Back when we were often four players, I used to lament the fact that we couldn't play A Game of Thrones since it took five to play optimally. I recently decided to spring for a copy of the expansion called "A Storm of Swords" because it features a new board designed specifically for four players. Of course, that's when Luch moved out of town, and we dropped to just three players...
Well, this week Bharmer made his once a month appearance and so we were four. Kozure decided to pick this game, and there was joy in the land of Westeros.
If you know A Game of Thrones, this is mostly the same game on a different board, but there are important differences:
1) There are no boats or wilding attacks.
2) Leaders are added to the game, and new rules for taking hostages and hostage negotiations go with them.
3) Each player gets a "Tactics" deck, which gives an ability for each game turn.
4) Four "Ally" deck representing factions that can be, err, allied with.
5) A claim track allows players to gain VPs in other ways than conquering territory.
A few other new items have been added which have a lesser impact on the game, such as a weather track that makes some passages inaccessible during stormy weather, and garrisons which are units that can only defend.
In my opinions, each of the additions are excellent. The loss of boats is unfortunate, but is more than compensated by the other additions.
The leaders, major characters from the books, are interesting because they have two "states". The first is their basic state, and boils down to an addition to the combat value for the group. The second is triggered when the player controlling it plays a certain kind of order (usually raid or consolidate power)... in this case the player can choose to ignore the chosen event and instead execute a march order and benefit from a slightly altered, more powerful leader. As an example, Jamie Lannister goes from a 1 strength unit to a 2 strength unit with a bonus sword icon when activated. The subtle impact here is that the triggering order might cause combat out of sequence... A raid marker that triggers a march allows combat earlier than normal and can therefore allow a player that would otherwise be later in the combat turn to make an attack before his opponent can act. If a combat involving a leader produces losses, the winning player can choose to claim a leader as a prisoner instead. Later on, power tokens can be squeezed out of the owners of your prisoners. Further, hostage negotiations can take place which adds a welcome layer of politics to a game that is meant to be political in the first place.
The tactics cards add a level of uncertainty to each game turn because depending on the choice, a player might have a bonus on siege or on defense, a player might make an alliance from the "Ally" deck, a player might squeeze power tokens from the former owners of prisoners in his holding cell, etc.
The Ally cards are interesting because they add reinforcements and other abilities to the players, and offer another path to follow to cement a lead or stage a comeback.
The Claim track adds another way to gain VPs. Certain tactics cards and westeros cards give the possibility to a player to gain a point on the Claim track, which gives players an alternative to pure military victory.
Overall, the game feels at once significantly different and much the same. The foundation of the game is unchanged, but a layer of chrome has been added which changes the flavour. The tactics card and the Allies shake up the chess-like simplicity of the basic game. Some players may strongly hate or prefer this introduction of randomness, but I like both for different reasons. Due to game length issues, I would probably pick A Game of Thrones: A Storm of Swords for four players and Mare Nostrum for five, but I'd happily play either.
In our game, I was the Lannisters, Shemp was the Barratheons, Kozure was the Greyjoys and Bharmer was the Starks. In the starting setup, the Lannisters start spread out and with Eddard Stark as a prisoner. The prisoner puts me immediately at odds with the Starks, and geographic adjacency + a Barratheon tactics card ensures that there will be conflict with them as well. Still, early in the game the Lannisters managed to conquer two neutral cities and satisfy their tactics card VP condition... I was within a single point of winning the game!
Then came turn 6.
In turn 6 I miss-programmed one of my armies, putting it in a situation where it became decimated. I lost King's Landing to the Barratheons, lost a 7 point army due to rout, etc, etc. I played very badly, making stupid call after stupid call, dropping back to 4-5 points in the process.
Greyjoy and the Starks were similarly exchanging blows in the north for much of the game. Jamie Lannister was planning a raid into the Greyjoy camp as The Starks came down from the north and started putting pressure in the center of the board.
Unfortunately, it was getting late and we were forced to end the game prematurely. It ended up being a three-way tie for most VPs, so we had to go to three levels of tie breaker to find the Greyjoys victorious (most supply was the determining tie-breaker).
A Game of Thrones is quite a long game to play, and requires a certain amount of effort to play properly. That's fine. I enjoy it quite a bit when it does get on the table.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
What's a Calpulli again? (The End of the Triumvirate, Mexica)
No new games played this week, so the post should be short.
Me, Shemp and Kozure again. Shemp picked The End of the Triumvirate and Mexica.
The End of the Triumvirate
Just to shake things up, we chose colours randomly. Kozure was red (Caesar), I played Blue (Pompei) and Shemp was black (Crassus). The starting positions make Pompei a military force in the beginning, whereas Caesar favors politics (I can only assume Crassus is somewhere in between). I started out by building/ conserving my strength and increasing my competency. Kozure and I were butting heads over control of Rome, while Shemp was remaining mostly unmolested. He stole my advisor, but I was managing to hold my own as a military force on the board. Kozure won the first election. Shemp won the second election, stealing the victory from Kozure by dragging ALL the remaining votes to his side. I was within two provinces of winning, but Shemp was so close to being acclaimed that it was imperative to bring him down. I spied a way to knock him down while simultaneously getting within one turn of winning through "competency" I had so much gold producing provinces on the board I was sure I would win, but Shemp and Kozure stole enough of my provinces that I was 1 gold short. In the end, we were all so close to winning every move was damage control. Due to the built in timer of the election, the game ended as Shemp claimed his second election as consul and won a political victory.
The End of the Triumvirate is quite a curious game. It simultaneously feels very much like a euro, and also very much like a wargame, which puts it in a very small category of games (with Antike, but what else?). The balance is terrific, and the tension of trying to advance your agenda without giving the game to another player through a different victory condition is palpable. Further, the constant timing mechanism of the elections ensures that the game ends eventually (this is an issue with Mare Nostrum, another game I quite like that feels similar). The main downside is that a player's turn has enough steps that downtime is somewhat of an issue. It's a three player game, and turns aren't THAT long anyway, but it's enough of an issue that I was noticing it (and I think that we tend to play reasonably quickly, so it might be worse for others).
Anyway, for a three player wargame it's quite good.
Mexica
In this session we started out fairly predictably by each going to our own corner and we eventually worked towards the middle. I forced the first scoring with a move that gave me the majority in a region AND got me on the sacred space for the bonus points, which I was very happy with. However, we forgot that the scoring only happens after all the players have had the same number of turns, which in this case would have given Shemp and Kozure a chance to act (and obviously would have improved their score). When Kozure ended it, it looked like I was comfortably ahead throughout the scoring. In counting the last half of the board, however, the score tightened up and it ended very close with me in the lead by 4-5 points. Hard to say if I still would have won if we hadn't made that mistake in the first scoring, however.
Me, Shemp and Kozure again. Shemp picked The End of the Triumvirate and Mexica.
The End of the Triumvirate
Just to shake things up, we chose colours randomly. Kozure was red (Caesar), I played Blue (Pompei) and Shemp was black (Crassus). The starting positions make Pompei a military force in the beginning, whereas Caesar favors politics (I can only assume Crassus is somewhere in between). I started out by building/ conserving my strength and increasing my competency. Kozure and I were butting heads over control of Rome, while Shemp was remaining mostly unmolested. He stole my advisor, but I was managing to hold my own as a military force on the board. Kozure won the first election. Shemp won the second election, stealing the victory from Kozure by dragging ALL the remaining votes to his side. I was within two provinces of winning, but Shemp was so close to being acclaimed that it was imperative to bring him down. I spied a way to knock him down while simultaneously getting within one turn of winning through "competency" I had so much gold producing provinces on the board I was sure I would win, but Shemp and Kozure stole enough of my provinces that I was 1 gold short. In the end, we were all so close to winning every move was damage control. Due to the built in timer of the election, the game ended as Shemp claimed his second election as consul and won a political victory.
The End of the Triumvirate is quite a curious game. It simultaneously feels very much like a euro, and also very much like a wargame, which puts it in a very small category of games (with Antike, but what else?). The balance is terrific, and the tension of trying to advance your agenda without giving the game to another player through a different victory condition is palpable. Further, the constant timing mechanism of the elections ensures that the game ends eventually (this is an issue with Mare Nostrum, another game I quite like that feels similar). The main downside is that a player's turn has enough steps that downtime is somewhat of an issue. It's a three player game, and turns aren't THAT long anyway, but it's enough of an issue that I was noticing it (and I think that we tend to play reasonably quickly, so it might be worse for others).
Anyway, for a three player wargame it's quite good.
Mexica
In this session we started out fairly predictably by each going to our own corner and we eventually worked towards the middle. I forced the first scoring with a move that gave me the majority in a region AND got me on the sacred space for the bonus points, which I was very happy with. However, we forgot that the scoring only happens after all the players have had the same number of turns, which in this case would have given Shemp and Kozure a chance to act (and obviously would have improved their score). When Kozure ended it, it looked like I was comfortably ahead throughout the scoring. In counting the last half of the board, however, the score tightened up and it ended very close with me in the lead by 4-5 points. Hard to say if I still would have won if we hadn't made that mistake in the first scoring, however.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Battles: With and without Pus (The End of the Triumvirate, Chaos in the Old World)
No new games this week (shocking, I know). We played The End of the Triumvirate and Chaos in the Old World (me, Kozure and Shemp). Curiously, these are all games that I was impressed with the last time I played them, but felt a little less satisfying this time. Maybe it was the games, maybe it was my mood. Who knows?
The End of the Triumvirate
This system is a very successful three way tug of war. In order to succeed, you have to make sure you are moving towards one of the three possible victory conditions without allowing another player to get ahead of you in another track. Alas, this is what happened.
I was Caesar, and decided I would try for the political victory. I focussed on gold, and political competency. The idea was that I would stay ahead in that track, buy votes as often as I could and either get elected twice or do it once and corner the vote. I thought that if I made myself an easy target I would benefit from people attacking me and move ahead on the political competency track for free (due to the compensation given to the vanquished in battle). Unfortunately, Shemp and I skirmished too much and allowed Kozure to get too strong. Although I was one turn short of winning myself, we weren't able to stop Kozure from winning a military victory. To Crassus go the spoils.
As I said, it's a fun game but for some reason it felt a little "off" for me. There was some downtime between turns, we had to look up the rules a lot, etc. Not sure why, just seemed less polished than I remembered.
Chaos in the Old World
Having finally figured out the correct rules to the game, I was anxious to give this potentially great game another spin (the game ships with a couple of game-breaking errors which made our last games interesting but incredibly lopsided). We drew randomly, and I ended up being the same character as last time... Khorne, the red. Kozure played Slanesh and Shemp was Tzeentch.
Playing correctly, it becomes extremely easy to gain dial "ticks" as Khorne. Khorne is such a force militarily that overcoming the other's minions is a simple task if they don't run away. I was gaining two ticks nearly every turn.
I'm told that it's very easy to play and win as Khorne at first, but experienced players make it very difficult for him to win. I can only extrapolate that seasoned players know how to retreat and make Khorne waste actions. I'll really try to play a different god next time in order to broaden my horizons...
Anyway, it was still a good game and I did enjoy it, but there is something about the gameflow I find clunkier than it should be. Particularly, the multiple housekeeping phases required before ending a turn is annoying. Similarly, having to go through all the provinces sequentially three times in order to resolve combat, then domination and then again to do corruption seems like a bit much. We ended up doing many of the steps simultaneously, but also often forgetting a step here or there.
Not a deal breaker. As the others said at the end of the game, by the end it was starting to feel pretty smooth. I feel there is probably a very good game there, we just need to internalize the steps a bit better.
Regardless, here are a few additional thoughts on the game:
1) One of the characteristics that often separate a euro from and american game is the presence of a spacial element and the representation of physical movement. The euros will frequently go with a more logistical approach which presents choices in an abstracted way, while the american game will often have a map and units moving from one space to another. In this respect, Chaos in the Old World feels much more like a euro than an american game. Although the units occupy a map that represents a fantasy world, units do not really travel from place to place in any meaningful way. Every game turn, players summon creatures to one or more regions, they battle and/or corrupt and then that's it. Adjacency is only meaningful because of a few placement limitations (units need to be placed in contiguous provinces). It's much more similar to El Grande or China than Risk, for example.
2) Another defining characteristic of american games is that at the end of a session there is usually a story to tell, whereas with euros it's pretty hard to describe what happened thematically. CitOW doesn't lend itself very well to storytelling in my opinion.
3) The game effects that the random "Old World" cards have on the game give the system an ameritrash feel, but not nearly as pronounced as I expected. The effects are all known at the start of each turn, and although they will certainly favour one player over another it hasn't yet felt like it was overpowering. More than anything, it transforms the landscape over the course of the game and forces players to keep on their toes.
4) The player's cards and factions work together very well to make each god play differently. The powers of the cards in particular are just powerful enough that playing well requires using them effectively, and playing them effectively means doing things differently than the other players. It is also quite obvious that each faction has cards designed to nullify the powers of others, so there is a definite tug-of-war going on in this game as well.
All in all, despite the heavily applied theme and the presence of dice based combat, the game mechanics feel more euro to me than american. Given my personal preferences, that's a plus.
The End of the Triumvirate
This system is a very successful three way tug of war. In order to succeed, you have to make sure you are moving towards one of the three possible victory conditions without allowing another player to get ahead of you in another track. Alas, this is what happened.
I was Caesar, and decided I would try for the political victory. I focussed on gold, and political competency. The idea was that I would stay ahead in that track, buy votes as often as I could and either get elected twice or do it once and corner the vote. I thought that if I made myself an easy target I would benefit from people attacking me and move ahead on the political competency track for free (due to the compensation given to the vanquished in battle). Unfortunately, Shemp and I skirmished too much and allowed Kozure to get too strong. Although I was one turn short of winning myself, we weren't able to stop Kozure from winning a military victory. To Crassus go the spoils.
As I said, it's a fun game but for some reason it felt a little "off" for me. There was some downtime between turns, we had to look up the rules a lot, etc. Not sure why, just seemed less polished than I remembered.
Chaos in the Old World
Having finally figured out the correct rules to the game, I was anxious to give this potentially great game another spin (the game ships with a couple of game-breaking errors which made our last games interesting but incredibly lopsided). We drew randomly, and I ended up being the same character as last time... Khorne, the red. Kozure played Slanesh and Shemp was Tzeentch.
Playing correctly, it becomes extremely easy to gain dial "ticks" as Khorne. Khorne is such a force militarily that overcoming the other's minions is a simple task if they don't run away. I was gaining two ticks nearly every turn.
I'm told that it's very easy to play and win as Khorne at first, but experienced players make it very difficult for him to win. I can only extrapolate that seasoned players know how to retreat and make Khorne waste actions. I'll really try to play a different god next time in order to broaden my horizons...
Anyway, it was still a good game and I did enjoy it, but there is something about the gameflow I find clunkier than it should be. Particularly, the multiple housekeeping phases required before ending a turn is annoying. Similarly, having to go through all the provinces sequentially three times in order to resolve combat, then domination and then again to do corruption seems like a bit much. We ended up doing many of the steps simultaneously, but also often forgetting a step here or there.
Not a deal breaker. As the others said at the end of the game, by the end it was starting to feel pretty smooth. I feel there is probably a very good game there, we just need to internalize the steps a bit better.
Regardless, here are a few additional thoughts on the game:
1) One of the characteristics that often separate a euro from and american game is the presence of a spacial element and the representation of physical movement. The euros will frequently go with a more logistical approach which presents choices in an abstracted way, while the american game will often have a map and units moving from one space to another. In this respect, Chaos in the Old World feels much more like a euro than an american game. Although the units occupy a map that represents a fantasy world, units do not really travel from place to place in any meaningful way. Every game turn, players summon creatures to one or more regions, they battle and/or corrupt and then that's it. Adjacency is only meaningful because of a few placement limitations (units need to be placed in contiguous provinces). It's much more similar to El Grande or China than Risk, for example.
2) Another defining characteristic of american games is that at the end of a session there is usually a story to tell, whereas with euros it's pretty hard to describe what happened thematically. CitOW doesn't lend itself very well to storytelling in my opinion.
3) The game effects that the random "Old World" cards have on the game give the system an ameritrash feel, but not nearly as pronounced as I expected. The effects are all known at the start of each turn, and although they will certainly favour one player over another it hasn't yet felt like it was overpowering. More than anything, it transforms the landscape over the course of the game and forces players to keep on their toes.
4) The player's cards and factions work together very well to make each god play differently. The powers of the cards in particular are just powerful enough that playing well requires using them effectively, and playing them effectively means doing things differently than the other players. It is also quite obvious that each faction has cards designed to nullify the powers of others, so there is a definite tug-of-war going on in this game as well.
All in all, despite the heavily applied theme and the presence of dice based combat, the game mechanics feel more euro to me than american. Given my personal preferences, that's a plus.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Not as humorous as you'd think (Dungeon Lords, Bacchus' Banquet)
Vlaada Chvatil is a designer that interests me quite a bit. His games aren't necessarily polished or anything, but they tend to be pretty innovative. Different, anyways. Galaxy Trucker is the biggest hit among his games in our group, and a personal favorite. Through the ages is a very clever civilization game marred by a terrible combat mechanism (imho), and Space Alert is a game I quite enjoy but unfortunately the rest of the group dislikes. The premise of Dungeon Lords sounded intriguing and potentially interesting... I pre-ordered right after I heard about it. We had four players this week (Me, Shemp, Kozure and Bharmer), so we gave it a go.
Dungeon Lords
The premise of Dungeon Lords is that each player is an aspiring dungeon lord looking to pass his dungeon lord exam. Over the course of two years, he will build a dungeon out of tunnels and rooms, monsters and imps and see how well it stands against the adventurers that always seem to show up at this sort of thing. The rulebook is humorous in it's explanation of the game system, the illustrations are whimsical in their description of the setting and the creatures, the setting is silly, the gameplay is... convoluted and fiddly and unfunny.
Frankly, I'm pretty disappointed. The gameplay boils down to worker placement followed by an efficiency puzzle. Players start off by sending their 3 minions to collect food, hire imps, mine gold, hire monsters, dig tunnels, etc. This feels a lot like any other resource management worker placement game where you start by gathering X so you can perform Y, etc, etc. There is a twist involved because there is a hidden ordering system which makes it unpredictable in what order the minions will make it to the desired location, and depending on the order they get there the benefit changes slightly (for example, when gathering food the first to arrive must spend a gold to get the food, the second gets 2 food for free and the third gets food and gold). At the end of each season, an adventurer goes to each player's dungeon with the most powerful going to the most evil player (I didn't mention it, but there is an "evilometer" that gets modified by certain actions). At the end of each year, the adventuring party is complete and storms the dungeon the player has been working hard to build. The game then changes character completely and it becomes a puzzle for each player to determine the best order to send creatures and traps after the party to minimize the damage they might cause.
At the end, if your score is positive, you passed the exam and become an official Dungeon Lord. If you have the highest score, you win.
There are things I like about the game. The hidden worker placement mechanic works well and introduces some interesting doublethink. However, I think I would have liked it better if the swing between coming in first, second or third was less pronounced. Determining the selection order for monsters is one thing, but needing to pay gold to get one food vs getting two food paying no gold is a big difference that can seriously impact your plans. I like the "puzzle" aspect of defending your dungeon, and enjoyed the training dungeons quite a bit because of this, but the actual game introduces so much fiddliness as to sap the fun out of it (the spells, the varying fatigue, etc).
I think if I had to sum up my main issue with the game it would be just that. The humour is lost amongst the ponderous fiddliness of the whole thing. The strategy aspect which comes from the elaborate worker placement system (which goes against the silly setting in the first place) is undone by the level of chaos in the game.
...and there is WAY too much shuffling of bits around.
Anyway, I won the game after facing off against the 2nd year paladin and beating him. I tried not to be particularly evil, but always found myself in front. I have to admit that I found planning the defeat of that party very satisfying, even though I wish I didn't need to wait as long as I did to get to that point. Oh well.
As I've thought about it more, I now feel compelled to try to simplify the game and give it another chance. I wonder if the hidden orders and cycling of available actions could be reduced to a simple 3 step worker placement phase. The party could be dealt out in the beginning and the players could build their dungeons accordingly. Tokens could all be laid out ahead of time to save time (the question mark markers face up from the beginning and the creatures/ rooms turned face up as the one above it gets purchased. Maybe the spells would bother me less if the rest of the game was simplified.
Or I'll just trade it.
Bacchus' Banquet
We also tried out this game which promised to be a shorter, more streamlined "hidden identity/ hidden goal" type game in the vein of "Bang!". The idea is that various characters are attending a great feast hosted by the Roman emperor Calligula. Depending on the secret identity a player receives, he may be trying to kill Calligula, try to gather up valuable presents or just... you know... eat and drink a lot.
The mechanics are simple. There are seven cards showing gifts, food, wine, poison, etc. The active player chooses three cards then discards one, keeps one and presents the last card as a present to another player. That player must decide if they will accept the gift before looking at it, or pass it on to another player. When a gift is accepted, it's effects are resolved and the game keeps going. The trick is that if the gift is not accepted by anyone, then the active player will have to accept it.
It's worth mentioning that each time a player accepts food, drink or poison he/she must adjust a token representing a belt buckle on his/her player board. If the belt buckle goes too far, the character passes out and is out of the game (though the player isn't eliminated, he/she simply draws a new hidden identity and keeps playing).
It works well. The simple act of picking three gifts and discarding one/keeping one/ offering the last as a gift leads to all sorts of double-guessing. For example, if the player takes poison as one of the three cards, will he risk gifting it in case it gets back to him? Maybe he will take two good cards and one bad one, discard the bad one and gift a good one hoping no one will be brave enough to take it... therefore getting two good cards that turn.
I rather enjoyed Bacchus' Banquet. It's not stellar, but it is fun. We laughed quite a bit and engaged in some serious double-think over the course of two sessions. In both games I played a conspirator who won if Calligula died or if three daggers were ever on the table at the same time. I won a joint win with Shemp as three daggers made it to the table in game one, and won again in game two as Calligula Shemp ate a hunk of meat that made his belt buckle burst.
Dungeon Lords
The premise of Dungeon Lords is that each player is an aspiring dungeon lord looking to pass his dungeon lord exam. Over the course of two years, he will build a dungeon out of tunnels and rooms, monsters and imps and see how well it stands against the adventurers that always seem to show up at this sort of thing. The rulebook is humorous in it's explanation of the game system, the illustrations are whimsical in their description of the setting and the creatures, the setting is silly, the gameplay is... convoluted and fiddly and unfunny.
Frankly, I'm pretty disappointed. The gameplay boils down to worker placement followed by an efficiency puzzle. Players start off by sending their 3 minions to collect food, hire imps, mine gold, hire monsters, dig tunnels, etc. This feels a lot like any other resource management worker placement game where you start by gathering X so you can perform Y, etc, etc. There is a twist involved because there is a hidden ordering system which makes it unpredictable in what order the minions will make it to the desired location, and depending on the order they get there the benefit changes slightly (for example, when gathering food the first to arrive must spend a gold to get the food, the second gets 2 food for free and the third gets food and gold). At the end of each season, an adventurer goes to each player's dungeon with the most powerful going to the most evil player (I didn't mention it, but there is an "evilometer" that gets modified by certain actions). At the end of each year, the adventuring party is complete and storms the dungeon the player has been working hard to build. The game then changes character completely and it becomes a puzzle for each player to determine the best order to send creatures and traps after the party to minimize the damage they might cause.
At the end, if your score is positive, you passed the exam and become an official Dungeon Lord. If you have the highest score, you win.
There are things I like about the game. The hidden worker placement mechanic works well and introduces some interesting doublethink. However, I think I would have liked it better if the swing between coming in first, second or third was less pronounced. Determining the selection order for monsters is one thing, but needing to pay gold to get one food vs getting two food paying no gold is a big difference that can seriously impact your plans. I like the "puzzle" aspect of defending your dungeon, and enjoyed the training dungeons quite a bit because of this, but the actual game introduces so much fiddliness as to sap the fun out of it (the spells, the varying fatigue, etc).
I think if I had to sum up my main issue with the game it would be just that. The humour is lost amongst the ponderous fiddliness of the whole thing. The strategy aspect which comes from the elaborate worker placement system (which goes against the silly setting in the first place) is undone by the level of chaos in the game.
...and there is WAY too much shuffling of bits around.
Anyway, I won the game after facing off against the 2nd year paladin and beating him. I tried not to be particularly evil, but always found myself in front. I have to admit that I found planning the defeat of that party very satisfying, even though I wish I didn't need to wait as long as I did to get to that point. Oh well.
As I've thought about it more, I now feel compelled to try to simplify the game and give it another chance. I wonder if the hidden orders and cycling of available actions could be reduced to a simple 3 step worker placement phase. The party could be dealt out in the beginning and the players could build their dungeons accordingly. Tokens could all be laid out ahead of time to save time (the question mark markers face up from the beginning and the creatures/ rooms turned face up as the one above it gets purchased. Maybe the spells would bother me less if the rest of the game was simplified.
Or I'll just trade it.
Bacchus' Banquet
We also tried out this game which promised to be a shorter, more streamlined "hidden identity/ hidden goal" type game in the vein of "Bang!". The idea is that various characters are attending a great feast hosted by the Roman emperor Calligula. Depending on the secret identity a player receives, he may be trying to kill Calligula, try to gather up valuable presents or just... you know... eat and drink a lot.
The mechanics are simple. There are seven cards showing gifts, food, wine, poison, etc. The active player chooses three cards then discards one, keeps one and presents the last card as a present to another player. That player must decide if they will accept the gift before looking at it, or pass it on to another player. When a gift is accepted, it's effects are resolved and the game keeps going. The trick is that if the gift is not accepted by anyone, then the active player will have to accept it.
It's worth mentioning that each time a player accepts food, drink or poison he/she must adjust a token representing a belt buckle on his/her player board. If the belt buckle goes too far, the character passes out and is out of the game (though the player isn't eliminated, he/she simply draws a new hidden identity and keeps playing).
It works well. The simple act of picking three gifts and discarding one/keeping one/ offering the last as a gift leads to all sorts of double-guessing. For example, if the player takes poison as one of the three cards, will he risk gifting it in case it gets back to him? Maybe he will take two good cards and one bad one, discard the bad one and gift a good one hoping no one will be brave enough to take it... therefore getting two good cards that turn.
I rather enjoyed Bacchus' Banquet. It's not stellar, but it is fun. We laughed quite a bit and engaged in some serious double-think over the course of two sessions. In both games I played a conspirator who won if Calligula died or if three daggers were ever on the table at the same time. I won a joint win with Shemp as three daggers made it to the table in game one, and won again in game two as Calligula Shemp ate a hunk of meat that made his belt buckle burst.
Friday, February 05, 2010
The Thunder-business (Dominion x2, Thunderstone, Ra)
It was Shemp's pick, but Shemp did not pick. So, we brought games, and we played some of those. Three players again (me, Shemp and Kozure).
Dominion
First up was Dominion, which I had never played before (although I've played Dominion:Intrigue a few times). When I had played the expansion, I was a little ambivalent... The games wants to be played quickly, but the cards were *just* complicated enough that I couldn't quite internalize what they all did or how they could be combined and still play fast. The result was that I just wasn't getting into it. The base game, on the other hand, is much easier to grasp quickly and I found it to be much more enjoyable. No doubt if I played enough I'd want the additional variety and interaction of Intrigue, but for now I'd pick this one every time.
We played two times. In the first, I focussed on mines, the bureaucrat and the cellar. I purchased coppers, upgraded them to silvers and then gold (or, alternatively, received silver from the bureaucrat and upgraded it to gold). My multiple cellars ensured that I had a copper or silver to upgrade whenever I had a mine in hand. I soon had many gold cards and purchasing provinces was relatively easy. The funny thing was that both Shemp and Kozure had a lot of thieves in their deck, and were repeatedly trying to steal from me... and not once did I turn over anything more than a copper! Luck was certainly on my side. I ended up winning... my first Dominion victory ever! In fact, it was my first non-dead last finish ever.
In our second game, the cards were strangely skewed to the high end. The only relatively inexpensive card was the moat (ironic, because there was only one attack action card available). I attempted a "garden" strategy by accumulating as many cheap cards as possible and as many gardens as possible. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until later that I should have focussed on cards that gave me more "buys" so that I could bulk up my deck even further. I didn't quite make it to 40 cards, so my gardens only scored 3 points each. It wasn't quite enough because Shemp's last minute purchase of the final garden card gave him just enough to get by me.
Thunderstone
I gave my son "The Adventurers: Escape fromt he temple of Chac" by AEG for christmas, and unfortunately after our very first play he gathered up all the cards (so he could figure out what was the highest possible score) and then sat them down on the couch. My other son was jumping on the couch. Within seconds, al the cards were bent and folded. Not great for a game where hidden information is essential. I wrote an email to AEG to ask if they sold the cards separately, and they offered to send me a whole new deck for free! Because of that great show of customer service, I decided to see what other games they sold and noticed Thunderstone. As I mentioned above, until today I hadn't particularly enjoyed Dominion but I did find the central mechanic interesting. This game seemed to have a bit more depth, a theme that actually was reflected in the gameplay and it was getting good reviews. I decided to go for it.
Our game group generally doesn't go for fantasy themed games. Shemp, in particular, voiced that his desire to play was low largely due to the theme and "me-too" gameplay. Luckily, the guys are good sports about trying out new purchases and Shemp proclaimed that we would follow up Dominion with "the Thunder-business".
There are a lot of similarities between the games. Cards in the middle of the table represent the village and are used in the same way as the cards in Dominion. The deck that players build over the course of the game are worth gold and depending on what you get in your hand you can purchase better cards. The main difference in the game is that players have a second option... cards have other symbols which indicate the kind of adventuring party that can be mustered for a dungeon crawl. To the side of the village, a dungeon awaits consisting of a deck of cars and three face up creatures. If a player decides to pit their party against a creature in the dungeon, then the strength of the attack is compared to the hit points of the creature and if defeated the creature goes to the player's discard pile (analogous to VP cards in Dominion). The game ends once the Thunderstone is unearthed from the near the bottom of the creature deck.
Although the dungeon represents the biggest departure from Dominion, many other aspects of the game have additional little modifications. There are hero cards that can be leveled up, heros have a strength rating and equipment can only be used by those that have enough strength. Fighting creatures in the dungeon requires light, and the deeper into the dungeon you go, the more light is necessary. There are other differences as well, but suffice it to say that the game is at once similar to Dominion and quite different from it.
My feelings on the game are mixed. The theme of the game is relatively well captured. Unlike Dominion, it doesn't feel like you are just acquiring cards for the sake of gathering VPs. The additional details add some interesting decisions and force players to balance more things at once (powerful heroes are good, but light is also necessary, and the dungeon can't be ignored too long as you build up your deck or else the other players will get all the VPs). There are downsides to these changes, however. In Dominion, each player determines which combos they are aiming for and nothing really constrains their actions except the common goal of gathering VPs. In Thunderstone, certain basic necessities are needed in order to achieve the overall goal , and each player needs to look after them to a minimum degree. For example, everyone needs to get light. Everyone needs to get heroes and upgrade them. Everyone will be going to the dungeon and fight the monsters. This may lead to an overall feeling of sameness even though the specifics of each game may be different. The variety is found within that context... the selection of heroes, the village cards purchased, the monsters encountered in the dungeon. Also, the larger number of factors that need to come together means that the decks are more prone to clumping.
Anyway, I'll need to play a few more times to make a final judgement. I'd say that I like it better than Dominion: Intrigue, but less than Dominion. I'm not a big fan of the way the game ends as written... it feels a little like kingmaking, but it's easy enough to fix it and say that the game ends as soon as the Thunderstone is revealed. I also think that there is a strange disconnect between the experience the game delivers and what we have come to expect from dungeon crawling games: usually the easy creatures come first and there is a build up to the big bosses at the end. The random distribution ensures that this won't be the case in Thunderstone, for better or worse. I suppose it would be possible to make a variant where the monsters were encountered in order of strength if it really bothers me later on.
I won the game because I managed a lot of dungeon victories early in the game. Later, my deck got clogged but I had a good enough lead that it didn't matter.
"Ok, Blink dog"
Ra
We finished up with Ra. Fun as always, I learned an interesting tidbit about Shemp... He told us that Ra is the game that makes him willing to keep playing games he is initially unimpressed with. At first he hated Ra, now he thinks it's great.
Kozure came from behind and won on the strength of a great haul from his monuments.
Dominion
First up was Dominion, which I had never played before (although I've played Dominion:Intrigue a few times). When I had played the expansion, I was a little ambivalent... The games wants to be played quickly, but the cards were *just* complicated enough that I couldn't quite internalize what they all did or how they could be combined and still play fast. The result was that I just wasn't getting into it. The base game, on the other hand, is much easier to grasp quickly and I found it to be much more enjoyable. No doubt if I played enough I'd want the additional variety and interaction of Intrigue, but for now I'd pick this one every time.
We played two times. In the first, I focussed on mines, the bureaucrat and the cellar. I purchased coppers, upgraded them to silvers and then gold (or, alternatively, received silver from the bureaucrat and upgraded it to gold). My multiple cellars ensured that I had a copper or silver to upgrade whenever I had a mine in hand. I soon had many gold cards and purchasing provinces was relatively easy. The funny thing was that both Shemp and Kozure had a lot of thieves in their deck, and were repeatedly trying to steal from me... and not once did I turn over anything more than a copper! Luck was certainly on my side. I ended up winning... my first Dominion victory ever! In fact, it was my first non-dead last finish ever.
In our second game, the cards were strangely skewed to the high end. The only relatively inexpensive card was the moat (ironic, because there was only one attack action card available). I attempted a "garden" strategy by accumulating as many cheap cards as possible and as many gardens as possible. Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me until later that I should have focussed on cards that gave me more "buys" so that I could bulk up my deck even further. I didn't quite make it to 40 cards, so my gardens only scored 3 points each. It wasn't quite enough because Shemp's last minute purchase of the final garden card gave him just enough to get by me.
Thunderstone
I gave my son "The Adventurers: Escape fromt he temple of Chac" by AEG for christmas, and unfortunately after our very first play he gathered up all the cards (so he could figure out what was the highest possible score) and then sat them down on the couch. My other son was jumping on the couch. Within seconds, al the cards were bent and folded. Not great for a game where hidden information is essential. I wrote an email to AEG to ask if they sold the cards separately, and they offered to send me a whole new deck for free! Because of that great show of customer service, I decided to see what other games they sold and noticed Thunderstone. As I mentioned above, until today I hadn't particularly enjoyed Dominion but I did find the central mechanic interesting. This game seemed to have a bit more depth, a theme that actually was reflected in the gameplay and it was getting good reviews. I decided to go for it.
Our game group generally doesn't go for fantasy themed games. Shemp, in particular, voiced that his desire to play was low largely due to the theme and "me-too" gameplay. Luckily, the guys are good sports about trying out new purchases and Shemp proclaimed that we would follow up Dominion with "the Thunder-business".
There are a lot of similarities between the games. Cards in the middle of the table represent the village and are used in the same way as the cards in Dominion. The deck that players build over the course of the game are worth gold and depending on what you get in your hand you can purchase better cards. The main difference in the game is that players have a second option... cards have other symbols which indicate the kind of adventuring party that can be mustered for a dungeon crawl. To the side of the village, a dungeon awaits consisting of a deck of cars and three face up creatures. If a player decides to pit their party against a creature in the dungeon, then the strength of the attack is compared to the hit points of the creature and if defeated the creature goes to the player's discard pile (analogous to VP cards in Dominion). The game ends once the Thunderstone is unearthed from the near the bottom of the creature deck.
Although the dungeon represents the biggest departure from Dominion, many other aspects of the game have additional little modifications. There are hero cards that can be leveled up, heros have a strength rating and equipment can only be used by those that have enough strength. Fighting creatures in the dungeon requires light, and the deeper into the dungeon you go, the more light is necessary. There are other differences as well, but suffice it to say that the game is at once similar to Dominion and quite different from it.
My feelings on the game are mixed. The theme of the game is relatively well captured. Unlike Dominion, it doesn't feel like you are just acquiring cards for the sake of gathering VPs. The additional details add some interesting decisions and force players to balance more things at once (powerful heroes are good, but light is also necessary, and the dungeon can't be ignored too long as you build up your deck or else the other players will get all the VPs). There are downsides to these changes, however. In Dominion, each player determines which combos they are aiming for and nothing really constrains their actions except the common goal of gathering VPs. In Thunderstone, certain basic necessities are needed in order to achieve the overall goal , and each player needs to look after them to a minimum degree. For example, everyone needs to get light. Everyone needs to get heroes and upgrade them. Everyone will be going to the dungeon and fight the monsters. This may lead to an overall feeling of sameness even though the specifics of each game may be different. The variety is found within that context... the selection of heroes, the village cards purchased, the monsters encountered in the dungeon. Also, the larger number of factors that need to come together means that the decks are more prone to clumping.
Anyway, I'll need to play a few more times to make a final judgement. I'd say that I like it better than Dominion: Intrigue, but less than Dominion. I'm not a big fan of the way the game ends as written... it feels a little like kingmaking, but it's easy enough to fix it and say that the game ends as soon as the Thunderstone is revealed. I also think that there is a strange disconnect between the experience the game delivers and what we have come to expect from dungeon crawling games: usually the easy creatures come first and there is a build up to the big bosses at the end. The random distribution ensures that this won't be the case in Thunderstone, for better or worse. I suppose it would be possible to make a variant where the monsters were encountered in order of strength if it really bothers me later on.
I won the game because I managed a lot of dungeon victories early in the game. Later, my deck got clogged but I had a good enough lead that it didn't matter.
"Ok, Blink dog"
Ra
We finished up with Ra. Fun as always, I learned an interesting tidbit about Shemp... He told us that Ra is the game that makes him willing to keep playing games he is initially unimpressed with. At first he hated Ra, now he thinks it's great.
Kozure came from behind and won on the strength of a great haul from his monuments.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Two is company (Steam x2, Mr. Jack x2, Carcassonne: The City)
We had an unusual two player session this week... just me and Shemp could make it. Other than wargames, my collection is fairly light on two player games, but we did get a chance to play a few games that don't often see the light of day.
Steam: St. Lucia
I bought this Bezier Games expansion map mostly for the single player side (which I like a lot). It's a bit strange because every single space gets a cube at the start of the game, and absolutely no coloured cities exist until somebody urbanizes. IT makes for a map that changes substantially between plays and is quite wide open with opportunity in the first half (though it does get tight before the game ends). Surprisingly, I did get to play the St. Lucia side once before with Luch on New Year's day. In that game, we pretty much had each started on one end of the island and worked down towards the middle. Not so with Shemp. I payed for first player privileges and after I had established my link he immediately built off of it. Unsurprisingly, our relationship was poisonous to both of us. I kept hold of the first player action and urbanized all the towns in the south using up all the coloured cities in the process and ensuring my track was in the way for all his deliveries.
(I'll note that we got a rule wrong... we played that the first player had the option to keep paying to go first until he passed or the 2nd player took the initiative special action. The correct rule is that turn order alternates... much more forgiving on player 2).
Shemp had a great deal of trouble getting in the black with this setup, and in the end I won fairly handily. This was all around a live and learn type of experience for both of us... I'm sure we would play very differently next time. All in all, it's a good two player board that I can see playing again.
Steam: Jamaica
Jamaica is a curious board. It's a small map, and relatively symmetrical. There are just two coloured cities in the middle and a handful of towns on either end. The game does not have a set number of rounds, and instead ends once all goods are exhausted. It didn't take us long to figure out that this was going to be a very barren board very quick. Barren board = brutal game. The only thing that could have made it more difficult is if they introduced terrain that cost more than usual to cross. Oh, yeah. They did that. The middle is mountainous, and those add +3 to track costs.
I urbanized both ends of the board, placing my track so that Shemp would hopefully be forced to ship through my links. Both our debts were spiraling out of control because building our infrastructure was expensive and long deliveries were hard to find. Most of the game was spent making sad 1-3 link deliveries. I faced bankruptcy on numerous occasion, with my income and VPs at -10/0 respectively. At one point, I had t spend 19 dollars (!!!) to develop 4 links of track to keep me from having zero delivering potential for the rest of the game (I had to rebuild 2 sections of track on mountain spaces). Luckily, I managed to scrape together enough points to get me by. Only near the end of the game did we start approaching solvency. If memory serves, Shemp won by a point and our scores were 0 and -1. Good times.
We made the assumption that using a two player map meant that the goods growth placeholders started with only 2 goods cubes (since that's what the rules state for 3 players). Considering the impact it had on the game, it's possible it should have been three. I posted a question on BGG... we'll see.
Mr. Jack
Shemp had never played this game before. It's one of the few two player games (that aren't wargames) that I've bothered to hold on to, because I liked it enough to keep even if it gets played rarely.
I played first as Jack, and almost managed to win. It came down to the last round, where Shemp discovered who I was (the cop) and was *just* able to catch me in time.
Shemp tried his hand at Jack next, and did much better than most in their first play. On the first few rounds, I managed to eliminate all but three suspects, but he successfully eluded further narrowing for quite a while. I believe I caught him in the 7th round, which was approximately 3 rounds more than any other first timer I've seen.
Although it's tough to play Jack, this is a very fun game that hits the right note between ease of play and strategy, luck and control. Good game.
Carcassonne: The City
We ended the evening with a oldie. Carcassonne: The City gets very little play in our group, and I've considered trading it away because of that on many occasions. However, I do like it and... it's just such a nice package! I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Yet.
I went far too aggressive on "farmers" (I know, wrong terminology for this set, but I can't remember what they actually use). I was short meeples throughout the game and missed out on the guard's scoring opportunities in the end. It was a competitive game, with just a few points separating us, but Shemp did win.
As we were packing up The City, we realized we had played much later than we usually do (12:15am!). Whatever, it was fun.
Steam: St. Lucia
I bought this Bezier Games expansion map mostly for the single player side (which I like a lot). It's a bit strange because every single space gets a cube at the start of the game, and absolutely no coloured cities exist until somebody urbanizes. IT makes for a map that changes substantially between plays and is quite wide open with opportunity in the first half (though it does get tight before the game ends). Surprisingly, I did get to play the St. Lucia side once before with Luch on New Year's day. In that game, we pretty much had each started on one end of the island and worked down towards the middle. Not so with Shemp. I payed for first player privileges and after I had established my link he immediately built off of it. Unsurprisingly, our relationship was poisonous to both of us. I kept hold of the first player action and urbanized all the towns in the south using up all the coloured cities in the process and ensuring my track was in the way for all his deliveries.
(I'll note that we got a rule wrong... we played that the first player had the option to keep paying to go first until he passed or the 2nd player took the initiative special action. The correct rule is that turn order alternates... much more forgiving on player 2).
Shemp had a great deal of trouble getting in the black with this setup, and in the end I won fairly handily. This was all around a live and learn type of experience for both of us... I'm sure we would play very differently next time. All in all, it's a good two player board that I can see playing again.
Steam: Jamaica
Jamaica is a curious board. It's a small map, and relatively symmetrical. There are just two coloured cities in the middle and a handful of towns on either end. The game does not have a set number of rounds, and instead ends once all goods are exhausted. It didn't take us long to figure out that this was going to be a very barren board very quick. Barren board = brutal game. The only thing that could have made it more difficult is if they introduced terrain that cost more than usual to cross. Oh, yeah. They did that. The middle is mountainous, and those add +3 to track costs.
I urbanized both ends of the board, placing my track so that Shemp would hopefully be forced to ship through my links. Both our debts were spiraling out of control because building our infrastructure was expensive and long deliveries were hard to find. Most of the game was spent making sad 1-3 link deliveries. I faced bankruptcy on numerous occasion, with my income and VPs at -10/0 respectively. At one point, I had t spend 19 dollars (!!!) to develop 4 links of track to keep me from having zero delivering potential for the rest of the game (I had to rebuild 2 sections of track on mountain spaces). Luckily, I managed to scrape together enough points to get me by. Only near the end of the game did we start approaching solvency. If memory serves, Shemp won by a point and our scores were 0 and -1. Good times.
We made the assumption that using a two player map meant that the goods growth placeholders started with only 2 goods cubes (since that's what the rules state for 3 players). Considering the impact it had on the game, it's possible it should have been three. I posted a question on BGG... we'll see.
Mr. Jack
Shemp had never played this game before. It's one of the few two player games (that aren't wargames) that I've bothered to hold on to, because I liked it enough to keep even if it gets played rarely.
I played first as Jack, and almost managed to win. It came down to the last round, where Shemp discovered who I was (the cop) and was *just* able to catch me in time.
Shemp tried his hand at Jack next, and did much better than most in their first play. On the first few rounds, I managed to eliminate all but three suspects, but he successfully eluded further narrowing for quite a while. I believe I caught him in the 7th round, which was approximately 3 rounds more than any other first timer I've seen.
Although it's tough to play Jack, this is a very fun game that hits the right note between ease of play and strategy, luck and control. Good game.
Carcassonne: The City
We ended the evening with a oldie. Carcassonne: The City gets very little play in our group, and I've considered trading it away because of that on many occasions. However, I do like it and... it's just such a nice package! I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Yet.
I went far too aggressive on "farmers" (I know, wrong terminology for this set, but I can't remember what they actually use). I was short meeples throughout the game and missed out on the guard's scoring opportunities in the end. It was a competitive game, with just a few points separating us, but Shemp did win.
As we were packing up The City, we realized we had played much later than we usually do (12:15am!). Whatever, it was fun.
Labels:
Carcassonne: The City,
Mr. Jack,
Steam,
Steam: Jamaica,
Steam: St. Lucia
Friday, January 22, 2010
I sort dead people (Unpublished prototype, Small World)
It was Kozure's pick this week, and Bharmer came by so we were five. He asked that we try out a new game he's working on and we did. As usual, I was surprised at how good his demos are (both from the standpoint of production quality and design quality). For a game that was essentially untested until we played, it worked well. I don't want to say too much about the game in case it's secret, so I'll move onto the next game we played... Small World.
I started out with Commando Trolls. I started out at the top of the board and spread out to the tops of the mountains there. Since trolls keep their lairs after they go into decline, I knew they might be there for a while. Meanwhile, Luch was making a killing on his flying wizards and was deemed the early leader. I switched to Dragon Master Elves and decided I would milk them until my trolls were thinned out. Lucky for me, the others decided they weren't worth the high cost to destroy and nearly all the trolls made it to the end of the game. Kozure's sorcerers suddenly started sweeping across the board and proved to be quite impossible to stop (they are quite powerful in a 5 player game!). Still, my elves made quite a good match with my trolls and I was earning a consistent 15 points or so per turn... somewhat under the radar too thanks to the nasty sorcerers and Giants and orcs running around.
Luch was responsible for handing out the races throughout the game and also returning the defeated tokens. He sorted dead people.
I thought I had it in the bag, but when the scores were counted the spread was quite narrow. I did win, but only by a few points. I guess my slow start nearly caught up with me!
I started out with Commando Trolls. I started out at the top of the board and spread out to the tops of the mountains there. Since trolls keep their lairs after they go into decline, I knew they might be there for a while. Meanwhile, Luch was making a killing on his flying wizards and was deemed the early leader. I switched to Dragon Master Elves and decided I would milk them until my trolls were thinned out. Lucky for me, the others decided they weren't worth the high cost to destroy and nearly all the trolls made it to the end of the game. Kozure's sorcerers suddenly started sweeping across the board and proved to be quite impossible to stop (they are quite powerful in a 5 player game!). Still, my elves made quite a good match with my trolls and I was earning a consistent 15 points or so per turn... somewhat under the radar too thanks to the nasty sorcerers and Giants and orcs running around.
Luch was responsible for handing out the races throughout the game and also returning the defeated tokens. He sorted dead people.
I thought I had it in the bag, but when the scores were counted the spread was quite narrow. I did win, but only by a few points. I guess my slow start nearly caught up with me!
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Corn is red ! (Chaos in the Old World x2)
I'm often on the lookout for games that manage to blend the elegance of euro games with the thematic gameplay of american style games. Although I like the clever mechanics, the streamlined gameplay, etc of the euros there is also a part of me that likes the miniatures and cards and *fun* that the thematically superior american games offer. Unfortunately, I've tried lots of the themey games and have usually been disappointed. They are either too long, too random, too fiddly or they have too much downtime (even some I like, like Fury of Dracula, have these problems).
Chaos in the Old World is a game that was getting a good amount of buzz because it apparently did a great job of providing a thematic experience within the framework of a solid and compelling game system. The length of the game was apparently just 90 minutes, the mechanics were supposed to be a blend of area control and combat. Sounded interesting.
The theme. Players play evil gods (from the Warhammer universe, apparently. I know nothing of it), bent on the ruination of the world. Each represents a specific vice, and uses a combination of magical powers and a variety of demonic creatures to bring about their personal brand of corruption into the world. The game goes to great lengths to bring out the theme in the art (the board is a depiction of stretched skin, for example). The cards back it up with explicit names and illustrations, like the disease god's "Rain of Pus" for example. Kozure wrote a separate post about how some aspects of the theme bothers him, how impersonating a character engaging in acts of such depravity felt wrong to him. Personally, I just find it corny. The surface theme of evils gods doing evil things doesn't strike me as better or worse than any other theme, but I find the specific references to pus, torture, disease and depravity very adolescent (comparable to teenage vampire movies, or just about anything else goth). It almost put me off buying it, but with Christmas gift certificate in hand and many people at BGG talking about it as game of the year, I decided to go for it.
The game does get points for naming one of the gods Khorne (Corn!), and making that god the red one.
Mechanically, the gameplay works with the theme but isn't particularly suggestive of it. Turns start with the revelation of an event card which has an effect on the game for that turn (such as announcing the arrival of elvish corsairs that will do battle with units present in certain spaces). Following this, the turn consists mostly of placing influence on the board (cards and units) and resolving combat between the creatures that have been unleashed there. After the combat has been resolved, VPs are awarded and "ruination" tokens are added to the board based on a kind of area control mechanic.
One of the defining characteristics of the game is that each god has the potential to improve his position by fulfilling a certain condition. Khorne does it by killing opposing creatures, Nurgle does it by corrupting populous areas, etc. At the end of each round, if a god has fulfilled this condition at least once they get to turn a dial on the board one step and receive the reward listed on the dial. If they fulfilled their condition more times than any other god, they can rotate it twice. If the god manages to reach the end of his dial, he wins.
This means that there are a few different path to victory... VPs or dial clicks. Each god has apparently been balanced a little differently. Each god has a different deck of chaos cards (magical powers that are used as effects on the board), different creatures with different stats, etc. The end result is that playing a different god should lead to a different experience.
I'll preface the session reports by saying that there is a small but extremely significant error on the card for one of the gods, Slannesh, which incorrectly describes the condition for dial click advancement. We didn't know about it and that god ended up being extremely unbalanced and won handily both games because of it.
I played Khorne in both sessions. Shemp played Slannesh in both sessions, but Kozure switched from Nurgle to Tzeentch in his second game. In both games, Shemp managed to get a number of noble tokens on the board in hard to get places and was generating dial clicks and corruption like it was going out of style. There were a number of entertaining battles and swings of events, but ultimately it was impossible to stop Slannesh from winning. It was impossible even to come close. Now that we know the correct rules, it will be fun to see how it plays when things are balanced. The god's personalities definitely come through with their abilities, and each player's gameplay is definitely affected by that. I was pure combat, but Shemp was very strong defensively. When Kozure played Tzeentch, he was creating chaos on the board with teleportations and other unexpected magical effects.
Despite the balance problems and some aspects of the theme, I quite enjoyed the game. The theme of gods trying to exert influence on the world through combat and magic comes through well, and the various moving parts do a good job of giving the game a sense of progression and variability without ever feeling fiddly (I'm talking about the hero, noble and skaven tokens, the Old World start of round cards, the god's upgrade abilities, etc). There appears to be more repetition than I'd like in the various card decks, but hopefully there will be enough combinations that will keep things feeling fresh. I also really like having alternate victory conditions in a game (another recent game, Power Struggle, has caught my eye for the same reason). I wouldn't say Chaos in the Old World blew me away, but does a good job at scratching the american style game itch in a euro timeframe and level of complexity.
Chaos in the Old World is a game that was getting a good amount of buzz because it apparently did a great job of providing a thematic experience within the framework of a solid and compelling game system. The length of the game was apparently just 90 minutes, the mechanics were supposed to be a blend of area control and combat. Sounded interesting.
The theme. Players play evil gods (from the Warhammer universe, apparently. I know nothing of it), bent on the ruination of the world. Each represents a specific vice, and uses a combination of magical powers and a variety of demonic creatures to bring about their personal brand of corruption into the world. The game goes to great lengths to bring out the theme in the art (the board is a depiction of stretched skin, for example). The cards back it up with explicit names and illustrations, like the disease god's "Rain of Pus" for example. Kozure wrote a separate post about how some aspects of the theme bothers him, how impersonating a character engaging in acts of such depravity felt wrong to him. Personally, I just find it corny. The surface theme of evils gods doing evil things doesn't strike me as better or worse than any other theme, but I find the specific references to pus, torture, disease and depravity very adolescent (comparable to teenage vampire movies, or just about anything else goth). It almost put me off buying it, but with Christmas gift certificate in hand and many people at BGG talking about it as game of the year, I decided to go for it.
The game does get points for naming one of the gods Khorne (Corn!), and making that god the red one.
Mechanically, the gameplay works with the theme but isn't particularly suggestive of it. Turns start with the revelation of an event card which has an effect on the game for that turn (such as announcing the arrival of elvish corsairs that will do battle with units present in certain spaces). Following this, the turn consists mostly of placing influence on the board (cards and units) and resolving combat between the creatures that have been unleashed there. After the combat has been resolved, VPs are awarded and "ruination" tokens are added to the board based on a kind of area control mechanic.
One of the defining characteristics of the game is that each god has the potential to improve his position by fulfilling a certain condition. Khorne does it by killing opposing creatures, Nurgle does it by corrupting populous areas, etc. At the end of each round, if a god has fulfilled this condition at least once they get to turn a dial on the board one step and receive the reward listed on the dial. If they fulfilled their condition more times than any other god, they can rotate it twice. If the god manages to reach the end of his dial, he wins.
This means that there are a few different path to victory... VPs or dial clicks. Each god has apparently been balanced a little differently. Each god has a different deck of chaos cards (magical powers that are used as effects on the board), different creatures with different stats, etc. The end result is that playing a different god should lead to a different experience.
I'll preface the session reports by saying that there is a small but extremely significant error on the card for one of the gods, Slannesh, which incorrectly describes the condition for dial click advancement. We didn't know about it and that god ended up being extremely unbalanced and won handily both games because of it.
I played Khorne in both sessions. Shemp played Slannesh in both sessions, but Kozure switched from Nurgle to Tzeentch in his second game. In both games, Shemp managed to get a number of noble tokens on the board in hard to get places and was generating dial clicks and corruption like it was going out of style. There were a number of entertaining battles and swings of events, but ultimately it was impossible to stop Slannesh from winning. It was impossible even to come close. Now that we know the correct rules, it will be fun to see how it plays when things are balanced. The god's personalities definitely come through with their abilities, and each player's gameplay is definitely affected by that. I was pure combat, but Shemp was very strong defensively. When Kozure played Tzeentch, he was creating chaos on the board with teleportations and other unexpected magical effects.
Despite the balance problems and some aspects of the theme, I quite enjoyed the game. The theme of gods trying to exert influence on the world through combat and magic comes through well, and the various moving parts do a good job of giving the game a sense of progression and variability without ever feeling fiddly (I'm talking about the hero, noble and skaven tokens, the Old World start of round cards, the god's upgrade abilities, etc). There appears to be more repetition than I'd like in the various card decks, but hopefully there will be enough combinations that will keep things feeling fresh. I also really like having alternate victory conditions in a game (another recent game, Power Struggle, has caught my eye for the same reason). I wouldn't say Chaos in the Old World blew me away, but does a good job at scratching the american style game itch in a euro timeframe and level of complexity.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Buckets of Blood and Showers of... Other... Bodily... Fluids
WARNING: This review contains concepts of a graphic nature which may be unsuitable for younger readers. It also contains unfettered waxing philosophical. Reader discretion advised.
Chaos in the Old World, far from being a game about monkeys running the European Union (*rimshot*), is a area-influence / mild wargame with variable player powers, card-based spells / effects and an action point (in this case "power point") mechanic. Underneath the blood-spattered chrome, this is actually a pretty clever little game.
I don't have time for a thorough review of mechanics and play - I'll leave that to the esteemed Agent Easy should he so wish, but I did want to record for posterity my thoughts on the theme and feel of this thing.
I'm not a squeamish person - I've attended (and remained entirely lucid through) two drug-free births and treated a few pretty bloody wounds in my time. I've watched my share of Tarantino films and various splatter-filled gorefests of movies. One would think I'd be "desensitized" by this point. Be that as it may, Chaos in the Old World makes me feel like I should be handling it with latex gloves and a haz-mat suit to avoid the ichor dripping out of its suppurating infectious wounds.
Once again, the game itself is not bad - I want to be clear - but the idea of drenching an entire continent in blood, pestilence, dark magics and perverted sexual frenzy as a game theme somehow turns my stomach in a way that playing wargames (which, to be quite honest, depict similar, if not quite as exaggerated, forms and degrees of pain and suffering) doesn't.
Board games and video games are, for me, ways of exploring alternate realities and possibilities of existence which (for a multitude of reasons) are impractical, impossible, undesirable, unachievable or sometimes just inconvenient. Quite aside from their mental challenge (and their sense of competition) - the theme of games allow me to stretch my imagination and play with perception and reality.
It's fun to imagine oneself a fighter pilot, business tycoon or even a lowly pre-industrial German farmer. To play at being a god dedicated to chaos and destruction... well, it just feels... wrong to me.
To simultaneously invoke Godwin's Law (yes, yes, I automatically lose) and use gobs of mega-hyperbole, I have a icky sense about this game that I'd imagine I'd feel playing a game about rounding up hidden Jews in France, playing a serial killer in1977 New York, scheduling various sexual escapades in a Caligula-esque court, or distributing smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans.
This is a game where the theme specifically invokes (and revels in) rape, murder, disease, torture, slaughter of peasants, blood sacrifice, insanity, corruption and a host of other unpleasant concepts.
"But it's just a game," you say.
True. Completely true.
Playing Devil's Advocate (almost literally, in this case), I've often felt that understanding what is attractive about evil helps one to know how to combat it. The concept of unbridled lust, wrath, violence, manipulation, random change and the like, represents for me a kind of personal freedom which is incredibly seductive. The idea of giving into all of these impulses of a carnal nature - to kill and torture without remorse, to have frequent and consequence-free sex, to scheme to give oneself power by trickery lies and deceit - appeals to the primeval urges of the amygdala and the crocodile-brain cerebellum and medulla oblongata.
To live as a god - without sin or fear of retribution - is attractive. It's certainly one of the appeals of Existentialism. I'm sure Shemp and I could have all sorts of interesting debate on its ramifications for society and individuals given his and my opposing views on religion and selflessness. In any case, I can see why some people might enjoy the sense of power and freedom that one might derive from playing this game (theme-wise)... I guess I just want to say that I'm a wee bit uncomfortable with it.
We're being evil in this game, kids, and it's not the usual hand-wringing, mad-scientist cackling cartoony-evil. We are trying to literally corrupt and reduce to ruin an entire continent. Capital "E" evil. Is that different that being a cutesy imp-commanding overlord in Dungeon Lords or corrupt government officials keeping down the populace in Junta? Or playing SS troops in Squad Leader? (I love those games, by the way).
Yeah, it's a game. No, I'm not asking that it be banned or people run screaming for the hills or shout "for Heaven's sakem won't someone think of the children?!". I'm not thumping a Bible and saying this offends God.
I do think that people should occasionally stop and think about what's going on in this game, what it says about the fictional world it represents and the real world it... parodies? satirizes?
What we think about good and evil, in short.
Heaven knows there's enough suffering in this world - in Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, the Phillipines - to want to invent more in our fantasies.
Play this game, if you're interested in it. It's pretty good. But like reading Lolita, The Story of O or Blood Meridian, there are imagined acts and events contained within which are pretty unsettling and world-view challenging.
To quote the internet meme "What is seen cannot be unseen."
Or you can just shrug it off and say "It's just a game."
Chaos in the Old World, far from being a game about monkeys running the European Union (*rimshot*), is a area-influence / mild wargame with variable player powers, card-based spells / effects and an action point (in this case "power point") mechanic. Underneath the blood-spattered chrome, this is actually a pretty clever little game.
I don't have time for a thorough review of mechanics and play - I'll leave that to the esteemed Agent Easy should he so wish, but I did want to record for posterity my thoughts on the theme and feel of this thing.
I'm not a squeamish person - I've attended (and remained entirely lucid through) two drug-free births and treated a few pretty bloody wounds in my time. I've watched my share of Tarantino films and various splatter-filled gorefests of movies. One would think I'd be "desensitized" by this point. Be that as it may, Chaos in the Old World makes me feel like I should be handling it with latex gloves and a haz-mat suit to avoid the ichor dripping out of its suppurating infectious wounds.
Once again, the game itself is not bad - I want to be clear - but the idea of drenching an entire continent in blood, pestilence, dark magics and perverted sexual frenzy as a game theme somehow turns my stomach in a way that playing wargames (which, to be quite honest, depict similar, if not quite as exaggerated, forms and degrees of pain and suffering) doesn't.
Board games and video games are, for me, ways of exploring alternate realities and possibilities of existence which (for a multitude of reasons) are impractical, impossible, undesirable, unachievable or sometimes just inconvenient. Quite aside from their mental challenge (and their sense of competition) - the theme of games allow me to stretch my imagination and play with perception and reality.
It's fun to imagine oneself a fighter pilot, business tycoon or even a lowly pre-industrial German farmer. To play at being a god dedicated to chaos and destruction... well, it just feels... wrong to me.
To simultaneously invoke Godwin's Law (yes, yes, I automatically lose) and use gobs of mega-hyperbole, I have a icky sense about this game that I'd imagine I'd feel playing a game about rounding up hidden Jews in France, playing a serial killer in1977 New York, scheduling various sexual escapades in a Caligula-esque court, or distributing smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans.
This is a game where the theme specifically invokes (and revels in) rape, murder, disease, torture, slaughter of peasants, blood sacrifice, insanity, corruption and a host of other unpleasant concepts.
"But it's just a game," you say.
True. Completely true.
Playing Devil's Advocate (almost literally, in this case), I've often felt that understanding what is attractive about evil helps one to know how to combat it. The concept of unbridled lust, wrath, violence, manipulation, random change and the like, represents for me a kind of personal freedom which is incredibly seductive. The idea of giving into all of these impulses of a carnal nature - to kill and torture without remorse, to have frequent and consequence-free sex, to scheme to give oneself power by trickery lies and deceit - appeals to the primeval urges of the amygdala and the crocodile-brain cerebellum and medulla oblongata.
To live as a god - without sin or fear of retribution - is attractive. It's certainly one of the appeals of Existentialism. I'm sure Shemp and I could have all sorts of interesting debate on its ramifications for society and individuals given his and my opposing views on religion and selflessness. In any case, I can see why some people might enjoy the sense of power and freedom that one might derive from playing this game (theme-wise)... I guess I just want to say that I'm a wee bit uncomfortable with it.
We're being evil in this game, kids, and it's not the usual hand-wringing, mad-scientist cackling cartoony-evil. We are trying to literally corrupt and reduce to ruin an entire continent. Capital "E" evil. Is that different that being a cutesy imp-commanding overlord in Dungeon Lords or corrupt government officials keeping down the populace in Junta? Or playing SS troops in Squad Leader? (I love those games, by the way).
Yeah, it's a game. No, I'm not asking that it be banned or people run screaming for the hills or shout "for Heaven's sakem won't someone think of the children?!". I'm not thumping a Bible and saying this offends God.
I do think that people should occasionally stop and think about what's going on in this game, what it says about the fictional world it represents and the real world it... parodies? satirizes?
What we think about good and evil, in short.
Heaven knows there's enough suffering in this world - in Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, the Phillipines - to want to invent more in our fantasies.
Play this game, if you're interested in it. It's pretty good. But like reading Lolita, The Story of O or Blood Meridian, there are imagined acts and events contained within which are pretty unsettling and world-view challenging.
To quote the internet meme "What is seen cannot be unseen."
Or you can just shrug it off and say "It's just a game."
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Let the people speak (Die Macher)
I shouldn't have been surprised, but Luch picked Die Macher once again.
What did surprise me, however, is that in the absence of the cheat sheet Bharmer uses there are a number of finer points in the rules that are really hard to keep straight. Die Macher is the definition of a game with many moving parts, and each one has it's own peculiarities that had us spending much of the game combing through the rulebook. The end result was that the pacing suffered and I enjoyed myself a little less than I usually do. I wouldn't rate Die Macher anywhere near my favorite games, but the times I've played have been fun... but we were definitely off our game this week.
Throughout the game Kozure and I had very similar... everything. Points, party membership, platform, etc. By the last quarter of the game, we were all extremely similar and efforts to use media influence to screw other players were hard to pull off because of it. Anyway, Luch won an unusually tight points race (maybe 20 points spread between the 4 of us)
Something funny happened that I was supposed to record, but I've forgotten now. Sorry.
What did surprise me, however, is that in the absence of the cheat sheet Bharmer uses there are a number of finer points in the rules that are really hard to keep straight. Die Macher is the definition of a game with many moving parts, and each one has it's own peculiarities that had us spending much of the game combing through the rulebook. The end result was that the pacing suffered and I enjoyed myself a little less than I usually do. I wouldn't rate Die Macher anywhere near my favorite games, but the times I've played have been fun... but we were definitely off our game this week.
Throughout the game Kozure and I had very similar... everything. Points, party membership, platform, etc. By the last quarter of the game, we were all extremely similar and efforts to use media influence to screw other players were hard to pull off because of it. Anyway, Luch won an unusually tight points race (maybe 20 points spread between the 4 of us)
Something funny happened that I was supposed to record, but I've forgotten now. Sorry.
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