Release the Kraken! (Cyclades x2)

Birthday money and a Paypal miss-hap has led me to owning a few new games. Most prominent among them is Cyclades.

Cyclades

A bit of trivia: Cyclades is correctly pronounced "KEYK-laTHayz" (Κυκλάδες) and not "Sigh-klayds". Who knew?

(Kozure, did. Apparently)

Cyclades is yet another game about civilizations rising and falling in the Mediterranean, though with Gods and mythological creatures in the mix. So, is it just another Mare Nostrum (w/ mythology expansion)?

No. It really isn't.

If I had to describe it in a nutshell, I'd say it's a kind of euro/ Risk lovechild with mythological creatures and fantastic production quality.

The board shows a map of a generic expanse of water filled with little islands. There are predetermined setups for 2-5 players (and a clever board which offers different combinations of islands for each player count). Each player starts with 2 armies and 2 fleets. The goal is to be the first to acquire two metropolis, either through building your own or conquering someone else's.

Five gods are overseeing the action. Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Athena and Apollon:

Each game turn has two main phases, an auction to determine which god's favour you have won this turn (i.e. which ability you can use) followed by an action phase where the actual turn is played out.

1) The player who wins Zeus gets a priest which gives a discount on future bidding and can purchase a temple.
2) The player who wins Athena gets a philosopher which gives a player a metropolis if a set of four can be turned in and can purchase a university.
3) Ares allows a player to purchase and move armies and purchase a fortress.
4) Poseidon allows a player to purchase and move fleets and purchase a port.
5) Apollon gives a player gold and a cornucopia that increases future income.

The auction is Amun-Re/ Vegas Showdown style, and the outcome determines turn order in addition to the specific actions available to the player. Three mythological creatures are available for purchase each turn (from a deck of 20 or so), each giving the purchaser a game-bending one use power.

Over the course of the game, players build up their armies, build buildings, acquire priests and philosophers. Invasions happen. Krakens are released.

So, is it RISK? It's certainly more complex than RISK, but it's still fundamentally a relatively simple game about building up armies and beating each other up. It's like RISK, but moving armies and attacking is only possible if you win the auction for the favour of Aries. It's RISK, but a mythological creature can swoop in a turn someone else's plan on it's head. It's RISK, but there are multiple paths to victory, not just conquest. It's RISK, but it plays in about 2 hours.

In truth, these changes makes Cyclades very little like RISK, but then again... it somehow scratches a similar itch. I'd say it's quite a successful hybrid of euro and american design. You have to adjust to the tempo of bidding on the gods you need at the right time, figure out how to best take advantage of the creatures available, set up opportunities to threaten and/or defeat your neighboring islands, etc. It works well, and I liked it a lot. Playing with three players there is an adjustment to the normal god auctions that alternates which ones are available on a given round. Knowing that a particular auction won't come back for a turn or two gives me the feeling similar to the order selection in Mr. Jack.

We played two sessions. In the first, we were just getting a sense of how things worked together and really didn't capitalize on the creatures much. While others were floating large fleets and amassing great armies, I was quietly building buildings. I used the power of the cyclops to convert one of my buildings to the last one I needed to build my second metropolis and won the game.

The second was much more hard fought. Shemp made a move about 30 minutes in and stole a metropolis from Kozure. He was bringing in +/- 10 gold a round and seemed unstoppable. Just as he was about to build his last building, Kozure stole half his money using the Griffon and unleashed the Kraken on his massive fleet and reduced it to kindling. Kozure also managed to steal a large, profitable island from him. Shemp was not close to winning anymore.

Lucky for me, I was. I needed either one last philosopher or a university. Trouble was, both of those need Athena and between Kozure and Shemp there was always someone with enough money to outbid me. Earlier in the game, Kozure had been forced to abandon an island with a few buildings. If I could get there, I would have the university I needed and therefore win the game. They set Medusa on me (troops are frozen on the island, and cannot leave), but I knew I would get my second metropolis shortly (then again, Shemp's earlier near annihilation reminded me that nothing is assured) . On the turn I made it, Shemp had managed a second metropolis we were therefore tied. I had more gold, and won the tiebreaker.

Shemp could have won if he had noticed that Polyphemus could have been purchased to make my fleets scatter and prevent access to the island I stole to win the game. I record this purely for posterity. Honest.

Oh, and "Don't s*** f*** my bowl noodle".

Update 2010 05 25

A few additional thoughts:

1) One of the critical game design improvements this has over Mare Nostrum is a built in timer to force the end-game. Each round, someone gets a philosopher. 4 philosophers = 1 metropolis. Mare Nostrum has other advantages, not the least of which is greater depth of play, but it requires more players, it's longer and less aproachable.
2) One of the major advantages Cyclades has over most games of this type is that it apparently plays well across it's entire range of players. Most seem to require the maximum to work well (Mare Nostrum, A Game of Thrones, etc), and finding that many players is not always easy.
3) I worry the game length will go up to high with more players, though. I can't think of anything that would counterbalance the added time required for a 4 player game compared to a 3 player game, for example. Given that our 3 player games this week took 2 hours each, this could be an issue.

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.

They played Le Havre (Le Havre)

Kozure, Shemp and Bharmer played "Le Havre" this week. I wasn't there, but I recently received an email from Kozure which ended with:

"PS - Le Havre was much better with three players."

So, that sounds good.

(sorry, this entry exists solely to give me accurate records for games played this year)

Play to yer strengths (Macao, Cutthroat Caverns, Roll Through the Ages)

We were three this week. I was looking forward to introducing Macao to Kozure, and decided I'd like to take Cutthroat Caverns for a spin.

Macao

This was our second play at WAGS, though I've also played a third game solo. I am very much enjoying this game, though as Shemp pointed out it really doesn't play to my strengths.

I've compared Macao to Taj Mahal, and I still believe that it's an accurate comparison in many ways, but it's in the differences that I get caught. In Taj Mahal, you are trying to manage the chaos introduced by the cards while balancing the short and long term goals of the game. Macao does much the same thing, but it is both denser (due to more simultaneous options) and more tactical (due to the impossibility of carrying cubes from one round to the next). I don't tend to do well in tactical games. I also tend to fare poorly in games where things need to be converted into other things (which is why a game like Le Havre is tough for me). Macao is very much about quickly ascertaining which of the cards that come up will create the best synergy with your plans. Since you get many cards, and there are various board elements as well, the player who can string together combos will be most successful. I'm not good at this. Not here, not in Dominion, not in Race for the Galaxy. Oh well, I still enjoy the challenge of this type of game and I am very much loving this one right now.

For a while this session I thought I had figured the game out. I was staying on top of my cards, making sure that I was activating cards fast enough to avoid getting penalties at the end. I had a card that allowed me to trade two cubes of one colour for any one other cube... which made activating 4 colour cube cards much easier. I managed to ship all three silk goods with a card that doubled the points. I was making some big purchases for VPs. I was way in the lead.

... but then Shemp started catching up. Then he was on my heels. Then he had baronesses so he leapt out in front. He won in distant first. Kozure did very well for his first game. He came in last, but not far behind me (and he would have done better if he hadn't been stuck with a number of cards on his tableau).

Cutthroat caverns

I picked up this game recently in a math trade, somewhat by accident. I thought this was along the lines of Heroquest... a kind of childish dungeon romp. Turns out, it's not that.

Cutthroat Caverns is more of a take that game than anything. There are nine monsters to defeat, and players must play cards to destroy them in order. The trick is that only the player that actually lands the killing blow gets the VPs. In other words, players are all "working together" to defeat the creature, but simultaneously trying to work it out so that they kill the baddie and get the points. Towards this end, the players get a hand of cards. Many are simple numerical values used to do damage to the creature. Others are effects that do tricky things like make other players miss, lose turns or other effects. To add further variety, there is a large deck of creatures, each with their own special powers, and only nine show up in a given game.

I don't know. As a take that game, I liked it well enough. It goes too long for what it is, but I could definitely see enjoying it if it was cut in half, which would be easy enough. It was funny trying to mess up the others, and we did laugh a fair bit. Shemp didn't seem too enthused, but I think Kozure liked it OK. I might try it again, or I might just save it for another group. We'll see.

For the record, I was winning this one too. Then Kozure stole one of my big kills and won the game. See a trend?

Roll Through the Ages

We had a few minutes left, so we played a game of Roll Through the Ages to finish. I rushed to a quick 5 techs and the others didn't see the end coming. This victory was not stolen from me.

Hah!

Well, I won the dice game... (Mexica, Dominion: Intrigue x2)

Shemp took a page from Luch's playbook and has decided to select the same thing for a few picks in a row. Whereas Luch was picking Die Macher, Shemp chose Mexica and Tikal for the second time.

However, just like last time, we only actually played one of the two (Mexica, in this case).

Mexica

At the end of our last session of this, Shemp remarked that there would be nothing preventing a player from placing buildings all around the board right from the starting space (before any canals were up). He decided to try this out, despite the obvious danger of getting the buildings he put out there surrounded and rendered useless. It worked fairly well. By placing buildings in every corner he ensured that he had a presence in all the regions we were creating around the board. We nicknamed the technique "carpet bombing the board". I suppose we could have spent points to put canals around them and cut him off, but there is so much you want to do in the game that it seemed too inefficient.

The board developed is a fairly screwy way. It was a mess of canals, and the land was nearly choked out well before the end of the game. I kept playing defensively, placing buildings in front of the bridges I built, etc. It meant that I ended up having to spend most turns teleporting... a rather inefficient way of playing.

Shemp built a commanding lead, and won the game in a distant first place. Kozure was in second place while me and Bharmer brought up the rear (of course, he had never played before... I had no such excuse).

Dominion/ Dominion: Intrigue

The Mexica game lasted a couple of hours, so we didn't really have time for Tikal. Shemp requested our latest go-to game for this situation... Dominion.

In our first session, we had the Saboteur, the Torturer, the Swindler and other similar types. There were no extra buys, and few extra actions. It was looking like it would be a long, drawn out affair. I latched onto buying lots of swindlers, and managed to play one just about every round in the game. This put a lot of curses into people's hands, it was burning through the stacks of cards on the table, but wasn't really getting me anywhere. I ended the game by exhausting 3 piles of cards, something that rarely happens in our group. Unfortunately, I was hoping to do it before people started buying provinces but it didn't work. When the game ended, we all scored pretty low but I was dead last with only 10 points. Bharmer won.

As an aside, we were arbitrarily rolling an 8 sided die and two 6 sided dice to determine turn order (geek enough for ya?). Going into this session, I rolled 20. This would be the pinnacle of my achievements this evening.

In the second session, things were more upbeat. There was festival, laboratory and others that provided plenty of additional actions and buys. I had an idea to combine the bridge and the workshop, allowing me to take duchies each time I made the combo. It worked pretty well, but it wasn't enough. I came in second with 32 points, while Bharmer (again) won... this time only ahead of me by 3.

So, I ended the evening winless. My biggest success was the dice game for turn order. Sigh.

Remember Alea? (Macao, 1960: The Making of the President)

Circumstances conspired to give me and Shemp another 2 player game night. I thought it would be a good opportunity to play Macao and 1960: The Making of the President.

Macao

Many eurogamers say they really like Alea games. I am one of them. Scan my top games list, and you will see quite a few of them (Ra, Taj Mahal, Princes of Florence, In the Year of the Dragon, Puerto Rico, Traders of Genoa, etc). Still, with the exception of Ra they rarely get played anymore. I can't be sure why, but I feel like the plethora of game releases has led me to search out games whose theme excite me as much as the underlying game mechanics. Alea games, though they typically provide excellent gameplay, often have very thin themes and for a couple of years this type of game wasn't really appealing to me (of course, Alea went on a pretty weak streak for a while there, which didn't help their cause). Last year they released Stephen Feld's In the Year of the Dragon, which I really liked and we've played a fair bit. Now Alea has collaborated with Stephen Feld again for Macao and I wanted to give it a try despite the particularly humdrum theme of the game.

Macao is yet another euro game about gathering resources, delivering goods and building buildings in a random distant location (in this case, a portuguese colony in China). It also jumps on a number of recent eurogame bandwagons by including dice and many, many cards with text that give various special abilities. Excited yet?

However, as I've often said it's how things come together than matters. Macao is a fantastic example of this. In playing Macao, I felt like this was a very unique and engaging game, despite how bland most of the component parts are. Oh, and challenging. Definitely challenging. Feld appears to like to add a dose of punishment to his games, if In the Year of the Dragon and Macao are any indication, and this appears to raise the stakes a little bit when playing his games.

At it's heart, Macao is a game where players must struggle to plan amidst randomness. It's hard to describe, but you have to think strategically as you act tactically.

Each round, a player rolls 6 differently coloured dice. Each player chooses two of the results and receives cubes in number and colour according to the chosen dice. The big trick is that the larger the number on the die, the longer it will take before you can actually USE the cubes. For example: if you choose the red dice showing a 4, you will get 4 red cubes in 4 turns. These cubes will be used to purchase cards and buildings later on, but cubes don't carry over from turn to turn so in order to buy something that requires a particular combination of cubes you need to plan ahead and make sure you coordinate the dice you choose so that you will receive the combination you want together on a given turn. This isn't as hard as it sounds but it does require forward planning... over several turns you know that at least one cube of every colour will be produced and it's up to you to select them if you need them. Most times, the choice is between few resources now or many resources later. Where things get, err, dicey, is when you decide you need to build or purchase something fast and really need certain combinations to come up.

What are the cubes used for? You can build buildings in the city to gain goods, you can sail your ship to deliver said goods, you can pay for cards which will give you special powers and you can jockey for turn order. Deciding which resources to go for, which cards and buildings to purchase in the coming turns, etc, is already enough to require some serious think. Planning for these costs while faced with the pressures of other players competing for the same resources and in the face of the randomness of the dice makes it feel even more challenging. Don't play this game while drinking... it can melt your brain a little bit.

While the randomness makes the forward planning difficult, it also makes it a little less of a brain burner than it might have been if everything was open and perfect forward planning was possible. You don't know how many cubes of various colours are coming, and you don't know what card powers will be available. You have to go with the flow to a certain extent. That being said, you also need to plan ahead quite a lot. If you don't put effort to filling your future turns with cube combinations that work to purchase the cards and buildings you need, it will NOT happen on it's own and you will spend the whole game accomplishing nothing.

The card powers available in the game are very interesting, and really impact the flavour of the game. Spying the cards that come up that will enhance your engine is key to winning the game (and manipulating turn order so that you are free to pick those cards before other players is therefore also very important). On the other hand, you will be frustrated if you attempt to do the reverse and play the game hoping to make specific card combinations from the start... there are too many factors that prevent this from working (only about half the cards come up in any given game, and many of those will get discarded and therefore be inaccessible to players).

On the surface, the only two ways of ultimately getting VPs are delivering goods and purchasing VPs (some VPs can be gained through purchasing cards and making lines of buildings, but these seem to be small amounts). That said, developing your engine through the various cards that come up will require players to play differently each time. I've only played once, but it seems like there would be huge variety in the way the game would play out between games.

I can't help but compare the game to Agricola in that aspect, but I would say that I found that the card effects in this game were more interesting and had a more pronounced impact on the game. Also, since the cards come out over the course of the game, they aren't as initially overwhelming either. On the whole, however, the feel of the game reminds me mostly of Taj Mahal. That too is a game that has been accused by some as being too random or tactical because of the card draws, but in actuality the player who can plan ahead and use the tools available to mitigate the randomness will win almost every time.

The game is probably best played with 2 or 3, because AP could certainly cause it to go too long with 4 players. With 2 players, I certainly liked it a lot.

We stumbled through the first half not really succeeding to do very much. I selected cards which allowed me to build twice in the city every turn and then earn gold based on the number of cities I had there. It seemed like a good combo I could profit from, but then I got distracted by other things and didn't make it happen early enough. Meanwhile, I managed to acquire all the rice and tea so in a final turn mad dash I spent nearly 10 cubes just crossing the board to make 20 points in deliveries. Shemp, for his part, was purchasing cards which allowed him free cubes and cube conversions. He managed to purchase many more cards than I could because of this advantage, and ended up winning by about 5 points.

1960: The Making of the President

This is a great example of those thematic games that have caught my attention over the years, but since it's only two players I've never had the opportunity to play until now. It's a game about the Kennedy vs Nixon election which uses a "card driven wargame" system similar to many popular wargames (We the People, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage, Twilight Struggle, etc).

Because it's a game about elections, it's unsurprising that they chose an area control system to represent the success of the two candidates. Cubes in each player's colour are placed in a state to represent who is leading or carrying that state. In addition to this, cubes can be placed to show who has the "media support" in each region, and cubes can be placed on the three issues to indicate who leads in each of them.

Each player has a hand of cards which are used either as action points (to move the candidate around the country placing cubes to show support, to add influence on issues, etc) or as events (historical events which have a game effect, such as displacing cubes or adding new ones). There is a special turn where normal play is suspended and a new subsystem is introduced to represent the "debates" and at the end the votes are tallied and the winner is elected.

Although I liked it well enough, I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed in the game. There are a few reasons for this:

1) The "area majority" mechanic felt somewhat arbitrary because the board changed so drastically between turns that it sometimes felt futile, or simply an exercise in outlasting the opponent.

2) The events on the cards were almost always more powerful than the number of action points on the card, so there was actually not much of a choice to be made when selecting them. If the event was for your side, you picked it. If it's for the other side, you used the action points. In Hannibal and Wilderness War, other card driven wargames I've played, the choices seemed more difficult... in a good way.

3) For all the uncertainty involved in gaining media support, it didn't seem to matter much.

4) The "rest" mechanic was odd. There would seem to be a tradeoff between playing high AP cards and getting little rest or vice-versa. The thing is, you have to play every card in your hand except one, so ultimately there is no tradeoff... you just get what you were dealt. Also, I kept forgetting to grab the rest cubes, which was annoying.

5) Having to read each event card to the other player in case they wanted to activate the event was a little annoying.

6) The translation of the historical events to actions in the game didn't work for me very well, which lessened the theme for me.

Anyway, it was okay but not a home run. I certainly wouldn't mind playing again. Of course, my opinion may be influenced by the fact that I won...

(truth be told, Shemp was crushing me leading into the debates. At the debates, we both realized that we had kept poor cards for the job, but he fared worse than I did. In the final two turns I managed to grab quite a few seats and won the game).

Roll 'em, pardner (Dice Town x2, Dominion x2)

It was Kozure's pick, and he was in the mood for fast, low fuss games.

Dice Town

A few weeks ago I participated in a math trade where I was looking to shift Dungeon Lords. It's a hot game right now, so I probably could have been greedy and held out for something valuable but I saw someone offering Dice Town. It sounded like a lot of fun so I went for it (I'm discovering that it's rather hard to find, so even better).

At home it's been an instant hit. My son LOVES this game. My sister, who doesn't particularly like games, likes this one. I like it, too.

Dice Town is a dice rolling game set in the old west. Players roll 5 custom dice with pictures of playing cards (9s to aces), hoping to set up combinations that will net them some goods. Everyone rolls there dice simultaneously and picks on to keep. Then they reveal what they kept, and roll the remaining four dice and keep one. This goes on until all five dice have been selected. Optionally, a player may pay 1$ per die to keep more than one die on a given roll.

Most 9s = gold nuggets
Most 10s = rob the bank
Most jacks = draw cards at the general store
Most queens = Steal cards from another player
Most kings = become the sheriff (sheriff breaks ties)
Best poker hand = Get land claims

If you got nothing on a turn, you visit "doc badluck" and receive a consolation prize (note that some of these are good enough to make intentionally visiting doc badluck a valid strategy on some occasions)

Nuggets, money, land claims and some general store cards are worth VPs. Most VPs win the game.

This game is easy to explain, plays relatively quickly, and is a lot of fun. There is a small amount of strategy, as it's important to pick your battles and spy what opportunities exist for getting lots of stuff with little effort. For example, if everyone is going for best poker hand, then a single 9, 10 and jack can land you gold, the money in the bank and a card from the general store. Similarly, if someone appears to be going for 9s (to get gold nuggets) and has more than you, pursuing 9s will likely yield nothing. Having said that, Doc Badluck can be a viable option in some cases and a player might well decide that it's beneficial to follow someone in a category they cannot win to make sure they get to visit the doctor... one of the doc's "remedies" is a gold nugget from each player, for example, if you can finish the hand with at least one ace and still win nothing.

It might have been fun if more combinations/ goals were at play, such as rewarding players for getting straights or whatever. Not a big deal, though.

We played two sessions, and although I had a strong start in the first one Kozure managed to beat us all on both occasions. Everyone enjoyed it, we'll see if it becomes a staple!

Dominion

Speaking of staples, Kozure followed up Dice Town with Dominon/ Dominon:Intrigue. This was the first time I had played with both expansions mixed together, and the first time I had played with the expansion since I realized I liked the base game (I played the expansion first, and was lukewarm to it). Having played the basic system a few times now, the expansion did not seem as intimidating as it did previously. I would say that on the balance I still prefer the simplicity of the basic cards, though I could see that with repeated play the different possibilities offered by Intrigue would be appealing.

In the first game I tried to build an engine where I would have several high gold cards in my deck and then use the "adventurers" card to constantly get more of that gold into my hand. I managed to purchase a number of Provinces this way, but couldn't prevent a loss. In the second, I floundered badly as I tried to make coppersmith work for me but it didn't. I lost badly.

Did Kozure win both Dominion games, too? Good night for him...

Hey guys, I like it! (Tikal x2)

Shemp picked Tikal and Mexica this week, though as he picked them he mentioned that we would surely trash him at Tikal since we had so much more experience than he did with the game. As we gathered around the table, he suggested we start with Tikal... he seemed curious to find out if he really liked the game or not.

He did. And then we played that again instead of Mexica.

The first game was characterized by very expensive pathways. There was a temple site that had two 6 step branches off of it. This also meant that many paths were completely inaccessible (i.e. no stepping stones). All in all, movement was wonky. I was lucky enough to draw the lion's share of the treasure hexes and so I built a big lead in points from those. In the end, those points won me the game (though Kozure surprised us all with a massive 50+ point scoring round at the end).

In our second game, Shemp had the lead in treasures and also strategically located his two tents on either side of a long uncross-able path. The mobility this afforded him allowed his domination of some big temples that we couldn't get to easily. He won.

I'm a little curious how often the player who draws the most treasure hexes wins the game. It's hard to say that it's definitely an advantage, because digging up treasure is costly (and making up sets even more-so). Definitely being able to score complete sets across multiple scorings is a huge advantage.

In my opinion, Tikal is best with 3 players (and is one of my favorite euros when played this way). It was nice to get it to the table again.

More thinky bloodshed (A Game of Thrones : A Clash of Kings)

Although we were only three players, I wanted to try the A Game of Thrones expansion one more time (now that I've played it with four, I was less afraid of getting a bad impression if it didn't work out).

I was Stark (white), Shemp was Lannister (red) and Kozure was Barratheon (black). Greyjoy is mandated as the house to remove from the game, which appeared to make sense though I was afraid that without my natural enemy it would be too easy for me (in the four player game, Stark and Greyjoy start in the north).

In practice, it wasn't too bad. I did enjoy relative peace for much of the game as I grew my forces and slowly marched south. As it happened in our last game, the Lannisters shot out ahead in VPs early in the game. Unfortunately for Shemp, he watched the Lannisters get beaten down for it, just as in our last game. It was Kozure who was pulling out ahead. He took King's landing and was pushing back the Lannisters, winning Claim with his abundance of power tokens. The three houses converged at Harandhall and Riverrun. I took Riverrun first, satisfying my house tactics card Claim condition. Kozure took Harandhall. Shemp came from the south-west and put pressure on both of them. In order to steal the victory from Kozure, Shemp and I hatched a plan to surround Harandhall, so that I could support the Lannister's siege against the city. As it often happens, particularly between me and Shemp, the partnership did not go as planned. He had just taken Riverrun from me, so in an effort to give me the opportunity to take it back I took an unconventional route to surround Kozure... I crossed the river with a single unit and "supported" with Rob Stark's army rather than moving the army itself. It was good enough to defeat Kozure's army, and good enough to take back Riverrun, but it left me with a single army at the gates of Harrenhall (ironically, the idea to take back Riverrun that turn came frm Shemp, though it was certainly my plan to go back eventually). In the final turn, Kozure's Barratheon's had 7 claim, Shemp's Lannisters had 5 and I had 6. If things went according to plan, Shemp would steal a city and we would find ourselves in a three way tie. knowing I wasn't in a position to gain any claim this turn, and knowing I had to stare down a host of betrayed Lannisters at Riverrun, I had to be defensive on my last turn and set myself up to win on the tiebeaker. Unfortunately, in placing my action tokens I didn't think to put a support token on my army adjacent to Harandhall and s when Shemp did attack, I couldn't help in any way. He lost by one. I hadn't seen it coming, but Shemp had a second target in mind, as he swept east to King's landing and took the city. Barratheon managed to get it back, but for a second there it seemed like he might have managed to stop Kozure from winning.

In the end, my programming mistake was a huge one, because I would have won on the tiebreaker (most supply). Oh well. All hail king Barratheon! All hail the master of A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords, Kozure, as his win ratio remains 100% at this game.

Of LannisPort and King's Landing (A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords)

Back when we were often four players, I used to lament the fact that we couldn't play A Game of Thrones since it took five to play optimally. I recently decided to spring for a copy of the expansion called "A Storm of Swords" because it features a new board designed specifically for four players. Of course, that's when Luch moved out of town, and we dropped to just three players...

Well, this week Bharmer made his once a month appearance and so we were four. Kozure decided to pick this game, and there was joy in the land of Westeros.

If you know A Game of Thrones, this is mostly the same game on a different board, but there are important differences:

1) There are no boats or wilding attacks.
2) Leaders are added to the game, and new rules for taking hostages and hostage negotiations go with them.
3) Each player gets a "Tactics" deck, which gives an ability for each game turn.
4) Four "Ally" deck representing factions that can be, err, allied with.
5) A claim track allows players to gain VPs in other ways than conquering territory.

A few other new items have been added which have a lesser impact on the game, such as a weather track that makes some passages inaccessible during stormy weather, and garrisons which are units that can only defend.

In my opinions, each of the additions are excellent. The loss of boats is unfortunate, but is more than compensated by the other additions.

The leaders, major characters from the books, are interesting because they have two "states". The first is their basic state, and boils down to an addition to the combat value for the group. The second is triggered when the player controlling it plays a certain kind of order (usually raid or consolidate power)... in this case the player can choose to ignore the chosen event and instead execute a march order and benefit from a slightly altered, more powerful leader. As an example, Jamie Lannister goes from a 1 strength unit to a 2 strength unit with a bonus sword icon when activated. The subtle impact here is that the triggering order might cause combat out of sequence... A raid marker that triggers a march allows combat earlier than normal and can therefore allow a player that would otherwise be later in the combat turn to make an attack before his opponent can act. If a combat involving a leader produces losses, the winning player can choose to claim a leader as a prisoner instead. Later on, power tokens can be squeezed out of the owners of your prisoners. Further, hostage negotiations can take place which adds a welcome layer of politics to a game that is meant to be political in the first place.

The tactics cards add a level of uncertainty to each game turn because depending on the choice, a player might have a bonus on siege or on defense, a player might make an alliance from the "Ally" deck, a player might squeeze power tokens from the former owners of prisoners in his holding cell, etc.

The Ally cards are interesting because they add reinforcements and other abilities to the players, and offer another path to follow to cement a lead or stage a comeback.

The Claim track adds another way to gain VPs. Certain tactics cards and westeros cards give the possibility to a player to gain a point on the Claim track, which gives players an alternative to pure military victory.

Overall, the game feels at once significantly different and much the same. The foundation of the game is unchanged, but a layer of chrome has been added which changes the flavour. The tactics card and the Allies shake up the chess-like simplicity of the basic game. Some players may strongly hate or prefer this introduction of randomness, but I like both for different reasons. Due to game length issues, I would probably pick A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords for four players and Mare Nostrum for five, but I'd happily play either.

In our game, I was the Lannisters, Shemp was the Barratheons, Kozure was the Greyjoys and Bharmer was the Starks. In the starting setup, the Lannisters start spread out and with Eddard Stark as a prisoner. The prisoner puts me immediately at odds with the Starks, and geographic adjacency + a Barratheon tactics card ensures that there will be conflict with them as well. Still, early in the game the Lannisters managed to conquer two neutral cities and satisfy their tactics card VP condition... I was within a single point of winning the game!

Then came turn 6.

In turn 6 I miss-programmed one of my armies, putting it in a situation where it became decimated. I lost King's Landing to the Barratheons, lost a 7 point army due to rout, etc, etc. I played very badly, making stupid call after stupid call, dropping back to 4-5 points in the process.

Greyjoy and the Starks were similarly exchanging blows in the north for much of the game. Jamie Lannister was planning a raid into the Greyjoy camp as The Starks came down from the north and started putting pressure in the center of the board.

Unfortunately, it was getting late and we were forced to end the game prematurely. It ended up being a three-way tie for most VPs, so we had to go to three levels of tie breaker to find the Greyjoys victorious (most supply was the determining tie-breaker).

A Game of Thrones is quite a long game to play, and requires a certain amount of effort to play properly. That's fine. I enjoy it quite a bit when it does get on the table.