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.

Russia's Greatest Love Machine.

This week!

There was no EASY, hey!

But there was SHAMUS! Wow! And TILI! played also! Hey!

So we were four and five players for RA! and RA! and then RA!! (but played by the correct rules this time)

And Then Colossal Arena!! Wow!



Please forgive the jarring nature of the above. My brain has spent the last couple of weeks running out of my ear, slowly, and that is impacting both the quality of this report and the quality of game choice for this week, since I, Shemp, was dictating. (The quality of my grammar and sentence structure is also affected, apparently.)

We ordered Pizza and jumped right in to teaching Shamus how to play RA! Foolishly, we trusted Luch! to do the explainening, "reasoning" that he would know the rules inside out as a result of playing RA! Fifty Thousand Times! a! Day! on Brettspielwelt, Hey!

Should we have known better? Yes! We should have known better! HEY!!

But we didn't. SO, the first couple of games of Ra (one four player, one five) were played such that any player could draw a tile AND call Ra or draw a tile and play a God. So things were a little wackier than usual, and a little higher scoring, I think. It's difficult to say! Wow! I should leave the answer open to more frequent players! Wow! I think!

Then we played again, the right way, with Kozure holding the rule hammer, and things settled down. Lots of RA! leading to a sparse first couple of ages, and a lot of PRESS! YOUR! LUCK! type action in the last age.

When Tili was playing, she often heard "Do it! It's TOTALLY WORTH IT!" Whether it was worth it or not ~ she was remarkably tolerant of this.

Final Analysis: FUN! CLOSE! & I believe that Shamus enjoyed his introduction to this game, despite a rough first play. (I said that everyone has a first rough play? Is it true? I definitely did. Mos Def)

AND THEN: Some Colossal Arena to fill out the evening. I wasn't quite feeling it.

Not sure why! Hey!

Overall, Easy's goal was to come a distant fourth! Unachieved! Sixth for him!

But there will be further chances for redemption! Hey!

WAGS next Week? Sans Easy? Sans Shemp? HEY! Stay tuned and find out! True believers!!

Wow!

Comment if you can and dare to.

(This is why we let Easy post usually. All of this.)

Microwave Popcorn

I tried to come up with a theme for this Wednesday, but couldn't. The closest I came to a common thread between this week's games was during my thoughts on food for the evening, and it occured to me that microwaved popcorn nicely tied together RoboRally and Power Grid . Couldn't get Colossal Arena to fit, though.

I broke out my somewhat recently aquired RoboRally (the re-release by Avalon Hill). We had all played with the earlier version before, so I was curious how they would compare. I'm going to assume that anyone reading this already knows how to play the game, and focus on the changes which have been made. To put it succinctly, they went for quantity, not quality. The new box has all sorts of counters (life tokens, damage counters, power down tokens), bits (plastic robots, plastic flag markers, players mats, timer) and boards (4 double sided boars + 1 double sided starter board). None of it, however, is up to the quality standards of the original. The robots are squat, largely undifferentiated plastic figures which are painted to look like pewter. The boards are thick, but do not match the originals in heft and quality of finish. I don't want to be too harsh, however, because some of the additional stuff is pretty good. The plastic flags are quite nice because they do not obscure what is beneath them. The player mats are a nice idea (although they could have been MUCH smaller), and the timer is a welcome addition. The biggest change, rules and component wise, are the starter boards. Gone are "virtual robots", the kludgy mechanic which made robots indestructible for a turn as they scrambled away from the start position. Now, every 'bot gets it's own start spot on the new 1/3rd sized board and it's off to the races. I also want to mention what is probably my favorite part of the new release... the revamped course guide. There are now LOTS of layouts to choose from, categorized by difficulty and length (many with interesting variations, such as capture the flag, team play, moving flags, etc).

I chose a single board expert course described as "short" called "Raid the Vault" (I think). On my very first turn, I completely missprogrammed my robot (because I thought I was a different robot on another starting space). Basically, I flew right into a pit... That was the start of a very "interactive" race, which saw us interfering with each others' plans more often than not (and since we were making efforts to play quickly, we fairly often made mistakes on our own). In short, it was exactly what RoboRally should be: Chaotic and unpredictable. I died again on the second or third round (pushed by another robot off track, and spent several turns sitting in front of Luch's lasers until I killed myself to start fresh with my last life). Despite this, I successfully caught up to Kozure, the leader, and managed to make it to the end first for the improbable win!

We followed with Power Grid. The game started quite oddly with quite a few large power plants making it out very early. This had the effect of stalling the regular process of the "future" power plants making their way into the "present" market because every new plant we would draw was lower than those to come (and yes, we did remember to get rid of the highest one each round). I started strong with control of northern Germany (kozure, Shemp and Luch divied up the south), and a lead in powered cities, which gave me the cash to buy up some of the expensive plants early. Thinking that I could safely wait until later on to develop the rest of the north, I started hoarding cash so that i could make a charge south once step 2 came along... however two things messed up my plans: 1) Kozure made a daring push through my 2 city thick barrier to the north, and started gobbling up my cities and 2) My ranking as first bit me, because Luch had the same plan to charge the south of Germany once step two came around... since he was last he acted first and bought up ALL the cities I planned to take with his hoard of cash. i tried to learn from my mistakes and purposefully fell to last place in the ranking by not building for several turns. I thought of a plan: My early aquisitions of big power plants mean that I had capacity to power a large number of cities (14), while the stalled power plant market meant that even late in the game the other players still had small plants. I decided to hoard cash and wait for step 3, then buy up all remaining cities i needed to finish the game (9 of them) before the rest bought enough power plant capacity to power more than me. Amazingly, it worked! I ended the game before anyone suspected it was close to finishing (I think).

All this, and we still had time for a game of Colossal Arena. I hadn't played before, but I had heard very good things from my fellow WAGSters (who had played it on a few occasions when I couldn't make it). The game, on the surface, is very simple. 9 creatures (from a pool of 12) are layed out side by side, and the story is that they are fighting in an arena. On your turn, you MAY place a bet on a creature and you HAVE TO play a card numbered 1 to 10 on any of the creatures (not necesarily the one you bet on). Once all the creatures have a numbered card, the round ends and the one with the lowest value is "killed". Therefore, you bet on the ones you think/ hope will make it to the end of the 5 rounds of combat (bets in ealrier rounds are worth more), and you play numbered cards to boost the ones you want to survive or weaken the ones others have bet on. It's a tough decision, though, because you can only play one card each turn. The game is complicated somewhat because each creature has a power which can be activated by the player with the biggest bet riding on it. I didn't really get comfortable enough to benefit from the powers, but I'm sure that in the long run they should add some additional strategic depth to the combat.

The game started out normally (I assume). Kozure went long on two creatures by using two of his 5 bets in the first round. The third round seemed to go on forever, as players opted to save the creatures they invested in rather than attack and finish the round. With so much of the deck spent, the game ended when the last card was drawn. After the dust settled, I tied Kozure for points, but he won on the secondary win conditions.

I thought it had the potential to be a very good game. I was a little shell-shocked on this play because I tried to absorb the creature powers right away, and i don't think it was necessary. I definitely look forward to more plays, though! It's amazing what knizia does with the numbers 1 through 10!!! (High Society, Lost Cities, etc)

2 wins and a virtual tie. Not a bad night! (though we never did microwave any popcorn)

Colossal Arena: 7