Midway = Half Way (The Fires of Midway)

The history of games played at WAGS is peppered with the occasional light wargame because Kozure likes to sneak 'em in once in a while to keep us honest. Although I enjoy some wargames, the card based light wargames (like Zero!, Airwar:Pacific, Naval Battles, etc) tend to have a couple of factors that keep me from enjoying them fully. Often they are highly luck driven and/ or seem somewhat unbalanced, but more often than not it's the fact that they are longer and more complicated than the weight of the game warrants. Still, I'm always happy to try a new game out and it's a time honoured tradition to allow the dictator to select that he/she wants so we came together this week to blow up some boats, planes and strategically significant microscopic islands.
That, and you never know because the next one might be a gem!

The Fires of Midway attempts to recreate the titular battle in a simplified card game, featuring arial combat and bombing/ torpedo runs against enemy ships. There is a central board which identifies the location of the American and Japanese boats, since distance is a very important concept of the game. Players each have a force consisting of boats and aircraft, represented by cards. On their turns, players must make a choice between making an aggressive attack, hanging back and repairing the ship or a mix of both. Once the choice is made, the planes fly to their target and a battle takes place. Players earn VPs for damaging or sinking enemy ships and for shooting down a specific number of enemy planes. As the game progresses, managing between the fires and leaks on your ships and the need for pressing the attack becomes more of an issue.

On my first turn, I took a couple of planes out and found BHarmer's ship hiding behind low cloud cover. My middling squadron had apparently eaten their wheaties that morning because they kicked the tar out of them. He spent the rest of the game fighting fires and watched as my partner Shemp came and did a repeat performance on his other ship. Over the course of the game, many of the casualties the americans suffered were the result of sending short range planes beyond their range more than anything! Things evened up a little before the end but overall it was pretty one sided and we won decisively. Kozure tells us the results mirror history relatively closely.

I had fun playing The Fires of Midway. For whatever reason, I got into it more than I often do and the random elements succeeded in making the game exciting. The game complexity and game length criticisms are valid, though. Our 4 player game wasn't over when we ended it 3+ hours later. There are a number of rules which felt like they could be dropped without sacrificing much in the gameplay, such as an elaborate targeting sub-mechanic which involves card play but ultimately only determines who gets to pick between two attack resolution tables.

Wishing for Gold (Pandemic, Beowulf, Dominion: Intrigue)

Still three players.

Pandemic

Since Pandemic was dropped from the lineup last week, I brought it again. Shemp picked it as our first game and we went with the mutation challenge (a.k.a. purple cube expansion). We had the dispatcher, the troubleshooter and the researcher.

Side note: Troubleshooter= awesome.

Things started out pretty leisurely, actually. Red was cured quickly and blue followed. The troubleshooter's ability to see where problems are going to be and then go there is very powerful. Suddenly, things started getting hairy and we were struggling to stay on top. We managed to get the four basic cures done, but purple still eluded us. I had five cards to spend to cure it, but none featured cities infected by purple, so I couldn't finish it. We drew the action card that allowed us to fish into the discard and drew what we needed to finish the game. After we won, I checked the infection cards to see what I would have drawn at the end of my turn... we would have lost the game because of an outbreak of Yellow in Johannesburg.

Close. Fun.

Beowulf

Beowulf made a rare repeat appearance. After last week's experiment to see if it played well with three (it did), it was nice to play it again. I unfortunately was unable to repeat last week's win, however. As the game was coming to a conclusion, I felt confident I would win the "battle with the dragon" episode. Kozure had pulled out, and it was me and Shemp left. I had the "All Iron Shield" (4 swords) and "Sword Hrunting" (3 swords), plus a few others. I lost. We had a good laugh at the odd turn of events, and it cost me a significant amount of points, but Shemp had a commanding lead regardless and it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game.

As usual, this was a lot of fun. It's a nice mix of card management and luck.

Dominion: Intrigue

The closer for the evening was an all-intrigue Dominion. Shemp selected a deck called "Secrets and betrayal" (or something like that). All the cards with names like "Saboteur", "Shanty Town", etc, were in the deck. I won the game, so I hate saying that I played semi-randomly, but that's what happened. There was a memorable round where I drew my wishing well and wished for a "gold" treasure and drew it (remarkable because I only had one). I purchased a province and then immediately had to trash it as Shemp played his saboteur and my newly shuffled deck happened to have it on top. Easy come, easy go, I guess. I narrowly beat Kozure and we had a discussion afterwards about the danger of buying the Harem cards (2 VPs/ 2 treasure) near the end of the game... Duchies are worth 3 VPs for the same price but are dead weight. I had been buying them for some time, thinking the game was ending but it took longer than I thought and my deck was becoming inefficient (Shemp mentioned that the same thing was happening to him).

I've heard good things about the upcoming Prosperity expansion. We'll have to see how that plays out.

Three's Company

For a variety of reasons, our attendance is most often three players these days. This is unfortunate as a good part of my collection is aimed either at two or four/five. Consequently, I frequently have trouble picking when it's my turn to dictate, because I/we don't have many games that are good with three that are also liked universally by the common triumvirate of Agent East, Shemp and me... or so I thought.

Shemp took the time to cross-index games recommended/best with three at BGG with the games that are in our collective collection. For the record these are (BGG ranking / title / playing time):

Best with Three

Light

140 Through the Desert 45 mins
142 Carcassonne: The City 30 mins
195 China 45 mins
251 Hey! That's My Fish! 20 mins
261 Colossal Arena 60 mins
309 Can't Stop 30 mins

Medium

7 Dominion 30 mins
29 Ra 60 mins
123 Yspahan 60 mins
146 Thunderstone 60 mins
155 Blue Moon City 60 mins

Heavy

2 Agricola 120 mins
4 Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization 240 mins
6 Le Havre 150 mins
9 Caylus 120 mins

Recommended with Three

Light

47 Galaxy Trucker 60 mins
48 Ticket to Ride: Europe 60 mins
57 Ticket to Ride 45 mins
68 Carcassonne 60 mins
87 Ingenious 45 mins
97 Citadels 60 mins
131 Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game 90 mins
137 PitchCar 30 mins
141 For Sale 20 mins
154 Nexus Ops 90 mins
160 Bohnanza 45 mins
186 Formula D 60 mins
203 Wits & Wagers 25 mins
204 Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age 30 mins
219 Formula Dé 120 mins
227 Liar's Dice 15 mins
229 Zooloretto 45 mins

Medium

12 Race for the Galaxy 60 mins
22 Stone Age 60 mins
23 Pandemic 60 mins
27 Railroad Tycoon 120 mins
32 Chaos in the Old World 90 mins
38 Small World 80 mins
50 The Settlers of Catan 90 mins
55 Space Alert 30 mins
61 Taj Mahal 90 mins
69 In the Year of the Dragon 75 mins
70 Acquire 90 mins
74 Modern Art 45 mins
78 Tikal 120 mins
80 Cosmic Encounter 60 mins
92 The Pillars of the Earth 120 mins
93 Chicago Express 60 mins
96 Genoa 120 mins
108 Ghost Stories 60 mins
114 RoboRally 120 mins
115 Cyclades 60 mins
120 Glory to Rome 60 mins
121 Fury of Dracula 120 mins
139 Vegas Showdown 75 mins
166 Medici 60 mins
175 Antike 120 mins
180 Macao 90 mins
193 Domaine 90 mins
221 Lowenherz 90 mins
248 Lord of the Rings 60 mins

Heavy

1 Puerto Rico 90 mins
5 Power Grid 120 mins
11 Tigris & Euphrates 90 mins
13 Steam 120 mins
16 Age of Steam 120 mins
18 The Princes of Florence 90 mins
21 Goa 90 mins
25 Shogun 150 mins
30 Imperial 120 mins
51 Arkham Horror 180 mins
128 Maharaja: Palace Building in India 90 mins

An evening with Stephen Feld (Macao, In the Year of the Dragon, Jungle Speed x2)

This is a couple of weeks late, but we've moved recently and I haven't had the time to write. This week we had Bharmer back, making it a foursome.

As Kozure mentioned in his recent post, we played Macao, In the Year of the Dragon and Jungle Speed. I wanted to play both Feld games because I really admire him as a designer, depsite his inability to choose compelling themes. The combination of strategy, interesting mechanisms and ... pain, have produced two games I like very much (I haven't tried any of his other designs).

Macao

Kozure was determined to improve on his past showings in this game, and early on it looked like he would achieve his goal with a win. He had a commanding lead, but as is customary with this game Shemp came from behind and stole the win (this time, beating Kozure by a single point). I don't exactly understand how a game like this can be so dominated by a single player, but so far Shemp's record stands at 100% after +/- 5 plays. Bharmer had just learned the game and therefore came in last, but this is the kind of game where that is expected. Not sure how to explain my poor showing, though!

In the Year of the Dragon

Finally got this second game by Stephan Feld to the table. Another great title, but significantly more compact in it's playtime. This is the epitome of a great euro in my book: short play time, high strategy, low luck. Feld has a hard time coming up with compelling themes, but the gameplay is top notch. I won this one by keeping my end of turn points high and making sure to dominate the fireworks points. For some reason, I tend to do very well at this one contrary to my winless streak at Macao.

Jungle Speed

I had hoped to play Pandemic as the last game of the evening. We didn't have time, and I'll admit I was disappointed at first. That is, I was disappointed until Kozure suggest we play Jungle Speed. We played twice and had a blast as usual. What a fun game.

Undefeated

Well, Shemp pulled off another come-from-behind win in Macao, which makes it 5 wins for 5 plays for him. 100%. Undefeated.

Impressive... most impressive.

We also played In the Year of the Dragon (Easy won) and Jungle Speed (Bharmer and Easy won one each).

I had to content myself with two (close) second place finishes in the non-filler games.

Which brings me to the interesting question... which games are we, as members of this group, good at?

There are many games which I enjoy but I'm not necessarily good at. Power Grid, for example, I usually come in the middle of the pack (used to be middle-high end, but recent plays have left me lower than usual). Conversely, one of the games which I almost put in the "will not play willingly" category, Phoenicia, I actually had my own personal highest win rate for. What does it say about me that the game I win most often I happen to dislike? Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately for my win record), Phoenicia has been traded away.

I think I've got a reasonably good win rate at Railroad Tycoon. I enjoy it, which usually assists in getting me to play better. I'm also usually pretty decent at Tikal.

As mentioned in previous entries, when El Grande was introduced to the group, I had a fairly high win ratio. Over time, that edge has been lost and now I'm frequently middling.

Shemp, as mentioned, is trending high wins at Macao.

This weekend, at TABSCON, I had the opportunity to play Race for the Galaxy with two people who play it a lot. I was creamed. Seriously creamed, twice in a row. Point spreads of something like 70 or 80 to my 30-ish. I felt like... well, I'd use some sports analogy here but I don't know sports teams well enough... the Nigerian Woman's Hockey Team up against Canada... or Canada's soccer team up against Spain. I thought I was not bad at RftG, but either I just had two seriously bad runs of luck, or those guys are super-geniuses. Now, granted, we were playing with two expansions, one of which I hadn't played before, but I was not in the running here.

One nice thing about going to places like TABSCON, it exposes you to playing skill levels outside your "regular" group. Generally I've found, much to my satisfaction, I do pretty well against other groups, save in games where it's obvious they play a particular game a lot.

I think it's clear, if you're a regular reader, that I'm not a "play only for the win" kinda guy. I try to win, for sure, but for me, it's the social atmosphere, friendly competition and sense of thematic engagement that draws me to board gaming.

But sometimes... sometimes... I just want that first place finish, dang it!

Hey WAGsters (or readers), what are the games that you're good at?

Military advantage = win (Through the Ages)

Life's become real busy lately, so writing this blog is tougher than it used to be. Sorry if things are getting sporadic.

Last week we played Through the Ages, a game I like some aspects of but which ultimately is not one of my favorites. One of the reasons is because I dislike the aggression system, and another is related to the first: In my experience, the player who gets the lead in military strength wins and the player who is in last has a really rough road ahead of them.

Now, I should add that in the games I've played, we have often truncated the game for lack of time. It's entirely possible that something in the third age balances out trying an idea strategy or a culture strategy against the advantage of going military in the first two ages. Maybe those strategies require longer to mature, for example.

Anyway, I was the lucky beneficiary of a winning military strength strategy. I started with Homer and tried to focus on always being in the lead for strength and also having solid culture generation. I built the railroads and discovered professional sports and enlisted James Cook to give me massive culture through the many colonies I had controlled (using the aforementioned military advantage). Shemp got beat up on a few times. Sorry about that buddy.

Kozure did mention when we wrapped up that his engine was just starting to ramp up and he would have benefited greatly from playing out the third age. Who knows?

Threeny Madness! (Ra, Glory to Rome, Beowulf, Dominion)

Shemp's pick this week, and he went for Threeny Madness (a play on "weeny madness", the name we used to give Magic decks that focussed on many small creatures). Turns out many of the games played aren't particularly "weeny", but what can you do?

Ra

First up was Ra, with Tilli playing instead of Kozure. Auction games are often subject to groupthink, and so I think everyone was somewhat surprised at how differently me and Shemp evaluated things compared to Tilli (who would typically play outside our group). In particular, it is my habit to purchase many smaller lots early rather than go long and hope for quantity. At first, it looked like it was a losing strategy... Tilli had a huge first round and Shemp and I scored very little. As the game wore on, Ra looked with dissaproval at those wanting quantity over quality and rewarded me with an enormous last round for the win.

Glory to Rome

Kozure stepped back in and Shemp chose perennial favorite Glory to Rome. I've often said that this game is characterized by a new "unbalanced" combo every game. Just to prove me wrong, this session didn't have that. We were all building away and minding our own business when suddenly all the building sites had been used and the game ended. Another odd thing: None of us had a single piece of material in the vault. Shemp thought he had me based on the influence I had gathered from building, but what he hadn't noticed was that I had built the ... (I don't recall the name, but it gives me 1 VP for each 2 materials in the stockpile). This sneakery allowed me to surpass Shemp by 1 and win the game.

Beowulf

A few weeks ago we were wondering if Beowulf with 3 would be any good. Having now played it, I must say that it is! Knizia distributed the episodic rewards very well so that there is as much interest in the 3 player auction as the 4 or 5 player.

In the early episodes, luck was shining on Shemp as he was making out quite well at all the risking challenges. Kozure also appeared to have a persistently large hand of cards. I struggled early in the game but game but found my footing about a third of the way. Through sheer dumb luck I won an episode with a single card from my hand. This reward allowed me to snowball my successes and soon I felt like I was doing really well. Going into the battle with the dragon, I had a hand of 10-15 cards ALL of which could be used in the battle (i.e. just fists and axes and wilds). I don't often do well at this game, but clearly this was my evening!

Dominion

We ended, as we often do, with Dominon. Shemp noticed that the was a themed deck called "Hand Madness!", so being unable to resist the tie in with the evening's theme he chose it. As you'd expect, it's a deck that has players manipulating the number of cards in their own and their opponent's hands quite a lot. Dominion is another game I typically don't do well in, but unfortunately this time the result was in line with the odds... I came in last after an unsuccessful attempt to pull off a bureaucrat + Council room combo. It didn't help that Shemp was constantly playing Militias to keep my handsize down. I unfortunately do not remember who actually did win, however.

Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield"? (Goa, China)

Strange story: I was listening to my "A Game of Thrones" audiobook as I arrived at Shemp's house. Shortly before I parked the car, a character says "Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield"? to John Snow after he goes into a rage during a practice duel. Upon entering Shemp's house, he tells me about how he had to yell at a guy in a car that almost ran him off the road on his bicycle. He mentioned that he had to yell "Don't you understand the meaning of "Yield" ? I don't know, to me it was weird.

We went "old skool" this week. I was hoping to get Goa, Puerto Rico and China played, but we only had time for Goa and China

Goa

Goa is a game that often gets put temporarily on the trade pile, but always comes off because it plays well from 2-4 and that's unusual for a game of this type. Also, it's theme is particularly uninspiring and therefore rarely gets off the shelf (it's been over two years...). Finally, and probably most damning, it's a good game but too bland to be very memorable amidst all the games we have (it's pretty close to playing a spreadsheet). Despite all this I enjoy it when it does comes out for the pure efficiency engine gameplay (though with auctions and an odd dash of luck introduced with the expeditions). I like it. It can stay.

Kozure seemed to be running away with the game, and Shemp clearly felt that he was doing very poorly throughout. In the end, Kozure did win, but Shemp and I were tied only 3 points behind.

China

Not much to say here. We are constantly surprised and impressed how much game there is here for the 30 minutes it takes. I pursued advisors more aggressively than Shemp and Kozure, and that won it for me.

Pus n' brains! (Chaos in the Old World, Unpublished Prototype)

Pablo joined us once more, so we took advantage of the occasion to play our first four player game of Chaos in the Old World. We also played another of Kozure's game creations... this one being a zombie dice game (which, as usual, I won't describe here in any detail).

Chaos in the Old World

Finally! A four player game. We gave Pablo Khorne since he is, on the surface, the easiest to play (and so best for newbies). I drew Nurgle, Shemp Tzeentch and Kozure Slaanesh.

I decided to concentrate on ruining one or two of the populous regions on the Board. Since warpstones were seeded to the north at the start, Shemp spent most of the game there (magicking and such). Khorne started in the high value central regions and Kozure's Slaanesh was busy sexing it up in the south. This arrangement squeezed me between Khorne's axe and Tzeetch's spells.
The Empire and Kislev were my targets and I focussed on getting lots of cultists there in order to rapidly corrupt them. I also added a single token to Troll Country and Bretonnia. Kozure looked like he was running away with it in VPs, but Shemp was doing quite well in the "Dial ticks" category. I was a close third, but I was banking on the ruination points putting me in front. On the fourth or fifth turn, three regions corrupted at the same time. Since I was in first place for two of them, I netted over 30 points and won the game.

I hadn't really realized how powerful ruining regions could be as a strategy. We haven't done much of this in the past, but after this game I expect to see it again. Pablo had difficulty keeping up with us since it was his first time, but by the second half he was doing quite well (with Khorne, it's almost a waste of time trying to win on VPs... better to get dial ticks and beat others down). The game play is a great mix of the euro and american style. The placement rules and action points make for a very strategic game, but the card effects and dice rolls keep things interesting. I look forward to playing this again with four experienced players.

L7+L7=L14 (Louis XIV, Glory to Rome)

Kozure dug into the back catalogue for his selection this week... two oldies but goodies: Louis XIV and Glory to Rome.

A quick search on the blog reveals that it has been almost exactly 3 years since we've last played Louis (November 2009 for Glory to Rome). As you might imagine, a rules refresher was in order.

Louis XIV

It's always interesting going back to an older game after a little while. I always felt like Louis XIV was a solid and interesting design, but during this session I had the distinct feeling that I was playing a somewhat convoluted version of El Grande meets... something with hidden missions (Princes of Florence? Traders of Genoa?). Still very enjoyable, and nice and short for this type of game. For a game that depends on the deal of the cards, I felt like there was a good amount of control available, too. It's not a game that I feel I need to play often, but it deserves to come out more than it does.

I had a very good game. I was able to complete my four missions every round, as well as accumulating a number of extra tokens which gave me shields at the end. This is not a game that lends itself to session reports, so I won't go into detail. I won by a significant margin, though. HA!

Glory to Rome

It was the return of the least broken "broken game" there is. Every session, everyone points the finger at a new card or combo and says that it's hopelessly unbalanced. What was it this time? I built the Colosseum, which allows me to take from other player's clientele when I use the legionnaire AND PLACE THE CLIENT IN MY VAULT. It's very powerful if none of the other players have built palisades. I was simultaneously filling my vault and reducing the other player's ability to play multiple actions in a turn. In all honesty, I felt my chances and a second landslide win in a single evening were pretty good when the draw deck ran out. Kozure surprised me with a rather rich vault that he was sneakily filling the whole game, but it wasn't enough... I did win but it was a much narrower victory than anticipated.

Those sneaky Kozurians.