Falling behind (7 wonders, Robo-rally, I'm the boss!, King of Tokyo, Diamant, El Grande, Cosmic Encounter)

I haven't been updating this regularly, but for the sake of posterity I'm going to record the games played in the last two weeks.

Honestly, it kills me to let the triumphant return of El Grande to the WAGS table pass without more comment, but so it goes. For the record, Shemp and I tied.

(stealth update)
Just wanted to comment on El Grande. If El Grande shows it's age at all, it's in downtime. Between turns, players are not involved in any way and this is something that more recent games have largely eliminated. Still, the gameplay remains extremely engaging for me. There's a simplicity to the process. Many of today's games,as fun as they are, appear to me to be a) variations on "cards with text that breaks rules" or "creatures with powers", or b) "games with so much going on that optimal play is not possible without AP". In the first case, the gameplay itself is usually not particularly interesting... The fun is in finding and creating combos between cards. In b) for many sessions there is no knowing whether the challenge is just doing better than the other guy at understanding the system. You're not necessarily just playing against other players, you are also just struggling to understand the games space. Many games appear interesting, but it's only an illusion because once you become familiar with what is going on and understand the good and bad moves are, you realize the choices are actually pretty obvious and it becomes dull. Anyway, in my mind El Grande is not one of those games. The interface is easy but the choices are always difficult. Great game.

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.

Mania! Mania? (Jungle Speed, RoboRally, Canal Mania)

Apologies to the gods of blogging, I'm posting this a week and a half late (it's a session report for Wendesday the 12th of Spetember). Why the delay? I'm blaming in on Metroid Prime 3.

We kicked off the evening with Jungle Speed. Does age matter? maybe. Shemp wasn't doing too hot in our game, but JayWowzer and I were neck and neck. Does time matter? Definitely. Starting out the evening with the game led to a far slower game than normal... I guess we hadn't properly "stretched" our gaming mojo yet.

RoboRally with 5 players should be chaotic enough, but I wanted to up the ante. I chose a scenario which appeared to be quite deadly (3 flags concentrated at the center of a board, with pits and conveyor belts all around). No one died in the first round, so that was discouraging. I cruised along unimpeded to the 1st and 2nd flag while the others struggled to get anywhere. Sadly, I lost all my mad programmin' skilz and ran around in circles trying to get number 3. Meanwhile, Luch managed to finish it off. I did manage to reprogram a few robots with my radio control beam, and Luch did manage to shoot alot of robots with his rear-firing laser. Kozure lost his last robot before the end of the game, and I don't beleive that Shemp ever made it to flag 1. Hmmm.

Canal Mania

Canal Mania can be best described as Railroad Tycoon meets Ticket to Ride (and, to a much lesser extent, Maharaja). You've got a board littered with English cities, and you need to connect them with canals. It resembles Ticket to Ride because you have routes you are trying to fulfill, and you must draw cards from a face up supply in order to pay for playing the canal pieces. It resembles Railroad Tycoon because you place hexagonal pieces of canal paths on the board, and ship goods from town to town once you've made the connections. Scoring also draws from both of it's sources: You primarily get points for completing your routes and sending goods across a long network of your cities. From Maharaja, the game borrows a very similar "role" system.

When I first was explained the rules, I thought the whole thing sounded pretty clever. It seemed like many of the downsides of the previous games had been addressed and/or streamlined. You would no longer be frustrated for a long period of time waiting for a particular colour of card to come up, because the cards come in only 5 varieties (actually, 4+ wilds) and every route can use a combination of all 4 different types. Also, the routes you choose determine the only places you can play on the board, so there should be much less analysis paralysis than the totally open options of Railroad Tycoon.

Oh, and the special powers of the roles, and the ease with which they can be swapped around, makes it possible to do SOMETHING productive at almost any time.

But you know what? It didn't do much for me. I'd play the original games before this one any day. It wasn't bad at all, but the process felt slower and more constrained than they do. The slower part might resolve itself with more plays (it SHOULD move fast, because there aren't many choices at any one time. I guess the multiple phases in each player's turn takes it's toll). I think the part that bothered me, though, was the scoring...

There are just a few ways to score points:
1) fulfill routes (contracts)
2) place tiles along those routes that are worth points
3) deliver goods along a long series of your cities

The problem I have is that the points for the routes seem irrelevant. A route worth twice as much takes twice as long to complete. They also go through 2 cities. Therefore, after I've completed a long route, you've completed two short ones, and we are even again.

Then, the choice of tiles used is fairly prescribed as well. I haven't played this often enough to know for sure, but it seems like over the course of a game most players will gain approximately the same number of points from tiles.

So, that leaves connections for delivering goods. Here, major differences in points can occur. If I have a good series of unconnected routes, and you don't, I bet there is nothing you could do to win. Therefore, it seems like the other two paths to victory engage players in a very close battle where 1 or two points will separate the winner from the loser, but the goods delivery makes that race irrelevant. So, then, why bother with counting the rest?

And finally, if the delivered goods are the key to victory, I would hope that there would be fair control over which routes you pick. Not so. On your turn, you pick from the available 5 routes (or much less, if some have already been taken). You can't play without a route, so if you don't have one, you pick from what's available. It seems that only 6-7 routes get completed in a game, so the luck of having the right route available at the right time seems very important to victory.

Now, I could obviously be missing something because I've played only once and didn't do well. Kozure CRUSHED us with a well connected series of canals. Clearly, he "Got It" way before we did (at least, long before I did). We were all virtually tied in second place.

I'd definitely play again. I eventually came around to Maharaja, and it's quite possible I just didn't get Canal Mania this time.

Note to potential buyers: there is very little "mania" involved in Canal Mania.

Enjoying Ameritrash (Robo-Rally, Railroad Tycoon)

If last week was about excellent eurogames, this week we played some of our favorite "Ameritrash" (I actually dislike this term, but whatever)

We started with Robo-Rally. As usual, I chose a "short" course... "Chess" I think it was called. The board layout features a large double conveyor belt which surrounds an alternating grid of single spaced empty squares and single conveyor belts. 2 flags.

With 5 players, I didn't expect things to be too crowded (it is a course designed for 5-8 players). I feared interaction would be minimal. That didn't happen.

Right out of the gate, Shemp committed the mistake I normally make, he mistook his robot for a different one. Poor Twonky flew right off the edge of the board.... My path went smoothly, with one exception: By the end of the first turn I had been shot so many times my first register was locked! Trying desperately to get out of the line of fire didn't help. By the end of the second round I had four registers locked. I was on the double conveyor belt, and for the rest of the game I circled the other players, unable to get off (Having only a single register left open meant I was only being dealt one card, and it was a "turn left" card ON EVERY ROUND until the end of the game). Oh well, I find this game fun even as a spectator so there you go.

There was some good competition for the first flag. I beleive that Brian, Luch and Kozure all achieved it within a few phases of each other. Shemp wasn't too far behind. In the race for the second flag it looked like bharmer had it in the bag until a bad card draw left him spinning his wheels for a turn. Luch stepped in and bumped him off course... inadvertedly correcting bharmer's path and leading him to victory...

Well, such is life in Robo-rally.

Railroad tycoon came next. I decided to try a variant I had come up with which I felt might address a few of the minor complaints I have with the game... namely that the player to the left of the auction winner is often at a large advantage and that cards don't refresh with enough frequency. The variant is pretty simple: Players bid for turn order, not just first place (Over the course of the game, we settled on a method stolen from "For Sale!". Bid goes from player to player according to the previous round's turn order. Bid starts at $1000, and the first player to drop out goes last, second player goes 2nd last, etc. Half of your current bid goes to the bank, rounded up, when you withdraw). Also, a number of cards equal to the number of players is turned up every turn.

It took a bit of getting used to, but I think the turn order modification is a winner. It didn't make an enormous impact in the game, but I definitely felt that players were earning their advantages a bit better. One nice thing I hadn't anticipated: Since bid order is determined by last round's turn order, the player who went first is less likely to be able to lead again (since he/she bids first, the value of the bid will always be higher than the other players). It turned out to be a nice balancing mechanism.

The change in rate for revealing action cards also worked reasonably well, but it wasn't perfect. Having that many cards turn up every round certainly kept the game interesting by injecting good reasons to compete for turn order into the mix, but it also led to every card getting turned up before the end of the game. On one hand, this means that players can reliably count on all the major lines eventually coming out and plan accordingly, but on the other hand it begs the questions: "if all the major lines are going to be revealed anyway, why not just start with them all revealed"? and "Is the game better when everyone knows all the major lines will be revealed"?

In the end, I think I'd like to try the next game with a different rule for the cards: Split out all the major lines and reveal a number equal to the number of players. With the remaing cards, reveal a number of cards equal to the number of players minus 1. I think this would do a better job of keeping each game fresh (by alternating the available major routes), but keeping the auctions interesting throughout the game.

In this session, I had the tycoon card for building a western link. I decided to focus on a section of the east coast to start off and build a bit of income before heading west. Kozure and I wound up trying to carve our own little section of that area, but we coexisted reasonably well. Bharmer was further south, Luch went central and Shemp was all about Chicago.

Early on, things were looking good for me. I grabbed the hotels for New York and Chicago, and both were proving to be quite lucrative for me. Shemp, in particular, couldn't help but give me points on most turns. Unfortunately for me, all routes out of chicago were snapped up by Shemp and Kozure, leaving me with the unfortunate prospect of giving one of them points every turn when I built the western link. I did eventually head out there, and since I was raking in the cash it wasn't onerous to build the tracks and the western link to give me a lucrative 4 link run for Kansas City to Chicago via Kozure's link. OF course, since Shemp had tied up most of Chicago and had a very good network out of there, he actually profited more than I did from the western link... but I hoped that my lead was big enough to give me the win (and increasing my lead over 3 players seemed worth it, even if Shemp might catch up a little). That's when Kozure steady progression west paid off: he picked up a major line (washington - Chicago?) worth 10 points and a second (New York - Kansas + western Link) for 20. The lead I had evaporated. I should still have been within striking distance, though. Sadly, my delivery network went dry and I couldn't catch up! Very well played on his part!

A very fun evening. There is some chance we'll be playing next week, but in case we don't I wanted to wish anyone reading this a happy holiday and new year!

Put down that cupcake and RACE! (Through the Desert x2, Formula De, RoboRally)

This week was all about racing:

We burned rubber on Formula De's SPA track.
We braved the homicidal factory in RoboRally's "Bloodbath Chess" course.
We, ummm, had our camels cross the sands of Sahara REALLY FAST (?) in Through the Desert.

Oh, and we ate my wife's yummy Valentine's Day cupcakes.

It all started with a quick game of TtD for three. Shemp let us know ahead of time that he hadn't been sleeping well for a few days. This, combined with the fact that his colourblindness made it nearly impossible for him to follow what what going on on the board led him to apologize in advance for his weak playing. I did win, but he managed 2nd place. Poor Kozure...

I think this one is sneaking into my top 10... simple rules, scales well to any number of players and never takes much more than 30 minutes. (Shame about the pastel camels, though). We later closed the night with another round with 4 players. Kozure used an interesting initial placement strategy where he grouped 3 camels in one corner. This gave him an easy way to block other players from cutting him off as he went for a very large land grab. He made up for his earlier defeat!

Formula De was the first "Main Course". I wanted to try the SPA course with the group... it has the reputation of being the best of the tracks. I have to say I quite enjoyed it! Quite often the decision regarding which gear to be in on any given turn was quite tough. The leader changed frequently throughout the game and the course was often choked at the corners. I started at the Pole Position (and consequently in last place with my 2nd car). I was very hard on my lead car and blew most of my tires and brakes by the middle of the course. I did have the lead, but my conservative play after that allowed both Shemp and Kozure to pass me. In the end, Kozure crossed the finish line first and 5th, with Shemp 2nd and 3rd. I manages 4th and 6th with Luch limping in 7th (he lost a car in the chicane).

In Roborally, the "Bloodbath Chess" map proved to be quite interactive and lively. I seem to have a habit of totally screwing up my first move and this game was no different. I died right away because I didn't notice a wall in my path. I was behind for the entire game, but I accumulated quite an interesting array of special abilities along the way (dual CPU, extra memory, brakes and rear firing lasers). They weren't enough... I came in third (and the only reason I wasn't fourth was that Luch lost his third life token by flying into a pit near the 4th flag).

Until next time, may none or your registers be programmed randomly

All Hell Broke Loose

We gathered this week, visited once more by our friend JayWowser from California, for an ambitious attempt at playing both a "long" course of Robo-Rally and a session of Arkham Horror. Turns out, we were too ambitious, but just by a little.

This was JayWowser's first go at RoboRally. We had five players, and we chose a 2 board scenario from the "beginner's" courses. I have to hand it to the course designers in the new edition... the two we've tried so far have been real winners. The length is well represented in the description, the courses encourage good interaction and keeps leaders in check by forcing "double backs" in most (all?) cases.

We played with my "Pirate's Cove" variant. I have always felt that this game penalizes the players that are behind too harshly (they go back to their last save point AND start with damage!). It's hard enough to come back from a death and stay in the race, why make it harder? In this variant, players who suffer a setback are given a chance to bounce back by being given the option to come at full health or take two damage and draw an "option" card (similar to Pirate Cove's rules, giving pirates a choice of option cards when they are beaten in battle). I'll probably post this to BGG eventually.

I made a bee line towards the first flag and got there largely unopposed. In contrast, the other four were battling it out from the start. Kozure made a habit out of zapping Jaywowser. Meanwhile, Shemp took a few too many rides on the looped conveyor belts. I had made it to the 2nd flag as all hell broke loose at the first one. JayWowser, heavily damaged and with several locked registers, along with an otherwise healthy Kozure, was sent flying off the board by a charging Luch (Kozure almost immediately went over again). As I made my end run across the board back to the final flag, Shemp decided to give up the race and focus on taking me out. Kozure was terminally stuck in the crossfire of too many robots, and was eliminated from the game. Meanwhile, JayWowser and Luch headed for flag 2... holding out hope that Shemp would screw me over. I got shot up good on the way to the final flag, well enough to lock 3 of my registers before I could reach it. I tried valiantly to get there anyway, and I did make it to within one space twice, but I was never able to make it work. JayWowser snuck down the middle and claimed the victory as Luch was destroyed by Shemp close to the final flag.

All in all, a very chaotic and exciting race (well, maybe not exciting for Kozure). I really enjoy this game.

Next up was Arkham Horror. The guys had hyped this up for me, and my brief solo game seemed very intriguing, so I was looking forward to trying it out. We started at 8pm, giving us 3 hours for the game (assuming we finished up at our regular time). 4.5 hours later, we still hadn't finished, so we called it a night!

Our group was a solid mix of brains and brawn. All in all, I never really felt like we were in serious danger of failing (of course, Shemp as our own personal army clearing the streets, all the healing abilities we could ask for, and a well timed visit from the feds, helped a lot in this regard). When we quit, we were very close to successfully sealing all the gates we needed, so we packed up confident we would have won.

My reaction to the game itself is mixed. On one hand, there is a large number of very cool concepts and mechanics in the game. I appreciate the sheer variety of "stuff" it offers (characters, monsters, equipment, Great Old Ones, etc). I feel like there was an honest effort to capture a huge amount of the flavour of the mythos (the stories, the rpg, etc). But in the end... there is too much. A serious amount of editing should have taken place.

A (very) brief synopsis:

Each player takes on the role of an investigator from a particular walk of life (psychologist, student, doctor, private eye, etc). Each has different strengths and weaknesses. A Great Old One is randomly selected as the evil which is about to awake, and the game begins. Each turn, "mythos" events occur, clues are discovered around town and portals open up in unstable locations on the board (spitting out monsters in the process). It is up to the players to seal these "gates" before too many open, awakening the sleeping evil... (the bulk of the game involves working toghether to roam the streets, collect items and "clues", fighting creatures and sealing gates. They can win by sealing them all, but if the condition is met for the Great Old One to awaken before they can do that, everything stops and the group must collectively fights it).

What I liked:

There is a clever character stat system which allows players to adjust their skills every round, but every time they raise something, something else gets lowered (such as raising your "speed" reduces your "sneak"). It's a very elegant little touch which gives good flexibility to the characters to adapt to situations in a way that is balanced and simple. The monster movement system is also interesting; routes in black and/or white are traced on the board. Every time monster movement occurs, creature's who's symbols are called that turn move along the track they have been assigned to (ex: All "Star" cleatures move along the white path). It's a bit cumbursome to scan every creature each round for the symbols, but it's an original way to have a multitude of creatures move in an unpredictable way (and better than just rolling dice for all of them). Each location has a deck of cards which determine the types of encounters which will happen there (it's a little overwhelming to see all the decks of cards, and it doesn't result in as much variety of events as you'd expect, but it's a nice idea nonetheless). The whole "upkeep","Move/fight","Location Encounters","Mythos Event" systems works pretty well, despite some confusion regarding WHEN combats actually occur in certain circumstances, and despite the poor layout of the mythos cards themselves. Finally, I like the dynamics of gate opening: Each mythos card calls for a new gate in a location on the board. If it already has a gate, all open gates spit out monsters. If a gate has already been sealed there, the players are spared. This system accomplishes many things with simple and logical mechanics.

What I don't like:

The biggest problem is that the game is fairly long, but it feels like it should be going faster. The issue, in my mind, is that on top of the core rules there are a myriad of other, tiny rules which are individually simple and add flavour, but collectively just feel cumbursome. The "doom" counters (I think that's what they were called), which track the slow awakening of the Great Old One, kept getting forgotten. Money is bordeline unecessary. The terror level is an interesting concept (with residents of town and shops closing as it rises), but it doesn't add enough to be included. The creature "overflow" area is similar, unecessary clutter. Between the modifiers to the game from the Great Old One, the 3 types of Mythos cards, the character abilities and the myriad equipment and spells... it's hard to really be sure to apply all modifiers at a given time. While the "Sky" space adds an interesting element, "Lost in Time and Space" seems like a kludge solution to a problem they couldn't solve. There is a lot more, but the last one I'll mention is that the creatures have two flaws which bothered me: 1) the colour coding for special movement should have been replaced with text on the card (in fact, in some cases there is both!). 2) The double sided tokens meant that we were constantly flipping to see how hard something was to kill, how hard it was to sneak past, what symbol it was for movement purposes, etc.

In short: Simplify! Consolidate!

The fact that no one can agree on how some rules work is clearly a problem. The fact that the climax of the game, the encounter with the Great Old One, is one such situation, is pretty awful. I haven't yet had such an encounter, but considering that I don't understand how "fighting" such powerful creatures is in the spirit of the mythos, I'd probably like to see the whole process eliminated or re-worked.

It would be interesting to see if the game would work like this:

1) No money (simple draw three, choose 1 mechanic at the shops instead)
2) no blessings or curses
3) No terror level/ Overflow stack
4) Eliminate the trip to the outer planes. When a player wants to seal a gate, draw and resolve 1 card of the appropriate plane. If he/she survives, try to seal the gate immediately (or possibly the next turn)
5) Agree that combat always takes place in the movement phase, no matter what.
6) The Great Old One chosen determines the special conditions of the game (as usual), but if it awakens, the game ends. (B.T.W. An idea for a better way of keeping track of the doom track: Count out a # of gate markers equal the length of the doom track and return the others to the box. When the last one is placed, the Great Old One awakens and the game is over. When an Elder sign seals a gate, return it to the bottom of the stack. I haven't tested it, but it seems like it would work)

A few items that could have simplified the game, but couldn't be done now without going back to the drawing board:

1)Reduce the equipment cards to one stack (combining spells, unique items and common items).
2)Possibly eliminate the location card stacks (and go with a simpler streets=nothing, locations=printed text at the location, Mythos card=game events). Some of the flavour would be lost, but it would dramatically improve the pace of the game.

Summary: A VERY ambitious game. Succeeds in many ways, but fails in just as many. I enjoyed myself as always, but I don't think I'll be requesting it in the future.

Rating: 6

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

Common, Rare and Strange

A pseudo-“bye” night; the vagaries of child-raising combined with Tili’s urgent need to complete a deadline made it necessary to play at Kozure’s place two weeks in a row. As it was technically Shane’s pick, he selected Settlers of Catan and Robo Rally, two games which are well known to the group and very commonly played by euro-gamers.

Kicking the evening off with Settlers of Catan, it was nice to play a game which was familiar and simple. Very little thought needed to be given to the mechanics of play; we could then focus on the strategy itself. Strangely, the number “5” came up several turns in a row, with more common numbers like “6” and “8” being given a miss. Kozure jumped into an early lead, but Hapi caught up quickly, wresting the longest road card away from him a few turns after gaining it. Shemp toiled in relative banishment for much of the game, but pulled off an excellent come-back in the last few turns.

The kill-the-leader strategy was in full effect, with the thief being judiciously assigned several times to one of Kozure’s key territories. Easy and Hapi shared the brick monopoly, but careful road and settlement placement allowed Kozure to trade and amass enough resource cards to accomplish the 2:1 ore and 4:1 trades he often found necessary due to the occasional wood and brick shortages. Hapi scored a few times with the usually rare “2” resource roll, and Easy blocked an early effort by Kozure to corner both Hapi and Easy in one area of the map, but Kozure eventually overwhelmed the market and built his way to victory, winning with the longest road, three cities and two settlements.

Left with a mitt full of resource cards at several points (especially Kozure), all the players reflected on the rareness of the thief roll (at critical points) and the boom/bust nature of the economy, which resulted in an uneven pacing of the game – long periods of no building, followed by windfalls of resources and frantic construction. A strange game.

Settlers of Catan is the equivalent of a Harvey’s burger for me; not subtle or complex, easy to digest, not really hard to swallow, nor challenging, but relatively satisfying nonetheless. It therefore falls on the other end of the brain-burn scale for me from, say, El Grande or Tigris and Euphrates, which, despite being fun in themselves, cannot be taken lightly.

Robo Rally, Richard Garfield’s fun little work, was similarly odd. Though off to an early lead again, Kozure found himself stymied by luck and fellow players on the second flag. A more jammed than usual first flag resulted in several comical results, with Shemp pulling a C3PO as he blindly navigated through a sea of dangers – pits, conveyors and fellow robots – to touch the flag despite his damage and the dangers and clawed his way back into the running after some initial set-backs. A series of battles around the second flag resulted in Kozure’s demise, which, combined with his problems in noticing key wall segments behind other players’ pieces earlier in the game, resulted in his last-place finish. Shemp flew past the other players and pulled off the win, with Easy and Hapi taking second and third place respectively.

In both games, Shemp came from behind to finish very respectably (second and first). As his stats prove, he's no pushover.

Robo Rally is a fun little game, but it depends heavily on players being able to select their actions quickly. The tendency is to over think. Strangely -and more than once- Shemp’s accidental selection of cards did not result in his death, though it usually proves fatal. I think a potential variant for the next session of this game is to auction off a set number of option cards (Princes of Florence or Power Grid style) with an arbitrary amount of cash (say, 10 electros from Power Grid), with each player being permitted a maximum of three options. Another potential variant is a timed planning phase, in which a set limit of time is permitted for planning (egg timer or digital countdown stopwatch). Unplanned registers are filled randomly from the player’s hand. It would be frantic, but would add a new twist to the game.

A fun evening with WAGS. Are there any other kinds?

Duel of Ages... The Theme!

In sharp contrast to the last two weeks (both spent playing one game of Civilization, which is still unfinished), last night we played 4, count 'em, 4 different games! While Duel of Ages was the theme, we didn't actually play that game... instead, I chose 1 game suited to each of the four eras (Ancient, colonial, modern and future).

For Ancient, we played Citadels (with the "Artist" from the expansion thrown in). This is a fun game which I always wish we could play more often. True, something seems missing (we actually discussed that the game would feel more satisfying if the "district" cards somehow had more character or functions... leading us to the interesting possibility of combine Citadels with a Princes of Florence type board). This session saw Kozure spend most of the game as the King, Shemp and I in between and Hapi screwed as the last player of almost every hand. Not surprisingly, he found it hard to find his footing while the rest of us battled for first. In the end, Kozure won (he was very excited becasue he had never one at this one) by the narrowest of margins (Kozure 28, Easy 27, Shemp 26, Hapi 18). I'd say that the addition of the artist had very little impact on the game. I'd probably go back to the original set for the next game.

For Colonial, we played Bang with the High Noon expansion. Even though I still enjoy this game, it's beginning to wear on me. I find that the game can go on for a little too long. The High Noon expansion definitely shakes things up, but there;s still lag. Shemp, as the renegade, won the game. I'd never seen the renegade win before!

For modern, we played Deadwood. Always a good time, I'd say this is EASILY the best Cheap Ass Game. The cards, roles and combinations thereof had us laughing the whole time, and yet there's just enough of an actual game in there to keep it interesting. Kozure managed to become the master thespian early in the game (seriously outclassing our 1 and 2s with his 5). Despite Shemp best efforts at falling off a roof, Kozure wallopped us in the end (he had something like twice the money of the second best player... Over $80 bucks, at any rate).

For Future, we played Robo Rally. This one was a bit of a miscalculation on my part. True, we only used two boards, but we placed 4 flags. While the three other games clocked in at 45 min. to 1 Hour each, this one took 2. Still, it was a highly entertaining game. A Misshap on my first turn sent my poor little robot on an unplanned tour of the wrong conveyor belts, where he miraculously survived a ride along the edge of the board only to be crushed in the 5th register. I was behind, but not out... Luckily, Hapi did what he does best (which is playing to screw others rather than try to win), screwing himself at the same time as Shemp and Kozure. After what had to be the most full contact, unpredictable and uncontrollable rounds I had ever seen in the game (we're talking three robot trains, massive front and back laser fire, reprogramed robots, robots spending a good chunk of the game with frozen registers, and howitzer fire, Oh My!), I managed to slip through and get quite a wide lead. Sadly (for me), I made another major mistake which sent me leaping off the board. Nearing midnight, Kozure and Hapi were playing chicken at the third flag while Shemp and I were racing for the last flag but he was more successful and beat me pretty easily. Not bad, since he was the only one who had never played before!

And now... Back to Civilization !