It takes a village (Urban Sprawl)

Chad Jensen is a designer of many games that lots of people like. Mostly, the Combat Commander series and Dominant Species. Although Kozure and Bearbomb are fans of CC, I prefer Conflict of Heroes. We've played Dominant Species a few times, and although I recognize that it's a good game it seems too long by a turn or two, and in my opinion El Grande does a very similar thing in a much tighter package. Anyway, this is a long winded way of saying that although I looked forward to playing Urban Sprawl, i didn't expect to love it.

Kozure and I were once again accompanied by Bearbomb, but this time he brought along a friend. 4 is the maximum number of players for US, so I was a little worried that a long game would go even longer.

Let's start at the beginning. Urban Sprawl is a game about city building. The board is a grid representing a town, and it starts with some buildings built. Over the course of the game, players will take out permits to allow them to build buildings in different parts of the city. Various buildings are randomly made available for construction, depending on the stage of the game. A host of random events come up throughout, giving bonuses or allowing a player to change the landscape in some way. Finally, in the second stage of the game onwards, certain roles are handed out, such as mayor or union boss, based on specific criteria (such as the player controlling the most valuable factory building).

The placement scoring rules encourage players to play similar buildings adjacent to each other, but other rules will motivate players to play elsewhere. The end result is that the city organically grows with some semblance of zoning intact (industrial zones, residential zones, etc), but it's not at all rigid so the final city is realistically diverse and quirky in it's layout... Just like real cities are. That part was pretty cool and well realized. The various building powers are interesting and working out good combos of buildings to play and clever placements of said buildings is definitely fun.

But. But.

Wow, it's long. and the events are really frequent and random. And don't even think that your money or board position will look anything like it does now on your next turn, because it won't.

The main decision a player will have to make revolves around working out the best placement for the buildings he wants to build. It isn't a simple or easy decision, as it requires some calculation and analysis of a fairly busy board, but it's not bad and certainly reasonable and enjoyable. Unfortunately, for me, the sheer number of random events that happen at the end of each turn felt excessive. They often have a significant impact on the game, but more than anything they just added too much time.

From his earlier designs, I know that the designer likes a heavy dose of chaos in his games. Similarly, length almost seems likes a preference. In my opinion, what worked in combat commander didn't really work here as well. It was a fun game, but after nearly 4 hours we still had over an hour to go... That kind of play time isn't justified by the mechanics. I realize that removing the events entirely would kill some of the flavor that the designer intended but a reduction would certainly help.

Anyway, there was quite a bit of movement in points throughout the game, though generally Bearbomb and I exchanged first and second place throughout most of the game. I had concentrated on civic buildings, And gathered the media marker early after Bearbomb had said a number of events gave bonuses for it. He wasn't kidding! It seemed like I was getting an endless supply of 1 dollar + 1 vp awards from all the events.
Bearbomb and Dale seemed to be very good judges of how to place on the board to reap majority bonuses.

At the end of the game, the roles give bonuses to the players that happen to have them. Like Dominant Species, these felt too large to me. I had the mayor and the lawyer, which netted me and absurd amount of points, stealing the game from Bearbomb.

So, I liked it. Some parts were really fun, and quite innovative. However the length, and particularly the wild randomness in relation to the length, bring it down a notch for me.

Keeping Track

Last week we played Troyes, followed by Tribune. I asked if we could give End of the Triumvirate a miss because I was fighting a cold and wasn't up to the requirements of deep strategery.

We had close games in both cases, though in both games the people who were tied or close to tied were Agent Easy and Shemp. My head was not in it that night.

I believe that Easy squeaked the win in both cases (Troyes - tie?, Tribune, tied for victory conditions, but one point difference on score?) but I am uncertain.

My recollection is hazy but I plead illness-induced head-fog.

Another kick at the can (Dominion x2, Panic Station, King of Tokyo)

The Wags group welcomed this week a new player, ececec. Unfortunately I arrived late and missed the two opening games of Dominion (with various expansions thrown in). All I know is that ececec beat Kozure bay single point in the last game.

We set up Panic Station. Ececec wanted to give it a try and I think we all wanted to give it another shot as well. Since last week's game, I realized a few things... First, the game DOES have a backstory that makes sense of a few of the game's odd mechanics. Apparently, the aliens are immune to traditional bullets so the players are searching for bullets specially developed by the decimated inhabitants of the ship to combat the aliens. Secondly, the androids are linked to the human's psychi so that's why they both get infected simultaneously. Whatever.

This session was not like the earlier sessions. Shemp was the infected one, but he decided to lay low for a while. So much so that I literally had no idea who I couldn't trust and just one turn before I thought I could win the game for the humans no one else was infected (and as far as I could tell, no attempts had been made either). I started looking around the table in case the host card has been accidentally left out of the game.

I then committed a grave error. I ended my turn in the hive, with all the gas cans I needed, but without any actions left to actually burn the hive. In swoops Shemp. I deflect the infection with a gas can, but then have only two left. Over in the other corner of the map, ececec does a heat scan and it's revealed that I am still human. He then trades a gas can with my android. On his turn, Kozure does the same. My turn again, oops! Let's move the critters and sure enough 4 of them come into the hive (1 in 4 chance of that happening!) and my human is pulverized. We then spend a few rounds coordinating a run by Kozure and Ececec to get my gas cans and burn the hive while avoiding the swarms and Shemp. A well placed grenade thinned the swarm nicely, and Kozure succeeded in putting the hive to the torch.

Again, I had fun,despite the somewhat clunky rules and thematic oddness/ blandness. It does keep you guessing, and it's pretty challenging for both the humans and the infected. I think it would play better with more players, and I look forward to trying it again.

We then finished with a session of Kings of Tokyo. Ececec picked up on it quickly, and luckily didn't seem too bothered when he was eliminated mid game. Kozure's mekadragon, equipped with those damned Wings and Acid breath destroyed us all.

It's just about a perfect game for what it is.

Cans of Gas Stave off Alien Infection + I Have the Stupid (Panic Station x 2, High Society x 2)

Last week (November 17th) we played Panic Station, twice, plus one other game. Evidently that other game stands out so well in my mind that I've completely forgotten what it was . I'm sure Agent Easy will be along shortly to correct the record. [edit: Agent Easy recalled that it was High Society]

[edit - added "High Society"]

High Society

This is always a fun, quick game. The first game, Agent Easy and I came very close in terms of points but he had slightly more money remaining.

The second game was tight - Agent Easy and Pablo were tied for points and for most money remaining, so it came down to highest purchased item value.

Such a clever little game.

Panic Station

What to say about panic station? Traitor mechanic, exploration, high-tech weapons and equipment, explosives, sci-fi setting... what's not to like?

Execution, it seems.

I wanted to like this one, I really did, but the weird "why is this done this way?" moments started to pile up about half-way through the game and never really went away.

First up, why can't humans use guns? The "in-game" explanation is that they're carrying the flamethrower, so they don't have the "room". OK, fine. They have the flamethrower to purge the alien nest. Sure, I can buy that. But... why do they have to find or trade for the fuel to actually use it INSIDE the facility they're supposed to be purging?

OK, only androids can use guns. I can also accept that, if you assume that the androids have built-in weapons that cannot be detached. But the upgrades are detachable - indeed, they START detached... once again, INSIDE the facility they've been sent to clear out.

Also, equipment teleports back and forth between team members of the same colour, but not between team members of other colours. In addition, if the human gets infected, the same-colour android gets infected as well, and vice versa. Say what?

If a human/android goes down, all their equipment disappears. Huhn? It's possible to lose the game because you can't possibly get enough fuel cans because your team mates got eaten by a parasite and apparently their equipment evaporates when your vital signs disappear?

Too many shaky "plot-points" that might have been 'hand-waved' with better background story writing, or better yet, avoided altogether with better rules writing.

Also, once again, the future is white ... except for one human who may or may not be Asian (Raven). They couldn't fit in a single visible minority? [edit: judging by surname "Ramirez" would seem to be Hispanic, so not entirely WASP] To top it off, all the androids look identical and are the stereotypical bald female hottie with silvery no-iris eyes.

The art is lazy. Actually, I take that back, the equipment art and the station location art is fine. The humans, androids and parasites are lazy. Compare:

Picture of "Alien Parasite":



with picture of "Japanese beetle Larvae":



You're using barely modified images of insect larvae as your evil swarming Alien/Body-Snatcher-esque take-over creature? Did someone on the production team have a bad phobia-generating incident on their lawn?

Okay. Deep breath.

I'm giving this one at least more try before I pass final judgment because people seem so crazy about it on BGG and usually the chattering masses aren't completely wrong, at least at BGG.

So far, though, not very impressed.

Now, to be fair, I screwed up the first game because I (and no one else) forgot the vitally important (but thematically none-too-intuitive) rule that people can avoid being infected by trading a gas can (... wait, what?) so I thought everyone was infected when in fact only three people were infected. I tried to make the case for ending the game early when in fact there was at least one viable human left.

In the end, the infected still won, but the experience was somewhat tainted.

Not to be outdone by my stupid mistake in the first game, I then nearly made the exact same mistake in the second game, fortunately it was spotted and corrected before it did too much damage.

UNfortunately, a strange (though probably not entirely unusual) combination of card trading around mid-game utterly confused both Shemp and Agent Easy making it look like I thought I was uninfected when I was, or was infected when I wasn't (I was actually infected), so a long period passed where Shemp and Agent Easy thought I was playing very stupidly, when in actuality I was really doing the only logical thing, which was to stay away and keep my infected guys out of danger (and being forced to trade back the stolen gas cans) because I had no infection cards left.

Not so! (This time.)

What had happened is that I had tried repeatedly to infect Pablo, only to be given a gas can each time, with the net effect that I had taken all of his gas cans. By reasoning out loud, Agent East figured out what had happened, but this clued Shemp in at the same time. Fortunately for humanity, some canny play by Pablo and Shemp allowed the humans enough time to search for more gas cans and win the game by burning the nest. Cleanse it with FIRE!

Humans 1, Aliens 1.

Now if I could just remember what the other game we played was, I could close down this blog entry in peace. [yeah, it was High Society]

Maria x2

I'm a few weeks behind, but I wanted to post this before tomorrow's game night so I will keep it short.

Over the past two weeks we've played Maria, the successor to Friedrich. It apparently plays best with three, which is very useful in our group (Friedrich is best with four).

In a nutshell, although we've only played the simple version so far I really like it. Movement is a logistical challenge for the players that aren't playing Maria since units must maintain supply and supply is slower than the troops. Combat is very interesting because the board is separated in regions and each region has a traditional card suit assigned to it. During combat, only cards from the appropriate suit can be used. This has the interesting effect of encouraging players to pay attention to where battles have been fought, because if a suit is exhausted by an earlier battle it can be advantageous to try to take advantage.

Anyway, the full game apparently introduces politics and different armies that change the dynamics substantially. Looking forward to trying it, though it will be hard to find the 5 hours to commit to it.

In our first game, I played France and managed a win on the very last action of the last turn of the game. Similarly, in our second game I won on the last action of the last turn as the Prussians. In both games, I was extremely lucky with my card draws so I can't claim any particular prowess at the game! So far, each power seems to play quite differently (the supply situation for the prussians is much more difficult than it is for France, it seems to me) which is nice to see.

Anyway, highly recommended even at the basic game.

If Babe Ruth was chased by zombies (Last Night on Earth)

To celebrate Halloween we played Last Night on Earth, a game that I enjoy well enough but only really gets played this time of year.

Me and Kozure were the zombies, Pablo and Shemp were the humans.

The last few times we've played this it's been on irregular maps, so playing the "Save the Townsfolk" scenario felt a little like a throwback.
Since the hero's objective is to keep searching until they find 4 townsfolk, the actual gameplay boiled down to: run to the other side of the board, where the zombies aren't, and then search. Ok, the zombies are close again, run back to the other side. For whatever reason, I don't recall previous games to be this way.

Anyway, the back and forth running went inform a while, occasionally (ok, frequently) peppered by Johnny blasting a zombie with his endlessly loaded shotgun. As the zombies, we were having a hard time cornering the heroes, so we weren't managing to damage them much. In thelastthird of the game, the hero's had found the villagers and were trying to survive until morning. Three of the heroes had taken refuge in the gun store in the corner, trying to keep the horde of undead at bay. It was quite close in the end, but the heroes prevailed because only one of them fell victim to the zombies.

The highlight of the game, for me, was when Johnny the jock sprinted through a wall of zombies. He attacked one and rolled a 5. Pablo, who was playing John, needed anything except a 5 or a 6. Oddly, he yelled "roll a 2!". The zombies did roll a 2 and Pablo nearly jumped out of his hair in excitement.

Clearly, comparisons between Johnny and Babe Ruth's famous prediction were earned and given...

Metal fatigue is a harsh mistress (Galaxy Trucker, Power Grid w/ alternate power plants)

The recent announcement of another expansion for Galaxy Trucker reminded me it had been a while since we had played this great game. I though it would be fun to try a really punishing series of flights, so we skipped round 1 entirely and instead did the following:

Ship 2 with evil machinations
Ship 3 with evil machinations and 2 Rough Road Ahead cards
Ship 3A with evil machinations and 2 Rough Road Ahead cards

The first round went pretty smoothly, but starting with round 2 we really started feeling the heat. The rough road cards are pretty tough... Round 2 had a card that made any energy use cost an extra tic-tac and another card that reduced our ship's speed for every ship connection that matched a 3 connector with a 2 or a 1. As you can imagine, ship building was slow and batteries/ furnaces where hot commodities.

... But we all made it without horrible consequences. My MVP was certainly the techie blue alien, since it made the first battery expenditure each encounter free.

Round three saw Remorseless fate (which is every bit as bad as it sounds) and Metal Fatigue. Now, between remorseless fate and metal fatigue, I thought the first sounded the most dangerous. Shemp would beg to differ.

Before launching, Shemp pointed out that this was his best ship ever. No bad connections, plenty of the tiles he wanted, every space used up. The problem is that ship 3A looks a lot like the Enterprise... It's got a very narrow middle. A single mishap there, and the ship splits in half. During the second event, Shemp lost a piece which protected the critical part through metal fatigue and then in event 3 a meteor struck and Shemp had to pick whether he wanted to keep flying with the front or the back of his ship. He chose the front.

When Shemp arrived at the end, he had approximately 5 tiles left in his ship, a single crew member, and no engines ( he lost his final one on the last card). It was pretty funny. Also, since ship 3 A is uninsurable, he paid nearly 30$ for the damage.

Ultimately, Kozure won the game. I actually thought I had it, but he snuck past me by a few points. I really enjoy this every time it comes out, even though it's definitely an experience game and not to be taken seriously.

Power Grid

We then played a three player game of Power Grid with the new power plants expansion (the expansion isn't new, only new to us). Although I enjoy Power Grid, I find it requires too much constant calculation which kind of ruins the pace. Also, I dislike the lull that seems to often happen during the middle of the game because nobody ever wants to by the middle powerplants. Apparently, the solution is to play with only 3 players and use the alternate plants because I found this game quite enjoyable.

It's hard to pick out the differences, but I never felt like nothing on offer was worth buying. We did have an odd result because many of the higher plants got pulled before the start ofthegame (as per the 3 player rules). This led to an end game where only I actually could power the 17 cities once they were built. I unintentionally foiled Shemp's hail Mary to beat me because he planned on buying up the resources preventing me from actually powering to capacity. I decided at the last minute not to power all my cities on the before last turn and kept the resources I needed for the last round so I did pull off the win.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know if the new plants simply have a lower capacity and the struggle to attain 17 is intentional. Either way, it was fun.

Shempuzelan TV is more entertaining than Easylander jousting (Civilization, King of Tokyo)

We played another three player session of the new Sid Meier's Civilization. It was Kozure, Shemp and I as Russia, Egyptians and Americans (respectively).

I was flailing around, not really having much success getting a strategy going (poor choices in city locations meant that the available resources were a touch thin). I purchased the Hanging gardens early so my military was easy to come by, so I went that way. Kozure had quite a productive empire, but also his military was surpassing me in technology. Shemp, meanwhile, was racing after a cultural victory.

Since no one had ever come close to wining with culture, it was not a threat we saw coming. Suddenly, Shemp was on the verge of winning! Kozure and I tried to stop him but Shemp was generating culture points too quickly. A last ditch attempt to thwart him was interrupted by his cultural superiority (he proposed we watched tv, when all we could offer was offer Jousting).

Anyway, Shemp won!

We ended off with another game of King of Tokyo. This one is getting lots of play in and out of WAGS.

Ketchup (Vikings, China, Clans, King of Tokyo, TransEuropa)

We thought we'd be five players this week, but then, before I knew it, we were back to three.

Pablo, Shemp and I gathered around a large bag of games. Our dictator was absent, but ordered us to play a very specific sequence of games in his absence. Then, the sequence was revoked. In our confusion, we ignored all instructions and chose to play a large number of short games so that Pablo could rip through his unplayed list that much faster.

We started with Vikings, which is a game I like very much. It packs a lot of game in a small package. Unlike a lot of games that try to insert a random factor in the hopes of making each game "different", Vikings succeeds at forcing you to consider each new round carefully once the tiles and Viking combinations are out. I was rocking this game, and built a very efficient set of manned islands. I started the evening with a win.

We followed with China. Another game that feels like a big game in a slim package, China never fails to conclude in approximately 1/2 hour and still provide a nice strategic experience. Shemp was gunning for me, and prevented me from completing any chains but a misunderstanding of the rules regarding emissaries caused him to fail his blocking strategies there. Pablo did manage a long chain, but ultimately I had enough majorities to pull win #2.

Clans followed. In my mind, anyone who enjoys China should also enjoy Clans. The games are completely different from a gameplay perspective, but they have a similar strategic weight, play length and semi-abstract nature. I goofed a few too many times during the game, and ultimately kept setting up the wrong colours. Shemp dominated this one.

Next up was King of Tokyo, the first repeat play for Pablo. I went first, and snagged the tentacles. Shemp stayed in Tokyo most of the game, but I was rolling lots of 3s and made it to 15 points without spending much time in the city. Shemp knocked us down with the -5 vp card but it wasn't enough... I used the tentacles to steal the jet pack from Shemp, forcing him to step down and I gathered the last few points required for the win. Pablo was yearning for hearts throughout the game but he couldn't roll them to save his life. On the other hand, he managed huge smack downs of 5 attacks on at let two occasions... This is a very fun game that achieves exactly was it's going for. Bravo.

Lastly, we played TransEuropa. In our first round, Pablo, in his first time ever playing the game, ended while Shemp still needed 8 links and I needed 5! Shemp managed to hang on a few rounds with his 3 lives before succumbing. In the last round, Pablo and I ended up tying so it was a shared victory for the final game of the evening.

The King with Wings (Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena x2, Lords of Vegas, King of Tokyo x2)

Kozure, Shemp and I gathered this week to play an evening of Vegas games. It didn't work out due to a lack of available time, but what can you do.

Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena

As Kozure was in charge of his lads that evening, Shemp and I played two rounds of Roma. We pitted the two decks against each other to see how that went. We'll certainly have to play several more times to really know if one is stronger than the other, but it certainly seems to me that the original Roma is a swingier deck, with more opportunity to score big points when things work and potential to get none at all if things don't. Roma 2 seems smoother, with better odds of getting useful cards but a slower overall pace.

In our first game, I was getting creamed because I couldn't get any VP generation going. I was down to one vp if i'm not mistaken. Luckily, Shemp lost all ability to roll the dice he needed, consistently failing rolls that had a 5 in 6 chance of working. I didn't lose that last point and in fact landed two forums and started reaping the rewards. A few short rounds later I bounced back and won the game. I did realize one thing, though... Once the opponent is close to winning, getting VPs can be a bad move if it ends the game before you have more than the othe player. It was necessary to bleed out VPs from Shemp before claiming them. Tricky.

Our second game was more even, and I don't remember who won.

Still enjoying this two player game. Long live Herr Feld!

Lords of Vegas

With the kids in bed, we started our game of Lords of Vegas. As the game developed, a few patterns emerged...

1) I once again started growing a large casino in the big center-left block. I seem to do this every game.
2) Kozure once again received a disproportionate amount of disjointed properties.
3) I got into a war over a casino with Kozure. Normally, this happens between me and Shemp. Although in the end I managed to wrest control from Kozure and end the game with two decent casinos, the constant re-rolling of the casino dice drained both our money and made it hard to stay competitive with Shemp.

There wasn't a huge amount of trading this game. Not sure why... The opportunities seemed harder to find (though Shemp tried his best!).

Shemp won by quite a large margin. Kozure and I were in a tight race for second.

King of Tokyo

Tom Vassel and Michael Barnes have both recently talked up King of Tokyo and so when I saw it I thought i'd give it a try. It's a very simple and mostly silly game about competing monsters trying to destroy Tokyo and each other. Although there aren't a ton of games with this theme, it's also not really particularly original. What sets this game apart is the simplicity and focus of the design. You are either a creature in Tokyo, dealing damage to all the monsters outside of Tokyo OR you are a creature outside of Tokyo dealing damage to the monster currently in Tokyo. Since the monster inside Tokyo cannot heal, it creates a natural cycle of monsters entering Tokyo, trying to stay as long as possible, and then leaving to lick it's wounds. The game is won by either accumulating 20vps or being last monster standing. It's a dice rolling game where you can either roll wounds, healing, VPs or victory points. Each player rolls three times, hoping to get dice in the combination they are trying to achieve, yada, yada, yada. A deck of cards representing upgrades spices things up as players can save up energy to purchase them and slowly transform their creature from, for example, a simple giant dinosaur to A GIANT DINOSAUR WITH TWO HEADS, WINGS AND ALIEN METABOLISM!!!. It's easy to teach, it's short and a lot of fun to play. Big thumbs up from me and easily the best boardgames Richard Garfield has done since Robo-rally.

In our first session, Shemp dominated Tokyo for nearly the whole game because he managed to snag the "wings" upgrade early, which allowed him to spend energy to ignore damage. I think Kozure won the second game, but I'm not sure.