Helping people is wrong (Survive!, Clans, Ra, Acquire)

After a significant period where we played at Shemp's house every week to accommodate my sons' swim schedules, we switched to Thursdays and played at Kozure's place. In addition to giving us a longer block of time to play games, we had a few additional players... Tilitumbleroo and Kozure Junior, the eldest (a very bright 6 year old).

Survive!

Our first game was Survive!, a classic game from the 80's recently resurrected by Stronghold games. This is a game of lighthearted nastiness where players try to get their people off a sinking island without getting eaten by sharks and sea monsters. It's very simple to play, so it's great for a wide audience, but it does have a mean streak because on a player's turn in addition to moving their people they must select an island tile to sink and move a monster... often leading to the fatalities of other player's pawns. Kozure Junior joined us for this game and made it a foursome. A few turns in, he asked if he was supposed to help or hinder the other players... to which we answered that helping people is wrong. Clearly, games teach important life lessons!

Many fatalities later, Kozure emerged victorious beating myself and Shemp by a single point! Kozure Junior finished just 2-3 points behind, so it was all very close.

Ra

Tilitumbleroo was hoping to play Acquire after she put the kids to bed, so as this was happening we started a game of Ra. Just to see what it was like, we opted to play on the Ipad instead of the physical game. Although Kozure amassed a large inventory of monuments, it was quite as much as he needed to surpass me. I was shocked when the score came up and I had won!

I play games frequently on my Iphone and I do quite enjoy it, however this was my first time playing in person against other players in this way. Although I think it would be dreadful on the Iphone, on the Ipad it's a decent experience. The obvious advantages of doing away with setup and takedown and of automatically tracking scores are nice but the tactile feeling is gone and the experience feels muted. In particular, the animations that they introduce to spice things up become annoying after a short time, even though they surely take less time than the physical actions used to take! Anyway, if I was going on a trip, this would be a great substitute for the real thing but I'll continue playing the boxed version for now.

Clans

We played Clans to finish up the time before our game of Acquire. I was green, but I played as red for a few turns (red being my normal colour when playing games). I recovered early enough that it didn't matter. We actually paused the game so that we could start Acquire and came back to it later, but for the sake of simplicity I won't break up the description. The green and red hut people both came within spitting distance of winning but in the end green (me) was triumphant. Go green!

Acquire

Acquire is the last of Shemp's Christmas buying spree. I had been looking forward to playing it for quite some time so this was definitely the highlight of the evening. It's a game from the 60s that, I had been told, still felt fresh today. Judging from the board, a grid of numbered spaces reminiscent of a battleship board, and the hotel chain building theme, I anticipated something in the same vein as Chinatown. It wasn't. Acquire is a business speculation game, not a negotiation game. It reminds me a bit of the casino growing aspect of Lords of Vegas, though far more streamlined.

In Acquire, players are investing in growing hotel chains. Players each have a screen hiding 6 random tiles that identify locations on the board. On a turn, a player must place one of these tiles.

If the placed tile created a grouping of two on the board, a hotel chain is formed. The player may now invest in this or any other
previously founded hotel chain by purchasing a total of 3 shares. The value of each share is determined by the current size of the chain (obviously, this means there is great incentive to invest early, before shares become too expensive).

Another possibility is that the placement of the tile joins two or more existing hotel chains. If so, the larger hotel subsumes the smaller one. Investors in the larger chain benefit because the larger size means higher share value. The investors in the smaller chain benefit because they get paid out. The largest and 2nd largest shareholders get a bonus and everybody can sell their shares at their current value. It's important to note that there is NO WAY to make money in this game unless a hotel chain you've invested in gets taken over. This means that after an initial buying spree, players start running out of money and are looking to have one of their chains absorbed into a larger one. In the end, though, being majority shareholder in the big chains will pay out huge returns so it's probably important not to focus exclusively on the smaller companies. It's quite a nice dynamic and I can see how many modern games could trace their mechanics back to those found here. Overall, although the gameplay felt quite abstract I found it to be a lot of fun and definitely able to stand up against current designs.

In our game, I benefited from the first take over and found myself with more cash than the other players which felt like a large advantage. Over the course of the game, I felt like I lost some ground and it seemed like Kozure was really taking off. Tilitumbleroo was also doing quite well. I felt that I had a very good stock portfolio, and that I might catch up in the endgame. At one point, I was playing an escalation war with all three other players as we were all purchasing shares to try to get a majority before merging some of the last available companies. The shares ran out and I was locked out. Kozure and Tili ended up as 1st and 2nd and did quite well. Kozure ended the game by merging the last company, but as the smaller one liquidated we all realized that Tili was able to convert shares to the larger one and this put here in the lead. When all the money was counted, her majority holding meant the difference and she won.

Lots of fun, very tense, great design.

Brain asplodin' (Yomi, High Frontier, Dixit)

Kozure, in one of his more sadistic choices, decided to foist upon our inexperienced group a game of High Frontier, WITH EXPANSION. Shemp prepared the room in case of brain asplosion.

Yomi

Kozure and I started with a quick game of Yomi. I played Grave, and got off to an excellent start... succeeding to land every blow I attempted. Kozure fought back to parity and we stayed close until we were both in the low 30s health-wise. That was when I landed the big mega attack for 45 damage, and that was all she wrote...

High Frontier

High Frontier is a challenging game. It's not the rules, though those can be challenging as well, it's that in order to get a succesful mission you have to get the math *just* right. You need to get the right parts that line up with the mission you plan to undertake, then make sure your rocket isn't overburdened by all that tech, then launch it into space and hope you brought along enough fuel to get to where you where wanting to go. Getting this right requires much calculating and recalculating... you can't get it wrong or you waste 30-60 minutes finding out. This is why brains asplode. It's also why I was fearing the expansion.

It turns out the expansion isn't so bad after all. The main addition, besides the expanded map, is a greater array of parts required to build your space rocket (previously, all that was available were thrusters, robonauts and refineries). Now, these same main elements are supplemented with reactors, radiators and generators. Some parts are interdependent, for example a particular reactor might need a level 2 radiator. It works, and provides more interesting combinations and possibilities without being too complex. This part works very nicely in my opinion.

There are other additions, such as politics, environments, glitches, etc. These had a very mild impact on our game, so it's hard to say if they were any good. My first impression is that they are not worth the overhead, but that could be just because of the way our session played out.

I have a feeling that the expanded game is really just the whole game the designer wanted to publish, before he was convinced that it would be too complicated. The whole experience feels more fleshed out, and I for one liked it better this way. Complexity be damned!

We didn't manage to finish the game. I managed to pull together a combination of equipment that gave me a heavy, high thrust ship. I flew to Mars and built my first factory and decommissioned everything. I then built the same rocket and went to the nearest M planet that I could explore, which was on the expansion board (technically, the closest planet is Hartha but Kozure would be getting there before me).

I think it happened to all of us, but in the confusion of trying to assemble these complicated ships parts kept getting left behind. In my case, I showed up at said M planet and realized I forgot the device that allowed me a re-roll in case of failure (odds where 50-50 of success without it). I did succeed, but if I had failed the whole mission would have gone down the toilet because there was 0 fuel left after I got there.

High Frontier is a fun, but very challenging game. Mechanically, it feels like it could use further development, but regardless it's quite an intriguing and immersive challenge. It's definitely right up there in terms of games I know I will remember when I look back someday.

Dixit

Just as we were packing up, Kozure pulled out Dixit so we could take a look. I suggested we play a round or two, just to see how it plays. It was the perfect relaxing type of game to follow High Frontier so we went with it and played out the whole game.

Dixit is the Spiel de Jares winning party game. Players are dealt a hand of cards depicting surreal images and each round a the acting player needs to select one and come up with a clue based on the image. All the other players must select a card from their hand that they feel also matches the clue, and all selected cards are mixed together. Points are then awarded based on how many people select the active player's card. As is often the case with these types of games, the acting player must select a clue that is neither too obvious or too obscure because there are no points awarded to the acting player if everyone or no one gets it right.

The images are quite nice and evocative, and the process of inventing descriptive clues for the images is fun. Ultimately, it's just an apples 2 apples clone, but a little more cerebral and involving more creativity.

That was then, this is now (Macao)

or "Shemp's 100% win record with Macao is *so* 2010"

We had a late start, so only time for one game. When I suggested Macao, Kozure's reaction was "what, you want to pad Shemp's record even more?"

No. That's not what I meant to do.

Things did not start well. I had a couple of baronesses and a few cards that gave me additional gold, but I was falling behind. Shemp and Kozure where ahead, but I was accumulating more end game bonus cards. When all was said and done, I finally managed to break Shemp's perfect streak with a squeaker of a win.

Great game.

Ooops, you win (Yomi, Cyclades, 7 Wonders)

It's going to be a short post this week...

Shemp and I started out by trying out Yomi. I purchased the Grave/ Jaina two pack, and I played Grave. Yomi is a card game that simulates Street Fighter type videogames, and has been getting great buzz so I was happy to try it out. I'd say I enjoyed it, but given our unfamiliarity with the rules I think it could definitely get better with practice. The mechanics do a good job of replicating what goes on in the games, allowing combos, feints, special powers, etc, while still being rather simple. I'll keep bringing it for a while and hopefully it will be easier to get a feel for it. For the record, Grave crushed Jaina, having landed his super mega move and dealing 45 points of damage... she never stood a chance.

We played Cyclades first (after an interesting email exchange about Kozure's fickle game moods). Everything was progressing normally, with maybe a little more combat than usual, and then Shemp won. No one saw it coming, and he made a huge bid on Athena so we should have been suspicious at least, but we weren't. Shemp took her unopposed, purchased his fourth philosopher and won. In Kozure's defense, he didn't have the funds to stop him. In my defense, I'm an idiot (I forgot to collect incom that round, so even if I had noticed he was about to win, I would have thought I couldn't stop him... even though I could have)

It was a bit anticlimactic, but bravo to Shemp for the stealth win!

We ended with 7 Wonders. As usual, I favoured science and completely ignored military, Shemp ignored science and Kozure was balanced. Shemp did a better job following through and beat Kozure by a hair. Me? Not close.

Sincere flattery (Defenders of the Realm x3)

At last week's session we played Kozure's newest acquisition, Defenders of the Realm.

I've read that this is very similar to Pandemic, and in many ways it is. There is a map of the game world, made up of many "locations" connected by paths. There are four types of minions spreading on the board trying to destroy the world, just like the diseases in Pandemic, and it's up to the players to stop them. If more than a certain number of minions is ever on a space and the game calls for more, there is an outbreak and new minions are added to all adjoining locations. If a minion of a certain type is ever meant to be added to the board, but none are left in the supply, the game is over and the players lose. The players win by defeating the minions in each colour.

Still, there are some significant differences. The obvious thing is that "curing" the invasion of a particular colour means defeating it's boss, a creature that has specific powers and win conditions. Players have quests that they can fulfill to gain advantages, each round adds a random effect to the board, and boss battles are resolved through die rolls.

For me, one of the defining mechanic of Pandemic (other than it's cooperative nature) is the the way the infection deck stacks. Cities that have been infected previously get added to the top of the deck, creating significant tension and putting huge pressure on the players as they strategize to prevent the diseases from creating an outbreak. This facet is missing completely from DotR, which is too bad. All of the "chrome" type mechanics which have been added successfully give the game a fantasy/ D&D feel, for better and worse. I enjoyed the retheming, the quests, the boss battles, etc, but the game definitely had a looser, more random and luck-driven feel.

We actually played three times. In the first, as the cleric (me), the Paladin (Shemp) and the Ranger (Kozure) an unfortunate series of card draws led to our demise before we all had our second turn (one card put a single orc on every empty green space, and the next put an additional orc in all locations with only a single orc. Guess what, no more orcs.

In our second game, we bumbled around the board with the same party and ultimately tried to defeat the demon lord. Although the odds were on our side, we failed and never managed to recover. The game ended with another loss before even defeating a single boss.

In our third game, we were firing on all cylinders. We switched the party to the sorcerer (me), the wizard (Shemp) and the Eagle Rider (Kozure) and got to work. Having recalled the mistake we made in our early games of pandemic, putting too much time and resources on removing disease cubes instead of attacking the source, we focussed much more on defeating bosses as early as possible. The demon boss was first on our hit list once again, though this time we defeated him. We then went for undead boss and orc, ending with the dragon. We successfully beat the game!

I found the game quite fun, though the game mechanics are not quite as tight as Pandemic. The comparison reminds me of Dominion and Thunderstone, actually. Dominion is clearly the better developed game, but the chrome of Thunderstone makes it enjoyable in it's own way, and maybe better for a different crowd.

Won't somebody think of the *zombie* children? (Earth Reborn)

I took a gamble on a game called Earth Reborn recently. I'm a big fan of Duel of Ages, and always appreciated the freedom of actions available, the multitude of character powers and equipment, etc. In many of our games, memorable stories would emerge as players would attempt unexpected or desperate strategies against one another (or failed spectacularly at what seemed like an easy success). The game does have issues (components, balance, playtime, etc), however, and rarely gets played anymore. When I was browsing the BGG essen videos, I stumbled across the one for Earth Reborn and was was quite attracted by the designer's stated goal to create a game that would foster these types of stories and memorable events. The fact that I really like Dungeon Twister, by the same author, certainly helped. It's a game about an apocalyptic future where two factions have emerged after hundreds of years hiding from nuclear radiation and are apparently not getting along. One faction is military, the other dabbles in the occult (zombies and such). In the weeks since I purchased it, I've been slowly working my way through the considerable rulebook and playing through a few scenarios solo to get acquainted with the system before inflicting it on anyone else. It's a very ambitious title that attempts to bring a lot to a single game, and from a production standpoint you get quite a toybox. Cool minis, tons of double-sided tetris like tiles for scenario building, a large assortment of equipment cards, tokens for decoys, passcards, mines, doors, etc, etc, etc. There is a lot of stuff here.

With some familiarity with the system, I became simultaneously very enthusiastic and discouraged. Setup time for the scenario based games are quite long. Although there isn't anything wrong with the theme itself, the implementation is pretty weak. Despite the huge effort to flesh out the backstory and the characters (there are pages of this stuff), it all comes off as *really* generic and cliché. Second, the scenario based learning system is great in theory, but we don't play games often enough to play 8-16 times just to understand all the rules. Luckily, I *really* like the game system. Despite it's incredible flexibility and depth, the rules are very logical and playable. The scenarios are much more than simply "kill everybody else", and once all the rules are known and the full game is being played the game setup seems like it will be reduced to something much more reasonable.

All that, and I wasn't really sure if anybody in the group would like this type of game.

Anyway, this week I picked it. We skipped to the scenario called "zombie family", which is a 3-4 player learning scenario which uses weapons, duelling for initiative and equipment.

In the scenario, the Salemites (the occultists) believe they've unlocked the secret to allowing zombies to procreate. A female zombie has been impregnated as a proof of concept. The Norad (military types) must invade the lab and destroy the female zombie before she escapes.

We played twice. The player controlling the Salemites starts with all his characters hidden mixed in with several decoy markers to make things harder for NORAD to figure out. We had a bit of a hard time with the hidden movement rules and got several things wrong, which was frequently leading to odd and unsatisfying results (ex: when characters were revealed, I thought it was necessary to wait until the next turn to activated them. In fact, it's just until the next round. Big difference. There was also perpetual confusion about the movement rules of hidden characters). Other than these scenario specific rules, everything was going quite smoothly rules-wise.

In the first session, Shemp was the Salemites. Kozure and I spread out our forces and stormed the building. It all boiled down to 3 individual skirmishes, but in the end the lady zombie was killed before she was very close to escape. Shemp suffered the brunt of the misunderstood hidden movement rules, and we realized that the male and female zombies are reversed between the miniatures and the cards which caused an error in deployment. Oh well, it was a good learning experience.

In the second session, Kozure was the Salemites. Shemp and I decided to storm fewer doors to prevent leaving too many open escape paths. We managed to uncover several decoys, but ultimately James Woo and Vasquez (NORAD characters) where caught in a showdown in a corridor while the zombie mommy got around them. There was a brief chance of stopping her as she struggled to bash down the door to get out, but zombies aren't easy to take down in a hurry.

At this point, it's still playing like a skirmish game. I'm looking forward to playing a more advanced scenario which opens up the possibilities a little bit (special powers, non-weapon equipment, destructible terrain, spying, searching, communication blocking, etc). Still, I think the game system is great... a combination of order tiles (that allow many different types of actions to happen while still limiting choice in a reasonable way) and action point allocation (which allows surprising flexibility to manage actions, special actions, opportunity actions, reloading weapons, etc, with very little unnecessary complexity.

Shemp and Kozure seemed to enjoy it, but not overly. Kozure mentioned that he preferred skirmish games that are more focussed on the skirmishing. Fair enough. I do think I'll be making this my pick for a while until we get to the full game so I can make a final assessment on the whole game. Right now, I am cautiously optimistic...

Next time, you shuffle (Dominant Species, Lords of Vegas)

We had a longer than usual game night this week. Toronto braced itself for a huge snowstorm and everything was closed. All the schools, etc. Turns out that it wasn't much of a storm. Still, it led to me being off early, Kozure being off early and Shemp's wife not working hence Shemp being available early. Unfortunately, Bharmer couldn't join us due to illness and he'll be unavailable for quite some time so it's three player sessions for us!

Dominant Species

We decided to take advantage of the longer than usual session and play Dominant Species again. We still shortened the game by 10 cards, just to make sure it wouldn't go all night. I played the birds, Shemp played the arachnids and Kozure played the reptiles. We actually played 3/4 of the game with a major rules error (scoring points based on dominance instead of numbers of animals) but came to the conclusion that results wouldn't have differed greatly anyway. Kozure was looking for a win after a losing streak with this game (not all at WAGS) and early on it looked like his wish would come to be. I felt like I was making blunder after blunder (maybe everyone felt the same?), but luckily I was still holding my own. Let's face it, there are so many choices that it's probably inevitable that really good moves go unnoticed until it's too late. Kozure did crush us, and his last turn near complete domination of the island only distanced him further. His wish was granted!

Although I think the full game would be too long, removing 10 cards felt like too many. Probably next time we'll take out 5.

My feelings towards the game haven't changed. It's like a super charged El Grande. Fun, quite engrossing, but longer/ more complicated isn't in and of itself better. One advantage it has it that it plays quite well with 3 and 4 players. For 5 players, I think I would pick El Grande every time, however.

One other thing that I hadn't considered the first time: As the game progresses, the scoring increments for certain types of actions get larger, particularly the tundra scoring. In the games we've had the tundra scoring on the last turn has seemed really large but still probably balanced. I just realized that if we played to the end of the full game these swings would get that much larger! That might seem game breaking. We'll see.

Lords of Vegas

We played this session with a variant where the deck is split in thirds instead of fourths when seeding the game end card. This was meant to eliminate the problem we had last game where we ran out of dice. Unfortunately, I shuffled the property cards REALLY poorly and the colours stayed clumped. This led to a very weird game where the player who just happened to bet on the right horse did well and the others did not. I was the beneficiary of the luck, and won by a significant margin. One of the colours was entirely under the game end card, so it provided no points to Shemp and Kozure who had seen none were out and figured it was inevitable that they would come.

Shemp continues to display his negotiating skills. There is a lot of room for trading and deal-making in this game and Shemp came up with a few interesting angles again this game (convincing another player to build a section of casino for him so that he gets cash payouts but is no threat to being casino boss, for ex). I had a lucrative casino growing where Shemp owned half of the 6 dice. His constant threat to re-roll the dice defined much of the game for me. I ultimately agreed to a massively one-sided deal where he promised to not re-roll the dice in my casino if I gave him just about every unbuilt property I had. It was risky, but the endgame came before Shemp could capitalize on all the new money. I won.



I still think this is a great game, I just hope someone else shuffles the property deck next time!

The long and the short of civilization building (Sid Meier's Civilization, Ra: The dice game x2, 7 Wonders x2)

I'll be wrapping up two week's worth of session reports into one post again this week. If anybody reads this, sorry!

Civilization

Last week we finally got the new Fantasy Flight Sid Meier's Civilization to the table. This game has just about nothing in common with the Eagle games version of the same name, but according to Kozure it has a very tight relationship to the videogame. In fact, as I was going over he rules with him, he was predicting what I was going to say based on his experience with the computer version, so it seems like the relationship is definitely there.

This game has all the usual trappings of civilization games: a tech tree, trading, politics, various paths to victory, combat... and game length. Compared to the Eagle version, the playtime is a very reasonable 1 to 1.5 hours per player. For a typical game night, it's right at the top end of doable.

The game board consists of several large square tiles that are arranged in a rectangle or triangle pattern (based on # of players) and revealed as the terrain is explored. Each player draws a political power from amongst the 6 available ones (Rome, America, China, Russia, Egypt and the Germans). Players really only have two kinds of units: Scouts and Armies. Scouts are used to found cities, and armies fight wars. The map is littered with symbols representing trade opportunities, natural resources and labour pools. When a player has a city, all the surrounding spaces are considered the city's outskirts and all things produced by those squares are available to the player who controls it. As the game progresses, wonders, buildings and great people will be placed in the city's outskirts and replace what they used to produce with the symbols on the token in question. All these resources are used to try to achieve one of 4 distinct victory conditions: Cultural, Financial, Military or Scientific.

Overall, the game quite impressed me in our initial playing. Many games of this type owe their game length to the time required to fiddle with purchasing military units, upgrading, trading or navigating the tech tree. In this version of the game, much of this fat is trimmed and the resulting gameplay is surprisingly efficient. The tech tree is very well done: a level 2 tech can only be placed on two level 1 techs. It's literally a pyramid. Simple, and works well. Resource gathering, building constructions, military advancements, wonders, styles of government and wealth are all dealt with in a manner that works, feels thematic yet requires very little overhead. Quite an achievement.

Still, it's not perfect. Chief amongst my complaints would be the combat system. Each token on the board represents an army, but the actual units are represented by cards and when a battle occurs a mini card game sub-system kicks in which didn't really click for me in our fist game. You draw a random set from your deck (why am I sending out random troops again?) and then play a series of rounds of establishing "fronts" and resolving combat "rock/ paper/ scissors" style. I can't say it doesn't work, but it's fiddly and introduces unnecessary downtime in a game that otherwise avoids most of these traps. Also, the culture victory condition involves dedicating your city to the arts and advancing your token along the culture track. Along the way, cards are drawn that give the player the ability to take some "take that" style actions on other players. I don't know, but it felt a little tacked on and random to me. "Take that" actions are rarely satisfying and can punish the receiving player arbitrarily (a similar problem I have with the church effects in Warrior Knights). I'm hoping that when we play again we will see more negotiating and hopefully these attacks will work better in the context of deal making and threats.

Lastly, the streamlining did come at a cost. Although the different factions are present, and different ages are represented by their technologies and wonders I couldn't help but notice that the progression from one era to another felt muted and diffuse. Modern day americans going against the egyptians, researching an ancient technology late in the game to make room for an additional modern one doesn't make sense and somewhat disrupts the thematic continuity/ atmosphere. It's not a big deal, but there it is.

Otherwise, a very solid addition to the civ building genre. Probably my favorite to date for it's combination of playability, play time and overall strategy and fun.

In this session I was the Americans, Kozure was the Russians and Shemp was the romans. I expanded like everyone else, but quickly saw that the Russians would overpower me so I concentrated on a cultural victory. Along the way, I watched as the germans and russians pulled away militarily and scientifically. Somewhere, I realized that I wouldn't get there in time but saw that an economic victory was attainable. I was one turn away from winning when Kozure took advantage of his steam technology to send a large force to destroy Shemp's capital (for a military victory). Just before the battle took place, Shemp declared a financial victory. In fact, it was a little anticlimactic because he only realized he could win that way as he was scrambling to find a way to fend off the incoming russian threat. He realized he could simply spend trade to add a coin to an existing tech and win the game.

Still, it was very close. I assume that such "accidental" realizations of victory will diminish with subsequent plays!

Ra: The Dice Game

I missed the first game since I arrived late (stupid work!), but participated in the second. It's a fun game, but not the equal of it's parent. Another difference: I do well at RA. I suck at RA: The Dice Game, if this session is any indication.

7 Wonders

We played this twice. This was our first try with more than 3 players (with Bharmer around, we were four). Early impressions continue to hold... this is a great, quick, engaging and clever game. 30 minutes with 4 players, lots going on, very fun. With 4, it's already noticeable that the free upgrades are harder to come by (of course, as Shemp pointed out that may also be because we are getting better at blocking). This week we saw a science win and public building win. There is no question that science is strong and needs to be watched, but clearly other strategies are viable as well. I bet that with time the winner will be the player who manages to eek out the most points in many categories that will win, due to other players blocking the obvious strategies.

Also, this was our first playing with the "B" sides. Not a huge difference, though since the wonders are less consistent in their VP allowances you need to play to their strengths or else you can fall behind (in the second game I lost badly despite having built the three stages of the Hanging Gardens. Only the first stage was worth VPs, with the other two allowing me to play the 7th card in a round and giving me a bonus science symbol. Alas, I was denied most science cards and didn't capitalize on the ones I did get). Typical scores are quite close. Lots of fun.

I wo-wo-wo-wo-wonder (Clans x2, Vikings, 7 Wonders)

Shemp went on a rare buying spree and purchased three games recently. Clans, Vikings and Acquire made it under the tree for Christmas. Tonight, we played Clans and Vikings, as well as my christmas present: 7 Wonders.

Clans

Clans is an older euro that was released in 2002. It's ostensibly about the formation of clans in early human history, but it's really just a pasted on theme. It is played on a board broken up in several small terrain sections (plains, mountains, etc). Wooden huts in 5 different colours are seeded across the board, one per space. On a turn, players must move all the huts in one space to an adjacent space with at least one hut (the clans are consolidating into bigger, more populous clans). Once a grouping is no longer connected to a space with any other huts, it is scored. All colours present receive the same number of points UNLESS all colours are present, in which case any singles are eliminated before scoring. The game is played over a couple of different eras and each features a terrain where bonus points are gained, and a terrain where no points can be gained (because that clan is DOOOOMED). The catch is that each player is secretly dealt a colour at the beginning of the game, so no one knows which colour is benefiting which player at the beginning (and, even at the end, in our case). There is therefore a requirement for bluffing if you don't want other players to start hosing you because they know who you are.

Clans reminds me of China, in the sense that it feels like a lot of game in just 30 minutes. It's extremely simple, but the combination of secret roles and possibility for screwage made it quite enjoyable. We actually played twice, and in the second game we were already seeing some layers to the strategy... scoring groups of huts in the doomed terrain to get the tokens off the board, moving groups of huts into combinations that encouraged other players to make your moves for you, etc. Good game.

Vikings

Vikings is also a kind of old school euro. It's central mechanic is an auction where players have to bid for a combination of vikings and land tiles. The vikings and land tiles are then placed on a player's tableau, where vikings in different places gives money, victory points, etc. There is too much to explain here, but it's essentially an efficiency game that feels like a more forgiving Princes of Florence. There is a nice mechanic where pirate ships must be guarded by warriors, or they nullify al the vikings placed in that column. It was a fun game that I would gladly play again, but it's not a stand-out either.

In this session, I went for fishermen vikings early and didn't get much else other than warriors. Although the fisherman did net me a huge number of points at the end, I was so far behind that I still ended way last. Kozure was far in the lead. Clearly he nurtures his inner viking.

7 Wonders

7 Wonders is quite popular right now, so I won't bother describing it much other than to say that it's a card drafting game with a theme of building civilizations. Cards can be used to gain money, to build a wonder of the world, or build a building/ develop a technology. Remarkably, it plays in 30-45 minutes even if played by 7 players.

The trick to making the game work so quickly even with large number is that each player is only able to interact with their neighbor on the right and left. In other words, no matter how many players are playing it's alway essentially a series of discreet 3 player games going in a circle.

In my opinion, this game is pretty slick. There are many things to consider, and many different paths to follow (production, science, wonders, etc). Although I felt dissatisfied with Fairy Tale, 7 Wonders feels substantial enough while you are playing. It's obviously been seriously playtested... it plays very smoothly. Also, the card art is extremely well done.

Overall, this game seems really good. There aren't many good 7 player games out there that play quickly, and even fewer that play as well across the entire player range (from 3 to 7 players).

Our first game was extremely close. I was forever the whipping boy as my military might was forgotten in favour of going for scientific achievements. I did managed to get quite a few and the big points made at the end gave me the win.

Rocket science is hard (High Frontier)

A few weeks ago, we played High Frontier. This was my second play, but Kozure and Bharmer have played 3-4 times now and Shemp was playing for the first time.

Shemp struggled through the game in much the same way I did the first time out. I came in thinking that it would be much easier this time but I had a hard time getting started anyway. The game simply requires such precise planning that it's hard to wrap your head around when you are not sure what's going on.

I was playing the group that gave a bonus to thrust, so I took the solar sails and went to Mercury. I had forgotten that it was necessary to exceed the planet's rating to land/ take off for free and had to really be creative when I got there to avoid wasting the whole trip. I did manage it, though (I had a second thruster). I developed a better thruster and things became much easier. I managed a second factory, a first for me. Meanwhile, Kozure had a tragic accident and lost all his early progress to an explosion. Bharmer similarly suffered an explosion and suffered a setback, but his was later. Thanks to being explosion free, I managed to beat the more experienced players by a few points (otherwise, I am sure I would have been a distant third).

High Frontiers was much more enjoyable this time. The early game feels kind of pointlessly lengthy (lots of purchasing/ reselling just to get water supplies up), which is a bit irritating in a game that is so long. It also still feels like the dramatic drop in game difficulty once advanced techs are developed could have been softened somewhat. From Kozure's description of the advanced game, there is a bit more granularity to the progress in that version, so it could be a case of seeing the concessions made to simplify the system. Either way, it continues to be a very intriguing game that I look forward to playing again.