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

Ah, El Grande. I missed you.

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

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

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

El Grande

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

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

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

Tigris and Euphrates

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

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

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

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

Playing Favourites

There is a unfortunate trend in modern society to try to "top ten" everything, from books, to songs, to stupid dog tricks. Although certainly fun, it also over-simplifies and narrows the qualities of things - a movie might be admired for its direction, while lacking somewhat in a script, or a book might have a fantastic set of characters, but lacks pacing - as examples.

As widespread and reductive the trend is, one thing that "top ten" and "best of" lists and articles force you to do is really sit down and evaluate what you really like about something. After listing to a number of Board Game Geek "GeekSpeak" podcasts over the past few weeks, I've decided to come up with my own answers to their "hook", as well as defining a few other favourites.

Derk and Aldie's "hook" is to ask an interviewee about their favourite game for two, three, four, five and six or more players. They usually say that for the six or more player category, that you can also specify a "party" game.

Understanding that preferences can change over time, here are my game favourites:

Favourite Game for Two

Hard question, since I play wargames, many of which are intended for two players. My favourite Euro for two at the moment is Lost Cities. My favourite wargame for two is a toss-up between Firepower, which is an all-time favourite, and the newcomer, Twilight Struggle, which is sort of a "weuro" (Euro-game mechanics with a wargame-like feel). Forced to choose, I would go with Firepower, just because with only three plays of Twilight Struggle under my belt, I can't really call it a favourite with conviction yet. I also enjoy Zero! for two, but I prefer it with four. Combat Commander: Europe was making a strong play for this category to displace Firepower, but after additional plays, the bloom is off the rose for me - I still enjoy it, just not as much as Firepower.

Favourite Game for Three

Three is a very difficult number for games, for balancing reasons - it's too easy for two to gang up on one. I actually don't own many games which work for three. Probably Tigris and Euphrates, even though it's not one of my favourite games in general, and Colossal Arena, which is a little light for my tastes. China is also good, but I'd rather play Tigris and Euphrates over China unless time was limited. In the wargame category, Doom is a lot of fun for three. I haven't really played many others which work for three - Axis and Allies: D-Day and Axis and Allies: Pacific being the principal ones, neither of which being stellar in my opinion. None of the answers feel satisfactory for me with three.

Favourite Game for Four

Another hard call but for the opposite reason of three-player games, because of the sheer volume of games which work well with this number. Probably Power Grid as the front runner, with Tikal and Princes of Florence coming in very close second and third respectively. A dark horse in this category is WildLife - with additional plays, it may creep up past Tikal and Princes of Florence to vie with Power Grid for first place. Louis XIV may do the same, once again, more plays would determine the eventual winner. I think a lot of people list El Grande in this category; I like and appreciate El Grande; it's just not something I jump at playing. In the wargames, my favourite four-player game is Zero!/Down in Flames series, pretty much hands down. I love that game. Duel of Ages is not exactly a pure wargame, but I enjoy it for four as well.

Favourite Game for Five

At the moment the clear winner for me in this player-category is Railroad Tycoon. It's unbalanced, somewhat random and has a number of other flaws, but I just love it, conceptually and during game play. I also like Ticket to Ride for this number, but it's a little light for me. I also like Draw Poker (I prefer draw poker to Stud variants) for five or more, but in the board games category, Railroad Tycoon wins out. I used to love Shogun (Milton Bradley version) and Axis and Allies in this category as wargames, but I played those to death in my teens. With additional plays the new Shogun (Dirk Henn) may also feature as a "waro" (a wargame with Euro-mechanics).

Favourite Game for Six

Until I play more six-player non-party games (doesn't happen often, really) it's probably Railroad Tycoon again. I'd like to be able to say Twilight Imperium, but having only played it three times, and only once with six, I can't really say for sure. Same with Civilization - I've never actually played it with six, but I imagine it would be terrific (if long). Bang! works well with this number, if a shorter game is needed. Firepower works well with almost any number, but I'd love to try it with six sometime, with each player controlling a squad. Duel of Ages is a lot of fun with six as well.

My favourite party game for six at the moment is Wits and Wagers, which is really quite good for almost any group of adults and I've played a lot. I've only played Times Up twice, but I really enjoyed it then, so additional plays of Times Up might bump Wits and Wagers out. Same with Werewolf, which I've only played on three evenings (with one or two plays each evening). I've heard Smarty Party mentioned a lot in this category, but I've never played. A close second in the party games category would be Things... which is a lot of fun with the right group of people.

Derk and Aldie also typically ask the following quesions:

Favourite Book

Hard question, for the reasons I listed at the beginning of this piece. The books I've probably read most often is the Narnia Chronicles, followed closely by "The Lord of the Ring". I'd have to say "The Name of the Rose" by Umberto Eco.

Favourite Movie

My favourite movie is Blade Runner, for reasons which are too complex to go into here. Close runners up are Aliens, Apocalypse Now, Seven Samurai and Once Upon a Time in the West.

Favourite Word

I enjoy the sound and the meaning of "sibilance". Similarly I enjoy "serendipity" as well. Probably "sibilance".

Not on Derk and Aldie's list is favourite TV show...

Favourite TV Show

Another difficult choice. Almost a dead tie between DaVinci's Inquest, Band of Brothers, Deadwood and Firefly. Of those, probably Deadwood and Firefly and if I had to pick between them, Deadwood. Fantastic cast, direction, writing, acting... just fabulous. All of them are great. If Firefly had gone another season or two, it might have been Firefly. As it is, there isn't quite enough depth with just the 14 episodes.

I'll probably be shot if any fellow Browncoat reads that.

In any case, I'm burning up the last minutes of my lunch hour, so I'm going to finish playing favourites and turn it over to my fellow WAGSters for comment.

2 Knizias (Tigris and Euphrates, Modern Art)

We played a couple of excellent Knizias which rarely seem to get table time this week: Tigris and Euphrates and ModernArt.

It was Bharmer's pick, and he chose these classics which he had never played before. Shemp was not in attendance this week.

Tigris and Euphrates

Tigris and Euphrates is a game I've played pretty much constantly online at BGG since I was introduced to it 2 years ago (which probably translates to +/- 20 games). The rest of the group, however, have only played (at most) a handful of times. I should have crushed them, right? Yeah, no.

Bharmer, very early on, committed a very common newbie mistake: he built a monument he couldn't defend (of course, it's a common newbie mistake for a reason... when you first learn this game, you mostly just want to see how things tick, and building a monument is an important part of that initial understanding of the game). Since I was in the best position to take advantage of this, I swept in and grabbed it. I actually scored a few points in external conflict on the way, so it was even better than it could have been. Yet again, I had an unfair advantage, which should have made winning the game easy. Clearly, despite my experience I'm not that good at this game. Over the course of the game, a large monument laden Western empire grew quite powerful (and attracted many leaders). The East saw smaller northern and southern civilizations develop, fragment and morph into three smaller territories after a series of bloody external conflicts.

It was an exciting game. Despite a general unfamiliarity with the game, players didn't keep to themselves (often a problem with less experienced players). As the tile bag dwindled, I was really struggling to catch up in blue. I took a gamble on an exterior conflict against Luch which didn't pan out, leaving me further behind. I did manage to hook up to a blue monument, but it seemed like it would be my lsat turn. Despite all my advantages, my score wasn't giving me much confidence. Surprisingly, I did get one last turn as the tile bag was passed back to me with a single tile in it! I snagged 2 more blues that round, putting me back in the running.

Final scores put me and Kozure in a tie for the win. We had to go to our third least colour to break it... I won. That was close! Bharmer continues to prove that he's exceptionally quick at picking up games by playing very well in his first time out.

Modern Art

Modern Art is a game we don't play nearly often enough. 4 players is, in my opinion, the best number for the game (3 is not satisfying, 5 is too chaotic). Modern Art has the odd quality of being a game that is easy to play, but hard to "get". Strategy is not evident. Understanding the economics of each individual sale is simple enough, but manipulating the market to your advantage is harder. If an artist is already on the table, is it to your advantage to play another card by the same artist and bring in more interested buyers, or is it better to bring in a new artist and devalue the other player's investments? The answer involves many factors, including the amounts the other players have committed to the purchases, how many more are on the table, what is in your hand, etc. Like Tower of Babel, I play this game and enjoy it, but never feel like we are catching on to the strategy.

Again, bharmer played very well for his first time. There were no blown deals or gross overpayments. He actually spent a couple seasons without buying any paintings at all (deciding to maximize sales instead). It didn't work for him, but it was interesting.

Scores were unbelievably close. Luch won the game with 520, Kozure came in second with 514, and I came third with 510 (those numbers are approximate). It was good to get play that again.

Here's to revisiting older games! And Knizias.

When headaches are FUN

This week, at dictator Luch's request, we played Tigris and Euphrates and Blokus. It was an odd evening, because Kozure came home to find that his computer was so infested with virii and spyware that he was forced to spend the entire evening fixing it. Luckily, Tilli stepped in and took T&E head on.

She hadn't played before, so we explained the rules and got going. Disaster tiles were put to better use than they normally are by our group. Kingdoms were effectively sliced and diced this way with some pretty interesting results (fortunes were swinging wildly). The game was very different for another reason: Since we paid much more attention to moving our leaders around to maximize our points, rather than independently building kingdoms and scrambling for the treasures, the game actually ended due to lack of tiles (with 5 treasures remaining on the board!). Highly unusual! We also stumbled across a new strategy: placing tiles adjacent to leaders specifically to prevent them from playing red temples, keeping them vulnerable to inner conflict. I'm actually the one who did it, but it's not until Shemp pointed it out that it was apparent that this was a good strategy in many circumstances.

Unfortuantely, T&E can be daunting to learn. The difference between internal and external conflict, and particularly the consequences of each, are abstract and therefore often hard to remember. I would say that Tilli did better than most (her score certainly reflected that), despite the headache it was giving her. In the end, she said she had fun but felt somewhat dazed by the experience, and was going to sit out for the rest of the evening. We immediately tried to get her back with Blokus.

At first it didn't work. Kozure joined us for one round, but then he discovered that his computer disinfecting wasn't going as well as he'd hoped, so Tilli joined us for a second game. Blokus continues to be a fast paced, light and fun abstract strategy game. Whereas the first few games seem to revolve around finding opportunities to simply place your pieces, our most recent games have seen players much more on the attack. Blocking, carving out future growth paths, making pretty patterns... all valid strategies.

To finish things off, we had another game of T&E. For whatever reason, this three player game led to very high scores. Luch seemed in command for most of the game, with a stranglehold on two monuments and an on-again off-again relationship with a third giving him an enormous stream of points in three of four colours. his strategy was interesting: he frequently dumped tiles in order to have the ones he needed to win battles. This is how he succeeded in securing so many temples for so long. Amazingly, he actually finished last... All the tile changing and fortifying didn't leave him enough opportunity to beef up his one weak sphere. Still, it was a tight race, 3 points separating the first and last place.

Footnote: Every game, I build temples, and every game, they are quickly stolen from me. Note to self: Gretzky!!!

Conquest-A-Go-Go

So, last night was an evening of TWO rounds of Domaine, a chaotic game of Tigris and Euphrates, nice wine, chocolate, and of course Easy's spectacular venison stew!

Things were interesting this week, as we had a chance to explore strategies in a couple of games that we had played before, but are far from having mastered. First up was Domaine - this time we got the rules closer to correct than ever before, only messing up the endgame rule that one can't draw from the chancery after the last card is gone from the draw pile. That's fairly minor, considering some of the flagrant errors that we have made in the past on this one.

First time around, we were all fairly aware of what was happening on the board, but it didn't quite prevent me from completing an L^3G, which is Shemp lingo for the Large Late Land Grab, typically the winning maneuver in one of our games of Domaine. Second time around, we were all wise to this, and Ogami pulled off a new winning strategy, employing a central starting location and judicious use of Treaties/Alliances to keep others with more firepower (like yours truly) from encroaching on his region. Other notable strategies this game were Kozure's second place effort (attempting to control one resource laden side of the board), my mostly-failed attempt at using one soldier laden region to roll over other players, and Easy's disasterous attempt to control a resource scarce side of the board.

After these efforts, we moved on to Tigris and Euphrates, for the first time in more than four months. We mostly had a good retention of the rules, but strategies were foggy indeed. Easy easily displayed the most Snucular/Sneakular tactic, by causing conflicts between two other players, disrupting both of their tactics. That kept me, personally, off-balance and reacting most of the game. Luckily, last night off-balance, reacting, and judicious timing of the end game were sufficient to give me a win with 8 victory points. Easy recieved 7, Kozure 6, and Ogami less than that.

Seems to me that we will need to play this one a little more frequently if we hope to get more respectable final scores happening - on the up side, though, we are all fairly evenly matched. Definitely competitive, and definitely fun.

And the dinner? Let's just say that it was definitely the classiest we have had on a WAGS night, and is unlikely to be matched anytime soon - special thanks to Easy for the meat and Mrs. Shemp for the wonderful selection of vino. 'Twas bellisimo!

Speed Tigris & Euphrates doesn't work...

Last night we played our second game of Traders of Genoa and our third or fourth game of Tigris and Euphrates. In Traders of Genoa, we discovered that the person you THINK is in the lead often isn't, and that even if you think you are dead last.... you probably aren't. In the end, ????? (who's mysterious shirt pocket kept producing goods, small orders and money) took the game by a slim margin over Kozure (who thought he was last). Everyone thought I was in first because I had a great first few rounds, but the truth was I couldn't get anything going beyond that point...so I wasn't even close. Shemp discovered that his attempt at not going overboard on dealmaking backfired, and HilzaCanuck showed that ????? doesn't have a patent on "Screw yr Neighbor" type play.

Most importantly, we discovered that screwage and salt are both very funny.

I stand by my earlier assertion that this game is highly dependent on the crowd and the mood. Just in the course of last night's game, I went through phases of really liking it and finding it boring... in tune with everyone's participation in the game (sometimes, it just felt like people were really into it, with bidding and conversation flowing freely, while at other times people were distracted and didn't seem to care). I think the main flaw of the game is that many turns can go by where it seems that there isn't much to gain. It can also be difficult to get things going with assembling the proper supplies. The strategy to a successful game seems elusive, unlike Domaine which seemed to reveal itself at a fairly rapid pace. I still look forward to playing it again, though, and I think it will get better with time.

Tigris proved to be the brain-burner it's chalked up to be. I discovered that :
1) it's very difficult to play effectively when only drawing black and blue.
2) Shemp has a habit of stealing my temples and keeping them
3) Human players are much tougher than Java ones

Shemp won that one by a large margin.

Lastly, we tried a game of SPEED Tigris and Euphrates (since SPEED Carcassonne worked so well).
It was 73h 5uXX0r

Without time to think, people mostly focused on growing their own personal kingdom. Clashes did happen near the end, but they were poorly planned (In fact, I won the game because Shemp attacked me and lost on the last round, beefing up my weakest sphere).

I still really like this game. I find myself wishing I had the opportunity to play this one, in particular, more often. It's involving without needing too much of a time commitment, and the enjoyment doesn't come from novelty... so I don't think it will get old.

Easy Off

Tigris and Euphrates

Another Wednesday, another WAGS night. We played Tigris and Euphrates twice, and finished it off with a game of Illuminati CCG (using the "One big deck" rules. I'm not going to do illuminati justice if I try to explain last night's session, so I'll leave it to Shemp. I'll tackle T&E instead.

Tigris and Euphrates came with high expectations, since it ranked #2 on the top boardgames at Boardgamegeek.
Briefly, it's a game involving laying coloured tiles (followers) and matching wooden discs (leaders) to create kingdoms. Points are scored by placing followers in kingdoms where that player has the corresponding leader. Since there are up to four players, conflicts between leaders will arise. These are handled rather abstractedly by counting the number of relevant followers on each side, and the loser is removed from the board (sometimes with his followers). One very original aspect of the game is that the most balanced kingdom wins, not the most powerful. You are judged by your weakest sphere.
To me, it had a very different "feel" than most german games we've played... more like "Chess" or "Go" than "Puerto Rico" or "Settlers of Catan". The whole thing is quite abstract and the game quickly becomes one of strategy over theme (I had heard that about El Grande as well, but T&E is much more so). Of course, that's only a bad thing if you don't like that kind of game. Personally, I love them. Still, many hallmarks of a good german game are here: plays in a reasonable amount of time, not too many rules (although it CAN be hard to get your head around them) and everyone plays until the end.

Our first game was all about exploration. We each built our own little kingdoms and rarely clashed in a big way. We were each on our own personal race to capture the "treasures" and so the game ended rather quickly. i won the game, but only by one point. All players were surpringly close. Although nothing spectacular happened, we were all happy to have a game undr our belts and try again with a better idea how to plan ahead.

The second game was much more aggressive. Although 4 distinct kingdoms were formed by the end, each dominated by a player (okay, mine was more like a village), the road to those kingdoms was quite twisted. Kozure had a powerbase in the center of the board, but was ousted by a large conflict with Shemp. Later int he gameI Kozure came back and booted me out of my little kingdom (just after I had built a water temple!!!). Luch was far more successful with his temple, drawing points from it until the end of the game. In the end, it came down to a very large battle between Shemp and Kozure, involving nearly half the board. Once all was revealed, Kozure won by 1 point, and again the difference between first and last place was just 2 points. I'm getting the feeling that close games will not be uncommon.

Just like the classic games I compared it to, T&E is a kind of "Brain Burner" game. There are always many choices, and your opponent is always trying to catch you off guard with a placement strategy you didn't see coming. Because of this, the game is a little heavy (there's a lot of thinking between turrns) and It will take many plays to really hone a good strategy... I still think El Grande acheived a better balance between abstract strategy and fun. I did like it a lot, though, (more than most, even) and I'm looking forward to seeing if increased familiarity and skill will raise this game to another level or not.

Rating 8