "Lost cities".
Ra was excellent. I really enjoyed this one, and I'm really sad it's out of print. This is an auction game set in Egypt. Each player is trying to build the most impressive dynasty by accumulating the most pharoahs, the best civilizations, the most temples, etc. Over the course of three "epochs" (rounds), players take turns either drawing from the pile of tiles to add to the board, or to call an auction to see who gets to keep the tiles which have been drawn so far. There is a clever mechanism for the auctions, though: The players start the game with three "sun" markers with number on them (2-16, no two are the same). and a value 1 sun tile is placed on the board. Whenever an auction occurs, players can choose to offer up one of their numbered tiles for the lot, and the highest bid takes them. There are three tricks, though! 1) Because of the unique scoring mechanism, the same face up tiles will be worth differently to different players 2) disaster tiles can turn up which actually destroys existing tiles if you win the auction, and this can make an otherwise desirable lot much less attractive if you hold the type of tiles which will be destroyed, and 3) one you've won an auction, you have to trade in your sun tile and take the one present on the table. The sun tiles you take are the ones you'll use to bid in the auctions on the next epoch, so you have to carefully consider the tile you'll be aquiring as part of the auction when bidding. There are two other ways an auction can happen... if the board fills up or if a player draws a tile and gets a "Ra" tile, an auction is immediately called on whatever is on the table. Each "Epoch" ends once all players have used up their bids or once a preset number of "Ra" tiles turns up. This can lead to some real tension as players try to turn up the tiles they need to complete their sets, but debate whether they should just bite the bullet and bid on what's there so that the round doesn't end before they get the chance to aquire anything. the scoring seems a little finisky at first, there are a lot of case like "you get this many points if you have the most pharoahs, and you loose this many if you have the least" or "you get one point for each river tile, so long as you have at least one flood, otherwise they are wortless". Plus, some items are scored every round, others only at the end of the game. Some tiles are thrown out at the end of the round, others go to the end. Still, a logic quickly emerges and it soon becomes pretty smooth. A cheat sheet which Jaywowzer printed out from Boargamegeek really helped visually organizing the sets, their scoring, etc.
All in all, I found the game moved quickly, had a nice balance of randomness and looked great. I'd put it right up there with my favorites, if i could get my hands on a copy!
for the record, JayWowzer creamed us on the first go around, and in the second game (with Kozure and Shemp in, but with Agent Oral out playing Lost cities with Tili), Kozure beat me by a nose through a consistent lead in the pharoahs in each epoch. JayWowzer played chicken with Ra and lost on a couple of occasions in the second game, accounting for his loss.
Ratings:
Witch Trial : 7
Ra: 9
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