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.
Showing posts with label San Juan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Juan. Show all posts
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Terakh, Tikal and Tan Tuan...er... San Juan
Or, "How Bharmer Kicked our Behinds Repeatedly"
First up was Terakh, the light strategy game with a fantasy/magic theme. I enjoy this game for its combination of chess-like strategy with a few wargame-y aspects like attack and defence modifiers, asymmetrical player powers and to-hit rolls. The designers have done a good job of finding the right balance between simplicity and theme for a game of this size and intended investment of time.
I came out swinging and dealt some pretty good hits quite early, eventually knocking both Ouch and Bharmer down to 2 and 1 points respectively (with a little help from Ouch), remaining at 3 points myself. Bharmer was in a tight spot, sandwiched between the two of us (an unfortunate but common occurrence when you're the third player to place in a three player game) and was attacked from both sides. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, but then Bharmer laid both Jason and I low with two successive Plague (?) cards, which reduce all Elders by one point unless they are already at one point or on a purple tria. Then the Terakh Crisis hit, which promptly killed Ouch and I, leaving Bharmer standing. So, after about 50 minutes of play, the game winner was decided by a dice roll. Normally, not my ideal ending, but a fun game and all the more impressive to see Bharmer win after being knocked down so thoroughly earlier in the game.
Tikal followed. For the first time in about a half-dozen or more plays, I think we actually managed to remember to place a new hex tile at the beginning of each player's turn, rather than forgetting and placing it afterwards, or not placing one at all, or remembering a turn or two later. This simple rules error has been the bane of our Tikal-playing careers, for some reason, we never got into the solid habit of remembering to do it at the right time.
So, this time we really cracked down on each other, heaping scorn on people who forgot.
Despite this revolutionary advance in gameplay, Bharmer pulled away early on and remained in the lead for the rest of the game. He grabbed at least two three-sets and three (or more) two-sets of treasure by the end (something like that, I can't remember), having scored between 12 and 21 points on treasure alone almost every scoring round but the first. I fell behind initially but eventually regained a little ground with treasure and careful positioning, though in the end it wasn't enough. Bharmer scored somewhere in the 110-115 range, I scored in the 85-90 range, and I think Ouch was 70-75 range. My personal mistakes here were failing to block Bharmer as often as I was able to block Ouch, and not getting in position to take treasures first before Bharmer. Our Tikal games are typically closer than this, so this substantial victory by Bharmer was pretty embarassing for both Ouch and I. Bharmer was helped substantially by placing almost every treasure site save one (as I recall), so luck of the draw did enter into it, but not to detract from his victory; he did play quite well.
At this point, Ouch had to leave, claiming the need to retire early.
With only about half an hour left in the evening, we turned to the only short two player we had on hand, San Juan.
What a shambles. Bharmer thoroughly trounced me, scoring something like 48 to my measly 21. I was completely outclassed in every category, failing to build even a single 6 building.
In my defence, I never actually drew a six-building to begin with, but I still played horribly. I missed several opportunities to build silver mines due to bad planning, and invested too many cards in the chapel before I had cards to spare. I was beaten by Bharmer's good play and my own poor judgement and timing.
I build a coffee roaster early, but my second build, a black market, and third build, the archive, were poorly chosen. I added stupidity to mismanagement by building a chapel fourth. I did have some poor draws, but this was a hole of my own digging. I had built all of seven (eight?) buildings when Bharmer plunked down his twelfth. Bharmer did well with the production building + guild hall combo, and also managed some other 6-point building bonuses, including a bunch from his palace.
I limped to the finish line, my only uncertainty about the victor being whether he doubled or tripled my score in the end.
This remains a decent game, and very elegant in its size, playing time and complexity. I remain somewhat leary of the problem like mine; once you fall behind you are almost certainly doomed against any player of competence - and it is not terribly difficult to fall behind due to bad early draws. Still, I deserved to lose that one.
And that, my fellow WAGSters, is why I vote that Bharmer not be allowed to play any more.
Just kidding. Mostly. Well... sorta.
Die Bharmer, die!
First up was Terakh, the light strategy game with a fantasy/magic theme. I enjoy this game for its combination of chess-like strategy with a few wargame-y aspects like attack and defence modifiers, asymmetrical player powers and to-hit rolls. The designers have done a good job of finding the right balance between simplicity and theme for a game of this size and intended investment of time.
I came out swinging and dealt some pretty good hits quite early, eventually knocking both Ouch and Bharmer down to 2 and 1 points respectively (with a little help from Ouch), remaining at 3 points myself. Bharmer was in a tight spot, sandwiched between the two of us (an unfortunate but common occurrence when you're the third player to place in a three player game) and was attacked from both sides. I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself, but then Bharmer laid both Jason and I low with two successive Plague (?) cards, which reduce all Elders by one point unless they are already at one point or on a purple tria. Then the Terakh Crisis hit, which promptly killed Ouch and I, leaving Bharmer standing. So, after about 50 minutes of play, the game winner was decided by a dice roll. Normally, not my ideal ending, but a fun game and all the more impressive to see Bharmer win after being knocked down so thoroughly earlier in the game.
Tikal followed. For the first time in about a half-dozen or more plays, I think we actually managed to remember to place a new hex tile at the beginning of each player's turn, rather than forgetting and placing it afterwards, or not placing one at all, or remembering a turn or two later. This simple rules error has been the bane of our Tikal-playing careers, for some reason, we never got into the solid habit of remembering to do it at the right time.
So, this time we really cracked down on each other, heaping scorn on people who forgot.
Despite this revolutionary advance in gameplay, Bharmer pulled away early on and remained in the lead for the rest of the game. He grabbed at least two three-sets and three (or more) two-sets of treasure by the end (something like that, I can't remember), having scored between 12 and 21 points on treasure alone almost every scoring round but the first. I fell behind initially but eventually regained a little ground with treasure and careful positioning, though in the end it wasn't enough. Bharmer scored somewhere in the 110-115 range, I scored in the 85-90 range, and I think Ouch was 70-75 range. My personal mistakes here were failing to block Bharmer as often as I was able to block Ouch, and not getting in position to take treasures first before Bharmer. Our Tikal games are typically closer than this, so this substantial victory by Bharmer was pretty embarassing for both Ouch and I. Bharmer was helped substantially by placing almost every treasure site save one (as I recall), so luck of the draw did enter into it, but not to detract from his victory; he did play quite well.
At this point, Ouch had to leave, claiming the need to retire early.
With only about half an hour left in the evening, we turned to the only short two player we had on hand, San Juan.
What a shambles. Bharmer thoroughly trounced me, scoring something like 48 to my measly 21. I was completely outclassed in every category, failing to build even a single 6 building.
In my defence, I never actually drew a six-building to begin with, but I still played horribly. I missed several opportunities to build silver mines due to bad planning, and invested too many cards in the chapel before I had cards to spare. I was beaten by Bharmer's good play and my own poor judgement and timing.
I build a coffee roaster early, but my second build, a black market, and third build, the archive, were poorly chosen. I added stupidity to mismanagement by building a chapel fourth. I did have some poor draws, but this was a hole of my own digging. I had built all of seven (eight?) buildings when Bharmer plunked down his twelfth. Bharmer did well with the production building + guild hall combo, and also managed some other 6-point building bonuses, including a bunch from his palace.
I limped to the finish line, my only uncertainty about the victor being whether he doubled or tripled my score in the end.
This remains a decent game, and very elegant in its size, playing time and complexity. I remain somewhat leary of the problem like mine; once you fall behind you are almost certainly doomed against any player of competence - and it is not terribly difficult to fall behind due to bad early draws. Still, I deserved to lose that one.
And that, my fellow WAGSters, is why I vote that Bharmer not be allowed to play any more.
Just kidding. Mostly. Well... sorta.
Die Bharmer, die!
Friday, May 18, 2007
When geometry ATTACKS! (San Juan x2, Terakh, For Sale!)
Luch strained his back. Ouch. He didn't make it.
San Juan
Bharmer, Kozure and myself played two games of San Juan over the course of the evening ("because it was on the table" Bharmer said). My appreciation for this game is growing every time I play it with three players... creating synergies between the roles and the cards takes some skill yet there is enough luck to keep things interesting. I loved that Kozure decided to play a card we had all decided wasn't worth using (the black market), only to find that it was indeed quite good. I somehow doubt that all the cards are perfectly balanced according to cost vs. benefit but it's nice to know that even the ones that look like dogs just need the right strategy to become useful (although the player with the palace often seems to win...). Bharmer won the first game and Kozure won the second.
Terakh
Kozure finally got Terakh to the table, a game I'd seen brought to several games nights but never played.
Terakh is a combat game that looks (and somewhat behaves) like an abstract. The board consists of a number of triangular sections put together in various ways according to the number of players. The pieces are also all geometric shapes: Pyramid "Elders", cylindrical "Incas", circular "Orbs" and eight sided "Dice". Despite the abstract nature of the components (and peculiar nomenclature), the actual game is pretty down to earth: To use Chess analogies, each player has several pawns, one queen and one king. Pieces are moved, pawns, queens and kings are captured. The last player with a King on the board wins.
Obviously, in practice there is a lot more than that going on. On a turn, players use 5 action points to determine who does what (and how much). The pawns must assume an offensive or defensive stance and then use die rolls to determine the winner of a combat. The queen is actually a pawn imbued with special powers (each player has a unique set of powers according to the colour they are playing). There are teleportation spots and the boards can be rotated during play. In addition, spell cards are distributed at the beginning of each round and can be used to affect the gameplay in various ways. As I said, it really feels more like a mini-wargame when you are playing than some sort of GIPF game... but you'd never know it from the components.
It's a fun game. The individual powers seem to do a good job of differentiating the experiences for the players. The spells inject an unpredictability to the events which unfold. The types of pieces, the manipulation of the board, etc feel well thought out and integrated. Although I didn't care for the illustrations on the pieces (or of the presentation of the game or gamebox in general), I did find the illustrations on the cards humourous.
I started out quite strong, and actually felt pretty much in control for the first little while. My die was hot, rolling far more 8s than I deserved. I played the Hydra clan and my ability to attack up to three opponents at once was forcing Kozure to retreat and spread out early on. At some point, I started making stupid moves (like forgetting my teleport ability, and like counting on low odds attacks to prevent my elder from getting destroyed). My idol was destroyed by Kozure before I could finish him and my elder was beaten down by Bharmer (who was playing a rather conservative game until that point). He eventually took out Kozure for the win.
For Sale!
We finished up with For Sale! Not much to say, except that I quite enjoy this game for what it is. I won over Kozure by 1 dollar!
San Juan
Bharmer, Kozure and myself played two games of San Juan over the course of the evening ("because it was on the table" Bharmer said). My appreciation for this game is growing every time I play it with three players... creating synergies between the roles and the cards takes some skill yet there is enough luck to keep things interesting. I loved that Kozure decided to play a card we had all decided wasn't worth using (the black market), only to find that it was indeed quite good. I somehow doubt that all the cards are perfectly balanced according to cost vs. benefit but it's nice to know that even the ones that look like dogs just need the right strategy to become useful (although the player with the palace often seems to win...). Bharmer won the first game and Kozure won the second.
Terakh
Kozure finally got Terakh to the table, a game I'd seen brought to several games nights but never played.
Terakh is a combat game that looks (and somewhat behaves) like an abstract. The board consists of a number of triangular sections put together in various ways according to the number of players. The pieces are also all geometric shapes: Pyramid "Elders", cylindrical "Incas", circular "Orbs" and eight sided "Dice". Despite the abstract nature of the components (and peculiar nomenclature), the actual game is pretty down to earth: To use Chess analogies, each player has several pawns, one queen and one king. Pieces are moved, pawns, queens and kings are captured. The last player with a King on the board wins.
Obviously, in practice there is a lot more than that going on. On a turn, players use 5 action points to determine who does what (and how much). The pawns must assume an offensive or defensive stance and then use die rolls to determine the winner of a combat. The queen is actually a pawn imbued with special powers (each player has a unique set of powers according to the colour they are playing). There are teleportation spots and the boards can be rotated during play. In addition, spell cards are distributed at the beginning of each round and can be used to affect the gameplay in various ways. As I said, it really feels more like a mini-wargame when you are playing than some sort of GIPF game... but you'd never know it from the components.
It's a fun game. The individual powers seem to do a good job of differentiating the experiences for the players. The spells inject an unpredictability to the events which unfold. The types of pieces, the manipulation of the board, etc feel well thought out and integrated. Although I didn't care for the illustrations on the pieces (or of the presentation of the game or gamebox in general), I did find the illustrations on the cards humourous.
I started out quite strong, and actually felt pretty much in control for the first little while. My die was hot, rolling far more 8s than I deserved. I played the Hydra clan and my ability to attack up to three opponents at once was forcing Kozure to retreat and spread out early on. At some point, I started making stupid moves (like forgetting my teleport ability, and like counting on low odds attacks to prevent my elder from getting destroyed). My idol was destroyed by Kozure before I could finish him and my elder was beaten down by Bharmer (who was playing a rather conservative game until that point). He eventually took out Kozure for the win.
For Sale!
We finished up with For Sale! Not much to say, except that I quite enjoy this game for what it is. I won over Kozure by 1 dollar!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Improbability and the East (San Juan, Shogun)
...or The Dice Tower is Luch's Harsh Mistress
...or The Dice Tower is Easy's Fluzy Lover
First, the big news: Congrats to Kozure and Tili on the arrival of mini-Kozure #2! Despite the baby's arrival, this particular family's commitement to gaming runs deep... This Wednesday, a mere two days after birth, we played at Kozure's place at their request!
While waiting for Luch to arrive, Bharmer and I played a game of San Juan with Tili (did I mention this was two days after birth?). Bharmer ran away with this one, being able to build a couple of large buildings and having the best resource production going. Tili and I pretty much tied, I beleive.
I have to say that from this session, I think that San Juan works much better with 3 than with 4 (and since 2 plays similarly to 3, I guess that must work just as well). Why? Because with 3 (and 2) players more of the roles go unchosen each round. This leads to a less homogeonous game where a player's choice really does impact the other players... with 4 players it seemed that resource production, building and trading occured pretty much every round. With 4, it was quite possible that no resources would be produced for several rounds or that building wouldn't occur. Anyway, it felt like a more satisfying game to me.
As Luch arrived, we set up Shogun. Tili retired for the evening and Kozure sat in. In our last game, I had enjoyed the game quite a bit, but described the game as an adult version of Mousetrap. How did game #2 go? Pretty much the same.
For the record, I won this game. Also for the record, there's no way in hell I should have!
For the first year, I tried to skip out on rice production to see what would happen. I also decided to focus on winning majorities in buildings over other ways to generate points. Not generating rice did lessen my angry farmers, and it was well I did because the rice deficit card which came around in winter was the -7 one. Ouch. I had the potential for 3 nasty revolts, and my building strategy combined with poor planning in the fall had left me short on soldiers. I was fully expecting to get ravaged. Due to the -7, I wasn't the only one in line for a wallopping, but I was by far the worse off.
Guess what, I survived completely unscathed and everyone else lost at least a province. Luch lost three.
The second year was similar. I planned for Rice this time. There were attacks, and I won and lost my fair share. Still, the previous winter had really stacked things in my favour. By the second winter, I had planned for the revolts and didn't lose anything to them. The others didn't fare as well, despite also having planned, and were crippled as a result (this time we were facing down a -6 rice drought).
What can I say? I feel I played a good game, that my building strategy was generally well thought out despite a few glaring mistakes along the way. Still, there were SO MANY large swings of luck that I felt that the result was kind of out of my control.
Shogun does a lot of things right: Despite being long, it never FEELS long. The planning phase is fun, if a little brain-breaking. Seeing things play out is entertaining. you always have more you want to do than you can, and the decisions feel like they matter. Finally, the dice tower is a really fun way to resolve battles.
But (you knew there would be a "but"), I still feel that it's not as much a strategy game as it seems it should be. So much rides on which of the 4 event cards comes up at which point (particularly in winter). Also, the order in which the 10 action cards comes up can REALLY mess up your plans (the timing of combat card and the treasure actions being particularly crucial). Immediately losing the province card if you lose a battle, and therefore potentially losing the associated action, can also be pretty devastating. Lastly, for all the "fun" of the dice tower, it does have a way to introduce more chaos than most randomizers would. These items can literally crush a player's plans unless they play ultra conservative at all times. A Game of Thrones has similar swings of fate with it's decks, and I guess that's one of the reasons I keep comparing the two.
In contrast, the randomized special cards are an example of the type of luck I'd expect to find in the game. As players secretely bid for turn order, the randomized powers create an interesting tension between chosing turn order vs the power you want. It makes the choice interesting, but isn't devastating or unbalancing towards one player or the other.
So, in the end, Shogun fails (for me) to be a STRATEGY game on the same level as similarly heavy games such as Power Grid, El Grande or even Railroad Tycoon (where luck is present, but in controlled ways). Despite that, it's a lot of fun... I'd prefer to play this over Power Grid, actually. I guess i'm mostly harping on the disconnect between what the game seems to want to be, and what it is.
Anyway, i've gone on for quite some time now. i'd be interested in other people's point of view on the matter!
Edit: I better way to describe my feelings towards Shogun occurred to me today... In Shogun, you can't win unless you play well strategically (where+when to build temples, which provinces to take, protecting your investments, etc). However, there is enough large swings of luck that your best play could easily get erased by bad luck.
In other words, play well + cross your fingers.
...or The Dice Tower is Easy's Fluzy Lover
First, the big news: Congrats to Kozure and Tili on the arrival of mini-Kozure #2! Despite the baby's arrival, this particular family's commitement to gaming runs deep... This Wednesday, a mere two days after birth, we played at Kozure's place at their request!
While waiting for Luch to arrive, Bharmer and I played a game of San Juan with Tili (did I mention this was two days after birth?). Bharmer ran away with this one, being able to build a couple of large buildings and having the best resource production going. Tili and I pretty much tied, I beleive.
I have to say that from this session, I think that San Juan works much better with 3 than with 4 (and since 2 plays similarly to 3, I guess that must work just as well). Why? Because with 3 (and 2) players more of the roles go unchosen each round. This leads to a less homogeonous game where a player's choice really does impact the other players... with 4 players it seemed that resource production, building and trading occured pretty much every round. With 4, it was quite possible that no resources would be produced for several rounds or that building wouldn't occur. Anyway, it felt like a more satisfying game to me.
As Luch arrived, we set up Shogun. Tili retired for the evening and Kozure sat in. In our last game, I had enjoyed the game quite a bit, but described the game as an adult version of Mousetrap. How did game #2 go? Pretty much the same.
For the record, I won this game. Also for the record, there's no way in hell I should have!
For the first year, I tried to skip out on rice production to see what would happen. I also decided to focus on winning majorities in buildings over other ways to generate points. Not generating rice did lessen my angry farmers, and it was well I did because the rice deficit card which came around in winter was the -7 one. Ouch. I had the potential for 3 nasty revolts, and my building strategy combined with poor planning in the fall had left me short on soldiers. I was fully expecting to get ravaged. Due to the -7, I wasn't the only one in line for a wallopping, but I was by far the worse off.
Guess what, I survived completely unscathed and everyone else lost at least a province. Luch lost three.
The second year was similar. I planned for Rice this time. There were attacks, and I won and lost my fair share. Still, the previous winter had really stacked things in my favour. By the second winter, I had planned for the revolts and didn't lose anything to them. The others didn't fare as well, despite also having planned, and were crippled as a result (this time we were facing down a -6 rice drought).
What can I say? I feel I played a good game, that my building strategy was generally well thought out despite a few glaring mistakes along the way. Still, there were SO MANY large swings of luck that I felt that the result was kind of out of my control.
Shogun does a lot of things right: Despite being long, it never FEELS long. The planning phase is fun, if a little brain-breaking. Seeing things play out is entertaining. you always have more you want to do than you can, and the decisions feel like they matter. Finally, the dice tower is a really fun way to resolve battles.
But (you knew there would be a "but"), I still feel that it's not as much a strategy game as it seems it should be. So much rides on which of the 4 event cards comes up at which point (particularly in winter). Also, the order in which the 10 action cards comes up can REALLY mess up your plans (the timing of combat card and the treasure actions being particularly crucial). Immediately losing the province card if you lose a battle, and therefore potentially losing the associated action, can also be pretty devastating. Lastly, for all the "fun" of the dice tower, it does have a way to introduce more chaos than most randomizers would. These items can literally crush a player's plans unless they play ultra conservative at all times. A Game of Thrones has similar swings of fate with it's decks, and I guess that's one of the reasons I keep comparing the two.
In contrast, the randomized special cards are an example of the type of luck I'd expect to find in the game. As players secretely bid for turn order, the randomized powers create an interesting tension between chosing turn order vs the power you want. It makes the choice interesting, but isn't devastating or unbalancing towards one player or the other.
So, in the end, Shogun fails (for me) to be a STRATEGY game on the same level as similarly heavy games such as Power Grid, El Grande or even Railroad Tycoon (where luck is present, but in controlled ways). Despite that, it's a lot of fun... I'd prefer to play this over Power Grid, actually. I guess i'm mostly harping on the disconnect between what the game seems to want to be, and what it is.
Anyway, i've gone on for quite some time now. i'd be interested in other people's point of view on the matter!
Edit: I better way to describe my feelings towards Shogun occurred to me today... In Shogun, you can't win unless you play well strategically (where+when to build temples, which provinces to take, protecting your investments, etc). However, there is enough large swings of luck that your best play could easily get erased by bad luck.
In other words, play well + cross your fingers.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Dis-Joint-Ed (Tikal, Set, San Juan, Wheedle)
i'm writing the blog, but I wasn't there the whole night.
From what I understand, the evening started with Ouch and Bharmer playing Tikal. Treasure vs Temple, it seems. I don't know who won. This was followed by Set once Kozure arrived. I've never played, so I can't say much.
San Juan
I arrived around 9:30, and we played San Juan for the first time at WAGS (side note, I wrote recently that I purchased a lot of games recently which were unlikely to see much play because they were 4 player max. Well, Shemp will be bowing out for an undetermined length of time, so I may have been wrong).
As I've said before, San Juan is a rather clever simplification/ conversion of Puerto Rico into a card game. As this was my second game, I felt a little more in control than I did the first time. At this point, I'm thinking that it's a good game which benefits greatly from the streamlining it's received compared to it's big brother, but the loss of player interaction drags it down a bit.
In our game, Bharmer started a very lucrative chapel early while Kozure went production happy (to match his Guild Hall). I went City Hall. It was pretty close, but Kozure beat us out.
Wheedle
We had a bit of time before the end of the evening, and we had this Knizia card game sitting around (an unplayed impulse buy on the part of Tili). I'll be honest and say that I would never have bought this game based on the presentation alone... it's about as bland as they come. Then, I read the rules. If I had a shred of interest before, I lost it. Wow, it sounded dull.
Anyway, we started playing... and it was a lot of fun!
It's simple enough. The theme is stock trading. You split the deck evenly between the players and put a card in the center of the table. Each card is a stock from a fictional company, and the card in the center is a company in trouble. The point is to collect majorities and monopolies in stocks, and you do that simply by yelling out what you want in real time, making deals with whoever will listen and/ or swapping a card from your hand with the one in the center of the table. When you think you have a better hand than the rest of the players, you yell "stop" and trading ends immediately. There is a small catch... if the calling player has a single card which doesn't score points the entire round is a scratch (for all players) and the calling player loses points. Also, the centre card (the card which represents the company in trouble) converts all those cards into point losses that round!
Hands are scored and the next round begins.
Anyway, the dealmaking and frantic swapping of cards was fun. This is a game you could play with anybody and have a good time. You can concentrate on gaining majorities in small stocks quickly, you can try to pick up a monopoly in a stock everyone seems to be giving away, you can swap a card in the center of the table at the last minute in the hopes of messing someone's stock collection. Not rocket science, but still a good time.
I hear it's based on "Pit", but I haven't played that so I couldn't tell you if it's better or worse.
From what I understand, the evening started with Ouch and Bharmer playing Tikal. Treasure vs Temple, it seems. I don't know who won. This was followed by Set once Kozure arrived. I've never played, so I can't say much.
San Juan
I arrived around 9:30, and we played San Juan for the first time at WAGS (side note, I wrote recently that I purchased a lot of games recently which were unlikely to see much play because they were 4 player max. Well, Shemp will be bowing out for an undetermined length of time, so I may have been wrong).
As I've said before, San Juan is a rather clever simplification/ conversion of Puerto Rico into a card game. As this was my second game, I felt a little more in control than I did the first time. At this point, I'm thinking that it's a good game which benefits greatly from the streamlining it's received compared to it's big brother, but the loss of player interaction drags it down a bit.
In our game, Bharmer started a very lucrative chapel early while Kozure went production happy (to match his Guild Hall). I went City Hall. It was pretty close, but Kozure beat us out.
Wheedle
We had a bit of time before the end of the evening, and we had this Knizia card game sitting around (an unplayed impulse buy on the part of Tili). I'll be honest and say that I would never have bought this game based on the presentation alone... it's about as bland as they come. Then, I read the rules. If I had a shred of interest before, I lost it. Wow, it sounded dull.
Anyway, we started playing... and it was a lot of fun!
It's simple enough. The theme is stock trading. You split the deck evenly between the players and put a card in the center of the table. Each card is a stock from a fictional company, and the card in the center is a company in trouble. The point is to collect majorities and monopolies in stocks, and you do that simply by yelling out what you want in real time, making deals with whoever will listen and/ or swapping a card from your hand with the one in the center of the table. When you think you have a better hand than the rest of the players, you yell "stop" and trading ends immediately. There is a small catch... if the calling player has a single card which doesn't score points the entire round is a scratch (for all players) and the calling player loses points. Also, the centre card (the card which represents the company in trouble) converts all those cards into point losses that round!
Hands are scored and the next round begins.
Anyway, the dealmaking and frantic swapping of cards was fun. This is a game you could play with anybody and have a good time. You can concentrate on gaining majorities in small stocks quickly, you can try to pick up a monopoly in a stock everyone seems to be giving away, you can swap a card in the center of the table at the last minute in the hopes of messing someone's stock collection. Not rocket science, but still a good time.
I hear it's based on "Pit", but I haven't played that so I couldn't tell you if it's better or worse.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Thoughts on some new (to me) games (Dungeon Twister, Hey! That's my Fish!, San Juan, Blue Moon City, Goa)
I won a gift certificate at Thought Hammer recently, and purchased a pile of game as a result. Very few of these are likely to see much play at WAGS, since they are all 2-4 player games, but I think friends and family will enjoy many of them. Luckily, I was able to play all of them with some high school friends which came to visit, and I'm glad to say there isn't a bad game in the bunch.
Dungeon Twister
The idea:
A twisted wizard has created a dungeon and pitted two teams of characters against each other. The first team to escape out of the opposite end of the dungeon, or to eliminate enough enemy characters, wins.
The mechanics
8 tiles, each depicting a section of a maze (complete with walls, doors, traps and miscellaneous other features) is layed out in a 2x4 grid. Each player starts the game with 8 characters and a number of items (rope, speed potion, treasure, etc). Some are chosen as starting characters, and the rest are layed face down on the dungeon tiles and are revealed later. Players are also given 3 "jump" tokens (allowing 3 jumps over pit traps over the course of the game), a set of action cards and a set of combat cards. Every round, a player must choose an action card to play which will determine how many actions he will get that round (2-5). The trick is that the player will only get his cards back once he has played them all, so choosing when to play the high value cards vs the low value cards becomes a a critical aspect of the game. When characters engage in combat, players must choose a combat card from their hand (value 0-6) to add to the combat value of the creature. The highest total wins, but the catch in this instance is that all cards except the "0" can only be used ONCE in the game (if you've played Lord of the Rings: Confrontation, you've seen this system before). The "Twister" gimmick referred to in the title of the game is that each dungeon tile has a "twister mechanism" space which allows a character standing there to rotate the dungeon tile (or a second matching tile elsewhere in the dungeon).
Thoughts:
I was intrigued by this title the moment I heard about it. As an ex-Dungeons and Dragons player, the theme has obvious appeal. However, I have not really been interested in other games of this type (such as Descent, etc) for whatever reason. I think it's because those games are about the dungeon crawl/ combat aspect of rpgs, and have often resulted in long fiddly hack n' slash fests. Dungeon Twister, on the other hand, uses the theme to liven up what is essentially an elaborate game of chess. A player needs to plan ahead to either meet his opponent's characters on his own terms or to successfully escape out of the dungeon. He must therefore carefully manage his resources and create synergy between his characters, items and dungeon tiles. Obviously, this type of game would be horrible to play against analysis paralysis prone players, but barring that I really enjoyed the game. As an added benefit, the game publisher (Asmodee) is releasing a stream of expansions ensuring a wide variety of dungeon tiles, characters and scenarios to keep the game fresh. In fact, one of the expansions is a 3-4 player expansion (which I've purchased, but I haven't yet played a game with more than 2 players). Anyway, I really enjoy this game.
As an aside, I used to rate Duel of Ages in my top 10 games, but it was mostly because I hadn't yet played a better game of that type (team of characters, variable terrain, missions, equipment). Problem is, Duel of Ages has it's fair share of issues. I still enjoy it, and it's wargame-lite character makes it different enough to warrant keeping both, but Dungeon Twister is shorter, looks better and plays cleaner. Looks like Duel of Ages lost it's spot.
Hey! That's my Fish!
The idea:
There penguins on ice floes looking to gather as much fish as they can before the ice dissapears.
The mechanics
Players get 3 or 4 penguins (depending on the number of players) and place them on a modular board (+/- 75 tiles). Each tile shows 1-3 fish. Basically, when you move your penguin you pick up the tile you were standing on, so the board gets smaller with every move. A penguin can go as far as it wants in a straight line, as long as it doesn't go over empty spaces. When all the penguins are unable to move, the game ends and the player who picked up the most fish wins.
Thoughts:
This is a simple and fast abstract game which benefits greatly from it's theme. The exact same game could have belonged to the GIPF series and not been nearly so approachable. Easy to teach, fun to play and supports up to 4 players. Very good game.
San Juan
The idea:
Players are developping the city of San Juan in this card game variation on Puerto Rico.
The mechanics
Much like Puerto Rico, the heart of the game involves choosing from a set of roles every round. Each role is associated with a specific action, such as building, that every player gets to do (though the choosing player gets some type of advantage, such as a reduced cost, etc). However, since this is a card game much of the mechanics have been streamlined and simplified. Building costs are payed by spending cards from your hand. Production buildings produce goods, represented by a face down card, and that card can be sold to draw a number of cards into your hand. The buildings' special powers are similarly all repurposed to be hand management related. The game ends once someone builds his 12th building, at which point everyone counts up their victory points to determine the winner.
Thoughts:
Puerto Rico is a very good game which has always bothered me due to the needlessly tedious setup and finicky rules. Honestly, the game requires me to count out two stacks of tokens which are up to 70-100 pieces EACH, on top of sorting out a large supply of counters and chits. And you can't prepare in advance, because it's all very different according to the number of players! I like it, but if I'm choosing I'll likely go elsewhere. Along comes this neat little card game, and it seems like I might not need to play it's big brother any more. My only worry is that in Puerto Rico, I felt I had more opportunity to passive-aggressively affect the other players. In San Juan, my first few games have not felt very interactive. Time will tell.
Blue Moon City
The idea:
Players are rebuilding Blue Moon City following a great war between the various races of the Blue Moon universe.
The mechanics
This is a hand management game. The cards come in various suits, and each can be played two ways: they have a numbered value which can be used to make donations, and most of them have a special power that can be used instead (the 1 point cards have powers, the 2s have weaker powers and the 3s have none). Essentially, the game is designed so that your hand can almost always be used to do something useful, if not exactly what you had planned. The "board" consists of 16 tiles depicting the blueprints of key buildings semi-randomly distributed in a "+" shape. Each building has 1-4 spaces for "contributions" of different colours. Players move around the board making such contributions, and the building are flipped to show that they are complete once all the "contribution" spaces are filled. When this happens, the player who made the most donations gets a reward, and everyone else who made at least a single donation gets a smaller one. The "twist" here is that neighboring completed buildings give bonus rewards as well, so making a very small donation to the right building in a built up district can yield big rewards. The most common payout is crystals, and these are accumulated and ultimately sacrificed to the obelisk in the center of the board. The first player to make a certain number of offerings is the winner.
Thoughts:
As with many recent Knizia middleweight games, opinions on this one were mixed. I was happy to discover that I really enjoyed it! Once you get a handle on the various special powers of the cards, gameplay is very straightforward (unlike the mindbending Tower of Babel). Coming up with clever uses for your cards is very satisfying, and the game moves pretty quickly. If I had to knock it, I'd say that it could have been livened up a bit with building powers, or something along those lines, to reinforce that it's a city the players are rebuilding. It might have been interesting if the game rules were altered every time a building was constructed, or that the biggest contributer received a new ability related to the building when it is completed. Maybe these are opportunities for expansions...
Goa
The idea:
Trader barons are setting up shop in Goa. By efficiently aquiring goods, making money, founding colonies, etc, players hope to establish themselves as the winner.
The mechanics
The game has 8 turns, and each one starts with an auction. Following the auction, each player has a series of "actions" where they can either found colonies, build ships, tax, produce goods or draw development cards (one last option is to improve an attribute of the colony, allowing to build more ships, make more money taxing, etc). At the end of the game, points are awarded for the number of founded colonies, the level of advancements, etc.
Thoughts:
Goa is a complex game. It's been compared to Princes of Florence by many people, because of the auction/ action game structure (that, and the fact that it's also a "multi-player solitaire" experience. Far moreso than PoF, in fact). I find that the game has a lot in common with Traders of Genoa (also by the same designer). Superficially, there is the trademark "tower". I've only played three Dorn games (Traders of Genoa, Goa and Louis XIV), but they all have used this mechanic! Here it's used to define which items among the grid of available items will be auctioned off. From a gameplay perspective, players must successfully orchestrate lots of disparate elements in order to succeed (plantations and new colonies must be founded in order to produce/ store goods, ships and population must be accumulated to pay for advancements, money must be raised for the auction, etc, etc, etc. ). more than anything, though, I find the games focus on additional actions, game-modifying powers, etc to be right up Dorn's alley. It also makes for a very different experience than PoF, as the powers and cards make for a lot more variety in play.
One thing I found dissapointing was the extreme dullness of the presentation. Unlike most games of this type, the mechanics translate pretty well thematically. If the boards had looked different, I bet the game would be a whole lot "friendlier" (as it is, it looks like accounting). The auctions occur at the shipping yards, money changes hands as the buyers walk amonsgt the crates. Players plant fields for resources, but also go to sea and found colonies (an inherently risky proposition). Boards depicting these scenarios would have been simple to produce, and would have served to ground the game. It's especially a shame since this game brings out a feeling of "civ-building" which few of these types of game can pull off.
Supposedly, this game works very well with 2,3 or 4. Since PoF effectively bottoms out at 4, it's great to have a heavy euro which can be played with fewer players. I really enjoyed my single playing so far.
Dungeon Twister
The idea:
A twisted wizard has created a dungeon and pitted two teams of characters against each other. The first team to escape out of the opposite end of the dungeon, or to eliminate enough enemy characters, wins.
The mechanics
8 tiles, each depicting a section of a maze (complete with walls, doors, traps and miscellaneous other features) is layed out in a 2x4 grid. Each player starts the game with 8 characters and a number of items (rope, speed potion, treasure, etc). Some are chosen as starting characters, and the rest are layed face down on the dungeon tiles and are revealed later. Players are also given 3 "jump" tokens (allowing 3 jumps over pit traps over the course of the game), a set of action cards and a set of combat cards. Every round, a player must choose an action card to play which will determine how many actions he will get that round (2-5). The trick is that the player will only get his cards back once he has played them all, so choosing when to play the high value cards vs the low value cards becomes a a critical aspect of the game. When characters engage in combat, players must choose a combat card from their hand (value 0-6) to add to the combat value of the creature. The highest total wins, but the catch in this instance is that all cards except the "0" can only be used ONCE in the game (if you've played Lord of the Rings: Confrontation, you've seen this system before). The "Twister" gimmick referred to in the title of the game is that each dungeon tile has a "twister mechanism" space which allows a character standing there to rotate the dungeon tile (or a second matching tile elsewhere in the dungeon).
Thoughts:
I was intrigued by this title the moment I heard about it. As an ex-Dungeons and Dragons player, the theme has obvious appeal. However, I have not really been interested in other games of this type (such as Descent, etc) for whatever reason. I think it's because those games are about the dungeon crawl/ combat aspect of rpgs, and have often resulted in long fiddly hack n' slash fests. Dungeon Twister, on the other hand, uses the theme to liven up what is essentially an elaborate game of chess. A player needs to plan ahead to either meet his opponent's characters on his own terms or to successfully escape out of the dungeon. He must therefore carefully manage his resources and create synergy between his characters, items and dungeon tiles. Obviously, this type of game would be horrible to play against analysis paralysis prone players, but barring that I really enjoyed the game. As an added benefit, the game publisher (Asmodee) is releasing a stream of expansions ensuring a wide variety of dungeon tiles, characters and scenarios to keep the game fresh. In fact, one of the expansions is a 3-4 player expansion (which I've purchased, but I haven't yet played a game with more than 2 players). Anyway, I really enjoy this game.
As an aside, I used to rate Duel of Ages in my top 10 games, but it was mostly because I hadn't yet played a better game of that type (team of characters, variable terrain, missions, equipment). Problem is, Duel of Ages has it's fair share of issues. I still enjoy it, and it's wargame-lite character makes it different enough to warrant keeping both, but Dungeon Twister is shorter, looks better and plays cleaner. Looks like Duel of Ages lost it's spot.
Hey! That's my Fish!
The idea:
There penguins on ice floes looking to gather as much fish as they can before the ice dissapears.
The mechanics
Players get 3 or 4 penguins (depending on the number of players) and place them on a modular board (+/- 75 tiles). Each tile shows 1-3 fish. Basically, when you move your penguin you pick up the tile you were standing on, so the board gets smaller with every move. A penguin can go as far as it wants in a straight line, as long as it doesn't go over empty spaces. When all the penguins are unable to move, the game ends and the player who picked up the most fish wins.
Thoughts:
This is a simple and fast abstract game which benefits greatly from it's theme. The exact same game could have belonged to the GIPF series and not been nearly so approachable. Easy to teach, fun to play and supports up to 4 players. Very good game.
San Juan
The idea:
Players are developping the city of San Juan in this card game variation on Puerto Rico.
The mechanics
Much like Puerto Rico, the heart of the game involves choosing from a set of roles every round. Each role is associated with a specific action, such as building, that every player gets to do (though the choosing player gets some type of advantage, such as a reduced cost, etc). However, since this is a card game much of the mechanics have been streamlined and simplified. Building costs are payed by spending cards from your hand. Production buildings produce goods, represented by a face down card, and that card can be sold to draw a number of cards into your hand. The buildings' special powers are similarly all repurposed to be hand management related. The game ends once someone builds his 12th building, at which point everyone counts up their victory points to determine the winner.
Thoughts:
Puerto Rico is a very good game which has always bothered me due to the needlessly tedious setup and finicky rules. Honestly, the game requires me to count out two stacks of tokens which are up to 70-100 pieces EACH, on top of sorting out a large supply of counters and chits. And you can't prepare in advance, because it's all very different according to the number of players! I like it, but if I'm choosing I'll likely go elsewhere. Along comes this neat little card game, and it seems like I might not need to play it's big brother any more. My only worry is that in Puerto Rico, I felt I had more opportunity to passive-aggressively affect the other players. In San Juan, my first few games have not felt very interactive. Time will tell.
Blue Moon City
The idea:
Players are rebuilding Blue Moon City following a great war between the various races of the Blue Moon universe.
The mechanics
This is a hand management game. The cards come in various suits, and each can be played two ways: they have a numbered value which can be used to make donations, and most of them have a special power that can be used instead (the 1 point cards have powers, the 2s have weaker powers and the 3s have none). Essentially, the game is designed so that your hand can almost always be used to do something useful, if not exactly what you had planned. The "board" consists of 16 tiles depicting the blueprints of key buildings semi-randomly distributed in a "+" shape. Each building has 1-4 spaces for "contributions" of different colours. Players move around the board making such contributions, and the building are flipped to show that they are complete once all the "contribution" spaces are filled. When this happens, the player who made the most donations gets a reward, and everyone else who made at least a single donation gets a smaller one. The "twist" here is that neighboring completed buildings give bonus rewards as well, so making a very small donation to the right building in a built up district can yield big rewards. The most common payout is crystals, and these are accumulated and ultimately sacrificed to the obelisk in the center of the board. The first player to make a certain number of offerings is the winner.
Thoughts:
As with many recent Knizia middleweight games, opinions on this one were mixed. I was happy to discover that I really enjoyed it! Once you get a handle on the various special powers of the cards, gameplay is very straightforward (unlike the mindbending Tower of Babel). Coming up with clever uses for your cards is very satisfying, and the game moves pretty quickly. If I had to knock it, I'd say that it could have been livened up a bit with building powers, or something along those lines, to reinforce that it's a city the players are rebuilding. It might have been interesting if the game rules were altered every time a building was constructed, or that the biggest contributer received a new ability related to the building when it is completed. Maybe these are opportunities for expansions...
Goa
The idea:
Trader barons are setting up shop in Goa. By efficiently aquiring goods, making money, founding colonies, etc, players hope to establish themselves as the winner.
The mechanics
The game has 8 turns, and each one starts with an auction. Following the auction, each player has a series of "actions" where they can either found colonies, build ships, tax, produce goods or draw development cards (one last option is to improve an attribute of the colony, allowing to build more ships, make more money taxing, etc). At the end of the game, points are awarded for the number of founded colonies, the level of advancements, etc.
Thoughts:
Goa is a complex game. It's been compared to Princes of Florence by many people, because of the auction/ action game structure (that, and the fact that it's also a "multi-player solitaire" experience. Far moreso than PoF, in fact). I find that the game has a lot in common with Traders of Genoa (also by the same designer). Superficially, there is the trademark "tower". I've only played three Dorn games (Traders of Genoa, Goa and Louis XIV), but they all have used this mechanic! Here it's used to define which items among the grid of available items will be auctioned off. From a gameplay perspective, players must successfully orchestrate lots of disparate elements in order to succeed (plantations and new colonies must be founded in order to produce/ store goods, ships and population must be accumulated to pay for advancements, money must be raised for the auction, etc, etc, etc. ). more than anything, though, I find the games focus on additional actions, game-modifying powers, etc to be right up Dorn's alley. It also makes for a very different experience than PoF, as the powers and cards make for a lot more variety in play.
One thing I found dissapointing was the extreme dullness of the presentation. Unlike most games of this type, the mechanics translate pretty well thematically. If the boards had looked different, I bet the game would be a whole lot "friendlier" (as it is, it looks like accounting). The auctions occur at the shipping yards, money changes hands as the buyers walk amonsgt the crates. Players plant fields for resources, but also go to sea and found colonies (an inherently risky proposition). Boards depicting these scenarios would have been simple to produce, and would have served to ground the game. It's especially a shame since this game brings out a feeling of "civ-building" which few of these types of game can pull off.
Supposedly, this game works very well with 2,3 or 4. Since PoF effectively bottoms out at 4, it's great to have a heavy euro which can be played with fewer players. I really enjoyed my single playing so far.
Labels:
Blue Moon City,
Dungeon Twister,
Goa,
Hey That's my Fish,
San Juan
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