Last week, we had three players for a new game and an old favourite while Easy was up North w/ the family.
First up was Castle, a card game co-designed by Bruno Faidutti of Citadels fame. Put very simply, it is a game where all players race play all cards out of their hands and draw piles onto the table. Each card has it's own rules regarding where it can be placed, and getting previously played cards returned to your hand is a common occurance.
We played three hands, and I enjoyed each more than the last - it's a good little game, where SYN type gameplay is necessary to win, and momentum seems to shift often and quite rapidly. I think that things would get really wild and woolly with more than 3 players, and I think that would be a good thing, too. Nothing fancy, but very enjoyable. For the record, I think that I won two hands of this, and Kozure one. That's not necessarily indicitave of the play, though. I felt that all of the hands were close to the end, and would play this one again in a second. I'd rank this just slightly higher than however I ranked Bang!, so, give it a 7.
Next, we had a three-player game of Princes of Florence. I always enjoy Princes, but find it to be more fun with four or five players than with three. With more players the bidding process is more competitive, and more profession cards get out into play. I'm not sure I can put my fingers on the reasons why, but the game just seems more interesting with more players, to me anyway. And this is despite the fact that it seems (based on our limited data) that 3 player games tend to be closer.
Anyhow, during this session it came into the last round a three way tie - I had gotten greedy and spent 2 bonus cards in the second last round, which meant I couldn't complete a work in the last round, which meant that I lost. Damn, I shouldn't be such a greedy duck. ????? was slightly ahead at the end of the last round, but Kozure used his Prestige cards (2 of 'em) to secure the win.
I think that I am going to downgrade PoF slightly - it's still a great game, but I haven't been quite as jazzed about it the last few times. Call it an 8.
Edit: I mistakenly thought that Faidutti designed Bang! That's just not true. Emiliano Sciarra designed Bang! Tripped up by a foreign language web site, I was - and I shall be more careful next time, you betcha.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
In The Name Of Catching Up.
Well, we've fallen behind on the blogging front, and I imagine that generalized WAGS-wide real world business is to blame. No matter, we'll just get caught up here.
TWO Wednesdays ago we tried out Mystery of the Abbey which seems to be influenced in roughly equal parts by Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose (later made into a film) and the board game Clue (also later made into a film). There was, I believe, a game of Zero afterwards, but I had to jet a little early, so I'll leave that part of the evening for someone else to fill in.
Our first round was with 5 players, and I found that it went a little bit slow, as the first time with new games often do. The game consists of passing cards and asking questions to eliminate possible suspects in a murder. There are a few forms of bonus cards, but for the most part, things are pretty straightforward. Points are scored for revealing information about the killer (hooded or not hooded, bearded or cleanshaven, order, rank, etc., etc.), or for revealing their identity. When the killer's identity is revealed, the game ends. In round one Kozure won, by deducing that Father Galbraith was the murderer. Please note: Tili played, and Shemp did not win.
Round two went much more quickly, with me, Shemp, winning by deducing that the killer was once again Father Galbraith (nefarious Franciscans~!~). Please note that this was a 4 player game, with Tili sitting out.
Thoughts:
1) Our games went very quickly, with most people knowing most of the information. I think that in future hands all players would be trying harder to keep things to themselves, either by holding cards back, or by declining to answer questions, as allowed by the rules. I think if that happened, things would be a bit more, say, Intriguing.
2) I like the extent of the different questions possible, and wonder about making things even more difficult by adding characteristics to the existing monks (something that could be done by printing new suspect sheets). I know that Wearing Pants/Pantsless was suggested during our games, and I'm sure there could be others.
3) Fun, slightly strategic game - I actually think it would work well as a party game, much as Clue does, but it does keep things more interesting. Not a knockout in my opinion, but quite solid. Methinks a 6.5, subject to upward revision.
I'm out.
PS - Eco wrote the essay "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt". I come back to it from time to time, and recommend it as worth reading. I'll let y'all fill in the blanks as to why I think that.
TWO Wednesdays ago we tried out Mystery of the Abbey which seems to be influenced in roughly equal parts by Umberto Eco's The Name of The Rose (later made into a film) and the board game Clue (also later made into a film). There was, I believe, a game of Zero afterwards, but I had to jet a little early, so I'll leave that part of the evening for someone else to fill in.
Our first round was with 5 players, and I found that it went a little bit slow, as the first time with new games often do. The game consists of passing cards and asking questions to eliminate possible suspects in a murder. There are a few forms of bonus cards, but for the most part, things are pretty straightforward. Points are scored for revealing information about the killer (hooded or not hooded, bearded or cleanshaven, order, rank, etc., etc.), or for revealing their identity. When the killer's identity is revealed, the game ends. In round one Kozure won, by deducing that Father Galbraith was the murderer. Please note: Tili played, and Shemp did not win.
Round two went much more quickly, with me, Shemp, winning by deducing that the killer was once again Father Galbraith (nefarious Franciscans~!~). Please note that this was a 4 player game, with Tili sitting out.
Thoughts:
1) Our games went very quickly, with most people knowing most of the information. I think that in future hands all players would be trying harder to keep things to themselves, either by holding cards back, or by declining to answer questions, as allowed by the rules. I think if that happened, things would be a bit more, say, Intriguing.
2) I like the extent of the different questions possible, and wonder about making things even more difficult by adding characteristics to the existing monks (something that could be done by printing new suspect sheets). I know that Wearing Pants/Pantsless was suggested during our games, and I'm sure there could be others.
3) Fun, slightly strategic game - I actually think it would work well as a party game, much as Clue does, but it does keep things more interesting. Not a knockout in my opinion, but quite solid. Methinks a 6.5, subject to upward revision.
I'm out.
PS - Eco wrote the essay "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt". I come back to it from time to time, and recommend it as worth reading. I'll let y'all fill in the blanks as to why I think that.
Friday, August 06, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
El Grande becomes...Gigante
Last night we played the El Grande Expansions for the first time (both the "King and Intrigue" and the "Grand Inquisitor and Colonies" in two separate sessions). It was an interesting experience for a couple of reasons:
1) I remembered, and relived, how LOST I was the first time I played the game.
2) El Grande already ranks as one of my favorite games (top 2), so changing it for the better would be difficult to do.
The verdict? I had a good time, but I had the sense that the expansions are really targeted to people who have played the existing game and are looking for variety.
The first expansion changed the flavour of the game by giving players the opportunity to predefine the actions they hope to get during the game, which would probably be a great change if you really knew how every card impacted the game... but we haven't played enough to know that so it ended up being pretty random. The whole thing felt, to me, very different than the basic game... even though on the surface it seemed like the less drastic of the two expansions.
Shemp won this one, but to be honest I felt so "lost" for strategy when playing it that I can't really even guess how he won, or why we lost. It was all a bit of a haze... One thing was clear, he got way more caballeros on the board way faster than we did. He pulled out to an early lead and we never caught up. With only four players, only two "actions" ever happen (since the highest bid is always the king, and the lowest is always the intriguant). This made the turns go faster, but also made them a bit monotonous for me.
If the first expansion is about re-interpreting the basic game, the second is more about adding to it. New territories, goods, tables limiting the number of caballeros in a region and, last but not least, the grand inquisitor all extend the scope of the game. Personally, I felt that this expansion seemed like "El Grande Extreme"... A more complex version of the same game. Again, a good idea if you are bored with the original, but not necessary yet for me. The grand inquisitor was an interesting addition (a phantom exra player), but the goods seemed unbalanced to the point that I am left wondering if there could be a successful strategy other than racing to get them. Lastly, The limiting table was kind of a non-issue... if it wasn't refered to by some cards, I'm sure you could take it out and not feel much of an impact either way.
In the end, it boiled down to Kozure being the "Uber-Inquisitor" vs my race for gold and goods (Shemp and ????? were to busy fighting over Grenada).
I won! Go Goods and Gold!
Between the two, I preferred the Grand Inquisitor version. It diffused some aspects of the game that I enjoy (bidding for limited actions, fighting on a crowded board, properly using the castillo, etc) but added new opportunities and strategies at the same time. I'd play both of them again, but for a little while I think that I will stick to the basic game for most sessions...
No rating, for now.
1) I remembered, and relived, how LOST I was the first time I played the game.
2) El Grande already ranks as one of my favorite games (top 2), so changing it for the better would be difficult to do.
The verdict? I had a good time, but I had the sense that the expansions are really targeted to people who have played the existing game and are looking for variety.
The first expansion changed the flavour of the game by giving players the opportunity to predefine the actions they hope to get during the game, which would probably be a great change if you really knew how every card impacted the game... but we haven't played enough to know that so it ended up being pretty random. The whole thing felt, to me, very different than the basic game... even though on the surface it seemed like the less drastic of the two expansions.
Shemp won this one, but to be honest I felt so "lost" for strategy when playing it that I can't really even guess how he won, or why we lost. It was all a bit of a haze... One thing was clear, he got way more caballeros on the board way faster than we did. He pulled out to an early lead and we never caught up. With only four players, only two "actions" ever happen (since the highest bid is always the king, and the lowest is always the intriguant). This made the turns go faster, but also made them a bit monotonous for me.
If the first expansion is about re-interpreting the basic game, the second is more about adding to it. New territories, goods, tables limiting the number of caballeros in a region and, last but not least, the grand inquisitor all extend the scope of the game. Personally, I felt that this expansion seemed like "El Grande Extreme"... A more complex version of the same game. Again, a good idea if you are bored with the original, but not necessary yet for me. The grand inquisitor was an interesting addition (a phantom exra player), but the goods seemed unbalanced to the point that I am left wondering if there could be a successful strategy other than racing to get them. Lastly, The limiting table was kind of a non-issue... if it wasn't refered to by some cards, I'm sure you could take it out and not feel much of an impact either way.
In the end, it boiled down to Kozure being the "Uber-Inquisitor" vs my race for gold and goods (Shemp and ????? were to busy fighting over Grenada).
I won! Go Goods and Gold!
Between the two, I preferred the Grand Inquisitor version. It diffused some aspects of the game that I enjoy (bidding for limited actions, fighting on a crowded board, properly using the castillo, etc) but added new opportunities and strategies at the same time. I'd play both of them again, but for a little while I think that I will stick to the basic game for most sessions...
No rating, for now.
Thursday, July 15, 2004
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
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
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Communication Received
Kozure has selected; the theme for this week is "TRAVEL". His edited message below:
Recently arrived is "Ticket to Ride". Apparently it's a quick play, even with four or five players, so I'll take one other choice. The other game we'll try is "Chrononauts", a game of time-travel, which I haven't been able to test with multiple players yet (it had one or two plays with two player and seemed interesting). If we still have some time to kill, I'd also like to try out "Castles", which has nothing to do with the theme, but needs multiple-player evaluation anyway.
In keeping with the hot weather, the need for a relatively quick and easy meal to allow for learning and playing several games, and the theme of "travel", the meal this week will be a "picnic".
Cole-slaw, potato salad, cold cuts, vegetables and buns.
See you torrow!
Recently arrived is "Ticket to Ride". Apparently it's a quick play, even with four or five players, so I'll take one other choice. The other game we'll try is "Chrononauts", a game of time-travel, which I haven't been able to test with multiple players yet (it had one or two plays with two player and seemed interesting). If we still have some time to kill, I'd also like to try out "Castles", which has nothing to do with the theme, but needs multiple-player evaluation anyway.
In keeping with the hot weather, the need for a relatively quick and easy meal to allow for learning and playing several games, and the theme of "travel", the meal this week will be a "picnic".
Cole-slaw, potato salad, cold cuts, vegetables and buns.
See you torrow!
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Speed Tigris & Euphrates doesn't work...
Last night we played our second game of Traders of Genoa and our third or fourth game of Tigris and Euphrates. In Traders of Genoa, we discovered that the person you THINK is in the lead often isn't, and that even if you think you are dead last.... you probably aren't. In the end, ????? (who's mysterious shirt pocket kept producing goods, small orders and money) took the game by a slim margin over Kozure (who thought he was last). Everyone thought I was in first because I had a great first few rounds, but the truth was I couldn't get anything going beyond that point...so I wasn't even close. Shemp discovered that his attempt at not going overboard on dealmaking backfired, and HilzaCanuck showed that ????? doesn't have a patent on "Screw yr Neighbor" type play.
Most importantly, we discovered that screwage and salt are both very funny.
I stand by my earlier assertion that this game is highly dependent on the crowd and the mood. Just in the course of last night's game, I went through phases of really liking it and finding it boring... in tune with everyone's participation in the game (sometimes, it just felt like people were really into it, with bidding and conversation flowing freely, while at other times people were distracted and didn't seem to care). I think the main flaw of the game is that many turns can go by where it seems that there isn't much to gain. It can also be difficult to get things going with assembling the proper supplies. The strategy to a successful game seems elusive, unlike Domaine which seemed to reveal itself at a fairly rapid pace. I still look forward to playing it again, though, and I think it will get better with time.
Tigris proved to be the brain-burner it's chalked up to be. I discovered that :
1) it's very difficult to play effectively when only drawing black and blue.
2) Shemp has a habit of stealing my temples and keeping them
3) Human players are much tougher than Java ones
Shemp won that one by a large margin.
Lastly, we tried a game of SPEED Tigris and Euphrates (since SPEED Carcassonne worked so well).
It was 73h 5uXX0r
Without time to think, people mostly focused on growing their own personal kingdom. Clashes did happen near the end, but they were poorly planned (In fact, I won the game because Shemp attacked me and lost on the last round, beefing up my weakest sphere).
I still really like this game. I find myself wishing I had the opportunity to play this one, in particular, more often. It's involving without needing too much of a time commitment, and the enjoyment doesn't come from novelty... so I don't think it will get old.
Easy Off
Most importantly, we discovered that screwage and salt are both very funny.
I stand by my earlier assertion that this game is highly dependent on the crowd and the mood. Just in the course of last night's game, I went through phases of really liking it and finding it boring... in tune with everyone's participation in the game (sometimes, it just felt like people were really into it, with bidding and conversation flowing freely, while at other times people were distracted and didn't seem to care). I think the main flaw of the game is that many turns can go by where it seems that there isn't much to gain. It can also be difficult to get things going with assembling the proper supplies. The strategy to a successful game seems elusive, unlike Domaine which seemed to reveal itself at a fairly rapid pace. I still look forward to playing it again, though, and I think it will get better with time.
Tigris proved to be the brain-burner it's chalked up to be. I discovered that :
1) it's very difficult to play effectively when only drawing black and blue.
2) Shemp has a habit of stealing my temples and keeping them
3) Human players are much tougher than Java ones
Shemp won that one by a large margin.
Lastly, we tried a game of SPEED Tigris and Euphrates (since SPEED Carcassonne worked so well).
It was 73h 5uXX0r
Without time to think, people mostly focused on growing their own personal kingdom. Clashes did happen near the end, but they were poorly planned (In fact, I won the game because Shemp attacked me and lost on the last round, beefing up my weakest sphere).
I still really like this game. I find myself wishing I had the opportunity to play this one, in particular, more often. It's involving without needing too much of a time commitment, and the enjoyment doesn't come from novelty... so I don't think it will get old.
Easy Off
Monday, July 05, 2004
Genoine Tigrises!
So, my gaming choices for the week are Traders of Genoa followed by Tigris and Euphrates. We should probably bring something else as filler, so I'll ask Kozure to bring star munchkin along (That's a short game, right?)
For dinner, I dictate those new Portabello burgers from President's choice.
You have been warned.
For dinner, I dictate those new Portabello burgers from President's choice.
You have been warned.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Dominating Carcasses
This week, we (yes, you heard right... WE. I actually made it this time) played a new game called Domaine. This is by the famed designer of Settlers of Catan, Klaus Teuber.
There are similarities: the guy likes random terrain, he likes soldiers which don't really fight (smacks of Canada, you might say), he likes home bases with minimum distances between them and finally, he likes resource hoarding. Still, in practice the similarities are only on the surface, and it all feels fresh and different enough that the game stands on it's own. Everyone tries to fence in little "domaines" and then expand them to include as many resources as possible (forests, towns and castles score points, mines supply money). Since everyone is competing for the same resources, soldiers are deployed to prevent being overrun (it's very simple formula: If you have more soldiers than the other player, you can grow your kingdom into the other's). The winner is the one who can score a set number of points first.
The scoring system is interesting: Your score is the total value of the resources you control, so if another player expands his kingdom and takes over a village you had previously controlled, that player gets the points AND YOU LOSE THEM.
Our first game was funny, because we were all learning and we discovered fairly early on that we all made some really dumb moves, and we were all paying for it. I would say we actually came close to "breaking" the system because we almost couldn't get anything going! In the end, it came down to a couple of really huge territories going to ?????, which won him the game.
Our second game was much better strategically, although I'm sure it will take many plays before we really get it down. In a tight contest, Shemp pulled a win with what would arguably be the oddest shaped territory we will likely ever see in the game.
To finish it off, we played two games of Carcassonne. The last game we played "Speedy Carcassone", giving very little thought to our moves and finishing it off in 15 minutes. The strangest thing: It was a lot of fun that way! I'm sure we'll be doing that again...
Oh yeah, and Shemp is 7h3 5uxx0r
Rating (Domaine):7
There are similarities: the guy likes random terrain, he likes soldiers which don't really fight (smacks of Canada, you might say), he likes home bases with minimum distances between them and finally, he likes resource hoarding. Still, in practice the similarities are only on the surface, and it all feels fresh and different enough that the game stands on it's own. Everyone tries to fence in little "domaines" and then expand them to include as many resources as possible (forests, towns and castles score points, mines supply money). Since everyone is competing for the same resources, soldiers are deployed to prevent being overrun (it's very simple formula: If you have more soldiers than the other player, you can grow your kingdom into the other's). The winner is the one who can score a set number of points first.
The scoring system is interesting: Your score is the total value of the resources you control, so if another player expands his kingdom and takes over a village you had previously controlled, that player gets the points AND YOU LOSE THEM.
Our first game was funny, because we were all learning and we discovered fairly early on that we all made some really dumb moves, and we were all paying for it. I would say we actually came close to "breaking" the system because we almost couldn't get anything going! In the end, it came down to a couple of really huge territories going to ?????, which won him the game.
Our second game was much better strategically, although I'm sure it will take many plays before we really get it down. In a tight contest, Shemp pulled a win with what would arguably be the oddest shaped territory we will likely ever see in the game.
To finish it off, we played two games of Carcassonne. The last game we played "Speedy Carcassone", giving very little thought to our moves and finishing it off in 15 minutes. The strangest thing: It was a lot of fun that way! I'm sure we'll be doing that again...
Oh yeah, and Shemp is 7h3 5uxx0r
Rating (Domaine):7
Friday, June 25, 2004
Game + Architecture Alert!
I just discovered the Antonio Gaudi Tile game while online, and thought that is looked interesting. Have any of you heard anything about it? Thoughts?
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