2008 Thoughts

I consider 2008 to be an excellent year in new and "new to us" games.

New games:

Race for the Galaxy, Glory to Rome, Agricola, In the Year of the Dragon, Pandemic, Perikles, Phoenicia, Battlestar Galactica, Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!, Thebes.

New to Us games:

Imperial, Hollywood Blockbuster, I'm the Boss!, In the Shadow of the Emperor, Pillars of the Earth, Wings of War, Atlantic Star, Medici.

New to my collection, but unplayed at WAGS

Red November, Space Alert

With the exception of Phoenicia, I would consider them all good to very good (well, Atlantic Star was a little bland, but it certainly wasn't bad). That's a pretty good success rate!

The first few years for me at WAGS were about catching up to the backlog of great german style games already released (the Alea line, Knizia's catalogue, the top 10 at BGG, etc). Last year was mostly about finding good/ great games that filled in niches that were kind of lacking (Last Night on Earth = horror, Jungle Speed = filler, Blue Moon City = casual strrategy, Dungeon Twister= well themed abstract, Nexus Ops = a better Risk). This year, I felt a little more in tune with the cult of the new at BGG, because I had caught up with most of what I wanted to try, and my game collection covered most of the bases I wanted it to (well, I'm still looking for a great civ type game, and a great negotiation game).

This is my take on the trends in this year's crop of new games:

1) Space seems to be the new renaissance Italy for game settings.
2) Cooperative games have become all the rage, and/or games that play well solo (often the same, but not always).
3) Pure German type games are starting to be a hard sell. Games that are mainly exercises in manipulating clever mechanics for victory points are starting to feel a bit "samey". I have already played a number of these, I already own a number of these, and although I still *love* them... I don't feel a burning desire to discover more. This year, the only successful new game that fits the classic mold is In the Year of the Dragon. Agricola sort of fits, but to me it feels like something different... which brings me to my next point:
4) The most significant change I've noticed this year is the gradual takeover of cards as the driving mechanic for game design. From Agricola to Dominion, Race for the Galaxy to Space Alert, the main innovation this year seems to be that strategy games are meeting card games in the middle. This happened in wargames with the introduction of CDGs (card driven wargames) and ameritrash games have used this tactic for quite some time. Did the trend in other types of games coincide with the rise of Magic the Gathering? I can't really say, but the impact is starting to cross-over to german games. The advantages of cards are obvious: base mechanics can be simple while the card powers can add chrome. Theme becomes much easier to convey through the use of imagery/ flavour text/multiple specific events or actions on the cards. The downside, however, is that cards bring their own share of issues: randomness, lack of balance between the cards, over-reliance on the cards to make the game interesting, etc. and some of these run in direct contradiction to what german games were all about.

For me, Agricola is the poster boy for this shift. Since Agricola has been such a big deal this year, I'll dwell on this one for a bit.

At it's core, Agricola is akin to being asked to make the tallest possible pile from a bunch of random objects. Your goal is to efficiently use what is at your disposal to make that tall tower. In the game, you are just picking from the vast selection of actions available, and trying to make those points add up to as many points as possible. The only thing Agricola brings to the table of game design is an enormous pile of cards. This takes an otherwise perfect information game and gives each player a different set of additional things to consider (or, to get back to the previous analogy, their personal pile of random objects to use to build their tower). Don't get me wrong, I like Agricola. The process of efficiently ordering what is in front of you can be enjoyable, but that doesn't change the fact that there is very little in the way of clever game mechanics underneath it all... which was previously the hallmark of german games (well, that and brevity, which is also AWOL here). Still, the immediacy of the theme combined with potentially endless combinations of cards has come together to make a game popular enough to unseat Puerto Rico as the #1 game on BGG... unbalanced cards and all. I can't help but think that Agricola is a sign of things to come, but that ultimately a better game will come that combines cards and great and interesting game mechanics will soon do it better.

So, crossover games, wargames and card games have been more interesting to me this year. With the exception of Perikles, none of the following games would have been possible without cards as the central mechanic.

Perikles is primarily a euro, but there are some definite elements of wargames in the design. When I played it earlier this year, Ireally enjoyed how the various elements came together, and I felt that the players had enough influence in the game that the die based combat was fun rather than frustrating.

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! is a wargame that integrates an action point system and a quest for brevity, simplicity and economy that feels heavily influenced by euro design principles. I've played this mostly outside of WAGS, but I really like it. The action point system it uses, particularly the concept of Command Points vs Action Points, is brilliant.

Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome have used the same basic system as San Juan/ Puerto Rico to make a card game that almost feels like a boardgame. Although there is an issue with the "multiplayer solitaire" nature of the gameplay in RftG, I still quite enjoy playing it. I like that the expansion to RftG allows for solo play, but I haven't had a chance to test it out very often. I personally find playing Glory to Rome more fun, but I do like both. RftG does a really remarkable job of minimizing the inherent problems with card games, particularly the card balance and randomness issues. Glory to Rome, as much fun as it is, doesn't even try.

Battlestar Galactica takes primarily from the ameritrash side (long, lots of chrome, huge swings of luck resulting from the order cards come out, etc), but the result has clearly been polished by some euro sensibilities (much like Fury of Dracula, also by FFG). The traitor mechanic and the way players are forced to deal with a growing number of emergencies over the course of the game is very similar in theory to Shadows over Camelot, but the implementation is significantly more successful. The game system breeds suspicion and yet provides many means to keep the traitor's identity secret. Based on my single play, it seems like a winner. I do wish it was shorter, though.

Pandemic is a great, quick, euro style cooperative game. The way the deck reshuffles to amplify the danger is simple but very clever.

Space Alert captured my imagination with the promise of a cooperative version of Robo-Rally that plays in just 10 minutes. I played the intro scenario solo and I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet. I suspect we will be screwing up very badly because there is a lot to take in, and not a lot of time to take it in with... hopefully it will at least be funny! There are only 10 or so soundtracks that come with the game, but since the soundtrack primarily tells you when to draw from a deck of cards and what to do with them, the game should stay fresh and variable.

I currently have the new edition of Cosmic Encounter (the grand daddy of games where a basic system meets a deck of powers) in my sights. II suppose it's possible Magic the Gathering was inspired in part by this game. Regardless, it looks like a really fun negotiation/ war game. I'd also love to try Chinatown, since I'm still looking for a great deal-making game (though I'm the Boss! was quite a lot of fun a few weeks ago).

Ticket to Ride continues to be the most popular game to play with friends and family outside of WAGS, but Hollywood Blockbuster, Wings of War and Nexus Ops gave it a good run for it's money this year. Occasional wargaming with Kozure has been a great deal of fun and a nice change of pace.

I can only hope that 2009 is as good a year as 2008 was.

2008 Year end stats

2008 was another great year at WAGS.

Here's a rundown of what was played (I haven't included anything played outside of WAGS, even if it has been recorded in the blog). I'll talk a little bit more about my impressions in a future post.

9 plays
Race for the Galaxy (7 base game + 2 with The Gathering Storm expansion)

5 plays
Glory to Rome

4 plays
Agricola

3 plays
Imperial
In the Year of the Dragon
Pandemic
Perikles
Phoenicia
Ra
Railroad Tycoon (1 base game + 2 with Rails of Europe expansion)

2 plays
Blue Moon City
Colossal Arena
Diamant
Entdecker
Fairy Tale
Goa
Hollywood Blockbuster
I'm the Boss
In the Shadow of the emperor
Jumpgate (prototype)
Last Night on Earth
Pillars of the Earth
PowerGrid
Princes of Florence
Puerto Rico
Shogun
The Kaiser's Pirates
Transeuropa
Wings of War
Zooloretto

1 play
A Game of Thrones
Aladdin's Dragons
Atlantic Star
Battlestar Galactica
Beowulf
China
Citadels
Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!
Corn (prototype)
Die Macher
El Grande
For Sale!
Funny friends
High Society
Jungle Speed
Mall of Horror
Medici
Nexus Ops
Plunder
RoboRally
Santiago
Sid Meier's Civilization
Taj Mahal
Thebes
Tigris and Euphrates
To Court the King
Traders of Genoa
Transamerica
Vegas Showdown
Wildlife
Zombie (prototype)

So, there you have it. 110 sessions played of 61 different games. 31 of those different games played more than once, 30 played a single time.

The fact that Race for the Galaxy was the most played game doesn't surprise me. The fact that Glory to Rome beat out Agricola for #2 does.

The fact that El Grande, my favorite game, is only here once makes me sad. Luckily, just about my entire game collection got played (though not all at WAGS). Although I am aware that it's getting very big, there isn't anything really gathering too much dust.

Notably missing, however: Carcassonne/ Antike/ Fury of Dracula/ Tikal/ Through the Desert/ Duel of Ages

Even older skool (I'm the Boss!, Medici, Atlantic Star)

JayWowzer was back for a surprise visit as he wraps up some of his loose ends in Toronto. He offered to bring some games, and Luch picked a number of games we hadn't ever played before. Although I had never heard of Atlantic Star, the other two have long been on my list of games to try.

I'm the Boss!

We started the evening with I'm the Boss! This is a 15 year old game by Sid Sackson which has a lot of lovers and haters on BGG. Having played it, I can see why.

The board features a number of spaces, each featuring a deal that can be made. Players start the game as one of the wealthy characters that can get involved in the deals. An example of a deal would be "Cashman + either Dougherty or Goldman split 3 shares". Theoretically, that means that the player with the Cashman card would negotiate with either the player with the Dougherty or the Goldman card to decide how to split up the share and complete the deal. Problem is that everyone else wants to get in on the deal, too. I haven't yet mentioned that all players get a hand of cards, and that those cards contain events such as "Cashman goes on a trip". Cashman can't very well participate in a deal is she's off on a trip, now can she? Not coincidentally, other cards represent relatives and friends of the various characters that are more than willing to step in and make a deal in the place of a suddenly unavailable character. There are also cards that allow a player to steal a character card away from someone else, "I'm the Boss!" cards that change who is in the position to decide if a deal is made, and "Stop!" cards that cancel a card being played.

The way it usually plays out is that the acting player (the "boss") lands on a space and proposes a deal to one or more players. counter proposals are made, other players try to get in on the action by sending some of the characters involved on trips and suggesting their own related characters instead. If a deal seems particularly lucrative, someone else might take control of the turn to cash in, but of course someone else might play a "stop" card, or play a card that makes him the boss!

Sound chaotic? It is.

But it's fun, too. At first, we weren't sure how to handle the negotiations. It felt mean interrupting a deal in progress. There was a reluctance to participate in negotiations with someone that had displaced someone else. That soon passed. I should say, however, that in the first few deals there was more focus on trying to railroad the deal maker but as the game progressed it became much more about screwing the other participants in the deal OR becoming the boss.

We enjoyed the game so much we played twice in a row. You'll have to search long and hard through the blog to find another game in recent history that was played twice in a row. Shemp immediately declared he wanted to buy it.

Our first game was a learning experience. I wasn't really sure why being the boss was an advantage, I was missing opportunities to put my hat in the ring at the right time, etc. However, everyone else was likely having similar problems. On what turned out to be the last turn, I closed a really lucrative deal and it put me in first place. It felt a little random, but no matter.

In our second game, I played with a bit more purpose. I snagged three character cards and was using them to underbid everyone with the intention of getting small amounts from a lot of deals in the game (in this game, when you use your character card instead of cards from your hand, they are not used up so you can afford to bid lower). I felt like it was working ok, but I missed out on a really big deal and split my earnings with Luch a few too many times. He won.

Medici

Next up was Medici. This is a Knizia auction game that is commonly compared to Ra... now that I've played it I'm not surprised. Although the two games are substantially different, they are very similar in feel and weight.

In Medici, players are traders trying to accumulate wealth through shrewd acquisition of spices and other goods. Just like Ra, however, the theme is rather thin. The result is a somewhat mathematical set collection game, but fun in it's own way. Here, the tiles have two attributes: colour and value. Points are scored for leading in number of tiles in each colour and for having high total values of all tiles in the current set. After three rounds, the players with the most points wins. One interesting twist is that players bid for the lots using the points they've accumulated, so excellent set collecting can be undone by overbidding. Another interesting aspect is that the 5 tile maximum means that, for example, once you've taken a lot with three tiles you are excluded from subsequent 3 tile lots, since you only have two spaces left. This restriction was used to good effect on a number of occasions by players who would effectively block a player from getting a tile they needed by growing the lot to a bigger number of tiles than that player could take.

My first impression is that Medici is simpler to understand than Ra, largely because the scoring is easier to grasp. I'd also say it's a little less fun, because the "push your luck" element in Ra is more compelling in my mind. Still, it was a good game that I'd happily play any time.

Luch destroyed us in this game. He simultaneously had the highest lot totals and climbed colour ladders as fast as the rest of us. I didn't notice at the time, but he must have been auctioning fairly conservatively as well. Shemp and I had a few notable turns where we dramatically overbid (20!). I think I finished tied for third place, which was decent considering how badly I was trailing for most of the game.

Atlantic Star

The final game for the evening was Atlantic Star, a card game about completing cruise itineraries (apparently it is mechanically identical to Showmanager, a game about completing plays).

It's a pretty simple system. There are 5 different routes to try to complete, and each turn you choose a card that represents one leg of the trip from the 4 cards available. Each route can only be completed once by each player, and once it is completed it is added to a chart in order of VPs accumulated. The game system is such that all players will complete all their routes on the same turn, and that is when the game ends.

I don't know. It was fine, but not exceptional. There was some tension in hoping that cards that worked particularly well with your hand would make it to you without getting chosen by another player... but there isn't much that can be done about it either way. Completing routes early is an advantage because ties are broken by the first player to have completed the route.

Luch once again demolished us. He managed a number of high scoring routes, though I couldn't tell what he did that was different than what I was doing. Anyway, it was nice way to end the evening.

A particularly fun evening of gaming. JayWowzer, it is unfortunate we won't be seeing you too often in the future... It's been great gaming with you.

Cyclops. Cylon. Cyclon. (Battlestar Galactica, Zombie game prototype)

Just as one american guest Wagster, JayWowzer, slowly ends his visits to Canada, another comes along. Mvinarcik, a BGG user from Ohio( I think) joined us this week and brought along his copy of Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game with a traitor similar to Shadows over Camelot. Players play the various characters from the show as they try to work together to defend Galactica from the incoming cylons, hunger, demoralization, infighting, etc. However, some of the characters might be cylons working against them... suspicion ensues.

In my opinion, the game works much better than SoC did. There is much more going on, and the system builds in possibilities for subterfuge on the part of the hidden cylons. We made a few errors in our first game which led to an easier than normal game (we accidentally had fewer cylons than the game called for), but even though we won the game by the skin of our teeth. The whole package is very thematic and appears to be an excellent adaptation of the source material into a game. My only complaint is that the game is long at 2-3 hours, and from what I read it's unlikely to get shorter. Not a big deal, but it will limit how often it gets out.

I played Tyrol the deck engineer, Luch played Helo, Mvinarcik played Laura Roslin and Kozure played Lee Adama. After Helo came back from the colonies, he quickly took the title of Admiral from Lee. Clearly drunk with power, Helo then proceeded to steal the title of president from Roslin. We were obviously suspicious of him. Of course, until then Roslin had been doing nothing but drawing Quorum cards and doing nothing with them. We were obviously suspicious of her, too.

When Roslin suggested it was dangerous for all this power to be in the hands of one man, I didn't know who to vote for. They were both suspect in my book.

Lee and Tyrol where both fairly obviously on the side of the humans, because they were working tirelessly to defend and repair the ship. In fact, I came to the conclusion that trying to play the game without Tyrol on the human's side would be significantly more difficult. Unfortunately, as we approached Kobol Lee decided he liked the cylons after all and switched sides. Perched far away on a cylon baseship, Cylon lovin' Lee did his best to take us down to no avail. We made the jumps we needed and made it home.

We had very little space combat, and no cylons boarded the ship. I suspect our game was atypical, or that there is a substantial variability in the way things swing from game to game. That's a good thing in my book.

I had a good time with this one. I look forward to playing again in the future.

We finished up with a play of a prototype zombie game that Kozure is working on. Since it's a prototype, I won't talk about it much.

An evening at war (Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!, Wings of War)

This evening started with a healthy debate on the pros and cons of the current plans for a coalition governments in Canada during this economic crisis. I think we came to the conclusion that's it's a good thing. Also, that it's a bad thing. Glad we got that all cleared up.

With only four players this week, I took advantage of my pick and chose to try out Conflict of Heroes on the group. I've played a number of scenarios already, and already knew that I liked it as a two player wargame, but I wasn't sure how the 4 player scenarios would work out or if Shemp and Luch would like it.

We played the online scenario "Smolensk Breakout". It's a beginner's scenario for 2-4 players where the germans are hold up in a series of buildings trying to defend from the surrounding russians until their own reinforcements arrive. It's entirely infantry based, but there are cards in the mix. On first inspection, it seemed perfect for the occasion.

Mechanically, I'd say Shemp and Luch caught on very quickly. Shemp tamed up with Kozure as the attacking russians, and Luch and I played the defending germans. Once the concept of action points, command action points and opportunity actions are understood this game is a walk in the park rules-wise. For a wargame, that's an admirable achievement.

In the end, though, the experience wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. There was a couple of factors which led to this:

1) We were playing too slowly. The game is easy enough to play quickly, and so with a bit more experience with the system we should get there. If the scenario played out to 5 rounds in an hour, as the scenario suggests, the experience would have been much improved.
2) I was on the defending side, and I played too aggressively. By taking unnecessary risk, I lost some important units. As the game progressed, the lost units contributed to a somewhat boring losing proposition for the germans. There was little tension or sense of struggle for either side... the germans were going to lose, it was just a matter of how badly.
3) We messed up with the reinforcement schedule, placing all the russians on the board in the first round. This, of course, added to the lopsided scenario.

By the end of the third round, we called it a win for the russians. All of my units were eliminated, and Luch had maybe two left. It wasn't pretty.

I don't want to fault the scenario or the game. As I said, I think Luch and Shemp would be willing to give it another go. With a bit of experience under our belt, I still think it could be a really fun 4 player experience. We had a couple of questions regarding the 4 player game rules, but nothing too serious.

(as an aside: Having played a 5 scenarios at this point, I'm starting to feel the limitations of the system a little more than I had in the beginning. The loss of leaders, the integration of squads and their weapons into a single counter, etc all add up to a simpler experience than a slightly more complex game such as the Ln'L system. There was a moment in Wednesday's game where Shemp destroyed a machine gun squad, and I realized there was no way for him to use it. It was a little disappointing to notice that such small things mattered to me more than I initially expected).

We finished up with another round of Wings of War. As the Red Baron (again) I flew literal circles around Kozure's Spad. However, my shooting left something to be desire, and Shemp eventually joined the fray to finish me off. I could't defend myself and was the first player eliminated. Somehow, Luch recovered from my loss and managed to take down Shemp and Kozure. Victory for the forces of GOOD!!!" It was lots of fun.

Goin' Old Skool (El Grande, Tigris and Euphrates, Santiago)

Ah, El Grande. I missed you.

I was thinking the other day that it would be interesting to look up when was the last time I had played a few of the games that I claim are my "favorites". The result was disappointing.

El Grande, probably my favorite game, hadn't been played in nearly a year and a half!

Last week, I brought it along in the hopes that there would be time at the end of the evening, but no dice. Lucky for me, Shemp picked it this week along with Tigris and Euphrates and Santiago.

El Grande

Roughly 4 rounds into the game, Luch was far in the lead, Shemp was in second and Kozure and I were trailing. Luch made an offhanded remark that he was not in the mood to choose intrigue, and simultaneously mentioned that he normally loses at the game. It was a Seinfeld-ian moment, because we all kind of realized he was probably in the lead because he was playing the opposite of the way he normally does (there was a time when Luch was referred to as Hapi on this blog. This was a reference to the fact that He Always Picks Intrigue). Anyway, after the realization, he started choosing Intrigue more, and promptly lost the lead he had.

Shemp leapt into the lead. He managed a couple of very nice point grabs with single caballeros (the efficient, german one, no doubt). I was making a comeback, partly due to the backlash Shemp was receiving for being in first place... but would it be enough?

It was. The last scoring round was unpredictable, but when the dust settled red (me) was in the lead.

Tigris and Euphrates

T&E is my second most played game if you count BGG online games, but my actual face to face games have been few and far between. I love the game, but the analysis paralysis it brings to the table makes it well suited to turn based computer play. Face to face, and with two players much less familiar with the game than Shemp and I, the game played out quite differently. I suppose you could say that with the pressure of time, the game developed less optimally than it typically does online. I developed a long skinny kingdom in the north that I *never* would have built normally. I paid for it, too, because Shemp started disaster tiling in strategic locations to swing vast parts of my kingdom to his control. Kozure had retreated to a corner of the board where he was benefiting from a monument. Luch was the swing in the three way battle going on in the center of the board. Although I had a large presence on the board, my score was weak in blue. When the score was tallied, Shemp was the obvious winner and I was tied for last.

We finished with Santiago. Although we had difficulty remembering to distribute the new money every round, in general the game went smoothly. A large crop of green beans allowed me to win the game. Since Santiago is a difficult game to talk about, I won't really try. Fun, though.

I had a great time playing these older titles. There are certainly some lessons in recent game design that seem to have come in vogue after the release of El Grande and T&E.. notably variable turn order mechanics and downtime minimizing. These aren't things that bother me if the game is engrossing enough, as these ones are for me, but Kozure was visibly "antsy" throughout much of the evening.

Sorry, Kozure. I'll be picking El Grande again in the near future!

Shemp played himself so hard he's bleeding (Jumpgate, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm)

We played a second session of Kozure's prototype, Jumpgate. This was was the first time Shemp and Bharmer had tried it, and I think it was the first playtest with the full complement of 4 players. I was initially worried that there would be too much chaos with 4... many games where the board changes significantly between turns suffer a little bit in my opinion. There's often a feeling of lost control that I find unsatisfying. Luckily, it didn't really feel that way. Again, I'm not going to talk about it too much but it was fun playing it again.

One note: For posterity, I want to record that during this game Bharmer managed to "Bharmer", "Luch" and perform a "quarter Ono". It was quite remarkable.

We finished the evening with our second game of Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm.

I was dealt an excellent hand. My starting world was the Separatist Colony. In my hand were 3 alien cards that had a military bent, and a fourth card that boosted military. They complemented each other so well I was able to put down military/ alien worlds and developments effortlessly, grabbing a "first to have 3 alien cards" chit along the way. I only had a single production world, the damaged Alien Factory, but between it and another card I had played it gave me 6 cards a shot. I spent the second half of the game putting down military worlds for free and 6VP developments. I don't normally do well at Race, but this one was playing itself. I ended the game 20 points ahead of the second place player, Kozure. Yay me!

Aren't we popular? (Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm, Agricola)

This night's session neatly assembles the two hottest games for 2008; Race for the Galaxy and Agricola. What could make this impossibly hot duo any hotter? We were playing the just released Gathering Storm expansion for RftG!!!

Catch your breath. Pick your jaw up from the floor.

Okay, it's not nearly as exciting as that. Particularly for us, because unless I'm mistaken our collective opinion on both those games are : Good/ very good... but not great. Still, good/ very good adds up to a fine night's entertainment, so who am I to complain?

Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm

I find it intriguing that this expansion comes complete with an expanded storyline to further that of the initial game. Mostly, this is intriguing to me because when I play Race for the Galaxy, I am aware of very little theme. I would have gone so far as to describe the original setting as particularly generic. Still, I'm actually kind of glad that the game's designer uses a storyline to develop the game... it makes me feel like there is a purpose behind the development of the expansions even if I currently am not really "feeling" it.

In reality, it was the the addition of a fifth player and the solitaire "bot" that attracted me. The additional cards are nice, but I haven't played enough to really know the base deck that well so the "newness" of the cards will be lost on me (most of the cards are still pretty new to me). I wasn't even aware of the new goal tokens, so that was a nice surprise!

The game played just fine with 5 players. I was a little afraid that all the phases would get chosen every round, making things a little "samey" throughout. It didn't really happen. It's still the same game, but we did play with the goal tokens so it did feel a little different. The goals introduce two new ways to score points: The first is a series of 3 point goals that reward the player that reaches particular achievements first (the ones we drew this game were: First to play 3 Alien cards into their tableau, First to accumulate 5 victory points, First to play worlds that produce all of the possible goods and First to to play a "6" development). The second is a series of 5 point goals that reward the player with the most of something (the two we drew were: The most developments and the most military). For our first game, anyway, the goals felt pretty good. It added a sense of urgency to accomplish certain things before other players, therefore increasing player interaction, without dramatically changing the feel or flow of the game. Of course, the danger with this sort of thing is that the players who's goals naturally align with goals on the table are unfairly advantaged (for example, the most military is almost surely going to go to the player with New Sparta). Anyway, it's a concern but it didn't feel like a problem in our first game.

Having claimed two of the "first goals" and one of the "most" goals, and finished the game with a 12 card tableau (including one 6) I thought I stood a pretty good chance of winning. Alas, Bharmer not only beat us, he was way ahead!

Agricola

Bharmer hadn't played this with the cards before, so he asked that we include them. Kozure shuffled up the entire deck of "E" cards and that's what we used (I actually hadn't played with the whole "E" deck myself, so I wound up seeing a number of new cards too).

Since I always seem to go long on animals, I figured I would try to take advantage of a particular occupation I had which allowed me to pay a food for a ploughed field at the start of every round. Problem was that, just like last game, I got carried away and started trying to get way too many of my other cards on the table as well. Although I feel the cards I did play were at least all used, I'm not 100% sure they got me further than NOT playing them. Because I was trying to coordinate the effects of all these cards, I never actually got around to planting anything in my ever growing pastures! I also was particularly poor at accumulating food without the help of the animals and ovens I was used to. I didn't ever resort to begging, but on two occasions I was saved by lucky breaks (other players giving me food for my master forester's wood space). On the final turn, I had to consume the two vegetables I was holding onto to feed the family, and lost 3 points because of it.

I came in second with 30, but Kozure crushed us with 38.

Monsters, indeed. (Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!)

Kozure and I got together again for some wargaming.

We played the "Monsters" scenario from Conflict of Heroes, Awakening the Bear! I was the attacking Germans, Kozure was the defending Russians.

This scenario introduces vehicle combat to players, and as such features a large number of tanks, trucks and APCs. A large hill separates the germans from two smaller hills that they are trying to take... and of course that's where the Russians are waiting and hoping to make the most of their elevation advantage.

I was at first a little overwhelmed by the number of units I had under my control, and intimidated by the task of waltzing into a well defended area. Thankfully, Kozure advised me on a couple of things and helped me clear up what I should try to do. I split up a few small teams to circle the hill in two directions while my main force crashed into the waiting Russians.

After the first turn, I had accomplished little. I hadn't taken any of the minor checkpoints in the first hill, and was nowhere near getting to the major objectives.

In the second turn, I organized a fire group in the middle and started laying down smoke to make the approach a little less deadly (thanks again to the selfless Kozure, who realized that the strategic importance of smoke was lost on me). It worked pretty well... I was climbing onto the hill and gaining ground. The Russians had a positional advantage, but as they were much slower and less effective units it was only a question of time before I would take the hill. By the end of the second turn, I had reached one of the two intermediate checkpoints and the russians were on the run from the hill.

I believe until now we were losing units at roughly the same rate. It felt (to me) that we were losing a lot of units, and watching our CAPS dwindle permanently was getting a little scary, but at least it was happening to both of us.

By now, Kozure's reinforcements were entering the board. These were massive tanks, heavily armed and armoured. I'm not 100% sure that these are the "monsters" from the title, but that's the way it felt to me. He spread them to block the two routes around the hill and effectively made life very difficult. A couple of hidden units which sprung up in those areas didn't help either.

Unfortunately for Kozure, he chose to load up his truck with a couple of his units on the edge of a forest that was within firing range of my tanks and movement range of one of another of my tanks. After firing and damaging a couple of units, I played a card which allowed me two moves without possible reaction and engaged him in close combat. He was out of CAPS, and they were used, so he was powerless to stop me. All units were destroyed. Kozure seemed sleepy around this point, and although he noticeably perked up afterwards a lot of damage had been done.

Kozure suggested that I try to make a break for one of the objectives on the last turn of the game. I had a number of units within range so I decided to give it a try (besides, attacking the monster tanks was NOT likely to work). It meant having to run the units through well defended terrain one at a time in order to sap the defense. In the end, the numbers game worked in my favour and I was *just* able to make it.

I won the game, but it was a squeaker. Obviously, Kozure helped me a lot with his advice, so I can't really claim a real victory.

Don't get too comfortable, Kozure: soon, the master will become the apprentice.

The game was a lot of fun to play, and the flexible yet simple system continues to impress me. I really look forward to playing some more.

I.H.T.C.I.M.T. (Diamant x2, TransEuropa x2, Power Grid, TransAmerica)

This week's post will be short:

Games were played in an environment of giddiness that was extreme even by our measure. I.H.T.C.I.M.T. will live on forever.

We played 2 games of Diamant. Those were surely the deadliest caves in Diamant history! 4-5 disasters in a row happened more often than you'd think...

Then, we played TransEuropa twice. Can anything really be said of TransEuropa? Not really, except that Bharmer appears to be pretty good at it.

We then played a ridiculously fast 6 player game of Power Grid. We weren't trying to speed play or anything, but it still clocked in a well under 2 hours... maybe even 1.5 hours. We played on the U.S.A. map (in honour of the recent elections, I suppose). I started in the hideously expensive south west, and pretty much lost when I made that decision. No one else started there, but Luch and Shemp came knocking soon enough. That meant that the few possibilities I had to expand beyond the LA area were eaten up before I could get to them.

Kozure zoomed ahead in the networked city count, and somehow avoided the downsides. He won the game with only JayWowzer as a possible threat to his win.

Speaking of JayWowzer, it's possible this was his last hurrah with us (his project in Canada is nearly complete). If we don't cross paths again, it was a pleasure gaming with you!

(we finished off with a game of TransAmerica. As usual I did very badly. Bharmer didn't win this one, but he was awfully close)

Exploring deep fear (Mall of Horror, RoboRally, Funny Friends)

For our halloween session of WAGS, I was able to choose the games. I felt it was a good opportunity to explore a serious phobia many of us have... the fear of being TRAPPED.

1) You are trapped in a strange place, and hideous monsters are trying to kill you. Mall of Horror.
2) You are trapped in a deadly factory, and surrounded by insane machinery and robots programmed by buffoons. RoboRally.
3) You are trapped in a life that is going from bad to worse, and that's on a good day. Funny Friends.

Okay, so the game choices were a bit tongue in cheek, but whatever.

Mall of Horror

Luch took control of the parking lot early on and held it with an iron grasp. He accumulated enough weaponry to take out all the zombies that came along. Meanwhile, the rest of us jockeyed for safe haven as the zombies accumulated ominously at the doors of the shops. Shemp, in a disastrous turn halfway through, lost all his characters and played the rest of the game as the designated zombie placer. When it was down to four survivors, Kozure and Luch tied because their hot chicks survived. Luch had, of course, more cards in hand and won on the tie-breaker.

Side note: Bharmer announced that he got married recently (and, apparently, very stealthily). Luch gave him an equipment card he drew from the parking lot as a wedding present. Just wanted to point out that that present came from ALL of us.

RoboRally

We played the scenario called "Ball Lightning". It's a relatively short 1 board/ 4 flag scenario but the trick is that all cards MUST be programmed within 30 seconds (one turn of the sand timer) or cards are programmed at random. That's a very short period of time to plan, and everyone's execution suffered for it. Of course, RoboRally is funniest when plans don't go as they should, so I enjoyed myself as usual. The only problem is that I had specifically chosen it because it was listed as "short" in the scenario book, but unfortunately it took 1.5 hours. Going where you needed to go with so little time to plan was quite difficult, never mind the inherent chaos created by having 5 robots on the same playing field.

I laboriously made it to the first flag and then barely made it to the second flag before 10pm hit (in the real world) and we decided to pack up so we could play our last game. By then, it was clear that Luch was going to win... he was two spaces away from his fourth and final flag. Shemp just barely made it to 1. It was chaotic, hellish and funny. Exactly as I had hoped.

Funny Friends

It's been a long time since we've played this at WAGS. JayWowzer joined us to make it a sixsome(?) and we set about leading really pathetic lives together. For those keeping score. Luch, Chris and I where men; Shemp, Bharmer and JayWowzer were women.

I started out finding the church and becoming sad nobody loved me. Then, I fell in love on a school trip and I promptly cheated on her. The poetry I started writing led me to become an Elvis impersonator. Some may argue that that was the high point of my miserable life, because the later part saw one of my condoms break leading me into fatherhood and a relationship with Shemp that I tried REPEATEDLY to get out of (I cheated through a one night stand with Bharmer, turned to drugs, consented when Bharmer wanted me once again and eventually turned to drugs because alcohol wasn't enough to dull the pain of being in a secure marriage with Shemp.

When Kozure ended the game, I had just started a cult.

Other lives lead:

Kozure was a drinker, an eater, a frequenter of roadhouses and a workaholic. All that changed when he had a vision of St. Mary, joined the loser club and became an alcoholic. Lucky for him, he caught a bridal bouquet, met "Kevin" at a drive-in movie and became happily married, and a freak. (Is it obvious he won the game?)

Bharmer was a freak in puberty and had no friends. He eventually discovered BSW (online gaming site), became so fat he resorted to liposuction and then became a game designer (obviously, that was when I swooned and consented to sleep with him).

JayWowzer was in an accident as a youth, and turned to drugs, drinking, religion and crash diets to deal with the pain. Despite becoming a certified addict, his parties and church meetings allowed him to establish the large circle of friends he always dreamed of.

Luch's life was rather incoherent. He dabbled in the black market, bullied and got a girl pregnant before selling his body to science, getting into fights and being a male sperm raider(!). All this allowed him to quit smoking, write his memoirs and become a millionaire.

Some may say that Shemp's life was defined by him (her) starting a commune and checking into a looney bin, but I would argue he (she) existed primarily to keep me married and use me for sex in order to first achieve the common goal of being a sex maniac.

...

I'll be the first to admit that Funny Friends doesn't really work as well as it could mechanically, but it's not bad and we all laughed a lot while playing. Other groups I've played this with have loved it, so even though it's not full of strategery I still am happy to play it once in a while.

It's O.K. father Joseph, it's the next world that matters (Last Night on Earth: The Zombie game x2, Pandemic)

I have to admit, if you had told me last year that it would take until now to play Last Night on Earth again, I would have been surprised. It's not the type of game that we usually play, but what it's trying to do it does it well. I'm glad Shemp was in the Halloween spirit and chose it this week.

We chose to play the online scenario "We have to go back!". It's an unusual setup that requires all 6 boards, where the heroes need to go into a village to look for two bio-canisters that are required to cure the zombie plague.

Shemp and Luch started as the zombies while Kozure played Father Joseph and Billy and I played Sheriff Anderson and Jake Cartwright.

Things didn't start off well as both Luch and Shemp rolled the maximum number of starting zombies AND they started with an "overrun" token on on of the buildings that potentially had a biocanister (overrun buildings can't be entered). We set about searching the other potential sites. Lucky for us, they were elsewhere and we managed to both find and escape with the two before sundown. I don't exactly recall, but I think we managed to do it without any casualties.

The game went quite quickly, so we played again. This time, Kozure and I played the zombies, Luch was Johnny and Becky and Shemp was Jenny and Sally.

As the zombies, we didn't start with nearly as many zombies as the Luch and Shemp did but we did have one major advantage... when we played the heroes THEY MOVED FASTER THAN THE ZOMBIES DID. It was very bizarre, but Luch and Shemp had the slowest moving heroes I've ever seen. Rolling higher than 1 or 2 was exceptional, it seemed. Oh, and then it rained, so they moved slower still. The zombies didn't shamble once, but they did manage to surround and then chomp on the heroes quite frequently. Becky ran around with an infection of some sort that would make her a zombie if she got hit again, and then Johnny and becky bit the dust and became zombie heroes. There was some fancy maneuvering on the part of team "Go Girl!", with a highly successful dynamite explosion being particularly effective, but ultimately they ran out of time and lost. Shemp was visibly perturbed when Luch's replacement hero Jake Cartwright spent a long time searching for items just as time was running out, but Jake did come out swinging and nearly saved the day (it came down to one roll against my zombie, and I got a 6). The zombies did not go hungry. There was no cure.

We closed the evening with a game of Pandemic. We decided that the black cubes were areas of zombie infestation, and that we were now witnessing on a macro scale the effect of the zombie plague we had just battled in Last Night on Earth (the micro scale).

We played at medium difficulty (5 epidemic cards) despite the fact that Shemp hadn't played before. We worked together pretty well, and things seemed very doable for most of the game. Our biggest problem was that we didn't have the medic, but I was playing the logistics character and discovered that the ability to move other players on my turn was very valuable indeed.

The early scares were zombie infestations, but yellow fever was equally problematic. A few turns in, scarlett fever showed up in spades throughout asia and much of our resources were consumed putting out that fire. We had discovered two of the cures, and had what we needed to cure the last two if the game could just get to me one last time (Luch had cure #3, and I had cure #4). As is often the case in Pandemic, the we ran out of time just before we could wrap it up. A final epidemic in Johannesburg finished us off.

Apparently, zombies should not have been our primary concern.

No. We weren't mooning you. (Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!)

Kozure and I got together for some extra-WAGSial affairs and played a recent wargame called Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear!.

It interested me because of three main reasons:

#1 It was said to be simple, without being simplistic.
#2 It played 1-4 players
#3 Scenarios are short (1-2 hours)

In wargames, those three characteristics are hard to find in one system. Add the fact that it is a very nice package (large counters, mounted maps, very nice box art) and I was sold.

Note: Over at BGG, this is the wargame equivalent of Agricola at the moment (in other words, the hype machine is in overdrive, and it has shot up the charts to become the #1 wargame almost instantly). Considering I was somewhat disappointed in Agricola, how did CoH fare? Happily, much better.

I won't get into the details of the system, but I think I'd describe it as a wargame design with the discipline of a euro design. The designer has clearly spent enormous effort trying to make a clean, easy playing game system that still manages to give players a fun, immersive and interesting tactical experience.

Each player has a number of units under their command (interestingly, this first set only includes German and Russian units). The game system revolves around a point system which successfully creates a very fluid environment (similar to Tikal, where 10 points are spent doing a variety of actions, COH gives each unit 7 points). The stroke of genius, in my opinion, is the inclusion of "Command" points which are a central reserve that can be used as the player sees fit (to add to fire power, to activate units that are already spent, to organize separate units into an organized group, etc). This simulates a lot of leadership, planning, luck, etc that would often be modeled by a number of additional rules, but with little to no complexity. Opponents each take one small action at a time, keeping downtime to a minimum.

The second stroke of genius is the way damage is represented. If a unit is hit, it is either eliminated or it draws a token and place it on the unit. If a unit with a token is hit again, it is eliminated. The great part is that the tokens have a variety of effects, such as "panic", "pinned", "suppressed", etc. These are kept hidden, and affect the unit in ways you would expect (slow/ eliminate movement, hamper fire, etc). Thing is, you don't know what happened to the enemy you just fired at. The fog of war it creates is interesting, and again there are nearly zero rules required for all this.

There are also cards in some scenarios which further add to the strategy and fog of war for the game. All in all, it's very difficult to fall back on "gamey" tactics like waiting for opponent's units to be used so you can run past them with impunity. Sure, you can try it, but your opponent might use its Command reserve points to jostle a spent unit back to action, or a card might get played which allows some sort of counter-measure you hadn't anticipated. It works very well.

The first scenario involves a couple of units converging on a central crossroad. The russians are defending a supply route, I believe. It's a good scenario to learn the basics of the system, but otherwise I don't see myself coming back to it very often.
Kozure capitalized on his superior knowledge of squad level combat and took me out. I don't think I eliminated a single one of his units!

The second scenario introduces hidden units, cards and group actions. It involves the germans trying to take a bunker and spot a section of road behind it. THIS scenario was a lot of fun.

As the germans, I thought thing were stacked in my favour. The scenario had me set up on a road leading to the bunker. I had three sets of machine guns and riflemen, wereas the russians had few visible units. I knew two of his units were hidden, but I would deal with that later...

Kozure wins initiative and immediately fires on my frontmost units. They are all hit and go scurrying in the forest for cover. That didn't go well.

After rallying the units, I sent a small force to the right and a larger force to the left. I discover that a large stack of machine guns and riflemen puts out a hell of a lot of bullets. Kozure, surprised by the power of my attack, lost a unit fairly quickly. Unfortunately, my large stack of units walked right up to one of the hidden units and suffered badly at the hands of close combat. I did take them out, and I did manage to rally all but one of my units. Things were looking good. Kozure vacated the bunker, but chose to hide the units.

Things then started to go very badly for me. I came to realize how dangerous stacking units can be as I walked up to a second hidden unit (the former bunker force). I was destroyed. My last surviving unit had a "panicked" damage token on it, which lowers the front defensive rating but actually increases the rear defensive rating (I guess, in their panic, they spend a lot of time looking behind them). For this reason, it was in my best interest to put my rear towards Kozure's oncoming units. Kozure was puzzled by my move, and thought I was mooning him.

Simultaneously, the last hidden unit took out the smaller force I had sent out earlier.

I lost. I'll be more careful about those hidden units next time.

Anyway, the combination of cards, flexible point allocation and hidden damage tokens created an environment of uncertainty that I found quite exciting. The simplicity of the rules allowed us to spend more time playing, and less time looking up rules. Obviously, a certain amount of abstraction is inherent in a system that is this streamlined but I'll take playability over historical accuracy any day of the week. Great game, and exactly what I was looking for!

Hyperspace, baby! Yeah! (Jumpgate)

We were down to three this week (of note, Shemp couldn't attend because of an "explosion of insanity" at his place).

This will be very short, due to the fact that we only played a couple of rounds of a game Kozure has designed for a local contest. I'm not sure to what point the details are under NDA.

I WILL say it's called Jumpgate, and that it's a good game. Kozure has remarkable talent for designing games of this type, and always surprises with components that are better than homebrew prototypes should have.

Here's hoping our constructive criticism wasn't too hard on him, and that the game is a success in the competition!

The peasants are NOT happy (Glory to Rome, Shogun)

Bharmer ended his long WAGS absence by inviting us to his boss' place while he was house sitting. Unfortunately, Kozure strangely felt that a lecture by "some guy" (Umberto Eco) was a more worthwhile use of his time than gaming. Clearly, he's lost it.
JayWowzer almost attended as well. However, I told him we were playing Glory to Rome again and then he didn't come. Hmmm.

Glory to Rome

Shemp revealed to the group that somehow, through his various absences, he has managed to:

a) Play Race to the Galaxy only once
b) Never play San Juan
c) Never play Glory to Rome

I was kind of startled by that information. Funny how that can happen.

I was determined not to let the vault bonuses elude me this game. Unfortunately, every one else felt the same. I built the building that let me take the merchant card from the deck instead of the pool, and figured this would work well if I could get a couple of merchants as clients. I then tried all game to do that, and failed miserably. Luch sat to my right, and he would scoop every merchant card from the pool before it would get to my turn (he was collecting stone and merchants). I wasn't doing badly, but it was far from a well oiled machine.

Luch built the forum, which gives an instant win if the player gets one of each client. Kozure tried this once before, but we blocked the pipeline by not allowing any merchants into the pool. Unfortunately, Luch had wisely picked up all the tricky clients before building the forum. All he needed was a laborer and a craftsman, and there was about eight of each in the pool already. We were powerless to stop him.

(well, Bharmer could have completed the Catacombs to end the game, though I don't think it would have given him the win so there wasn't much point).

Another fun session, and another that felt completely different from the others we've played. The variability of the game is impressive.

Shogun

We tried an advanced setup system along with the advanced board this time. While I like the way the advanced board makes the borders to the different regions less defined, the new setup routine felt like a step backwards. We were drawing two province cards and picking one, with the additional option of drawing a face down card if neither face up choice was any good. Honestly, with just two cards to pick from the setup was a crapshoot. I think at least three cards should be used for this system to yield anything much more coherent than a standard RISK setup.

In the west, Luch and I were at odds from the start. Meanwhile, Shemp and Bharmer coexisted somewhat more peacefully in the east. We were having rather significant battles pretty early on, and many were resulting in ties. In Shogun, when players tie, both players lose the region... a big blow to all involved. The odds are against ties happening. Then again, the odds are against most of the combat results for the evening.

Love or hate the cube tower, it does make things unpredictable. Also, the green peasant cubes add further uncertainty. It felt like the peasants were on a rampage, however. Odds meant very little. You could dump 8 cubes of your colour against 2 peasant cubes, and still lose the fight. The peasants were not happy.

I placed a large number of buildings early, and got a good lead to show for it at the end of the first year. Unfortunately, I went broke doing it, and never really managed to get out of that hole. I started losing important territories to Luch, and played much of the second year with only 6-7 territories (amazing how difficult it is to plan your actions when you don't have enough territory cards to pick them with!). I did win, but it was by a single point. A single extra round and I probably would have been left in the dust, considering how badly I was bleeding. Glad it didn't happen.

Is there an option to play three years in Shogun? I'm curious how that would change the game

Best Laid Plans of Mice and CONAN (Imperial, Power Grid... sorta)

When speaking of analysis paralysis in boardgames, the compliment must be paid to Ouch that he is the one least frequently affected.

We have a term in our group for choosing actions/moves with a minimum of thought; to act on instinct and gut feeling rather than belaboured machinations:

The term we use is "Conan Brain" or "Conan Play".

Like the loinclothed, bulgy barbarian of Ron E. Howard's creation, Conan brain-based play is direct, straightforward and accomplished with a minimum of fuss. It is often helped by an egg-timer.

This week, Ouch (as dictator) declared that we would attempt to play two games at once with Conan brain-style play. The games he chose were Power Grid and Imperial. I'll pause a moment for all the alarmed gasps from hardcore hobby gamers to die down.

The WAGSters Code (currently unwritten) demands that we try as gamely (pun intended) as possible to follow the dictat of the dictator. So, we gamely set up both Power Grid and Imperial adjacent to each other on the same table and gave it a shot.

We abandoned the concept after one turn. Neither game lends itself well to long pauses between turns - Power Grid in particular requires player interaction from every player in every phase. Imperial is only somewhat better, given the nature of the investor card and keeping track of bonds. We decided that this concept of simultaneous play, while interesting as a thought exercise, might be better conducted in practice with games that are more suitable - games that have long periods of downtime while one player decides actions and the others are doing nothing.

The idea of simultaneous play is not without merit. Certainly it would give our brains a good work out. We should attempt it again in the future with games that are famous for downtime - Tikal, perhaps, maybe paired with multi-player wargame like Shogun or Conquest of the Empire.

In any case, we played a relatively rapid game of Imperial. I did my best to think with Conan Brain. I had originally planned to try a three power strategy of trying to get Germany, England and Russia, but somewhere along the line I lost any chance of England and ended up with a bumper crop of Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Using both nations together to split up the Balkans, Greece and Turkey guarantees a huge development base, and their position on the map allows for simple, one front wars, unlike Germany, which often gets sandwiched between France and Russia (occasionally Italy) .

I made one attempt at taking over England but was promptly slapped down, so I shrugged and gobbled up Russian and Austria-Hungarian bonds like they were hotcakes. Ouch and Shemp seemed content to steal countries from each other, so aside from a pre-emptive invasion of Northern Italy (which they both held bonds for), I did very little but build up my two empires and snatch small snacking portions (Sweden, North Sea, Baltic) from England and Germany when I could.

By the time they noticed that I had two powerhouse empires which weren't constantly attacking each other and made a play for higher bonds to wrest control from me, I had enough capital to buy 50%+ of the available bonds in both nations and cement my control. I then made threatening overtures toward Germany (I had no German bond) and Italy, which kept things hopping on my warfronts, while simultaneously taxing and building factories as often as possible.

Although I had pulled fairly far ahead in the endgame both Ouch and Shemp made a creditable effort to catch up. I think the final scores were 181 for Kozure, ~155 for Shemp and ~120 (?) for Ouch. I ended the game with Russian pegging the 25 power point x5 spot, with a lot of nations still languishing in the x2 range.

Strangely, this ended up being almost the opposite of my intended "three separated nations with a smattering of other investments strategy".

I'm liking Imperial more and more with each play. It may displace Power Grid and Tikal from my number 2 and 3 positions in my favourite Euro game rankings. I appreciate that the turn order is mutable but straightforward, and even the initial starting player is determined by bid. I also enjoy the limited wargame nature of the game combined with the economic aspect.

This also marked the first time I have destroyed a factory during an invasion of Italy. In this case, both my opponents several held bonds in Italy, while I only owned a 1 or a 2. As destruction of a factory can slow down the power point progress of a nation, it can be very useful to use against nations where you have no investment.

Mommy, let's have a corn wash! (In the Shadow of the Emperor, Blue Moon City)

Ignoring the blog title is probably best.

This is likely my last post until Bharmer returns, because I'll be away next week. I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to play some four player games and chose In the Shadow of the Emperor, Blue Moon City, Pandemic and Wings of War. ItSotE took much longer than I expected, so neither Pandemic or Wings of War made it to the table.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

I'm not sure what I expected from this game, but this wasn't it. For whatever reason, I thought this was going to be a dry, short, abstract middleweight euro. It's not that.

(of course, I shouldn't have expected that Kozure would purchase a game of that description. Those are typically more my thing)

In fact, it's a fairly complex but thematically engaging game. A euro for sure, and abstract enough, but the mechanics work with the subject matter. It's a political struggle that starts in the individual regions of germany and ultimately leads to the choice of emperor for the Holy Roman Empire. A clever series of mechanics which see your nobles age and marry is well integrated and makes it even less likely that you will feel like you are just pushing abstract pieces around a gameboard for victory points.

Despite the fact that the game only lasts through 5 elections, it goes on for quite a while. Our game took 2.5 hours, although it didn't really feel like it. It's a zero luck game, so there is a lot of pondering going on.

The game reminded me somewhat of Agricola (though the rest of the group likened it more to Wallace's Way Out West). In a weird twist of fate, as I was playing the game someone else wrote this at the Toa of Gaming blog: What are the odds of two people making that same observation over a 4 year old game at the same time? Weird. Anyway, my comparison boils down the the action selection mechanism, which feels a lot like Agricola to me (though this game has the added benefit of marrying the efficiency game with area control board play to give it a better sense of interaction).

As an aside, "worker placement" as a named mechanism has been bugging me for a while because it doesn't really feel like an independent mechanic (in the same way that "area control", the "rondel", "Role selection" are distinct from each other). Isn't worker placement simply inverted role selection? Is the distinction that these games typically allow you to increase the number of roles you can take on?

I tried pretty hard early on to take on Shemp and get elected as Emperor right away. Unfortunately, I picked the wrong rival... he had played before (and won). I was barely treading water with my understanding of the intertwined mechanisms at work. He outsmarted me at every turn and I wasted round after round accomplishing very little. He won again, with Luch a relatively close second, Kozure third and me dead last.

In retrospect, I realize I severely undervalued the towers (which is the equivalent of not growing your family in Agricola) and tried too hard to stay in control of the regions I already possessed (which garners no victory points). Lesson learned.

I wasn't totally enamored with the game. I'm not sure if it was my mood, or my preconceived notion of playing several quicker/ simpler games that evening. Still, it's a very intriguing game and will probably get better with familiarity. I just hope the analysis paralysis doesn't become too much of a problem and diminishes with experience rather than worsen.

Blue Moon City

We finished up with Blue Moon City. It's a game I enjoy very much, and is pretty much a poster boy for the type of game I expected In the Shadow of the Emperor would be: relatively short, mechanically engaging, paper thin theme.

I didn't play particularly well. Luch won and I was still several turns away from placing my last cube. Normally, this is a pretty tight game, but in this match I wasn't even close!

Pandemic and Wings of War will have to wait. Until next time, wash your cars with corn!

Every plane is a little different. One's just right for you! (A Game of Thrones, Wings of War)

Shemp was an indecisive dictator this week, so we brought a number of games to choose from ("we'll bring the games we damn well please", I believe, was the wording). He picked Kozure's A Game of Thrones, a game I've been trying unsuccessfully to get to the table for months... so no complaints here. We were one player short of the ideal 5, but we aren't good enough at the game to tell the difference yet.

A Game of Thrones

In order to avoid getting the same starting setup as last game, we chose the factions randomly instead of getting our traditional colours. I ended up with white (House Stark), Shemp was red (House Lannister), Kozure was yellow (House Baratheon) and Luch was green (House Tyrell).

House Stark is this game's version of Russia. Huge northern territory, mostly empty. It looks like a good starting position, because there is lots of land to expand to unchallenged. The downside, however, is that it's very hard to defend.

Very early in the game, Kozure gave me an ultimatum to exit the eastern sea. Outnumbered, I headed north. Once north, I realized there was no where left to go. Later on, when Kozure came followed me, I had nowhere left to go and was eliminated from the sea. My eastern border was wide open for attack, and there wasn't much I could do about it.

Problem was, to the south Shemp was also creeping towards me. We struck a deal to divide the regions a particular way, and then out of the blue Luch comes and takes one of mine by sea. Luckily, Shemp sank his ships which allowed my attacks on his units to eliminate rather than allow retreat. There was substantial border tension between myself and Shemp after that, as it was clear we were lining up to attack. I made what I thought was a shrewd move: Shemp had a considerable force (3 knights) in a region I wanted. He prepared for my attack, but instead I defeated the region to the south, cutting off any possibility of retreat when I would eventually turn my attention to the knights. It didn't work, though, because I passed up an opportunity to attack at bad odds and wound up having to defend at impossible ones instead. It was a stupid move on my part. Oh well.

The real problem, however, was that all this distracted us all from the real threat: Kozure was expanding unchecked. Before we knew it, he won. Did I mention that he waltzed in and took my starting province from under my nose? I knew that undefended border would come back to haunt me...

A Game of Thrones is a very good game. Even though there are large swings of luck due to the events that come up, they affect all players equally. In fact, it's biggest impact seems to be to make each session different (last game was characterized by a total lack of supply, whereas this one had one muster all game... keeping unit count low.) Another odd thing: The barbarians attack 2-3 times at 0 strength!

It had been nearly two years since we last played. I think we'll be playing again next week. Looking forward to it.

Wings of War

We had about 20 minutes left, and Shemp indulged me by picking Wings of War. I recently acquired a number of the miniatures and the Burning Drachens set.

As far as finding a wargame which is easy, attractive and fun enough to play with non-wargamers, this one hits it out of the park. When I first brought it home, I played a game with my 5 year old son. We had a great time, and I bought a few more miniatures a few days later.

Gameplay couldn't be simpler. Each plane has a deck of cards representing areal maneuvers (hard turn right, straight, swoop to the left, etc). Each deck is different and approximates the flying characteristics of the the real plane.

- Choose three maneuvers and places them face down on the table.
- Simultaneously reveal them one at a time.
- For each card, line up the "start point" identified on the card with your miniature, then pick it up and set it down at the end of the flight path symbol.
- If a plane is within shooting range of another plane, the targeted player draws a card from a damage deck and keeps the result secret.
- Once the total adds up to the damage capacity of the plane, it's shot down.

That's it. It all comes down to a 20-30 minute session of maneuvering around the table, trying to line up shots and avoid getting hit in return. It's fast and fun, and looks really nice. The game ships with a large number of optional rules for special damage, altitude, zeppelins, tailing, etc. Of these, we only played with a few of the special damage types (fire, gun jams and damaged rudders). It took about 1.5 minutes to explain the rules and we were dogfighting.

I played the red baron in his signature red Fokker DR.I. Shemp joined me as the german Albatros D.Va. Luch and Kozure teamed up with the SPAD XIII and the Sopwith Camel, respectively.

Well, the Fokker lived up it's reputation as a fragile but agile plane... but the Red Baron did not live up to his reputation as a pilot capable of flying it. I was shot down by the Kozure's Sopwith rather quickly (I drew a 5, a 4, a 3 and a 1). Shemp managed to last a while longer, but ultimately succumbed to a concerted attack by the good guys (he drew a ton of zeros and ones and therefore managed to survive several hails of bullets).

I think it went over quite well. I'm not typically into miniatures because they often end up being clunky and complicated. I'm happy to say that Wings of War is an exception, and I like it very much. I'd like to try a balloon busting scenario next time, maybe with more/ newer planes.

Now, I just have to figure out how to store these things...

The Game That Never Ends.

toothpastefordinner.com

On Winning (Glory to Rome, Agricola, Race for the Galaxy)

One thing that this blog doesn't really focus on is who wins and "winning strategies". I think that is largely due to the fact that we're a pretty laid-back group and it's not really the main intent of our play - that is, although we do our best and definitely are competitive, we're not aggressively (or ridiculously) so. I've read a lot of horror stories on BGG and even witnessed a few games playing with other people or groups where it was obvious that winning was the main goal of a particular player. I've seen people storm away from a gaming table; I've seen Paris Hilton-level pouts and sulks and seriously obnoxious rules-lawyers, know-it-alls and "gotta-wins".

Generally speaking, and in fact with probably 97% of boardgamers, they're nice, well-balanced people. That percentage may be a little lower with RPGers (not to knock RPGers, since I am one, but the weirdness factor definitely is a little higher in that social circle).

I do want to comment on what a pleasure it is to play with this gaming group. It's one of the highlights of my week and I always look forward to it, as much as a day or two beforehand. Agent Easy, Bharmer, our occasional visitor Jaywowzer, Ouch, and Shemp are all pleasant opponents and good friends.

That said, (and at the risk of sounding obnoxious) it does feel awfully good to win all three games in an game night. I guess the victory is somewhat sweeter knowing that you're up against decent opponents and often coming in a close second in some tight games the previous three evenings I've attended.

The first game of the evening was Glory to Rome, one of the triumvirate of similar card-based resource optimization games started by San Juan and continued by Race for the Galaxy. I like the theme and general mechanics of this game, but I still have trouble with the powers of some of the building cards, which occasionally seem unbalanced/overpowered or somewhat... I don't know the best word... arbitrary?

The Catacombs - for example. A card which ends the game at the whim of the builder? Or the Forum, which wins the game regardless of influence if you have one of each clientèle (not a difficult situation, with some combos - like the one which lets you perform a patron action for each influence on completion of the building). Another, whose name I've forgotten, lets you perform an action twice for each of your clientèle if you lead or follow an action. The Ludus Magna (allows client Merchants to act as any other occupation) in combination with a few Merchant clients can also be a killer combination. Similarly, the Temple, although difficult to build, can give an amazing advantage to a player (nine card hand!).

The game seems more interesting than San Juan, but simultaneously less balanced, so I'm not sure if one is better than the other as a game design. Given the choice, I'd still pick Glory to Rome, but San Juan is probably a "tighter" design. Glory to Rome also lacks one outstanding characteristic of its two brethren games, brevity.

Since I had missed out on vaulting materials in previous plays, I made sure I did so about mid-way through the game, instead of scrambling at the end. I also built a temple early on as my first building, which helped immensely when I did the thinker action. The combo of decent buildings with a lot of marble and brick in the vault put me well in the lead. It also helped that Jaywowzer was struggling a little with the rules, so his usually savvy play wasn't interfering with my nefarious plans.

Agricola is also a somewhat overlong game in which the deal of certain cards (occupations and minor improvements) singly or in combination can give a player a secret and fairly distinct advantage. This is a different criticism than the imbalance of individual cards which are available to everyone as in Glory to Rome. Inasmuch as that is true, you can still lose with poor play even with the best of card combinations. I think (though I must have at least ten or more plays of the basic game to be sure) that the best way to play this game would be to have a common pool of available occupations and minor improvements dealt at the beginning, with players using coloured markers to indicate which have been purchased. This way, each player has the same opportunity to use and benefit from the same occupations and minor improvements, and the replay value is retained through the cycling of cards (the family game, though interesting and good as a learning tool, does seem like it would become repetitive after a dozen plays).

I pursued my usual strategy of a balanced approach with a slight focus on planting/sowing. This time I did manage to get more animals earlier in the game, which helped with feeding my family and with end-game scoring. Once again, however, I lost out on a fifth family member and a five room house. I also have yet to upgrade to a stone house in this game. I had actually been trying for a build strategy this time around, since I had the master builder card in my hand, but it didn't pan out.

A nice combo appeared for me in the form of the berry picker, mushroom picker, and reed gatherer occupations plus the basket minor improvements. They are relatively short term gain occupations, but can make the difference between begging and not begging when grabbing a lot of wood.

I think a lot of what helped me to victory is managing a third family member early on. The number of extra actions helped me a lot.

As happy as I was with my play, I still only managed a very narrow victory over Agent Easy with 38 points. Easy was super-close with 37, as was Jaywowzer with 34 and Ouch managed one of his higher scores in the game, 24. Ouch did get some nice card combos initially (master baker, potato dibber, grocer(?) and something else) but didn't quite translate them into a higher score, unfortunately.

Race for the Galaxy continues to be one of my more enjoyed light euros. It's quick, competitive and well-themed. One drawback is that it is a less interactive game than Glory to Rome (while still being more interactive than San Juan) which does lend a sense of not really having to pay much attention to the gameplay of others. That's a dangerous habit to fall into, though, because failure to notice strategies, especially produce/consume timing, can make or break a winning bid.

I drew New Sparta, but had a dearth of hostile worlds, so I had to pursue a mixed economy strategy initially. Early play of the Interstellar Bank bankrolled a lot of later purchases and once I did start getting military power in combination with the usual New Galactic Order (I think that's the one, the one with VPs for military power), I was feeling good about my chances. Jaywowzer ended the game a little earlier than I expected, though, with the play of his twelfth tableau card. Ouch and I tied for VPs with 28 apiece, but I squeaked the win with one more card in hand and one more resource in my tableau. Jaywowzer was in the 24-26 range (I've forgotten) and I believe that Easy was in the 20-24 range.

So, I won Race for the Galaxy, but narrowly. Hat Trick... woo hoo! USA! USA! USA!

I'll be quiet now.

Yum. Aminals. (Agricola, Colossal Arena x2)

Bharmer is out for the month, so we were four.

Luch chose an animal theme (sorry, aminal), and asked that we lead with Agricola. We set up outside in Kozure's backyard and launched into our first advanced game as a group (it eventually started raining, so we ended inside)

Note to self: Agricola is a difficult game to bring inside quickly when it starts raining.

From my hand, I saw a number of cards which had great potential. Of note, I had a card which let me instantly go from 5 rooms to 6 for free and another which let me get a free stone room. I figured I'd try to build a seven stone room mansion on my little farm!

Trouble is, I got distracted by the pastor card which gave me a ton of goods if i could only manage to be the last player with only two rooms. Considering our last game saw everyone go to three rather quickly, I didn't think it would be too difficult. Unfortunately for me, the cards had a distracting effect on everyone else and the desire to play minor improvements and occupations led to a slower than usual path to a bigger house. Shemp, in particular, was sticking to two rooms forever. By the time I decided I couldn't wait any longer, it was already too late to achieve my goal. I did still manage 6 stone rooms, but the seven would have taken another 2-3 actions to gather the necessary goods for the minor improvement. Meanwhile, I managed a rather lucrative animal based farm which kept my family comfortably fed throughout the game. In the end, despite losing several points for empty pastures and a complete lack of plowed fields, corn or vegetables I snuck past Kozure for the win.

With four players, the game feels significantly less constricted than with five. Of course, as I mentioned earlier the cards were distracting us from the basic actions, so that may have had a lot to do with this feeling (in fact, 50% of our scores were lower with the cards than without, so clearly they take some getting used to).

I think the addition of the advanced game is a necessary thing to keep Agricola fresh, so the added complexity is worth it in the long run. The family game is more or less scripted (not to say that there aren't multiple workable strategies within that framework, just that much of the grain of the gameplay will need to follow the same basic order every game). The cards I've played with don't fundamentally change much that is going on, but it does encourage you to see the value of things differently. It also makes predicting other player's moves more difficult (in a good way).

Shemp and Luch asked that we go back to the family game a few times so that they can get a better grasp of the fundamentals, so we are unlikely to play with the cards for a while. Agricola continues to be a fun game that keeps me thinking, but like Shemp said "It's a good game, but I don't really understand all the love it's getting on BGG"

We finished up the evening with two games of Colossal Arena. We even played with the character powers! Luch proved to be quite the shark in this betting match and won both games. I'm happy to say that both games went much quicker than other games of this we've played and therefore felt much better. If we can keep the length to +/- half an hour, it's a fine game.

Games with rules and components (Entdecker, Pillars of the Earth, Fairy Tale)

Kozure was camping, so it was a foursome.

Entdecker

Before Shemp arrived, we started with Entdecker, a game we pretty much massacred the rules to last time. What is it about Teuber games, anyway?... We keep mangling the rules to Domaine as well (I should say "kept", as we haven't played Domaine in a really long time... hmmm... we should fix that)

We managed to correctly play the exploration rules, and we filled in the areas correctly. Unfortunately, we completely screwed up the in game scoring because we were only giving points to the first place player! Lucky for us, we noticed well before the game was over and gave back the points to the players who should have received them. I'm pretty sure we got it right, too.

The starting scenario we used had the 4 bonus tiles set up in 2 pairs on either side of a wall of water. Obviously, it was a race to set up two huge, high scoring islands. I snagged the first one, but I poured a lot of effort into it and Bharmer and Luch both received points for it. Luch and Bharmer worked together to develop and close the second island, and I got shut out. Bharmer was way out front in points, so I started closing lots of little islands to get my scouts onto the village tracks and tried to secure a couple of high scoring huts. In the end, it all came down to a single tile draw... if I could flip a tile that closed the second last space on the board, I would be able to send the last scout I needed to secure a pivotal majority. If the tile I drew didn't fit, Bharmer would do it. I got the tile I needed, and won the game by a slim margin. It was close all around (Luch, who was behind most of the game, got a lot of points off the scouts and nearly overtook us).

Entdecker and Domaine actually share a similar space for me in the game landscape. I really enjoy both, but they are somehow unspectacular. Between the two, Domaine is the tighter game, but the late land grab that usually determines the winner is a big problem. If Entdecker was a little shorter, and if it did a little more to differentiate itself from other exploration games (like the superior Tikal), I'd probably want to play it more often. The luck involved may rub some the wrong way, but it fits the theme well in my opinion.

Anyway, I don't intend on trading it or anything. It' a fun game to play once in a while.

Pillars of the Earth

The latest "new" and/or "hot" game mechanic is "worker placement". It was featured in last year's Caylus (which I've never played) and in this year's phenomenon Agricola. Pillars of the Earth was released between those two, features similar gameplay mechanics and has been well received in it's own right.

If you watch Oprah, or if (like me) you have a spouse that does, you know that Pillars is based on a novel that somehow involves the building of a cathedral. Bharmer has read the book but claims not to watch Oprah. Whatever, I have my eye on him. Anyway, here the cathedral simply acts as an elaborate timer: after each round one section of the cathedral is added. When the cathedral is complete, the game ends. As an aside, we all disliked the cathedral design proposed by the game. The one we built with the pieces was decidedly more... deconstructionist.

These worker placement games have certain similarities: There are a lot of options laid out at once, and players must find the most efficient order to choose them in. However, small differences can have a big effect:

-The mechanism used to determine turn order in Pillars is slightly wonky (each player has three token in a bag and they are pulled at random. If you get picked early you have to pay or go to the back of the line). I'm not sure that the cost makes up for getting screwed out of turn order, but is it really worse than Agricola, where placement is simply clockwise?

- Whereas Agricola is fairly devoid of interrelated mechanics, Pillars has several interesting tradeoffs inherent in the system. The resource mini-auction at the beginning has to be weighed against the gold provided by unused resource workers. The resources are converted into victory points at different rates according to the different professionals you've hired. Etc.

- This may sound petty, but the presentation in Pillars is several leagues better than in Agricola. Instead of multiple awkwardly organized boards in the middle and piles of wooden tokens with no place to go, Pillars has a single board with a place for everything. Even money is handled with a track (a system which works remarkably well, and yet I can't think of another game that does it). Also, despite the fact that there is a similar seeding of the board that occurs every round, it's far more reasonable.

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty good game. There is a good amount of push and pull, tough decisions, etc, etc. I'm still wrestling with my feelings over Agricola, because although I can point to several things that Pillars does better I can't deny that it feels more generic than Agricola does. When I played Agricola, it felt like a rather different animal than the other games I've played, Pillars doesn't. Agricola also has the obvious advantage that it's entirely modular design allows it to be more variable and therefore (theoretically) stay entertaining longer. I say theoretically because after five games I've noticed a sameness developping in each game potentially due to the semi-ordered presentation of the action spaces, the need to do things in a certain order to get your farm going, and needing a little bit of everything in order to do well. Keep in mind that I've only played one advanced game and only one multiplayer game, so the sameness issue may not be real (and if it is, the modularity would make it very easy for an expansion to completely turn the sameness on it's head). So, while Agricola lacks severely in the elegance dept., it feels like it breaks new ground.

In our session, I first tried to go long on sand, acquiring a prince that gave it to me for free every round fairly early. I overspent in the second round and bought myself a lead that was already erased by the third. The others where manipulating turn order and stealing all the sand contracts before I could get them, so I switched to stone. I couldn't get it together, though, and placed last. It was a tight race between Bharmer and Shemp for first, but I can't remember who won in the end (I think it was Shemp).

Fairy Tale

This has been a long post, so I'll keep this short: Fairy Tale was much more fun with four players than it was with two. It felt more like I remembered, so it's nice to see it wasn't a worthless trade. I actually think four might be ideal, if only because during the draft you know one of the cards in your original deal will come back to you.

I was doing pretty well until Shemp hunted the card I was using to unflip two cards that would have triggered lots of points on the table. I didn't recover. Still, Bharmer had a huge score on the table and won... I don't think any of us where even within striking distance.

Fun filler.

All that, and a bag of chips? (Civilization, Agricola, High Society x2)

We all gathered once again to conclude our latest game of Sid Meier's Civilization. In our last session, I had managed to stay under the radar and gain a significant lead through the purchase of a large amount of technology. If I was permitted to survive until the end of the game, I would surely win. The players all agreed that they would cooperate to take me out. I fully expected to be obliterated tonight, but something else happened... the other players conceeded the game and we played Agricola instead! (Bharmer wasn't enjoying the game, and successfully stopping me meant that I would be eliminated and they would likely have to spend a fourth evening determining the new winner. My success was far from assured, but I had a real shot so we called it a game)

Agricola

Agricola is the new "it" boardgame. So much so that it has currently unseated Puerto Rico as the number 1 game on BGG, a feat no other game has yet managed to do (I have no idea if it will stay there, but I wouldn't pick either game as my favorite so whatever).

The theme here, predictably, is farming. The implementation is more literal than most, however... each player actually gets a board depicting a little plot of land and over the course of the game they have to till the land, grow crops and raise animals while trying to improve the house, raise a family and... you know... keep everyone fed.

The mechanics involve a central board depicting a plethora of available actions, each of which can only be chosen once a round. Players start with a two room house and a husband and wife team, and each of those can choose to do one of the available actions every round. As the house grows, babies can be had and they can grow up and take actions themselves. Meanwhile, gathering food becomes tougher and tougher. Predictably, not having to resort to begging is a prime motivator in the game.

In the end, the farm is scored and almost every aspect is graded: from the number of wasted plots of land, to the number of children, the amount of food on hand and the variety of livestock being raised. Because there are way more things that need doing than there is time to do them, Agricola is a capital "E" efficiency game.

Prior to this evening, I had tried the solo family game a few times. It actually works fairly well as a sort of optimisation puzzle, so that was good. Sadly, the rulebook could have been significantly better... it works as a reference but a new player will be lost for a little while. As an example, there is a simplified "family" game which is recommended as the first game. Wouldn't it be logical then to make the instructions prominent and simple to follow? Instead, the advanced rules are described first, then a paragraph explaining how to convert the rules for a family game can be found eight pages in. In other words, those the least familiar with the game are asked to first read and understand the complex rules and then to modify them according to a few paragraphs at the end. Also, on a number of occasions the rules refer to a board by name without actually ever identifying them anywhere AND they include a number of alternate boards without explanation, leaving a beginning player trying to sort out all these components fairly confused (at least, I was). Once you know what everything is, it's all fairly obvious, but new players DON"T know what everything is by definition. There is more, but you get the idea.

Luckily, the game itself is quite good, and play is pretty smooth and intuitive once things get going. The only direct interaction between players is in the action selection, but since competition for certain spaces can be fierce I don't expect anyone to start talking about "multi player solitaire". If I had a gripe, it would be that reloading the board every round gets a little tedious.

Bharmer proved he is the efficiency king by winning with a farm that was completely built up through a balanced approach that left him with five family members in a clay mansion with just about every scoring category covered. By contrast, I had four empty spaces, only three family members and several blanks in the scoring sheet. I honestly thought that my previous experience with the solo games would give me a significant advantage, but since I came in second-last I think we can forget that. Having so many other players competing for the same actions really changes the dynamics of the game... I spent the last five rounds trying to build fences, but the option was always snagged before I could. Goods rarely accumulated. etc, etc. It's very different playing an efficiency game by yourself than trying to be efficient when the thing you want to do is frequently unavailable.

I guess I can't really talk about Agricola without mentioning the huge amount of cards that can be used in the advanced game. By dealing out a hand of 14 cards to every player, each game is slightly different. We didn't play with them, however, so I can't really comment much.

I actually really like Agricola. I find myself thinking about it quite a bit afterwards, trying to think of a better way to get things done next time. I'm also really looking forward to trying out the decks of cards and seeing how they impact the game. It's not my favorite game. In fact, like Puerto Rico, I'm not sure it's in my top 10. Still, it's good and definitely worth trying out.

Bharmer and Kozure left for the evening. We finished up with two quick rounds of High Society. Shemp rocked us in both games, but at least Luch put up a fight.

Eleven O'Clock Shadow (Pillars of the Earth, In the Shadow of the Emperor)

In a satisfying Western Middle Ages-themed evening, we played two games new to the group: Pillars of the Earth and In the Shadow of the Emperor.

Pillars of the Earth is a game for 2-4 which evokes the trials and tribulations of building a late Romanesque/Early Gothic cathedral in 12th Century England.

Based on the novel by writer Ken Follett, players need not have read the source material to enjoy the game. I'll skip exacting details of the rules, but here's a general overview:

Players seem to be competing teams of craftsmen and workers trying to contribute most successfully to the construction of a cathedral. Turn order is determined initially by random selection.

Players then draft resource and craftsmen cards from a common market in turn order from the start player, which determines which craftsmen are hired (at a cost) and which resources their workers (labourers) will harvest in the upcoming turn.

Subsequent "round order" is determined by a fairly original blind draw method, which gives each player the option to select their action when their pawn is drawn from a bag by paying a set cost or passing. The cost decreases with each draw, each player having three pawns in the bag and selection (followed by payment or passing) continuing until all pawns of all players have accounted for an action. Players who pass on the opportunity to pay for an action select an action for the pawn much later in the round for no cost

The rest of the game is a sort of resource management and task optimization game - you need X number of Y type of material to get Z number of victory points - different craftsmen deliver different ratios of material (or gold) to VP (or occasionally gold) conversion. Other action/locations confer other benefits (gold for each worker at the Wool house, 1 or 2 VP at the Priory, skip random events at the Abbot's house, and so on).

After determining play order, the players conduct 17 (!) steps in each round - at each "stop" along the path, taking the actions in the order indicated by the placement of the pawns during the action draw mechanic. You resolve events, get paid, take VP, harvest resources, draw new craftsmen, gain temporary workers, sell or buy materials and convert said materials (as desired) into VPs, then determine the start player for the next round.

The game is fun and thematic but has a number of random elements which can significantly alter player success quite independently of their skill in playing the game. The pawn draw action order mechanic is the first heavily random element. Second is the material selection cards. Third is the craftsman cards, a fourth is privilege cards and the event cards also insert a considerable amount of luck to play. Now, I'm not against randomness on principal and in this case it seems to fit well with the theme, but it does get to be a little much. Balancing against the randomness (and in the designer's defence) you can select actions or use strategy to avoid being hurt drastically by either random events or the craftsmen/resource/privileges which you either receive or manage to miss. However, you cannot escape the fact that luck can be a major factor in your success or failure.

I like the look and general feel of the game. The round timer (a miniature, stylized wooden cathedral) is overdone but fun to use and gives a good sense of progress. Play is relatively quick (once you get the general concepts down) despite the drawn-out action selection process.

Overall, a decent game (if not something which grabbed me like Imperial did) with good production values and solid gameplay. Looking forward to additional plays.

From very random to not so random at all, In the Shadow of the Emperor is an area-influence game with some aspects of Way Out West, Intrige and a number of other area-influence games.

Players are powerful aristocratic families in Mediaeval Germany, vying for power and high political office in the Elector states of the Holy Roman Empire. One player is chosen at random as starting Emperor, but from that point onward, no randomness intrudes. Players place barons and knights into positions, and then have the option to conduct actions which move, negate, age, marry, promote (and so on) the barons and knights so as to achieve enough power in each of the three ecclesiastical states and four secular states to elect the emperor. Various machinations affect their positioning, along with an interesting mechanic for aging nobles, essentially putting a timer on how long you can hold onto power in each state.

The game suffers to some degree from a rulebook with some bad translations and oversights, but generally it's a challenging and very strategic game with a lot of direct player competition and intrigue. Some might criticize the clockwise-from-the-Emperor turn order mechanic, as seating position and initial Emperor selection can have a great effect on the outcome, but you can't complain about randomness in the game itself. Play continued past the 11:30 PM mark in order for us to be able to finish the game, but no one seemed anxious to abort the game early, which is always a promising sign.

Since the strategic depth is so great (and the gameplay mechanics relatively light) this is a game where multiple plays are possible and desirable for best appreciation. I hope this one gets that privilege.

In non-WAGS news but still game-related, I managed to get in a game of 1960: The Making of the President which is only two-player but worth mentioning. I had traded a few of my older and seldom-played wargames for 1960, which is an area influence game with a card-driven strategy mechanic and a wargame-y feel. Players take the roles of Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy in the American presidential election of 1960. It's sort of a re-themed version of the designer's earlier game, Twilight Struggle, but the games differ enough to be different games, while being similar enough to make transition from one to the other quite smooth.

I like Twilight Struggle more, of the two, but 1960 is no slouch either, and well worth owning, if only for its gorgeous production values, clear rules and concise player references.