Tide of Dice

Short break at work, so a short post about last week's games.

It was technically Brian's pick at my place - he couldn't think of anything he particularly wanted, so he said he'd decide once we got there.

We played Liar's Dice (a.k.a Bluff, Perudo, Bullsh*t, etc.) again - it's a quick filler. My parents were around until 8 PM, so we played something they could get into easily.

Afterwards, I left it up to Brian and he selected Tide of Iron, a recent wargame purchase I had made which was sitting off to the side on the kitchen table (only because I hadn't found time to stuff it into the downstairs closet, not because I was trying to push it on anyone.

Tide of Iron is a introductory/novice level wargame aimed at people who are interested in WWII tactical combat but don't want the complexity of Combat Commander: Europe, Advanced Squad Leader or the Advanced Tobruk System. That said, it's about two steps up in terms of complexity from Memoir '44.

It has a long set up time, necessitated by its interesting but somewhat flawed modular squad composition system and geomorphic terrain system. Components are excellent and rules are great. It's a very good low-medium (3-4 out of 10) complexity wargame, good for transitioning players between games like Memoir '44 and more grognardy offerings.

The tag-team of Bharmer and Ouch kept me hard pressed through the game and finally broke through with one turn remaining. I did handicap myself somewhat by giving myself fewer starting Strategy cards than is called for in the scenario, but it didn't make all that much of a difference, and they played well.

No time for a more detailed review save to say that Tide of Iron will be waiting for the day my eldest son turns 10 or 11 or so. I think he'll enjoy it quite a bit.

Attack of the Weenie Hoards!!! (Hey! That's my Fish!, Liar's Dice, Bohnanza, Mama Mia!, Wheedle, Set, Jungle Speed)

Luch wanted to play lots of really short games. To that effect, we managed to play Hey! That's my Fish!, Liar's Dice, Bohnanza, Mama Mia!, Wheedle, Set, Jungle Speed. Surely, this is a record for most DIFFERENT games played in an evening, and maybe most games too.

Missing the cut were: Falling!, Cash n' Guns and Can't Stop.

Bohnanza

I learned that Kozure is not a big fan of Bohnanza. Myself, I like the game, though I agree that three rounds is too long. The biggest problem, though, is how deeply counter-intuitive some of the mechanics are. The cards cannot be sorted or moved in your hand (I'm looking at you, Bharmer!). The three phases in each round always take a read through of the rules to remember. Whatever, it's a fun game once it gets rolling. Luch won, which was not surprising because he was clearly the best at setting up trades in his favour (my favorite was when he refused to take a card Kozure was offering him until he agreed to give him both, knowing Kozure could not afford to keep both cards)

Mama Mia!

I cleaned up at this game. Apparently, it's hard to complete all your orders by the third round but I had all but one done in the second. Throughout, it seemed like everyone else was playing for my benefit (if I had an order for 3 olives and a pepperoni, the other players would play 3 olives leading to my turn, and I would complete the order). I don't expect to see luck like that again for a loooong time.

Wheedle

When I last played this game, I rocked. This time, not so much. Out of four rounds, I called three and made errors in all of them. My score at the end was -10. The others seemed to be doing quite well, so I apologize to all for repeatedly making potentially good hands redundant.

Set

Set seems to be a board game version of Wii's Big Brain Academy. Find patterns in a set of tiles before the other players do. The patterns have to be pretty specific, though: The image on each card has four characteristics (colour, shape, number and fill). To make a pattern, every characteristic has to be THE SAME or DIFFERENT on all three cards. It's pretty hard to do (and to explain), but Kozure was clearly much better at it than us. He CRUSHED us. Big Brain indeed.

Jungle Speed

This was a lot of fun when we last played with guest Wagster Sonja. I'm happy to say that it was just as much fun last night. There was a lot of laughter, twitchyness and bruised fingers to show for it. Once more, Kozure displayed his affinity for pattern recognition by winning 2 of the 3 games rather comfortably, with Luch winning the third. Me? On a couple of occasions I felt like I was on fire and doing really well. Then Kozure would win, and I would realize that I am old, slow and not good at pattern recognition. Sigh. Anyway, this is lots of fun and I hope it becomes a semi-regular evening closer. Back to the Big Brain Academy for me... I will avenge these losses!

Umm... what? (Liar's Dice, Zendo, Mao, Dvorak)

or... Metagaming is a harsh mistress.

For a change of pace, Kozure chose a variety of games where ther "metagame" matters as much as the game itself (he called them "nomic" games, though I'm not familiar with the term). In other words, what you know about the other players' habits and inclinations is as important as the rules themselves (poker is one such game). We were graced by the presence of normally absent Wagster Shemp (the lure of such an odd theme was too much for him to resist, it seems. Let the metagames begin!)

Liar's Dice

Everybody starts with 5 dice. They are rolled and kept hidden. Players must, in turn, make a bet or call. A bet might be "I bet there are three 4s on the table". To raise the bet, a player would have to either say that there were four (or more) 4s, or that there were three 5s (or 6s). When a player chooses to call the bet, the dice are revealed and SOMEONE will lose dice depending on who was right. If the caller was right, the last player who bet loses as many dice as they overbid. If the better was right, the caller loses one die. Play continues until everyone loses all their dice but one player. To make things interesting, 1s were wild.

This turned out to be quite a fun, light game. The player elimination isn't a big deal, since it's so short (except when you are eliminated in the first round... which did happen to me once). Countless variants exist, which would be fun to try. It seemed like our choice to limit raising the bet to raising the value AND the number of dice limited the variety of betting (once you have reached the 6s, there's not much you can do but increase the number of dice. By the end, we seemed to go to the 6s pretty quickly). I understand that this makes it a quicker game, but allowing a player to go from "three 6s" to "four 2s" would allow players to steer things back to the strengths in their rolled dice... or to bluff about it. As it was, it seemed more like straight push your luck. Fun though.

Zendo

There are several identical objects in 4 different colours. One player must think of a rule (such as the group must contain two red pieces) and then display two sets of objects... one which obeys the rule and one which breaks it. The key is that the player can leave several red herrings. In the previous example, the set which obeys the rule could consist of 4 objects, two of which are red and two of which are blue. The red blocks are stacked, but the blue ones are on their side. The other players must, in turn, put together sets of objects in an attempt to try to figure out what the rule is. Is the rule that the group needs to contain four pieces? Is the rule that two objects must be on their side? etc, etc. After each attempt, the player who knows the rule must declare whether the set obeys the rule or not.

This was a very clever game. After the initial frustration of trying to figure out what is going on, things fall into place rather quickly. As usual, I tried to overcomplicate things with my solutions (Kozure's initial rule was that one of the objects needed to be red. My first guess was "There has to be two red objects, arranged in a grid, with one object on it's side). Live and learn. Bharmer stumped us with "There has to be a red and blue object but they can't touch".

Mao

Mao is a game that, by definition, you aren't supposed to know about until you play it. I therefore won't ruin the surprise here, except to say that it involves playing a game without knowing it's rules. During our session, Luch came very close to losing it when he repeatedly comitted error after error. Kozure should have been careful, Luch was playing with a knife at the time.

I couldn't help but think that the game would have been better if the player who knew the rules wasn't playing, but all the reviews I've read since then seem to imply that the player "in the know" is normally involved. It's no surprise that Kozure won.

Dvorak

The last new game of the evening was Dvorak. Dvorak could be renamed "invent your own game", but whatever.

In Dvorak, the players collaborate to come up with a theme and a goal. Afterwards, players each secretely define 8 cards which will make up the draw deck for the game. There are no rules or standards for the cards, and since they are not discussed, there is no garantee that the means to end the game exist in the deck. Once gameplay begins new rules or cards can be added through unanimous vote. Players draw and play cards until the game objectives are met.

I won't embarrass the group by describing what the chosen theme was. I will say that two of the cards I created were "Corn" and "Fancy Hat", and that they were otherwise without description or use (just to see). Over the course of the game, a "Hole" card was added to the game by Luch which combined with the corn card producing unintended results. The fancy hat ended up being instumental to Bharmer's victory, of course.

It's an interesting game, but experience would probably lead to more satisfying results. The card mix wound up being pretty bad if getting anywhere was a priority. At a certain point, you are tempted to invent rules just so that an end can happen! Obviously, this comes off feeling cheap. I'm sure that very clever sessions of this have occurred, and that some players have been able to introduce rules which gave them advantages and led to victory (rather than going for "funny"). Our session was big on funny, but low on clever.