Conan the ...Eurogamer (?)

"Between the time when the first game of Chess was played, and the rise of the sons of Caylus, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Essen upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"

Ouch suggested we throw off the burden of heavy thinking and play using only our Conan-brain - quick and intuitive play without deep strategy. Amid much thick Austrian accents and exhortations to "get out of the tunnel, it's not safe," we completed a full game of Power Grid in just over one hour last night. Conan-thinking!

Interestingly, despite the low-brow intent we played a relatively close game of Ticket to Ride - Shemp and Ouch tied at 101 (I trickled in at 80 with a poor mid-late-game ticket draw unfulfilled, Hilaria - something less... she elected not to count, I believe) - it came down to destination tickets filled - of which Shemp had more.

Power Grid was a lop-sided win for Shemp. I did my initial placement poorly (grabbing easy early connections rather than going for long-term strategy) and then Ouch was persuaded to blockade me rather than go for a more long-term strategy himself. Consequently, Shemp had the western half (we played with the top three regions of Germany) all to himself for most of the game. He earned it, but we helped by playing poorly.

"He did not care any more... life and death... the same. Only that the crowd would be there to greet him with howls of lust and fury. He began to realize his sense of worth... he mattered. In time, his victories could not easily be counted... he was taken to the east, a great prize, where the war gamers would teach him the deepest secrets. Language and writing were also made available, the designs of Knizia, the philosophy of Ulrich and Kramer.. But, always, there remained the discipline of dice."

Oh, I finally won a game of Trans Europa! Wooooooo! Apparently all I have to do to do well at games is to say "This is the time I will not suck at playing X." Power of positive thinking! (gag)

We played Carcasonne stupid-fast. It was... interesting. Any faster and it would have been pointless-fast. The layout was a mess.

Ticket to Ride (~0:50) [Shemp 101, Ouch 101, Kozure 80, Hilaria >80), Power Grid (~1:10) [Shemp 17, Ouch, 14, Kozure 11 - not even close] , Trans Europa (0:35) [Kozure 1, Shemp & Ouch - 14+] and Carcassonne (0:20) [Ouch (by a wide margin), Kozure, Shemp (scores not fully calculated after Ouch was shown to be easily the winner)], all after a 7:45 PM start time. Not bad, eh?

"So, did Conan travel to all his destinations in America, power the grid of Germania, connect the cities of Europa and lay waste to the fields of Carcasonne. And having no further concern, he and his companions sought adventure in the West. Many wargames and euros did Conan play. Honor and fear were heaped upon his name and, in time, he became a king by his own hand... And this story shall also be told."

Rambling on the Rails to Pirate's Cove.

This entry will be a bit more free form than most. Rambling, so as to entertain Easy, who was absent. (Punk.)

(It's a busy time of year, that's my excuse, and I am sticking to it.)

How'd it go Wednesday? Anything interesting?

The standard sort of interesting. Game-playing, Kickass Chilli (thanks to Ogami).


We played two games of Ticket to Ride. Ogami won the first with four players
(Tilli played) and Kozure won the second with three players.

Then we played Pirate's Cove. Shemp won the first game. I think we played a second game of Pirate's cove, but I can't remember for certain, or who won.

Actually, I am certain we played a second game. The first game of Pirate's Cove we played, Shemp and Kozure actually tied for points, which by the rules is resolved by a final player-vs-player battle. Shemp won, but it was a big fight. It was a three player game, so we had two legendary pirates on the go. Kozure and Shemp both teamed up to defeat Blackbeard, and then fought. And then there was a tie, and another Kozure-Shemp throwdown. Epic.

The second game of Pirates Cove, Tilli played. The winner of the second Pirate's Cove game was either Kozure or Ogami, but Kozure still can't remember who won, but knows it wasn't him. I know it wasn't Shemp or Tilli. Must have been Ogami, then. I think that matches up with my recollection. There was a battle with the Flying Dutchman, who was also hanging around on the first game. Of Pirate's Cove, not Ticket To Ride. The Flying Dutchman in Ticket to Ride would just be wierd. Since I am dictator, I decree that Ogami won the last game last week.

If we can't even keep track of winning, so much for being able to keep track of winning, showing, and placing. Maybe we can start that with the New Year. We could resolve to...

HMMM - this is a little light on analysis. That's the problem with waiting nearly a week to Blogue.

Ticket to Ride (actually, both games) have relatively simple mechanics which lend themselves to a finite set of tactics that can be mastered. Strategy is almost beside the point in TTR, I think, due to the randomness of the tickets that you can recieve. Both are fun enough to play with anyone at any point, but neither seems particularily DEEP. Maybe that's why I am having some difficulty writing about them.


Look. Hey, look. Here's the thing. Both games are prime for what Kozure calls "Meta Gaming". Playing the players. Trying to guess what others will do. Trying to conceal your intentions. The players are all trying to pull off a con (a confidence game), with brightly coloured, well designed pieces. It's a more elaborate poker.

Fun. Interesting. You can do some math on the game. Resistant to commentary.


Apologies to Kozure for the liberal cut and paste theft from his email.

I am such a punk.

Tilibumbleroo+Wags= Shemp wins

Last night, we played the Spiele Des Jahres game of the year winner, "Ticket to Ride" and a very odd time travel themed game called Chrononauts.
Ticket to Ride was a fun game. Simple enough but with good strategy. Basically boils down to collecting trains of similar colours to claim train routes between major cities for points. We had a good time picking at it's various production flaws (the Star of David", and unfortunate colour coding among others), but all in all it was quite an attractive and entertaining game. It seems that Days of Wonder specializes in medium weight strategy/ high production values games. Shemp and Tilitumbleroo battled for the longest train ride, while Kozure and Easy spun their wheels. In the end, Shemp pulled a win.

This led us to an interesting observation: Just about every time that Tilibumleroo plays a game with us, Shemp wins.

She didn't join us for the second game of TtR, and three players proved to be quite different experience. Without the luxury of multiple routes between cities, it became a game of "Grab your route while you can" (at least for me). Lucky for me, most of my plans worked out (except I ran out of trains and missed a big ticket...Bah!) and I won.

Next up was Chrononauts. this is a very strange game involving time travel, the effect of altering timelines and the chaos of having several people try to do it at once. This game managed to be incredibly complex and simple at the same time. I found myself a little frustrated by having to always corelate the year in which I had to alter time with the year I wanted the ripple effect to take place in (couldn't they have put that on the cards?) and a little discouraged by the amount of chaos in the game... but by the second game I started to see the balance in the game come through. A fun diversion game, but i wasn't the only one who commented on how messed up it must have been to try to design this game!

By the way, Tilibumbleroo joined us for both hands of Chrononauts and Shemp won both times. hmmmmmm.....

Ticket to Ride: 7
Chrononauts: 5