Galaxy Trucker
We played our second session of Galaxy Trucker this week. I can't explain why, but it wasn't my night for ship building. My first ship was actually decent, except for the complete lack of batteries. The third had almost no crew. On the flip side, the others were building very good ships for the most part (Kozure had an unfortunate first round due to a misunderstanding of the building rules...). Shemp managed to do much better than the last place finish he managed last time. In fact, he won!
Luch came to the realization that he has been building his ships wrong since the beginning. He was placing pieces anywhere on his board, rather than growing out from the initial cockpit piece! He HAS been doing quite well, finishing 2nd in both our games, if I'm not mistaken. Let's see if this rules clarification has an impact on his standings for game three...
Unfortunately, there were no spectacular ship destructions. For the most part, our ships survived mostly intact. The winner was determined by the player who could take advantage of the most abandoned space stations and survive the most slavers. Very few meteors, this time.
Galaxy Trucker has turned out to be a very fun game. It certainly has a novelty factor, but the puzzle-like ship building aspect is very enjoyable and the actual space flight is entertaining enough to work. I was really afraid the group would dislike it after our experience with Space Alert (a similar "gimmick" game by the same designer), but it looks like they like it. Shemp declared that it was "a million times better than Space Alert", so that's pretty good. Probably.
(I still like Space Alert, but I seem to be the only one. Galaxy Trucker is clearly the better game, however)
Conspiracy
It's been 3 1/2 years since we last played this game, which is in and of itself a game I've been dragging around with me for nearly 30 years. Something felt a little off as we played this time. The crossing and double crossing was rather limited, and the frequent "near wins" that characterized our earlier games didn't occur. Typically, the briefcase makes it to within one space of a number of players before anyone actually succeeds in bringing it home. This time, however, the briefcase easily came back to England (me) due to a tactical error on the other player's parts (Shemp though Kozure would stop me, Kozure thought Shemp would). In the second, Luch managed to put his money on the two characters that turned out to be pivotal and became impossible to stop.
I like the game, but it certainly seemed to lack something this time. Will it take another 4 years to see if it gets better or worse? We'll see.
Through the Desert
It's also been a while since we've played this one. Through the Desert is unfortunately not a very "sexy" game, in the sense that it doesn't jump out at you and compel you to play. It doesn't have a particularly compelling theme, it has no particularly clever mechanics, the bits aren't over the top. It definitely feels like it's from an earlier era, where games could be simpler and still get noticed.
Still, I'm really happy we got it to the table. I'm reminded of how much I enjoy playing it! The gameplay is so clean that all that is left is a very fast moving series of difficult decisions. I'm not sure that there is another game that epitomizes the "I have so many things I want to do, but so few actions to do them with" feeling as well as Through the Desert. I don't recall who won the games, but I had a great time playing.
Showing posts with label Through the Desert. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Through the Desert. Show all posts
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Camel. Hump. (Princes of Florence, Through the Desert, China)
BHarmer's pick this week. A random assortment of games, but good ones.
Princes of Florence
We opened up with one of my all time favorites, Princes of Florence. As far as I'm concerned, there is no better optimisation game. What does this type of game need to do well? Players need to be largely in control of their fates, but there needs to be just a little luck to keep things from becoming static, and just enough player interaction that a player might feel the pressure to change an otherwise ideal strategy to react to evolving circumstances.
I've tried a few different strategies in this game. The pure builder and jester strategies are both popular, but since they are fairly obvious the competition for those resources are typically pretty tight (making them less effective as a result). Instead of going a middle road, as I usually do lately, I decided to try to simply bulk up my professions early and see if the extra hand size would carry me through the game. I auctioned for a recruiter card on the first round and purchased a profession as my first action. I purchased another profession on the second round. This meant that, along with the jester I had won in the auction, my works were worth a minimum of 8 (6 profession cards and 2 for the jester). As a large number of my professions required forests and the freedom of religion or opinion, I was able to gather what I needed and play a large number of works cost effectively.
Things didn't go perfectly, though. The profession cards and prestige cards I drew didn't match up well with my hand. As I tried to bid up other players I got stuck with a builder I didn't want. I miscalculated on a turn and nearly made it impossible for myself to complete my plan to complete two works on the final round. These things make me happy, because if they never happened, the game would quickly become very boring. I'm glad the resources are so limited, I'm glad that there are so few turns, and I'm glad that I can use the auction to make life difficult for other players (and that it can come back and bite me).
It was a very tight game until the end. I won due to the two works on my last round.
Through the Desert
After the usual griping about the terrible colours that the camels come in, we played two rounds of this excellent little game. Kozure killed us in the first, with a good number of 'longest chains' and surrounded areas. I won the second, largely due to a large 21 point area of the board I was able to cordon off. This is probably the first time that my initial placement amounted to more than just 'I'll place this camel near those two water holes' or 'between these two palm trees'. I placed a camel halfway up the edge of the board, and placed two blockers to the right of it. Since the blockers matched the colour of the other player's camels in the area, it was tricky for them to come block my land grab. Obviously, in a five player game the odds of having a placement strategy work are minimal since it's just luck no one saw what I was doing or even that they didn't place a camel or two in a place which would have screwed up my plan unknowingly. Still, they didn't and it worked! Still, it's pretty cool that despite what seemed like a game winning move, the lead was pretty small since I had to forego so many other scoring opportunities (water holes, palm trees, longest chains) in order to make it work.
Oh, and I ALMOST enclosed a circle right in the middle of the board. That would have been cool (damn you Kozure!!!)
China
We ended with China, another excellent game which packs a punch in very little time. 4 Players is pretty much as high as it will go before kind of breaking down, though (and 3 is best). Luch usually seems to go heavy on advisors, and Kozure normally seems to go majorities and chains. I went advisors as well, so I was in frequent competition with Luch. Not sure who won the game, because we realized later that we forgot to score the roads! Minus those, I had won, but I was very weak in connections so it could have been anyone's game.
Princes of Florence
We opened up with one of my all time favorites, Princes of Florence. As far as I'm concerned, there is no better optimisation game. What does this type of game need to do well? Players need to be largely in control of their fates, but there needs to be just a little luck to keep things from becoming static, and just enough player interaction that a player might feel the pressure to change an otherwise ideal strategy to react to evolving circumstances.
I've tried a few different strategies in this game. The pure builder and jester strategies are both popular, but since they are fairly obvious the competition for those resources are typically pretty tight (making them less effective as a result). Instead of going a middle road, as I usually do lately, I decided to try to simply bulk up my professions early and see if the extra hand size would carry me through the game. I auctioned for a recruiter card on the first round and purchased a profession as my first action. I purchased another profession on the second round. This meant that, along with the jester I had won in the auction, my works were worth a minimum of 8 (6 profession cards and 2 for the jester). As a large number of my professions required forests and the freedom of religion or opinion, I was able to gather what I needed and play a large number of works cost effectively.
Things didn't go perfectly, though. The profession cards and prestige cards I drew didn't match up well with my hand. As I tried to bid up other players I got stuck with a builder I didn't want. I miscalculated on a turn and nearly made it impossible for myself to complete my plan to complete two works on the final round. These things make me happy, because if they never happened, the game would quickly become very boring. I'm glad the resources are so limited, I'm glad that there are so few turns, and I'm glad that I can use the auction to make life difficult for other players (and that it can come back and bite me).
It was a very tight game until the end. I won due to the two works on my last round.
Through the Desert
After the usual griping about the terrible colours that the camels come in, we played two rounds of this excellent little game. Kozure killed us in the first, with a good number of 'longest chains' and surrounded areas. I won the second, largely due to a large 21 point area of the board I was able to cordon off. This is probably the first time that my initial placement amounted to more than just 'I'll place this camel near those two water holes' or 'between these two palm trees'. I placed a camel halfway up the edge of the board, and placed two blockers to the right of it. Since the blockers matched the colour of the other player's camels in the area, it was tricky for them to come block my land grab. Obviously, in a five player game the odds of having a placement strategy work are minimal since it's just luck no one saw what I was doing or even that they didn't place a camel or two in a place which would have screwed up my plan unknowingly. Still, they didn't and it worked! Still, it's pretty cool that despite what seemed like a game winning move, the lead was pretty small since I had to forego so many other scoring opportunities (water holes, palm trees, longest chains) in order to make it work.
Oh, and I ALMOST enclosed a circle right in the middle of the board. That would have been cool (damn you Kozure!!!)
China
We ended with China, another excellent game which packs a punch in very little time. 4 Players is pretty much as high as it will go before kind of breaking down, though (and 3 is best). Luch usually seems to go heavy on advisors, and Kozure normally seems to go majorities and chains. I went advisors as well, so I was in frequent competition with Luch. Not sure who won the game, because we realized later that we forgot to score the roads! Minus those, I had won, but I was very weak in connections so it could have been anyone's game.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
The Blind Leading the Blind ( Through the Desert x2, Aladdin's Dragons x2)
JayWowzer, in addition to bringing Antike last week, generously left us his copy of Aladdin's Dragons to play in his absence. After a few quick games of Through the Desert we gave it a try.
Aladdin's Dragons is a rather interesting and odd game. Thematically, players are trying to steal treasure from dragons, find useful wares at a market and ultimately try to purchase magical artifacts from the califf's palaces. However, if you strip away the theme we are left with a game where players are placing markers numbered 1-9 face down in different areas in the hopes of having majorities once they are revealed. In other words, it's a huge exercise in blind bidding.
After two plays, I'm not sure what to make of it.
The board is split into three main regions (caves, market, palace) and these cleanly describe the three main aspects of the game. The "caves" provide currency to spend later on, but those treasures are of no value in and of themselves. The "market" provides players with the opportunity to "bend the rules", such as aquire spells (powerful special action cards), alter the turn order, exchange currency at a profit or use more than one magical artifact a turn. Again, these abilities are important, but do not directly contribute to winning the game. The palace is where currency gained in the caves is spent to aquire magical artifacts. The artifacts confer special abilities onto the players, and are also the only source of victory points.
There is interesting tension on many levels. With 8 tokens and 16 spaces on the board, it's obvious that there are more things you'll want to do than you are able each round. The decision to focus on aquiring treasure in the caves vs. manipulating the board and/or aquiring spells in the market vs. aquiring artifacts in the palace (or to go for a little bit of everything) is the first of many tough decisions. Second, winning a space is not as simple as placing a token there... you have to have the highest total in the space! This means that you effectively can only place in a select few spaces, because you find yourself bolstering your presence in areas you really want to win (and occasionally slipping a token into a space others are ignoring). Lastly, since the pieces are placed face down, there is opportunity to bluff by placing tokens in areas you don't care to win just to force the opponent to commit more resources there.
All these layers of decision making are interesting, however in the end things felt a little unsatisfying for a couple of reasons:
1) The blind bidding needs to be offset by enough "public" information so that players have something to go on when placing their bids... otherwise the result is complete chaos. In Aladdin's Dragons, players can see the number of chips on the board from each player, and this gives valuable clues about their intentions. Other than that, there is very little to go on! In a game like RA, I can look at a set of tiles and approximate it's value for the other players, since I know what they are holding. This allows me to mitigate the randomness of that game by using educated guess about how they might play. Here, I didn't really feel I could do that to any degree.
2) The spell cards are quite powerful, introducing a little too much chaos in the game. For example, the ability to force every player to discard 7 treasures is devastating! I realize that the "counterspell" artifact negates this to a certain degree, but each player can only use a single artifact per round, so it's big sacrifice by an individual player to use it. I never really like it when one person needs to bite the bullet in order to protect him/herself while giving the rest of the group a free pass (sort of reverse king making). I did like the concept of "spells", though, so I wish they were just a little less impactful. By contrast, I thought the artifact special powers where very well implemented, since a player must choose a single artifact per round to use. I wonder whether the game would be any good if the spells where removed, but the artifact powers remained.
Our first game was extremely chaotic, and we mostly flailed around trying to figure out what we were doing. Everybody except Kozure, that is, who masterfully swept just about everything he wanted from under our noses. He won by such a large margin that the result was pretty obvious halfway through the game. On the strength of the first game, I wasn't a big fan. Still, there was enough time so we played another.
Our second game was much better. We anticipated each other a little better, and we fought more competitively for the important spaces each turn (now having a better feel for the spaces that are more important at different stages of the game). I focussed largely on aquiring goods early on, hoping to spend the last half of the game aquiring artifacts with them (this strategy seems both obvious and basic, but I had to try it to see if I was right in that assessment). I was having reasonably good luck with the strategy, even claiming a few cheap artifacts along the way. When I switched gears and started purchasing more heavily, I was able to grab a fair number when I needed them. When all was said and done, Luch and I tied on artifacts AND on scrolls, but he had more of everything else you might use as a third tiebreaker, so he won. A very tight game!
I think it's entirely possible this game gets MUCH better with repeated plays, particularly with the same group. Judging by the improvement in our second game, I'd guess that much of the "Chaos" I'm seeing is really caused by my lack of familiarity with the system (for example, it occurred to me as I wrote this that the purpose of the "eliminate 7 treasures" cards might be to prevent players from adopting the strategy I used... gathering treasure in the beginning and spending them at the end... every game). So it's possible that behind the surface chaos there is a system here which self balances with experienced players.
Damn, now I want to play it again.
Aladdin's Dragons: 7.5
Aladdin's Dragons is a rather interesting and odd game. Thematically, players are trying to steal treasure from dragons, find useful wares at a market and ultimately try to purchase magical artifacts from the califf's palaces. However, if you strip away the theme we are left with a game where players are placing markers numbered 1-9 face down in different areas in the hopes of having majorities once they are revealed. In other words, it's a huge exercise in blind bidding.
After two plays, I'm not sure what to make of it.
The board is split into three main regions (caves, market, palace) and these cleanly describe the three main aspects of the game. The "caves" provide currency to spend later on, but those treasures are of no value in and of themselves. The "market" provides players with the opportunity to "bend the rules", such as aquire spells (powerful special action cards), alter the turn order, exchange currency at a profit or use more than one magical artifact a turn. Again, these abilities are important, but do not directly contribute to winning the game. The palace is where currency gained in the caves is spent to aquire magical artifacts. The artifacts confer special abilities onto the players, and are also the only source of victory points.
There is interesting tension on many levels. With 8 tokens and 16 spaces on the board, it's obvious that there are more things you'll want to do than you are able each round. The decision to focus on aquiring treasure in the caves vs. manipulating the board and/or aquiring spells in the market vs. aquiring artifacts in the palace (or to go for a little bit of everything) is the first of many tough decisions. Second, winning a space is not as simple as placing a token there... you have to have the highest total in the space! This means that you effectively can only place in a select few spaces, because you find yourself bolstering your presence in areas you really want to win (and occasionally slipping a token into a space others are ignoring). Lastly, since the pieces are placed face down, there is opportunity to bluff by placing tokens in areas you don't care to win just to force the opponent to commit more resources there.
All these layers of decision making are interesting, however in the end things felt a little unsatisfying for a couple of reasons:
1) The blind bidding needs to be offset by enough "public" information so that players have something to go on when placing their bids... otherwise the result is complete chaos. In Aladdin's Dragons, players can see the number of chips on the board from each player, and this gives valuable clues about their intentions. Other than that, there is very little to go on! In a game like RA, I can look at a set of tiles and approximate it's value for the other players, since I know what they are holding. This allows me to mitigate the randomness of that game by using educated guess about how they might play. Here, I didn't really feel I could do that to any degree.
2) The spell cards are quite powerful, introducing a little too much chaos in the game. For example, the ability to force every player to discard 7 treasures is devastating! I realize that the "counterspell" artifact negates this to a certain degree, but each player can only use a single artifact per round, so it's big sacrifice by an individual player to use it. I never really like it when one person needs to bite the bullet in order to protect him/herself while giving the rest of the group a free pass (sort of reverse king making). I did like the concept of "spells", though, so I wish they were just a little less impactful. By contrast, I thought the artifact special powers where very well implemented, since a player must choose a single artifact per round to use. I wonder whether the game would be any good if the spells where removed, but the artifact powers remained.
Our first game was extremely chaotic, and we mostly flailed around trying to figure out what we were doing. Everybody except Kozure, that is, who masterfully swept just about everything he wanted from under our noses. He won by such a large margin that the result was pretty obvious halfway through the game. On the strength of the first game, I wasn't a big fan. Still, there was enough time so we played another.
Our second game was much better. We anticipated each other a little better, and we fought more competitively for the important spaces each turn (now having a better feel for the spaces that are more important at different stages of the game). I focussed largely on aquiring goods early on, hoping to spend the last half of the game aquiring artifacts with them (this strategy seems both obvious and basic, but I had to try it to see if I was right in that assessment). I was having reasonably good luck with the strategy, even claiming a few cheap artifacts along the way. When I switched gears and started purchasing more heavily, I was able to grab a fair number when I needed them. When all was said and done, Luch and I tied on artifacts AND on scrolls, but he had more of everything else you might use as a third tiebreaker, so he won. A very tight game!
I think it's entirely possible this game gets MUCH better with repeated plays, particularly with the same group. Judging by the improvement in our second game, I'd guess that much of the "Chaos" I'm seeing is really caused by my lack of familiarity with the system (for example, it occurred to me as I wrote this that the purpose of the "eliminate 7 treasures" cards might be to prevent players from adopting the strategy I used... gathering treasure in the beginning and spending them at the end... every game). So it's possible that behind the surface chaos there is a system here which self balances with experienced players.
Damn, now I want to play it again.
Aladdin's Dragons: 7.5
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Put down that cupcake and RACE! (Through the Desert x2, Formula De, RoboRally)
This week was all about racing:
We burned rubber on Formula De's SPA track.
We braved the homicidal factory in RoboRally's "Bloodbath Chess" course.
We, ummm, had our camels cross the sands of Sahara REALLY FAST (?) in Through the Desert.
Oh, and we ate my wife's yummy Valentine's Day cupcakes.
It all started with a quick game of TtD for three. Shemp let us know ahead of time that he hadn't been sleeping well for a few days. This, combined with the fact that his colourblindness made it nearly impossible for him to follow what what going on on the board led him to apologize in advance for his weak playing. I did win, but he managed 2nd place. Poor Kozure...
I think this one is sneaking into my top 10... simple rules, scales well to any number of players and never takes much more than 30 minutes. (Shame about the pastel camels, though). We later closed the night with another round with 4 players. Kozure used an interesting initial placement strategy where he grouped 3 camels in one corner. This gave him an easy way to block other players from cutting him off as he went for a very large land grab. He made up for his earlier defeat!
Formula De was the first "Main Course". I wanted to try the SPA course with the group... it has the reputation of being the best of the tracks. I have to say I quite enjoyed it! Quite often the decision regarding which gear to be in on any given turn was quite tough. The leader changed frequently throughout the game and the course was often choked at the corners. I started at the Pole Position (and consequently in last place with my 2nd car). I was very hard on my lead car and blew most of my tires and brakes by the middle of the course. I did have the lead, but my conservative play after that allowed both Shemp and Kozure to pass me. In the end, Kozure crossed the finish line first and 5th, with Shemp 2nd and 3rd. I manages 4th and 6th with Luch limping in 7th (he lost a car in the chicane).
In Roborally, the "Bloodbath Chess" map proved to be quite interactive and lively. I seem to have a habit of totally screwing up my first move and this game was no different. I died right away because I didn't notice a wall in my path. I was behind for the entire game, but I accumulated quite an interesting array of special abilities along the way (dual CPU, extra memory, brakes and rear firing lasers). They weren't enough... I came in third (and the only reason I wasn't fourth was that Luch lost his third life token by flying into a pit near the 4th flag).
Until next time, may none or your registers be programmed randomly
We burned rubber on Formula De's SPA track.
We braved the homicidal factory in RoboRally's "Bloodbath Chess" course.
We, ummm, had our camels cross the sands of Sahara REALLY FAST (?) in Through the Desert.
Oh, and we ate my wife's yummy Valentine's Day cupcakes.
It all started with a quick game of TtD for three. Shemp let us know ahead of time that he hadn't been sleeping well for a few days. This, combined with the fact that his colourblindness made it nearly impossible for him to follow what what going on on the board led him to apologize in advance for his weak playing. I did win, but he managed 2nd place. Poor Kozure...
I think this one is sneaking into my top 10... simple rules, scales well to any number of players and never takes much more than 30 minutes. (Shame about the pastel camels, though). We later closed the night with another round with 4 players. Kozure used an interesting initial placement strategy where he grouped 3 camels in one corner. This gave him an easy way to block other players from cutting him off as he went for a very large land grab. He made up for his earlier defeat!
Formula De was the first "Main Course". I wanted to try the SPA course with the group... it has the reputation of being the best of the tracks. I have to say I quite enjoyed it! Quite often the decision regarding which gear to be in on any given turn was quite tough. The leader changed frequently throughout the game and the course was often choked at the corners. I started at the Pole Position (and consequently in last place with my 2nd car). I was very hard on my lead car and blew most of my tires and brakes by the middle of the course. I did have the lead, but my conservative play after that allowed both Shemp and Kozure to pass me. In the end, Kozure crossed the finish line first and 5th, with Shemp 2nd and 3rd. I manages 4th and 6th with Luch limping in 7th (he lost a car in the chicane).
In Roborally, the "Bloodbath Chess" map proved to be quite interactive and lively. I seem to have a habit of totally screwing up my first move and this game was no different. I died right away because I didn't notice a wall in my path. I was behind for the entire game, but I accumulated quite an interesting array of special abilities along the way (dual CPU, extra memory, brakes and rear firing lasers). They weren't enough... I came in third (and the only reason I wasn't fourth was that Luch lost his third life token by flying into a pit near the 4th flag).
Until next time, may none or your registers be programmed randomly
Labels:
Formula De,
Robo-Rally,
Session,
Through the Desert
Thursday, November 10, 2005
Attack of the middle weight Euros!
Six, count 'em... SIX (6) games played last night.
We focused on 3 middle weight games: Through the Desert, China and Tower of Babel.
I call a game "middle weight" when the rules are relatively simple, playtime is relatively short but there is still a depth of strategy to the game.
For context:
Light = For Sale! (very light), Caracassonne, Ticket to Ride (this is borderline)
Middle Weight = Settlers of Catan, Modern Art, Ra
Heavy = Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Puerto Rico
It's arbitrary, but it works for me.
Anyway, Through the Desert was first up. It was new to everyone, and I was really looking forward to it. First reaction (I bet you can't guess!)... Pastel camels... hmmm. Why did they have to be pastel? The colours blend in anything but bright light, and for Shemp (or resident colour blind player) a few were nearly impossible to tell apart. Not sure if they were trying to maintain a "bleached" look to keep in theme with the whole desert thing, but I wish they were easier to tell apart. The rest of the components are decent but unspectacular (plastic palm trees, thick chips for water holes and score markers)
The game is quite simple. Everyone has 5 starting camels on the board, one of each colour. on a turn, two camels are placed to extend on of their existing "caravans" (or lines of camels). Points are scored for crossing water holes, connecting to oasis or enclosing areas. End game points are scored for longest caravans of each colour. Other than a few placement restrictions (such as not being allowed to place a camel of a certain colour adjacent to another player's camels of the same colour), that's it. Game ends once all camels of one colour are placed.
In our first learning game, we stumbled along semi-randomly trying to figure out what to do. AS with many Knizia games (and german games in general), there is always far more things you WANT to do than you CAN do. Should I snatch the 3 point waterholes sitting right in front of my pink camel, or connect to the oasis before I get blocked? I went for water holes and oasis at first, but I did secure a medium sized piece of the desert. Kozure was unfortunately cheated as I forgot to mention that enclosed areas could not have any other camels in it. Luch ran away with the victory by successfully doing just about everything... getting long caravans, connecting to point sources and securing areas! Our second game was more thoughfully played. I managed to grab a corner of the board from under Kozure's nose. Luch's enormous green caravan didn't help him too much, and Shemp was still confounded by the colours. Despite not connecting to very many oasis, my long caravans and waterhole chits managed to give me a narrow 2nd place. Kozure won the game by 3 points (a very sneaky land grab near the end won him the game!).
China came next. I had played this at BSW as Web of Power, and liked it for being a nice straightforward strategy game. It's been called El Grande light, and I can understand the comparison, though it's pretty thin (it's area control...on a map...that's about it). Gameplay is pretty simple: Play 1 or 2 cards into a province of China. Place that number of houses or advisors. When the province is full, score it. At the end of the game, check if any player has a majority (or a tie for majority) in neighboring provinces for bonus points. Connected series of 4 or more houses are worth points too. (Game ends once the deck has been run through twice). The trickiest thing about the rules is the odd scoring for majority of houses... 1st place player gets points equal to the number of houses in the province. 2nd place gets points equal to the number of houses the 1st player has. etc, etc. This has a great impact on the strategy (in a province with 8 spaces, if 6 are controlled by red, and 1 by blue, red would get 7 points and blue would get 6. While there is little/no benefit for either player to fill the last space, a third player could swoop in and tie for 2nd with one house and swiftly pick up 6 points as well). Since the game moves so quickly, and opportunities disappear faster than you can react to them all, it's important not to overbuild unless you need to do so to block.
For an area control game, it goes incredibly fast. There are important decisions to be made, but not too much information to take in, so decisions can be made quickly. In the first game, I confined myself to the southern provinces and concentrated on establishing a network of advisors, and won. However, we discovered that Shemp and Kozure were playing under the impression that ties didn't count as a majority, so that hindered them. In the second, I tried to go for 2nd or 3rd place in as many provinces as possible but didn't succeed very well. Luch successfully grabbed a few house and advisor majorities, giving him the win. It's clear that advisors, used properly, are very powerful. I wonder whether the advanced game, wich introduces a monument which doubles the points from one province, is an attempt to balance that. Either way, I suspect that future games will see us being more aggressive in preventing advisor majorities.
I liked this version of the game, but a few comparisons to Web of Power are in order.
While the 3-4 player board is a bit more constricted, the 4-5 player board (which we used) is WIDE open. In contrast, Web of Power has a very "slanted" distribution of connections, alliances (and, I think, card distribution). I think this means that China is easier to jump into right away, but I bet Web of Power has more inherent flavour (i.e. taking control of France necessitates playing a different game plan than going for Italy, for example). I'm not good enough at WofP to know that for sure, but it's my impression. 2nd, scoring provinces once they are complete seems to weaken the building strategy somewhat (in WofP, the provinces are scored both times the deck is exhausted... meaning they are scored twice versus the "Advisor" and "Road" scorings which only happen once). Again, I can't be sure but I think I the older version might have been more balanced. In the end, though, these are minor criticisms. The game was very well received and does what it is trying to do very well!
Last was 2 additional plays of Tower of Babel. Our first game left me feeling a bit puzzled and dissapointed. While I can't say that I have warmed to the appearance of the game, the gamePLAY has gotten much better. I still find it difficult to process all the ramifications of my bids: bidding high places me on the board if I get accepted, and gives me victory points if I don't, but it allows the "building" player an easy chip, a bonus card and he can keep many of his cards. Bidding low increases my chances of getting on the board for 2nd or 3rd place points, but the building player will get the majority and the bulk of the benefit. Even more difficult is the "trader"... sometimes it's best used to "sour" an offer you don't want the other player to accept, other times it's a shrewd way to trade away a majority for a chip you might need for a set. I don't think I'm doing any worse than any other players, but I often only realise the impact of my offer AFTER it's been revealed and the opponent has chosen. Similarly, making an educated decision on which "wonders" to build, and when, is eluding me somewhat.
In my mind, I keep making comparisons to Domaine: The game WANTS to be broken, I think. Just as Domaine leads to a win by "large land grab" unless players actively play to stop it, Tower of Babel encourages players to hoard cards until they can build on their own and to offer as many cards as possible at every auction to get easy victory points. I'm not sure what the best way to fight these strategies! I suppose a that all things being equal, the player who acts quickly and makes smart collaborations to build could build a lead that way. It also seems that one ways to defeat a player who constantly offers a large number of cards for every bid might be to actually accept them... he is then stripped of using them again and winds up with very little scoring power until he rebuilds his hand. Anyway, not sure. I can't quite wrap my head around it.
In the first game, Shemp led for most of the game on the strength of his building strategy (and had enough sets of tiles to seal the win). For whatever reason, most of us spent much of the game with huge hands of cards... I think we were being too stingy to accept large offers of cards, wanting the majorities ourselves.
In the second, I tried to see if it was possible to compete without going for the matching tiles, and instead trying to score as many points as possible on the board. Aided in no small part by a "take a 2nd turn" card I completed a few monuments and placed in many others. I had NO points from the chips when the game ended (I only had 2), but the others weren't able to catch up so I won.
A final note: The graphic designers for this game need to be disciplined on two counts. 1) Bland Bland Bland! (I've said this before) 2) The illustrations for the bonus cards make no sense. I'm all for language independent cards, but at least make an effort for the symbols to match the effect. The "take a 2nd turn" card is unforgiveably missrepresented! (this is a fault of another recent knizia game with semi-random and language independent bonus cards... Amun Re)
I loved being able to get in so many games into one evening, I think these will come out a lot.
Through the Desert: 7.5 (really an 8, but knocked back for the colour issues)
China: 8
Tower of Babel: 8 (revised from 7)
We focused on 3 middle weight games: Through the Desert, China and Tower of Babel.
I call a game "middle weight" when the rules are relatively simple, playtime is relatively short but there is still a depth of strategy to the game.
For context:
Light = For Sale! (very light), Caracassonne, Ticket to Ride (this is borderline)
Middle Weight = Settlers of Catan, Modern Art, Ra
Heavy = Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Puerto Rico
It's arbitrary, but it works for me.
Anyway, Through the Desert was first up. It was new to everyone, and I was really looking forward to it. First reaction (I bet you can't guess!)... Pastel camels... hmmm. Why did they have to be pastel? The colours blend in anything but bright light, and for Shemp (or resident colour blind player) a few were nearly impossible to tell apart. Not sure if they were trying to maintain a "bleached" look to keep in theme with the whole desert thing, but I wish they were easier to tell apart. The rest of the components are decent but unspectacular (plastic palm trees, thick chips for water holes and score markers)
The game is quite simple. Everyone has 5 starting camels on the board, one of each colour. on a turn, two camels are placed to extend on of their existing "caravans" (or lines of camels). Points are scored for crossing water holes, connecting to oasis or enclosing areas. End game points are scored for longest caravans of each colour. Other than a few placement restrictions (such as not being allowed to place a camel of a certain colour adjacent to another player's camels of the same colour), that's it. Game ends once all camels of one colour are placed.
In our first learning game, we stumbled along semi-randomly trying to figure out what to do. AS with many Knizia games (and german games in general), there is always far more things you WANT to do than you CAN do. Should I snatch the 3 point waterholes sitting right in front of my pink camel, or connect to the oasis before I get blocked? I went for water holes and oasis at first, but I did secure a medium sized piece of the desert. Kozure was unfortunately cheated as I forgot to mention that enclosed areas could not have any other camels in it. Luch ran away with the victory by successfully doing just about everything... getting long caravans, connecting to point sources and securing areas! Our second game was more thoughfully played. I managed to grab a corner of the board from under Kozure's nose. Luch's enormous green caravan didn't help him too much, and Shemp was still confounded by the colours. Despite not connecting to very many oasis, my long caravans and waterhole chits managed to give me a narrow 2nd place. Kozure won the game by 3 points (a very sneaky land grab near the end won him the game!).
China came next. I had played this at BSW as Web of Power, and liked it for being a nice straightforward strategy game. It's been called El Grande light, and I can understand the comparison, though it's pretty thin (it's area control...on a map...that's about it). Gameplay is pretty simple: Play 1 or 2 cards into a province of China. Place that number of houses or advisors. When the province is full, score it. At the end of the game, check if any player has a majority (or a tie for majority) in neighboring provinces for bonus points. Connected series of 4 or more houses are worth points too. (Game ends once the deck has been run through twice). The trickiest thing about the rules is the odd scoring for majority of houses... 1st place player gets points equal to the number of houses in the province. 2nd place gets points equal to the number of houses the 1st player has. etc, etc. This has a great impact on the strategy (in a province with 8 spaces, if 6 are controlled by red, and 1 by blue, red would get 7 points and blue would get 6. While there is little/no benefit for either player to fill the last space, a third player could swoop in and tie for 2nd with one house and swiftly pick up 6 points as well). Since the game moves so quickly, and opportunities disappear faster than you can react to them all, it's important not to overbuild unless you need to do so to block.
For an area control game, it goes incredibly fast. There are important decisions to be made, but not too much information to take in, so decisions can be made quickly. In the first game, I confined myself to the southern provinces and concentrated on establishing a network of advisors, and won. However, we discovered that Shemp and Kozure were playing under the impression that ties didn't count as a majority, so that hindered them. In the second, I tried to go for 2nd or 3rd place in as many provinces as possible but didn't succeed very well. Luch successfully grabbed a few house and advisor majorities, giving him the win. It's clear that advisors, used properly, are very powerful. I wonder whether the advanced game, wich introduces a monument which doubles the points from one province, is an attempt to balance that. Either way, I suspect that future games will see us being more aggressive in preventing advisor majorities.
I liked this version of the game, but a few comparisons to Web of Power are in order.
While the 3-4 player board is a bit more constricted, the 4-5 player board (which we used) is WIDE open. In contrast, Web of Power has a very "slanted" distribution of connections, alliances (and, I think, card distribution). I think this means that China is easier to jump into right away, but I bet Web of Power has more inherent flavour (i.e. taking control of France necessitates playing a different game plan than going for Italy, for example). I'm not good enough at WofP to know that for sure, but it's my impression. 2nd, scoring provinces once they are complete seems to weaken the building strategy somewhat (in WofP, the provinces are scored both times the deck is exhausted... meaning they are scored twice versus the "Advisor" and "Road" scorings which only happen once). Again, I can't be sure but I think I the older version might have been more balanced. In the end, though, these are minor criticisms. The game was very well received and does what it is trying to do very well!
Last was 2 additional plays of Tower of Babel. Our first game left me feeling a bit puzzled and dissapointed. While I can't say that I have warmed to the appearance of the game, the gamePLAY has gotten much better. I still find it difficult to process all the ramifications of my bids: bidding high places me on the board if I get accepted, and gives me victory points if I don't, but it allows the "building" player an easy chip, a bonus card and he can keep many of his cards. Bidding low increases my chances of getting on the board for 2nd or 3rd place points, but the building player will get the majority and the bulk of the benefit. Even more difficult is the "trader"... sometimes it's best used to "sour" an offer you don't want the other player to accept, other times it's a shrewd way to trade away a majority for a chip you might need for a set. I don't think I'm doing any worse than any other players, but I often only realise the impact of my offer AFTER it's been revealed and the opponent has chosen. Similarly, making an educated decision on which "wonders" to build, and when, is eluding me somewhat.
In my mind, I keep making comparisons to Domaine: The game WANTS to be broken, I think. Just as Domaine leads to a win by "large land grab" unless players actively play to stop it, Tower of Babel encourages players to hoard cards until they can build on their own and to offer as many cards as possible at every auction to get easy victory points. I'm not sure what the best way to fight these strategies! I suppose a that all things being equal, the player who acts quickly and makes smart collaborations to build could build a lead that way. It also seems that one ways to defeat a player who constantly offers a large number of cards for every bid might be to actually accept them... he is then stripped of using them again and winds up with very little scoring power until he rebuilds his hand. Anyway, not sure. I can't quite wrap my head around it.
In the first game, Shemp led for most of the game on the strength of his building strategy (and had enough sets of tiles to seal the win). For whatever reason, most of us spent much of the game with huge hands of cards... I think we were being too stingy to accept large offers of cards, wanting the majorities ourselves.
In the second, I tried to see if it was possible to compete without going for the matching tiles, and instead trying to score as many points as possible on the board. Aided in no small part by a "take a 2nd turn" card I completed a few monuments and placed in many others. I had NO points from the chips when the game ended (I only had 2), but the others weren't able to catch up so I won.
A final note: The graphic designers for this game need to be disciplined on two counts. 1) Bland Bland Bland! (I've said this before) 2) The illustrations for the bonus cards make no sense. I'm all for language independent cards, but at least make an effort for the symbols to match the effect. The "take a 2nd turn" card is unforgiveably missrepresented! (this is a fault of another recent knizia game with semi-random and language independent bonus cards... Amun Re)
I loved being able to get in so many games into one evening, I think these will come out a lot.
Through the Desert: 7.5 (really an 8, but knocked back for the colour issues)
China: 8
Tower of Babel: 8 (revised from 7)
Labels:
China,
Session,
Through the Desert,
Tower of Babel
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