After a somewhat prolonged hiatus (due in no small part to the birth of my new son), we made it back for the final(?) chapter of our Beyond the Supernatural RPG campaign. So, of course, the big question is: Did we prevent the destruction of Egypt? Of the world? Did the supernatural evils cross through the portal and enslave all of humanity?!!!
Can't rightly say, actually.
What I CAN say, is that the horrible die rolling which plagued our characters last session was replaced this time with VERY good luck. When Stan tried to do something, it often actually worked (Highlight: He was trying to hack off a vampire's head with a hunting knife, it turned into a bat and tried to fly away, Stan bit it's head off before it could, and then spit it out at a startled nearby vampire). When Helmut rolled initiative, he often went first (to put this in context, I don't think he had EVER gone first before this night). When Sam fired his gun, he rolled a hell of a lot of 20s.
The session started out with the characters in dire straights. All three were terribly wounded. The vampires were corralling them in a side tunnel while deKoonig, the head vampire, went off to complete the ritual which would open the portal to the big demons from beyond. In a bold, risky and (most of all) desperate attempt Helmut and Sam attacked the vampire guards in order to create a distraction so that Stan could escape with Professor Aziz. Stan and the professor rushed to the site of the ritual in order for Aziz to conduct his own counter-ritual, presumably to either shut down the gate or capture the demon (we didn't know which). Stan did his best to keep the vampires away, but he was quite outmatched (and outwitted. Note to Stan: if you have only a small amount of holy water, don't risk it by holding your hand out and saying "I have holy water here"). Luckily, Sam and a surprisingly quick Helmut came to help as things were getting sticky. Helmut's fire bombs were proving very effective, and Stan was having some luck sawing heads of of the vampires. In a bit of awful luck, when Stan managed to drop the container of holy water directly into deKoonig's mouth, hoping to burn him up from within, deKoonig managed to swallow it completely unharmed!!! (he rolled a 20 on his poison save). Eventually, the creatures did get to the professor and killed him before he could finish the ritual. Helmut, using his genius ability in Lore, managed to complete the ritual on his own, just as the evil ritual was completing and the gate was opening.The heros were surrounded by a circle of white light as a result of Helmut's incantation, and they moved forward and collided this aura with the evil darkness which was spreading.
There was a blast. Then there was darkness.
Then there was a field, mushrooms, a strange man... and no Egypt.
Stan could sense that wherever he was, it was a place with far more magical energy than the Earth he knew. Whatever the outcome of the incident in Egypt, Stan, Sam and Helmut were no longer around to see it. This was a different place, and quite possibly a new beginning.
With a campaign 10 years in the making now at a close, we called it a night for the RPGing. I had a great time playing it, and I want to thank Shemp again for being the GM. Stan McCormick, Auto Mechanic and Ghost Hunter, will always be one of my favorite characters.
We still had about an hour before we had to go, so Luch pulled out his new copy of Bohnanza and we gave it a whirl.
Bohnanza is a card game about planting beans. Players have to plant the most profitable crops possible, and must trade with other players in order to maximize their opportunities. Once the deck of cards is run through three times, the game ends and the richest player wins. The game system is quite clever in a few ways:
1) Players can only plant two varieties of beans at one time (three later in the game). The goal is to collect as many of that card as possible since the payout increases the more cards are in the set. The problem is that the mechanic of the game forces players to plant the first card in their hand every round... if there's no room for the card in an existing patch, one of the them has to be uprooted and thrown away (whether it's worth money yet or not). The only way to get rid of a card from your hand that you don't want to plant is to trade it away. This mechanism leads to constant trade from all players and is very effective at keeping all players involved and interested at all times (no matter who's turn it is).
2) When crops are cashed in, a number of cards from that set are kept as money. This effectively reduces the number of cards of that variety as the game progresses. There are so many varieties that it's hard to keep track of them all, but knowing what's out there and what isn't is a big advantage when planning the crops to pursue.
Although the theme is quite silly, there is a certain level of skill needed to understand what to trade, how to plan ahead and when to negotiate. I thought it was quite a good game, but I don't think I'd ask my sister to play it. As it turns out, beginners luck was on my side and I managed a win, but the game was pretty close and it felt tight right to the end!
Rating:
Bohnanza: 7.5
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
All about the Benjamins
Short one this week:
With JayWowser with us for another visit, we played a few games he hadn't yet tried... Traders of Genoa and Pirate's Cove.
Traders was good fun... the stinginess of our last game wasn't quite as apparent and the session felt more fun for it (in my opinion). It lasted a bit longer than most... 2 1/2 hours. Not sure why, other than we didn't lose a single round to the market place, whereas we normally lose at least one (and, to be fair, it WAS a 5 player game). I tried to go for a "Privilege" strategy, with a plan to collect 1 for 1 tokens and random goods and then trade them in one shot for a pile of privilege cards (since I knew that no one would ever give me any once they knew I was going for it). It didn't quite work out because the five player game left very few privileges on the board, and the ones I did manage to get didn't work togehter that well. I think I played okay, but in the end Luch's ownership tokens brought hima pile of money which no one could touch.
Alas, I came in last!
One thing which frustrates me a little about this game is the limitations put on trading. I bought this one because it was described as "the german answer to negotiation/ trading games such as monopoly". In this game, Shemp was trying to get a few privileges in order to extort a pile of money out of me. this should have been a good move (and in Monopoly, it might have worked), but in ToG, the trading is forced into revolving around small immediate trades (who wants THIS action). There is no opportunity to shift things around by trading outside those confines. There is no real opportunity for a move like Shemp was attempting, and that is a shortcoming in my book. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
In the end, we only had time for a half game of Pirate's Cove. Not sure what Jeff thought of this one, but if he didn't like it, I would hope he'd give it another chance... we were really rushing through it and much of the flavour didn't come through.
Still, I had a great time as usual. Until next time...
Easy
With JayWowser with us for another visit, we played a few games he hadn't yet tried... Traders of Genoa and Pirate's Cove.
Traders was good fun... the stinginess of our last game wasn't quite as apparent and the session felt more fun for it (in my opinion). It lasted a bit longer than most... 2 1/2 hours. Not sure why, other than we didn't lose a single round to the market place, whereas we normally lose at least one (and, to be fair, it WAS a 5 player game). I tried to go for a "Privilege" strategy, with a plan to collect 1 for 1 tokens and random goods and then trade them in one shot for a pile of privilege cards (since I knew that no one would ever give me any once they knew I was going for it). It didn't quite work out because the five player game left very few privileges on the board, and the ones I did manage to get didn't work togehter that well. I think I played okay, but in the end Luch's ownership tokens brought hima pile of money which no one could touch.
Alas, I came in last!
One thing which frustrates me a little about this game is the limitations put on trading. I bought this one because it was described as "the german answer to negotiation/ trading games such as monopoly". In this game, Shemp was trying to get a few privileges in order to extort a pile of money out of me. this should have been a good move (and in Monopoly, it might have worked), but in ToG, the trading is forced into revolving around small immediate trades (who wants THIS action). There is no opportunity to shift things around by trading outside those confines. There is no real opportunity for a move like Shemp was attempting, and that is a shortcoming in my book. Any suggestions on how to fix this?
In the end, we only had time for a half game of Pirate's Cove. Not sure what Jeff thought of this one, but if he didn't like it, I would hope he'd give it another chance... we were really rushing through it and much of the flavour didn't come through.
Still, I had a great time as usual. Until next time...
Easy
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Attaching a Rating to Fun?
Sooner or later, as a collector or as an afficianado, you start to make the inevitable "lists".
Best game, worst game, top 10, top 50, etc., etc.
I just finished the exercise of rating all the games we've played as a group over at BGG. It's pretty hard - you realize how relative a lot of your preferences are and how souless a simple 1-10 rating can feel.
Some games are good for quick, silly rounds, others are good for long, brain-burning sessions. How do you attach a rating to fun?
I noticed while rating games at BGG that they use a system based on how often you are willing to play a game - which might skew the ratings if you're generally an enthusiastic player or otherwise quite jaded.
There are a few games in our repetoire that, while I appreciate their technical artistry and execution, I don't feel like playing all that often. In at least two major cases (Tigris and Euphrates and El Grande) I rated games a full point lower than the majority of BGG ratings just because I don't really enjoy them as much as others seem to do. In other cases, I've rated games higher than they probably deserve from a technical standpoint, just because they have sentimental or personal elements to them which evoke a more emotional rating.
So, my ratings are a combination of technical appreciation with gut feeling like/dislikes.
What's your personal system?
Best game, worst game, top 10, top 50, etc., etc.
I just finished the exercise of rating all the games we've played as a group over at BGG. It's pretty hard - you realize how relative a lot of your preferences are and how souless a simple 1-10 rating can feel.
Some games are good for quick, silly rounds, others are good for long, brain-burning sessions. How do you attach a rating to fun?
I noticed while rating games at BGG that they use a system based on how often you are willing to play a game - which might skew the ratings if you're generally an enthusiastic player or otherwise quite jaded.
There are a few games in our repetoire that, while I appreciate their technical artistry and execution, I don't feel like playing all that often. In at least two major cases (Tigris and Euphrates and El Grande) I rated games a full point lower than the majority of BGG ratings just because I don't really enjoy them as much as others seem to do. In other cases, I've rated games higher than they probably deserve from a technical standpoint, just because they have sentimental or personal elements to them which evoke a more emotional rating.
So, my ratings are a combination of technical appreciation with gut feeling like/dislikes.
What's your personal system?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Get out of Town you Yellow-Bellied Galoot!
‘Chinaman’ Choy narrowed his already squinty eyes and spoke in gravely tones.
“Get out of my town,” he said evenly, without fear.
The notorious Baker gang stood unflinching, hands poised over Colt Peacemakers and Winchester triggers.
“This here’s our turf now, Chinaman. Best you go on back to San Antonia and take up laundrywarshing.”
Choy surveyed the quartet of gunslingers arrayed against him, “Abilene’s mine, Baker. You and your kin ain’t welcome.”
“Then I reckon this comes to shootin’ irons,” Jeb Baker growled. He went for his gun.
A fusillade of pistol fire rang out. At the end, only the Chinaman still stood, short-shadowed in the noon-day sun.
“I told you to get out of my town,” he spat.
* * *
This week’s theme was “Cowboys and Cutthroats: 19th Century American Capitalism”. In keeping with the theme, dinner was beef burritos and pork and beans, supplemented by jalapeno chips and gummy worms (worms – tequila – get it?). The game for the evening was Way out West. A session of US Patent Number 1 had also been planned, but a late start and enthusiasm for our first game put the nix on that idea.
Way out West is typically described as a tile placement game. It is, in a sense, but it also has a strong wargame-lite element to it which gives it a bit more kick than your average session of Puerto Rico or Tigris and Euphrates. The concept is that the players are robber barons / gang leaders / venture capitalists in the gunslinging, cattle-rustling Wild West. The board depicts five old west towns (San Antonia, Kansas City, Abilene, Dodge City, and Deadwood) of various maximum sizes, each with a upper limit on the number of ranches and buildings that can be placed there. The players begin with $25 and three cowboys. The cowboys are placed one at a time in turn order determined randomly at the beginning, and then the game begins.
The game mechanics seem dense at first, but after an initial hump, they come across (to me, at least) as rather elegantly refined to allow for interesting strategies but also reflect the theme very well.
There are 12 turns (9 in 5 or 6 player games), and every third turn is a money-making turn. The round begins with a short bidding round, beginning with the first player of the last round. The bids proceed until a player does not bid, at which point the player puts in any money already bid (if any) and places his turn order marker on the turn order track. Bidding continues until all the players drop out and the turn order for the turn is determined.
In turn order, each player selects one of several actions: build, hire a cowboy, buy cattle, move cowboys, start a gunfight, drive cattle, or place a farmer. After one round of selecting actions, in turn order, the players select again in turn order for their second action.
Building involves placing one of several types of building, all of which either earn money/VP, multiply money/VP earned, or provide additional security (Jail). Hotels earn $1 for every cowboy belonging to an opponent in the town during a money making turn. Stores earn $1 for each cow belonging to an opponent and $2 for each farmer. Stagecoaches earn $1 each time a cowboy comes into town from out East or leaves the town. Banks earn $2 for every other building or transport belonging to an opponent in the town. Trains double the income from all cattle in the town, not just those belonging to the player. Jails provide a sheriff which can fight for or against inhabitants of a town during a gunfight.
Hiring a cowboy brings in one or two cowboys at a cost of $1 each. Each player has a limited number of cowboys (and buildings, for that matter). Buying cattle works similarly, save that there are restrictions on where cattle can be placed – the towns are numbered 1 to 5, and lower numbered-towns must be more than half full before cattle can be placed in the next higher numbered town.
Moving cowboys involves moving cowboys already on a map, and is usually a precursor (or a result) of a gunfight.
Gunfights involve a simple dice-combat, with the side with the lower number of cowboys firing first, each die roll of 5 or 6 killing an opponent cowboy. When numbers are equal, combat is simultaneous. Cowboys have the option to retreat after the first round of combat, losing the round. This is the principle random / tactical element of the game; everything else is pure strategy. Winners of gunfights steal cattle, take over businesses, burn down jails, rob banks or kill farmers, depending on the target of the showdown.
Driving cattle involves moving a cow from one corral to any other empty corral on a map (useful to get your cattle out of a town with a farmer, or if your control needs shoring up elsewhere).
Placing a farmer is essentially a “screw your neighbour” mechanic. Farmers reduce income (and VP) from cattle in the same town. They also have the ability to displace a cow from the corral they are placed in.
The game is won by a tally of victory points. Buildings count for VP equal to the total number of buildings in town, as do cattle (1 VP) and the special “train” transport, which adds one VP to each cow. Players also earn 5 VP for the most money and 4 VP for being the most notorious. There is also a town bonus (equal to the size of the town) given to the player who “controls” a town by having the highest total of buildings and cattle in a town. Farmers subtract 1 VP per cow in the same town.
I find the theme of this game irresistible, and the integration of theme with game mechanic is very well done. Theme aside, however, this is also a clever little game of strategy and tactics, with a dollop of diplomacy and alliances thrown in for good measure. The only dodgy element of the game is the sometimes frustratingly random results of combat. Despite comments from other reviewers on BGG, I found that most combats, with one or two exceptions, resolved about how one would expect – the outnumbered cowboys usually lost, and when numbers were close or equal, it could go either way. I really enjoyed both games, and felt that despite a serious strategic blunder in the first game, I was having fun throughout.
I did note that Easy suffered what amounted to a two turn dearth of actions due to a daring bank robbery by the Shemp clan. I suppose one could blame Easy for leaving such a juicy target undefended, but we’re still learning. Hopefully that dry spell was not too painful for Easy.
As always, in re-reading the rules after a play through, I did discover two minor things which we did wrong – fortunately, I don’t believe that in either case that it had much effect on our game. First, all cowboys involved in a bank robbery must leave town and disperse to different towns (max one each) if there is a jail in the town that was robbed. I think the bank robbery only happened once, and I don’t think the dispersal of Shemp’s cowboys would have had much effect on the remainder of the game. It’s possible that there was no jail in the robbed town, so the issue may be moot. Second, you must have MORE than half of the corrals full before you can place in the next higher town - we played with if there IS half, you can place them in the next higher town (always when you have a cowboy there). That might have had a larger effect. We'll have to remember that rule for next time.
I thought after playing that I had gotten the “you always roll at least one die in defence” rule incorrect, but after a careful re-reading, it seems we had it right. This seems a little strange to me in that it’s just as safe to leave cattle undefended as to have a cowboy in the same town, but if you had a bank or a jail in town as well, it would be safer to have cowboys rather than depend on the intrinsic defence.
One thing that was not covered in the rules, FAQ or errata as far as I can tell, is what happens when all of the cowboys are killed in a simultaneous combat. We played it as if the defender won in this case. I will check on BGG for confirmation.
This is not a perfect game by any means, but I do find it very successful in a number of areas in which I rate “The Perfect Game”. I also found it fun, which is a key factor for me, at least. Another interesting twist in this game is that it is not economically smart to have a stranglehold on a town - you have to let the other hombres in to get a piece of their action. The various things that can happen in a turn do technically make this a little more dense than would be understandable for most non-gamers, but for me, I found this to be just the right combination of simplicity with diversity of options.
Hapi ran away with the first game (due in no small part to some spectacular gunplay by some of his cowboys) and Easy won the second. I suspect additional games will be closer, and I look forward to paying another visit to the Wild West very soon.
“Get out of my town,” he said evenly, without fear.
The notorious Baker gang stood unflinching, hands poised over Colt Peacemakers and Winchester triggers.
“This here’s our turf now, Chinaman. Best you go on back to San Antonia and take up laundrywarshing.”
Choy surveyed the quartet of gunslingers arrayed against him, “Abilene’s mine, Baker. You and your kin ain’t welcome.”
“Then I reckon this comes to shootin’ irons,” Jeb Baker growled. He went for his gun.
A fusillade of pistol fire rang out. At the end, only the Chinaman still stood, short-shadowed in the noon-day sun.
“I told you to get out of my town,” he spat.
* * *
This week’s theme was “Cowboys and Cutthroats: 19th Century American Capitalism”. In keeping with the theme, dinner was beef burritos and pork and beans, supplemented by jalapeno chips and gummy worms (worms – tequila – get it?). The game for the evening was Way out West. A session of US Patent Number 1 had also been planned, but a late start and enthusiasm for our first game put the nix on that idea.
Way out West is typically described as a tile placement game. It is, in a sense, but it also has a strong wargame-lite element to it which gives it a bit more kick than your average session of Puerto Rico or Tigris and Euphrates. The concept is that the players are robber barons / gang leaders / venture capitalists in the gunslinging, cattle-rustling Wild West. The board depicts five old west towns (San Antonia, Kansas City, Abilene, Dodge City, and Deadwood) of various maximum sizes, each with a upper limit on the number of ranches and buildings that can be placed there. The players begin with $25 and three cowboys. The cowboys are placed one at a time in turn order determined randomly at the beginning, and then the game begins.
The game mechanics seem dense at first, but after an initial hump, they come across (to me, at least) as rather elegantly refined to allow for interesting strategies but also reflect the theme very well.
There are 12 turns (9 in 5 or 6 player games), and every third turn is a money-making turn. The round begins with a short bidding round, beginning with the first player of the last round. The bids proceed until a player does not bid, at which point the player puts in any money already bid (if any) and places his turn order marker on the turn order track. Bidding continues until all the players drop out and the turn order for the turn is determined.
In turn order, each player selects one of several actions: build, hire a cowboy, buy cattle, move cowboys, start a gunfight, drive cattle, or place a farmer. After one round of selecting actions, in turn order, the players select again in turn order for their second action.
Building involves placing one of several types of building, all of which either earn money/VP, multiply money/VP earned, or provide additional security (Jail). Hotels earn $1 for every cowboy belonging to an opponent in the town during a money making turn. Stores earn $1 for each cow belonging to an opponent and $2 for each farmer. Stagecoaches earn $1 each time a cowboy comes into town from out East or leaves the town. Banks earn $2 for every other building or transport belonging to an opponent in the town. Trains double the income from all cattle in the town, not just those belonging to the player. Jails provide a sheriff which can fight for or against inhabitants of a town during a gunfight.
Hiring a cowboy brings in one or two cowboys at a cost of $1 each. Each player has a limited number of cowboys (and buildings, for that matter). Buying cattle works similarly, save that there are restrictions on where cattle can be placed – the towns are numbered 1 to 5, and lower numbered-towns must be more than half full before cattle can be placed in the next higher numbered town.
Moving cowboys involves moving cowboys already on a map, and is usually a precursor (or a result) of a gunfight.
Gunfights involve a simple dice-combat, with the side with the lower number of cowboys firing first, each die roll of 5 or 6 killing an opponent cowboy. When numbers are equal, combat is simultaneous. Cowboys have the option to retreat after the first round of combat, losing the round. This is the principle random / tactical element of the game; everything else is pure strategy. Winners of gunfights steal cattle, take over businesses, burn down jails, rob banks or kill farmers, depending on the target of the showdown.
Driving cattle involves moving a cow from one corral to any other empty corral on a map (useful to get your cattle out of a town with a farmer, or if your control needs shoring up elsewhere).
Placing a farmer is essentially a “screw your neighbour” mechanic. Farmers reduce income (and VP) from cattle in the same town. They also have the ability to displace a cow from the corral they are placed in.
The game is won by a tally of victory points. Buildings count for VP equal to the total number of buildings in town, as do cattle (1 VP) and the special “train” transport, which adds one VP to each cow. Players also earn 5 VP for the most money and 4 VP for being the most notorious. There is also a town bonus (equal to the size of the town) given to the player who “controls” a town by having the highest total of buildings and cattle in a town. Farmers subtract 1 VP per cow in the same town.
I find the theme of this game irresistible, and the integration of theme with game mechanic is very well done. Theme aside, however, this is also a clever little game of strategy and tactics, with a dollop of diplomacy and alliances thrown in for good measure. The only dodgy element of the game is the sometimes frustratingly random results of combat. Despite comments from other reviewers on BGG, I found that most combats, with one or two exceptions, resolved about how one would expect – the outnumbered cowboys usually lost, and when numbers were close or equal, it could go either way. I really enjoyed both games, and felt that despite a serious strategic blunder in the first game, I was having fun throughout.
I did note that Easy suffered what amounted to a two turn dearth of actions due to a daring bank robbery by the Shemp clan. I suppose one could blame Easy for leaving such a juicy target undefended, but we’re still learning. Hopefully that dry spell was not too painful for Easy.
As always, in re-reading the rules after a play through, I did discover two minor things which we did wrong – fortunately, I don’t believe that in either case that it had much effect on our game. First, all cowboys involved in a bank robbery must leave town and disperse to different towns (max one each) if there is a jail in the town that was robbed. I think the bank robbery only happened once, and I don’t think the dispersal of Shemp’s cowboys would have had much effect on the remainder of the game. It’s possible that there was no jail in the robbed town, so the issue may be moot. Second, you must have MORE than half of the corrals full before you can place in the next higher town - we played with if there IS half, you can place them in the next higher town (always when you have a cowboy there). That might have had a larger effect. We'll have to remember that rule for next time.
I thought after playing that I had gotten the “you always roll at least one die in defence” rule incorrect, but after a careful re-reading, it seems we had it right. This seems a little strange to me in that it’s just as safe to leave cattle undefended as to have a cowboy in the same town, but if you had a bank or a jail in town as well, it would be safer to have cowboys rather than depend on the intrinsic defence.
One thing that was not covered in the rules, FAQ or errata as far as I can tell, is what happens when all of the cowboys are killed in a simultaneous combat. We played it as if the defender won in this case. I will check on BGG for confirmation.
This is not a perfect game by any means, but I do find it very successful in a number of areas in which I rate “The Perfect Game”. I also found it fun, which is a key factor for me, at least. Another interesting twist in this game is that it is not economically smart to have a stranglehold on a town - you have to let the other hombres in to get a piece of their action. The various things that can happen in a turn do technically make this a little more dense than would be understandable for most non-gamers, but for me, I found this to be just the right combination of simplicity with diversity of options.
Hapi ran away with the first game (due in no small part to some spectacular gunplay by some of his cowboys) and Easy won the second. I suspect additional games will be closer, and I look forward to paying another visit to the Wild West very soon.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Darth Y'all
This week, we were able to discuss Revenge of the Sith fully, which natuarally lead to a couple of rounds of Star Wars: Epic Duels! Also on tap were a giant pizza from Pizzaville, and two rounds of Löwenherz - I don't believe either of those were related to Lucasfilm, but I can't be positive about it, either.
We started out with a round of Epic Duels, playing teams of two against two - Easy and I played the dark side, while Kozure and Luch were the light side. Everyone selects their characters, which come in sets of two or three, and have (in theory?) been balanced. A setting also needs to be selected - there are several included in the game, which represent locations from the Star Wars films, and are gridded off into squares. Each major character has a pre-designated starting spot on each board - secondary characters must be placed in immediate proximity to their major character. From here, the goal is simply to destroy the other side of the force.
Movement around the board is achieved by rolling a custom dice, which allows you to move either one of your characters, or all, depending on the outcome of the roll. After movement, a player may play cards from their character's custom deck, usually to harm another player's character, which would be allowed to play a card to defend. Some characters use close range attacks; others are line-of-sight. Characters attuned to "The Force" can sometimes attack in other ways, as well. Damage is counted on special cards that come with the game - some characters can withstand more than others.
I've probably played this game a five or six times now, but Wednesday was the first time that it has 'clicked' for me. I think the key to keeping this one fun is to keep gameplay quick, make sure you are fully awake, and don't take any losses too personally. Gaining some familiarity with the various characters helps things out as well, since all have different "special" cards that can affect your play tactics. I had a lot of fun with the first round and also a later one, where Luch and I were the dark side against Kozure and Easy's light side.
The experience of playing Löwenherz was quite interesting - it seemed that players' opinions shifted over the course of the night. We had played this game once previously, but had unfortunately made some errors, undermining our attempt to get a real feel for what it is all about. This night was a triumph for us in one respect - I think that we managed to play Löwenherz by the actual rules, a first in our experience with both it and it's cousin, Domaine.
The first game was a narrow victory for me, while Easy destroyed the field in our second round by pursuing a strategy for monopolizing silver mines - I personally don't think that strategy would work with the same group a second time, but who knows, really? I think that we started out the evening preferring Domaine, after one game preferred Löwenherz, and by the end of the evening preferred Domaine again - if that recollection isn't correct, I'm sure we'll all read about it in the comments!
Luch felt that Domaine plays quicker, with fewer options to consider. I'm not so sure about that, but thought it was interesting to see how two games with such similar concepts and rules can be changed by a mechanical tweak - in this case, replacing the auction of Löwenherz with the purchase mechanic of Domaine. All in all, I found the evening to very interesting, revealing new aspects of some games that we have played before.
A great success!
We started out with a round of Epic Duels, playing teams of two against two - Easy and I played the dark side, while Kozure and Luch were the light side. Everyone selects their characters, which come in sets of two or three, and have (in theory?) been balanced. A setting also needs to be selected - there are several included in the game, which represent locations from the Star Wars films, and are gridded off into squares. Each major character has a pre-designated starting spot on each board - secondary characters must be placed in immediate proximity to their major character. From here, the goal is simply to destroy the other side of the force.
Movement around the board is achieved by rolling a custom dice, which allows you to move either one of your characters, or all, depending on the outcome of the roll. After movement, a player may play cards from their character's custom deck, usually to harm another player's character, which would be allowed to play a card to defend. Some characters use close range attacks; others are line-of-sight. Characters attuned to "The Force" can sometimes attack in other ways, as well. Damage is counted on special cards that come with the game - some characters can withstand more than others.
I've probably played this game a five or six times now, but Wednesday was the first time that it has 'clicked' for me. I think the key to keeping this one fun is to keep gameplay quick, make sure you are fully awake, and don't take any losses too personally. Gaining some familiarity with the various characters helps things out as well, since all have different "special" cards that can affect your play tactics. I had a lot of fun with the first round and also a later one, where Luch and I were the dark side against Kozure and Easy's light side.
The experience of playing Löwenherz was quite interesting - it seemed that players' opinions shifted over the course of the night. We had played this game once previously, but had unfortunately made some errors, undermining our attempt to get a real feel for what it is all about. This night was a triumph for us in one respect - I think that we managed to play Löwenherz by the actual rules, a first in our experience with both it and it's cousin, Domaine.
The first game was a narrow victory for me, while Easy destroyed the field in our second round by pursuing a strategy for monopolizing silver mines - I personally don't think that strategy would work with the same group a second time, but who knows, really? I think that we started out the evening preferring Domaine, after one game preferred Löwenherz, and by the end of the evening preferred Domaine again - if that recollection isn't correct, I'm sure we'll all read about it in the comments!
Luch felt that Domaine plays quicker, with fewer options to consider. I'm not so sure about that, but thought it was interesting to see how two games with such similar concepts and rules can be changed by a mechanical tweak - in this case, replacing the auction of Löwenherz with the purchase mechanic of Domaine. All in all, I found the evening to very interesting, revealing new aspects of some games that we have played before.
A great success!
Saturday, May 28, 2005
Bright Lights, Big City
New Week.
2 new games.
Joined by our honorary Wagster, JayWowser, we took on Kozure's new copy of Power Grid. This is a top 5 game which had a reputation for fiddly rules but tight and enjoyable gameplay. How did it fare? Well, first off, we played a 6 player game where half the players had played a basic game and the other had never played. For this reason, our first full game took quite a long time (over 3 hours). Still, it turned out to be quite good.
Most of the criticisms regarding fiddly rules are valid. There are 3 rounds, and the rules change in each successive one, every turn has a lot of steps, there are lots of little pieces which all do different things and finally the is a lot of "book-keeping" type activites which SOMEONE playing the game needs to remember (ex: power plants getting cycled in or out of the game, resources being put back into circulation, etc). I remember thinking that this was one of those games which would play in under 1/4 of the time if it was turned into a computer game.
That being said, the game's got a lot going for it. For all their complexity, the mechanics do two things very well: 1) They create the illusion of a changing economy, a fluctuating market in fuel sources. 2) The players who are trailing have advantages against the leaders to keep them in the game. It's not terribly elegant, but it works.
The basics are simple enough:
1)Each player bids on power plants until everyone has bought one or passed.
2)Fuel is purchased for the power plants
3)Players build connections between cities
4)Players burn fuel to produce energy to those cities in order to generate money
The winner is the player who, once the requisit number of power plants have been built by any player, manages to power the most cities (and if that results in a tie) the one with the most money.
There is honestly too much going on in the game to decribe succinctly, but a few items deserve to be noted:
1) The fuel economy is represented by a chart indicating the cost of different fuels. The larger the available quantity of fuel, the cheaper it is. Different fuels power different power plant (coal, oil, garbage and uranium). In the beginning, coal is plentiful and cheap, but if everyone buys coal power plants it gets snapped up pretty quick and becomes expensive. In contrast, since garbage and uranium are initially expensive players are tempted to avoid the plants which use them as fuel. This seems to lead to a few players who have easy access to the fuel when it becomes cheap. Of course, everyone wants the wind generators, since they provide power without the need to purchase any fuel! for all the interlocking systems of the game, there is one they DON'T have which would seem to be a natural: Players who invest in a technology early gain no advantage or discount on future power plants of the same type.
2) The board is made up of cities which are eligible to receive power plants. In each phase from 1 to 3, the players can only have as many cities as the number of the current phase. This has the interesting effect of making the board alternately constricted and open as the game goes from phase to phase. Since the progression from phase to phase occurs differently each game, players must be flexible and think ahead in order to avoid being boxed in for a few turns. To keep things constricted, a game with fewer players uses a smaller portion of the board.
Interesting note: In a classy move, the board ships with two maps on a two sided board, U.S. AND Germany!
3) The winning conditions are counter-intuitive at first. The game ends once SOMEONE builds his/her 14th power plant (in a 6 player game). At the end of that turn, the player who was able to power the most of his/ her plants in the cities wins. Therefore, if the player who built the 14th plant first only has enough fuel to power 3 cities, any other player who manages to power more than that will win. More typically, what seems to happen is that a few players manage to make it to 14, but not all of them have reserved enough fuel to power all of them. If there are ties, the most remaining money wins.
In our game, we quickly discovered that the board feels very full, very fast. Our starting cities where all very close and I feared that my proximity to Tili and Kozure might do me in pretty early. I banked on claiming about 5 cities in my area, but my first plan was to secure an escape route for future growth in Eastern Germany. Sadly, turn order didn't go my way and Tili blocked up the escape route right away. I slowly put plants in the 5 cities nearby and then, when phase 2 came up, started claiming the second spots in the territory of my neighbour to the south: Kozure. Little did I know that JayWowser had plans to snap up all but 3 of them in one turn! (He was clearly playing a boom and bust game, doing very little for several turns and then exploding with big purchases once in a while). Having been outbid on the eco-plants by Tili, I resorted to focusing on coal. I managed to build a trio of plants which could power 14 cities quite early, and that proved to be instrumental later on... As other where busy bidding on plants to get to 14 in the last few rounds, I was able to spend my second last round just buying fuel for the plants, and my last round doing nothing but building my last cities and powering them (putting me in a very favorable financial position compared to the others, who were spending big bucks bidding on power plants). Shemp managed to also build plants in 14 cities on that last turn, but I had much more money in hand, giving me the win.
Luch spent, I think, the entire game in the "last player" turn order. This afforded him the opportunity to buy fuels first (making them cheaper), and build first (giving him a jump on prime locations). Unfortunatly, that strategy didn't pan out for him. Still, it seems that it could definitely work because the advantages are clearly there.
A few early notes on possible strategy:
1) The North West section of the Germany board, with many nearby cheap connections, really seems like the place to be.
2) Cycling your plants too many times gives diminishing returns. The plants are expensive, and cities progressively return less money (going from 1 to two cities gives a player 11 more electros, but going from 13 to 14 gives only 5 or so more).
3) Going last in the turn order can be a huge advantage, but it would likely have to be teamed up with a strategy of using coal or oil power plants (Because buying those first would always mean cheap fuel and cause other players to pay more). If the last place player is using eco plants or nuclear energy, his ability to go first isn't that useful, since he's not in competiton for fuel anyway.
Anyway, great game. Look forward to playing it again (I bet it will be much faster!)
Next up was Fairy Tale, a japanese card game brought to us my JayWowser.
I won't spend too much time describing this one... it's basically a set collecting game where players try to accumulate points by matching complementary cards, playing high scoring single cards and satisfying the condition on them or play cards which disrupt the other player's plans. The theme is that players are building a story, or something. The card art is quite nice in a Manga sort of way (although overly busy with symbols), but in the end the theme is quite thin... Which is okay because I though the game itself was really good.
The heart of the game is in the hand building... Each player is dealt 5 cards. They choose one and pass the rest to the left. Then they choose 1 card from the fours they were passed, and so on, until they have chosen five cards. Then they discard 2 cards and play the round with the remaining 3.
Players then choose 1 of their cards and reveal them simultaneously. Players check to see if any cards have global effects (such as the "Hunt" cards which immediately cancel any black cards just revealed, or the variety of cards which reveal or hide previously played cards). This continues until all three cards are played, and the whole thing (drafting of cards, etc) happens 4 times, for a toal of 12 cards layed.
At the end, each player counts up to see how many points they've made. Many cards are simply worth the amount printed on them. Others act as multipliers for themselves (if you have 1, it's worth 1 point. If you have 2, they are each worth 2. Etc) Others are "friends" of another card, and are worth 3 times as many of the "friend card" which you have managed to accumulate.
In the first of our two games, we didn't do too badly considering we didn't really grasp the way the cards worked just yet. Kozure won it, I think. The second game saw us all trying a few strategies, with the most impressive being Shemp's, who managed to get all but one of his baby dragons, resulting in 6x6 points=36. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that wasn't enought to win... My hand of "Friend" cards and individual points nudged slightly ahead of Kozure's version of the same.
All in all, a great filler game which only takes 20-30 mintues to play and was lots of fun. It's a shame it's such a hard one to find!
Anyway, JayWowser (if you are reading this) it was nice having you again, and we look forward to another!
Powergrid: 8.5
Fairy Tale:8
2 new games.
Joined by our honorary Wagster, JayWowser, we took on Kozure's new copy of Power Grid. This is a top 5 game which had a reputation for fiddly rules but tight and enjoyable gameplay. How did it fare? Well, first off, we played a 6 player game where half the players had played a basic game and the other had never played. For this reason, our first full game took quite a long time (over 3 hours). Still, it turned out to be quite good.
Most of the criticisms regarding fiddly rules are valid. There are 3 rounds, and the rules change in each successive one, every turn has a lot of steps, there are lots of little pieces which all do different things and finally the is a lot of "book-keeping" type activites which SOMEONE playing the game needs to remember (ex: power plants getting cycled in or out of the game, resources being put back into circulation, etc). I remember thinking that this was one of those games which would play in under 1/4 of the time if it was turned into a computer game.
That being said, the game's got a lot going for it. For all their complexity, the mechanics do two things very well: 1) They create the illusion of a changing economy, a fluctuating market in fuel sources. 2) The players who are trailing have advantages against the leaders to keep them in the game. It's not terribly elegant, but it works.
The basics are simple enough:
1)Each player bids on power plants until everyone has bought one or passed.
2)Fuel is purchased for the power plants
3)Players build connections between cities
4)Players burn fuel to produce energy to those cities in order to generate money
The winner is the player who, once the requisit number of power plants have been built by any player, manages to power the most cities (and if that results in a tie) the one with the most money.
There is honestly too much going on in the game to decribe succinctly, but a few items deserve to be noted:
1) The fuel economy is represented by a chart indicating the cost of different fuels. The larger the available quantity of fuel, the cheaper it is. Different fuels power different power plant (coal, oil, garbage and uranium). In the beginning, coal is plentiful and cheap, but if everyone buys coal power plants it gets snapped up pretty quick and becomes expensive. In contrast, since garbage and uranium are initially expensive players are tempted to avoid the plants which use them as fuel. This seems to lead to a few players who have easy access to the fuel when it becomes cheap. Of course, everyone wants the wind generators, since they provide power without the need to purchase any fuel! for all the interlocking systems of the game, there is one they DON'T have which would seem to be a natural: Players who invest in a technology early gain no advantage or discount on future power plants of the same type.
2) The board is made up of cities which are eligible to receive power plants. In each phase from 1 to 3, the players can only have as many cities as the number of the current phase. This has the interesting effect of making the board alternately constricted and open as the game goes from phase to phase. Since the progression from phase to phase occurs differently each game, players must be flexible and think ahead in order to avoid being boxed in for a few turns. To keep things constricted, a game with fewer players uses a smaller portion of the board.
Interesting note: In a classy move, the board ships with two maps on a two sided board, U.S. AND Germany!
3) The winning conditions are counter-intuitive at first. The game ends once SOMEONE builds his/her 14th power plant (in a 6 player game). At the end of that turn, the player who was able to power the most of his/ her plants in the cities wins. Therefore, if the player who built the 14th plant first only has enough fuel to power 3 cities, any other player who manages to power more than that will win. More typically, what seems to happen is that a few players manage to make it to 14, but not all of them have reserved enough fuel to power all of them. If there are ties, the most remaining money wins.
In our game, we quickly discovered that the board feels very full, very fast. Our starting cities where all very close and I feared that my proximity to Tili and Kozure might do me in pretty early. I banked on claiming about 5 cities in my area, but my first plan was to secure an escape route for future growth in Eastern Germany. Sadly, turn order didn't go my way and Tili blocked up the escape route right away. I slowly put plants in the 5 cities nearby and then, when phase 2 came up, started claiming the second spots in the territory of my neighbour to the south: Kozure. Little did I know that JayWowser had plans to snap up all but 3 of them in one turn! (He was clearly playing a boom and bust game, doing very little for several turns and then exploding with big purchases once in a while). Having been outbid on the eco-plants by Tili, I resorted to focusing on coal. I managed to build a trio of plants which could power 14 cities quite early, and that proved to be instrumental later on... As other where busy bidding on plants to get to 14 in the last few rounds, I was able to spend my second last round just buying fuel for the plants, and my last round doing nothing but building my last cities and powering them (putting me in a very favorable financial position compared to the others, who were spending big bucks bidding on power plants). Shemp managed to also build plants in 14 cities on that last turn, but I had much more money in hand, giving me the win.
Luch spent, I think, the entire game in the "last player" turn order. This afforded him the opportunity to buy fuels first (making them cheaper), and build first (giving him a jump on prime locations). Unfortunatly, that strategy didn't pan out for him. Still, it seems that it could definitely work because the advantages are clearly there.
A few early notes on possible strategy:
1) The North West section of the Germany board, with many nearby cheap connections, really seems like the place to be.
2) Cycling your plants too many times gives diminishing returns. The plants are expensive, and cities progressively return less money (going from 1 to two cities gives a player 11 more electros, but going from 13 to 14 gives only 5 or so more).
3) Going last in the turn order can be a huge advantage, but it would likely have to be teamed up with a strategy of using coal or oil power plants (Because buying those first would always mean cheap fuel and cause other players to pay more). If the last place player is using eco plants or nuclear energy, his ability to go first isn't that useful, since he's not in competiton for fuel anyway.
Anyway, great game. Look forward to playing it again (I bet it will be much faster!)
Next up was Fairy Tale, a japanese card game brought to us my JayWowser.
I won't spend too much time describing this one... it's basically a set collecting game where players try to accumulate points by matching complementary cards, playing high scoring single cards and satisfying the condition on them or play cards which disrupt the other player's plans. The theme is that players are building a story, or something. The card art is quite nice in a Manga sort of way (although overly busy with symbols), but in the end the theme is quite thin... Which is okay because I though the game itself was really good.
The heart of the game is in the hand building... Each player is dealt 5 cards. They choose one and pass the rest to the left. Then they choose 1 card from the fours they were passed, and so on, until they have chosen five cards. Then they discard 2 cards and play the round with the remaining 3.
Players then choose 1 of their cards and reveal them simultaneously. Players check to see if any cards have global effects (such as the "Hunt" cards which immediately cancel any black cards just revealed, or the variety of cards which reveal or hide previously played cards). This continues until all three cards are played, and the whole thing (drafting of cards, etc) happens 4 times, for a toal of 12 cards layed.
At the end, each player counts up to see how many points they've made. Many cards are simply worth the amount printed on them. Others act as multipliers for themselves (if you have 1, it's worth 1 point. If you have 2, they are each worth 2. Etc) Others are "friends" of another card, and are worth 3 times as many of the "friend card" which you have managed to accumulate.
In the first of our two games, we didn't do too badly considering we didn't really grasp the way the cards worked just yet. Kozure won it, I think. The second game saw us all trying a few strategies, with the most impressive being Shemp's, who managed to get all but one of his baby dragons, resulting in 6x6 points=36. Unfortunately, as it turns out, that wasn't enought to win... My hand of "Friend" cards and individual points nudged slightly ahead of Kozure's version of the same.
All in all, a great filler game which only takes 20-30 mintues to play and was lots of fun. It's a shame it's such a hard one to find!
Anyway, JayWowser (if you are reading this) it was nice having you again, and we look forward to another!
Powergrid: 8.5
Fairy Tale:8
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Karnage @ Karnak
The Scene: The temple of Amun at Karnak. Helmut and Aziz hid away in an inner compartment. Buchanan and McCormick were hidden in the shadows near the Great Hypostyle Hall, surveiling the approach to the temple.
All was quiet in the temple for several hours, but at 4:05 AM Stanley McCormick sensed something ominous, and whispered into the two-way radios.
"They've arrived." As soon as the shadowed figures were spotted, though, they were lost again, amid a wind, a rustling, and a flapping. McCormick believed that they had penetrated deep into the temple, to inner chambers hidden in darkness.
Tension continued mounting with little action until roughly 6:00 AM - at this point there was the sound of a vehicle, slamming, and then an entourage entered the temple, along with the first rays of light. Two cloaked figures, and 18 others, some burdened, and some apparently unburdened. They purposefully headed to the inner sanctum, and minutes later a small grouping headed back to the main entry, where the lead hooded figure loudly chanted an invocation. Wind whipped up, howling, resulting in a sandstorm that blackened the sky. There was more movement amongst the most recent arrivals, and 6 individuals were left on patrol, while the rest returned to the interior.
Buchanan agitated for immediate action, but the others vetoed that idea, preferring to wait for Noon, preferring to strike at the presumed climax of the ritual, and the presumed summoning of the Elder God Mun'Mut'Kunzu.
At 10:00 AM a slow procession began down the main axis of the temple. Stan and Sam kept tabs, and at one point Buchanan braved the sandstorm to loop around a sentry from the outside. He would later regret plunging into the sandstorm, as it seemed to result in repeated jamming of weapons later on, when he most needed them.
The procession was headed by a cloaked figure (presumed to be O'Brien), followed by four torch bearing cultists, two bearing the stone artifact, and six bearing a restrained figure on some sort of board. By 11:52, they arrived in the area just in front of the inner chamber, and it became apparent that a sacrifice was to take place. A human sacrifice. Buchanan and McCormick were watching, Helmut and Aziz were readying to do their part to stop this from happening.
McCormick slipped away to ready his weapons.
At 11:52 AM things went to Hell.
A stumble, a stubbed toe, and an oath by McCormick drew attention, and subsequent gunfire. Chaos erupted, and Fearg chanted. McCormick threw himself to the ground at the feet of the cultists, drawing gunfire. Buchanan attempted a distraction, and joined in the gunplay himself. Helmut von X realized his attention was needed, and moved to the main hall. Fearg chanted. McCormick let double shotguns blaze. Buchanan cursed his luck and bled. Helmut loosed some arrows. Fearg chanted. McCormick was grabbed by four cultists, and was presented to Fearg. Fearg chanted. Helmut dodged. Buchanan fired scavenged rifles. Fearg chanted and Stanley McCormick foresaw that he was going to die.
At 11:53 AM things were the darkest.
Buchanan’s rifles jammed. Stanley, despite his brute strength, was immobilized. But Helmut's arrows made their mark, while Fearg chanted. Buchanan's shots once again hit their marks. The cultist's numbers were reduced to those holding McCormick. Fearg chanted, and raised his ceremonial dagger. Helmut drew his katana, and dispatched McCormick’s captors. Fearg brought his dagger sweeping down to McCormick’s heart. Stanley McCormick, finally, dodged.
At 11:54 all that was left of the cult was Fearg O'Brien, and piles of meat. Fearg took several rifle shots without blinking, but finally was forced to break his chant. The demon took a couple of last swipes, transformed to a serpent, and was tossed aside. Aziz joined the other three adventurers in the main room, and they caught their breath. McCormick opened himself to the Supernatural, attempting to get a fix on O'Brien.
He didn't get a fix on O'Brien. But he did get one on DeKoonig!
The Vampire and minions materialized and thanked our bleeding protagonists for "dealing with" O'Brien. DeKoonig offered the honour of being a first meal in his forthcoming Vampire Kingdom.
At 11:55, dawn had not yet arrived.
(previously)
All was quiet in the temple for several hours, but at 4:05 AM Stanley McCormick sensed something ominous, and whispered into the two-way radios.
"They've arrived." As soon as the shadowed figures were spotted, though, they were lost again, amid a wind, a rustling, and a flapping. McCormick believed that they had penetrated deep into the temple, to inner chambers hidden in darkness.
Tension continued mounting with little action until roughly 6:00 AM - at this point there was the sound of a vehicle, slamming, and then an entourage entered the temple, along with the first rays of light. Two cloaked figures, and 18 others, some burdened, and some apparently unburdened. They purposefully headed to the inner sanctum, and minutes later a small grouping headed back to the main entry, where the lead hooded figure loudly chanted an invocation. Wind whipped up, howling, resulting in a sandstorm that blackened the sky. There was more movement amongst the most recent arrivals, and 6 individuals were left on patrol, while the rest returned to the interior.
Buchanan agitated for immediate action, but the others vetoed that idea, preferring to wait for Noon, preferring to strike at the presumed climax of the ritual, and the presumed summoning of the Elder God Mun'Mut'Kunzu.
At 10:00 AM a slow procession began down the main axis of the temple. Stan and Sam kept tabs, and at one point Buchanan braved the sandstorm to loop around a sentry from the outside. He would later regret plunging into the sandstorm, as it seemed to result in repeated jamming of weapons later on, when he most needed them.
The procession was headed by a cloaked figure (presumed to be O'Brien), followed by four torch bearing cultists, two bearing the stone artifact, and six bearing a restrained figure on some sort of board. By 11:52, they arrived in the area just in front of the inner chamber, and it became apparent that a sacrifice was to take place. A human sacrifice. Buchanan and McCormick were watching, Helmut and Aziz were readying to do their part to stop this from happening.
McCormick slipped away to ready his weapons.
At 11:52 AM things went to Hell.
A stumble, a stubbed toe, and an oath by McCormick drew attention, and subsequent gunfire. Chaos erupted, and Fearg chanted. McCormick threw himself to the ground at the feet of the cultists, drawing gunfire. Buchanan attempted a distraction, and joined in the gunplay himself. Helmut von X realized his attention was needed, and moved to the main hall. Fearg chanted. McCormick let double shotguns blaze. Buchanan cursed his luck and bled. Helmut loosed some arrows. Fearg chanted. McCormick was grabbed by four cultists, and was presented to Fearg. Fearg chanted. Helmut dodged. Buchanan fired scavenged rifles. Fearg chanted and Stanley McCormick foresaw that he was going to die.
At 11:53 AM things were the darkest.
Buchanan’s rifles jammed. Stanley, despite his brute strength, was immobilized. But Helmut's arrows made their mark, while Fearg chanted. Buchanan's shots once again hit their marks. The cultist's numbers were reduced to those holding McCormick. Fearg chanted, and raised his ceremonial dagger. Helmut drew his katana, and dispatched McCormick’s captors. Fearg brought his dagger sweeping down to McCormick’s heart. Stanley McCormick, finally, dodged.
At 11:54 all that was left of the cult was Fearg O'Brien, and piles of meat. Fearg took several rifle shots without blinking, but finally was forced to break his chant. The demon took a couple of last swipes, transformed to a serpent, and was tossed aside. Aziz joined the other three adventurers in the main room, and they caught their breath. McCormick opened himself to the Supernatural, attempting to get a fix on O'Brien.
He didn't get a fix on O'Brien. But he did get one on DeKoonig!
The Vampire and minions materialized and thanked our bleeding protagonists for "dealing with" O'Brien. DeKoonig offered the honour of being a first meal in his forthcoming Vampire Kingdom.
At 11:55, dawn had not yet arrived.
(previously)
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
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?
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?
Friday, May 06, 2005
RECONAISSANCE REPORT FROM ZZ PLURAL ALPHA BEGINS
Supreme Overlord Gazak-Thul XXIV,
I have completed my reconnaissance of the puny meatling squatter camps located in sector ZZ plural Alpha. It is a pathetic, squabbling world of carbon-based, bipedal monkey things with a strange fascination with mammary protrusions. In particular, I was amused to discover a small group of three of them playing simulations of their attempts to fend off invasion. Hah… should we choose to destroy them, rest assured there would be no cardboard counters or randomized plastic cubes involved! GAAAGH GAAGH GAAAGH GAAAGH! *snort*
Their first nonsensical simulation was called “They’ve Invaded Pleasantville”, a hypothetical invasion set in the bucolic country-side bumpkin town of what they call “America” from fifty of their orbital periods ago. It is a poorly decorated game, with a bare minimum of attention given to artwork or style. It depicts the effort of a “Sub-Commander Zebulon” (wouldn’t Planetary Tyrant Zebulon from sector GK epsilon be amused!) who is taking over the monkey-people of the town of Pleasantville using implants which render them slave-like zombies. One of the monkeys takes the lofty role of Zebulon, while the other smelly hominids (well, usually one other hominid, but this play-through was modified for three competitors, instead of the usual two) play the wretched inhabitants of the town who are alerted to the invasion. In a careful game of hidden control and randomized movement, the Zebulon simulator must try to take over as many inhabitants as possible before 12 turns pass, while the human simulators must convince other sceptical townspeople of their cause, converse with potentially converted “uncontrolled” townspeople and capture implanted humans to interrogate or remove their implants. Combat and influence are handled by charts which related to comparative odds, an ancient and primitive method typically called “Combat Result Tables, or CRTs” by other ape-man simulation enthusiasts. There are also tables of “Die Roll Modifiers, or DRMs”, though they are not called as such. I am lead to understand that these CRTs and DRMs are primitive even by Earthling standards, especially in comparison to more modern hominid simulations (though still primitive when set beside our own HolOlfactoryMoist-o-Rama Simulatrons). Using a simplistic but effective method of counter substitution, the Zebulon player conceals which townspeople are under the control of his superior forces. He must then carefully move both implanted and non-implanted uncontrolled townspeople to deceive his opponent(s) about which townspeople are actually under his control. There are other aspects of the game, but to delve further would take up entirely too many chronopulses. Victory is sustained for the Earthling-side player if he discovers and kills the immobile (heh, not unlike our own chubby-wubby Zebulon, eh?) Sub-commander Zebulon or if he maintains control of at least half of the influence value of human townspeople by the end of the twelfth turn. If these conditions are not met, the obviously more deserving Alien simulator is victorious.
In this event, apelings Hapi and Shemp quavered in their loafers and heels as the townspeople, while unworthy Kozure simulated Zebulon (rather poorly, I hasten to add). Kozure made critical errors in marshalling his forces early on, tipping his hand too soon as to which were alien-controlled and which were mere townspeople. Hapi and Shemp effectively gained recruits (though not helped much by the Bartender) and had a fair-sized posse by turn three. A few random movement rolls moved some of the implanted apes right into the clutches of the growing alerted town forces and Kozure was too foolish to simply ignore the optional random move. Although Kozure was recovering and getting more slaves by turn 7, a simplistic and unexpected method of interrogation by left-to-right, top-to-bottom elimination of Zebulon’s location revealed the Sub-Commander’s position far too early. A posse of angry townspeople descended on the supermarket, brushed aside the ineffective resistance put up by the only alien-controlled townspeople in the area (the Sheriff and the Check-out Girl) and lynched Zebulon in a most undignified manner. Overall, a feeble effort by the Kozure-player and a very effective and coordinated game by Hapi and Shemp. Of course, our forces would have simply Blasto-Rayed the whole town, leaving nothing but monkey ashes and melted malt shops. GAAAGH GAAGH GAAAGH GAAAGH! *snort*
The second pitiable simulation was a similar “Old School” game designed by the man-ape Tom Wham, originally for TSR, but repackaged for Steve Jackson games in a clumsy but cute “video-tape” box. The game is called “The Awful Green Things from Outer Space” and, while also meant for two monkeys, can be played by up to six or so with quick modifications. This game represents the struggle of a curiously non-hominid crew to fend off an infestation of “Awful Green Things” picked up as geological samples from a strange world. The crew of the Znutar, made up of four different sentient races and one kiwi bird-like mascot, once alerted to the presence of eggs, babies and adult Awful Green Things on their ship, must make use of various weapons like pool sticks, stun guns, welding torches, communications beamers, fuel tanks and even the packaged foodstuff “Zgwortz” to kill the invaders, or, if things become desperate, abandon the ship. It is a childishly simple game of area movement and dice-based combat – the only really distinctive feature is the random combat effects of the weapons, which can kill, stun, grow, shrink or fragment the aliens into multiple pieces (which can then grow themselves). I know if someone came at me with a high-frequency demodulating etha-net transponder/communications beamer, I wouldn’t be standing in the way, Garthoz be my witness! GAAAGH! *snort*
In this simulation, the puny earthlings forced the Shemp-ape to play the AGTs, while Hapi and Kozure split up the crew. Shemp made a valiant effort, but unfamiliarity with the game and some early bad random-cube roll breaks had him on the defensive for the majority of the play. Kozure and Hapi managed to contain and eliminate the AGT menace with a loss of only five crew members. Surprisingly, your humble servant found this game amusing and quick, despite its simple and dated pedigree. All of the monkeys flapped their ingestion holes and announced that they would enjoy playing both games again. The one known as Kozure wanted to play “The Awful Green Things from Outer Space” again immediately, but their self-imposed chronospan was insufficient to allow completion.
Instead, the meatlings opted to play a game called Zero!, a simulation of one of their laughably small-scale conflicts of 60 orbital periods ago. This game of airfoil-craft powered by piston-drive internal combustion engines was familiar to them already and play proceeded quickly. Kozure played against Shemp and Hapi. Man-ape Kozure pounced on Shemp early in the game, scoring a quick damage result, while Hapi and Kozure’s other element tangled below. The play went very well, as all players now seemed familiar with how to fly their simulated aircraft. After a whirling dogfight, Kozure’s “IJN” emerged victorious, having destroyed one opponent’s aircraft and damaged another, while the “USAF” played by Hapi and Shemp only managed to damage one Zero. Surprisingly, Kozure’s element of weak Oscars were unharmed.
The puny humans seemed pleased with their laughable simulations, even going so far as to permit one of their slug-like offspring to burble and drool in observation. There was much ingestion-hole flapping and intake of a disturbingly odorous food called “curry”, and also mention of an absent member named “Easy”. What a sorry and pitiable race, to find amusement in such primitive and inadequate diversions.
I conclude that this race is ripe for conquering, or should that prove to be more trouble than it’s worth, simple liquefaction for storage as a high-protein meal supplement. However, my most bilious Supreme Overlord, perhaps a few more orbital periods of study are merited to further document their pathetic paper and plastic simulation techniques. While meagre and positively archaic, there is a certain… charm… to their execution and use.
Yours ever obediently,
Scout-Captain Yup-Lodjaq
Reconnaissance Craft Halsaf the Trenchant
Invasion Force Grak Vanguard
Sector ZZ Plural Alpha
END COMMUNICATION
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