Two original themes (Troyes, Tribune)

I purchased Troyes a little while back with a gift certificate, and received Tribune in a recent math trade, so we played a couple of new games tonight. Both feature particularly unoriginal themes, and the kind of abstraction that demands excellent gameplay to be fun (or else it's just another bland, dry and generic euro). Let's see how they did on our first try:

Troyes

Troyes is a game about the struggle between three factions (military, clergy and trade), all the while faced with external threats of various types, in medieval France. The actual gameplay has little do do with this, however. Players get a number of dice in three colours according to their presence in the three main "buildings". Dice are rolled, and these become the pool from which all actions will be activated. Over the course of the game, a number of cards are turned up showing possible actions and on their turn players will choose 1-3 of the available dice and assign them to one of those actions. The actions will generate money, influence, VPs or future bonuses.... But most of them amount to micro moves and the game is won by accumulating many small rewards over the course of the game.

There are a number of unique things going on. Number 1, dice can be selected from any player, not just your own pool. It costs money to do this, but often it's worth it and it obviously it takes away from what that player can do later. Number 2, the actions work by totaling the number(s) on the selected dice and dividing them by whatever is on the card... For example it might say you get 2VPs for each multiple of 3 you had totaled. Number 3, a player gathers "influence" which allows modifications to the values rolled (re-roll dice, flip dice, etc). Number 4, the city of Troyes is perpetually under attack and/or suffering internal unrest of some kind and this is represented by event cards which turn up at the start of each round. These must be defended against and if left un-countered will continue to impose a nasty effect every round. This means that depending on what comes up, or where you are in turn order, it may be necessary to re-prioritize and dedicate resources to quash the event. Lastly, each player gets a secret goal but at the end of the game every player gets to score points from each secret goal (in other words, if the goal was to get X influence for 6VPs all players who have that much influence get the VPs). This is interesting because it means you must pay attention to what other players are concentrating on to try to guess what the bonus condition they have is and try to earn it as well.

Between selecting yours or another player's dice, the ability to modify your roll, and the various items worth pursuing there is a lot more control than you'd expect from a dice game. Commensurate with this, there is a lot more to think about. With the wrong players, this could be an AP nightmare. otherwise, it's an interesting and challenging game, but I think it might take another play or two before it starts to reveal it's true colours. In our first game, the amount of options is large enough that it's hard to see how one choice is better than the other. About half-way in I started seeing how things worked together a bit better. The dice selection mechanic and the way the available actions change each game is quite interesting and should provide a different experience each game. I am reminded of Macao, and the way that the dice and available cards drive the game... A combination I really enjoyed.

I liked it. I didn't love it, but my gut tells me this one is worth investing a few more plays in. It's definitely a VP hunt, it's pretty mathy, and quite abstract but I think the sum is more than it's parts. We'll see.

Kozure won the game, having accumulated a large stack of VPs even before the endgame had been scored. He had gone after many of the events while I was focussing more on end game bonuses. Shemp was unfortunately saddled with a starting position that gave him little income, a problem since his secret goal was money (my fault, I hadn't explained that part). Scores where close, though!

Tribune

For our second un-original theme, we have a game set in ancient Rome. This one is about controlling different factions in order to satisfy a number of victory conditions before the other players. It's worker placement, but the rewards for each space is always a choice of cards (face up cards! Face down cards! 5 face down cards!, etc) and after reading the rules I was skeptical that it would be much fun at all.

Turns out it's pretty good. The cards are collected to try to control factions, and control is established by playing a set of cards. Control is kept until someone else plays a better set (higher total value or more cards). There is a bonus given for simply taking over, and another for being in control. Going after the factions means more than just accumulating the number required to satisfy a victory condition... You need to get them in the right order and at the right time so that the take-over bonus and control bonus helps you satisfy the other victory conditions at the same time. It's true that all the actions available are for gathering cards, but the thematic link (although tenuous) at least makes sense and since players are always trying to complete sets of cards the various ways of collecting them allows for different types of risk/reward.

It flows well, is fun to play and the interaction is interesting. Looking forward to trying this one again as well.

This was apparently Kozure's evening as he won this as well. Shemp thought he had a chance to achieve all the goals at the same time as Kozure but couldn't manage it. Meanwhile, I still had a few more to go.

Catch up (frag x2, Nightfall, Power Grid)

Very late post... Will keep it brief.

A few weeks ago I showed up late and only was able to participate in the second game. They had started out the evening with Frag, which i've never played and know nothing about. I had recently participated in a mammoth ( for me) math trade, and so had a pile of new to me games sitting around. One of the games was Nightfall, the new AEG deck building game, and Kozure decided he wanted to try it. We unwrapped the cellophane and did what we have rarely, if ever, done before: read and learn the rules as we played the game. Typically we make sure someone knows how to play, but this one didn't seem like it would be too complicated and it turned out to not be too bad.

The game is extremely combat centric. It's all about getting past the other player's guards and doing damage to the players controlling them. Think Magic the gathering instead of Dominion or Thunderstone. The clever twist which makes this game work better than Magic for multiplayer is that the goal is to inflict "wounds" and the winner is th eplayer with the least wounds. The result is that in order to win, players are forced to spread out their attacks, not simply picking on the weakest player.

I used to be an avid "Jyhad" player, and on the surface I thought that the game might feel like a stripped down version of that game. The theme is similar, the combat oriented gameplay fits, but ultimately there us little resemblance. Where Jyhad did a great job of capturing the theme through it's mechanics, Nightfall could really be about anything. The gameplay in Nightfall revolves around playing chains of cards, and other players can choose to add to the chain if they have the right combo in hand. Effects are resolved in reverse order so later orders can mess around with earlier ones. It is through this mechanic that players will play their minions and give them orders. In practice, it creates interesting gameplay and decision making, but the chaining has zero connection with anything that could be going on thematically so it feels like you are playing a game mechanic, not a ferocious battle between vampires and werewolves.

I was very successful and finding combos, but less successful at taking advantage of them. It's quite hard to set up cards that will work together AND be useful, which makes choosing cards for your deck difficult. Our first game saw Shemp emerge victorious.

So, I enjoyed it and look forward to playing it again but I was disappointed by how weak the game was thematically. It's also tough on the colorblind, because the chaining mechanic depends on matching collies between cards that haven secondary symbol associated.

Last week I also missed games night. I heard Power Grid and Frag! were played.

Easy Come, Easy Go. [Historical]

EASY GO:

Blue Moon City
Phoneicia
Quo Vadis
Pueblo
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Zombies!

Easy Come, Easy Go.

Agent Easy trades his games a lot. Poor addled Shemp can't keep track of what games are available to the group, since a lot of those listed on the left have been traded away.

So.

I'm initiating a new series of posts. Starting NOW. Hopefully my math trade stalking skills are strong. Of course if I'm incorrect, AE will let me know. I'd hope.

EASY COME -

Tribune Prima Inter Pares
High Frontier
Power Struggle
Nightfall
Dixit


EASY GO -

Dungeon Twister 2
Alien Frontiers
Earth Reborn
Ingenious
Ghost Stories: The Village People expansion

The Raw of Go(f) (Go)

Shemp and I played Go. We drew randomly for side. Shane won despite me playing black. Pretty substantial loss for me (though not completely crushing), mostly due to my attempt to invade which went disastrously wrong and resulted in a lot of prisoners for him.

I played another game of Go on Saturday with an opponent at TABS which was a real back-and-forth battle. Neither of us was never certain who had the upper hand until the end. My opponent won, but it wasn't quite the same blowout as the game against Shemp, because I learned my lesson and didn't try a foolish invasion, opting instead to pass, which my opponent took. Pretty close. I lost, even though I was black, so again, not a good showing, but this guy had over 40+ finished computer games under his belt where I have many fewer.

They say that one should lose one's first 100 games of Go quickly... I'm on my way to that.

I still really like this game.

The Fog of War (Alien Frontiers, Nexus Ops)

Another math trade is coming up, and since I had a number of games I was considering trading I sent an email to the group and asked if they objected to me trading any of them away. After receiving their feedback, Kozure mentioned he'd like to give a couple of them a parting play. Alien Frontiers and Nexus Ops it was.

Shemp, Kozure, Pablomeka and I started out with Alien Frontiers. It was actually a very close game, with everyone within one point. The game ended with a great turn by Shemp placing his last two colonies before anyone expected him to. He won.

I like Alien Frontiers well enough. I've played it with the group a few times, and a few more times with my oldest son, but ultimately it's just "meh" and lasts too long for what it is. This farewell session confirmed that to be true...

Nexus Ops was a bit different. I hadn't played in a long time, so I was prepared to feel like maybe I shouldn't trade it. It certainly has it's charms... I like how it forces combat, and the combat system itself is fun. However, it is also too long for what it is AND it suffers from a generic and bland feeling I can't quite put my finger on. I wouldn't have expected a garish and dayglow space combat game to feel bland and generic, but there you go.

This session was characterized by phenomenal bad rolling on everyone's part. Pablomeka, in particular, had his rubium dragon breath approx. 6 times in a nearby square and fail every time. On another turn, I had 3 rock striders and two fungoids attack 4 humans and no hits were registered on either side. We blamed it on a mysterious space fog that must have been causing the problem.

Anyway, it was fun as always but both games remain on the trade pile.

A war of ideas (Clans, Ra, Scrabble Slam, Innovation x2)

Work prevented me from arriving on time last week, so I missed the first few games. The group was kind enough to play a number of short games until I arrived (Clans, Ra and even Scrabble Slam!) where played, though I do not know the details).

When I did get there, Bharmer perused the games I brought and selected the newly acquired "Innovation", casting aside Troyes and Junta- Vive el presidente! Shemp promptly added "Y'all have got too many games", and we were off.

Innovation

I read the rules. I reread the rules. I played a few hands. I still had no idea what was going on, or why. Mostly, I didn't know why. I was afraid that a four player game would lead to certain brain asplosions.

I really like the designer's previous game, Glory to Rome. It's a kind of managed chaos. Despite similarities to Race for the Galaxy, I doubt anybody would describe the experiences as similar. The game plays quite differently each game because of the variety of possible super combos that inevitably come out in the later game. Innovation has a similar barely contained chaos but the games are distinctly different.

Innovation is about the evolution of great ideas through different periods of history. It's a card game, and every single card represents a different idea. At the start of the game, all the cards are grouped by era and each stack is placed in a circle. All players are dealt two ideas from the prehistoric era and the game begins. Players get two actions per turn, which can be to draw a new idea, to play a new idea or to activate an existing idea. The meat of the game is in the activation if ideas... Each player's tableau of active idea cards will feature a number of icons, and each time a player activates an idea it's necessary to compare how many of the pertinent icon each player has. If it's a beneficial idea, any player with equal or m ore icons also get the effects. If it's an aggressive idea, players with equal or more icons are immune. One of the main, ahem, innovations of the game is the concept of "splaying" cards. An idea that permits the splaying of a stack of cards allows a player to slide all the cards in a stack to the right, left or top. This allows a number of icons from the cards below to be seen, and the revealed icons then count as forming part of the tableau... Very powerful.

So,it's a game about creating synergy between ideas. As expected, some of the powers become quite powerful and can create unexpected combos. One thing we hadn't expected was that some earlier ideas can become quite powerful if all other players move on. For example, Shemp discovered that in the beginning, when everyone has "plant" icons, a card based on them can be hard to pull off. However, as players move on and everyone else starts to shed their "plant" icons in favor of science and industry, it's much easier to dominate in that field. To win, one player has to claim a certain number of achievements (however there are cards in later ages that provide alternate win conditions, so if you are behind you could always make a rush for those).

Although there is some effort made to tie the card's powers to the idea it represents, between the abstraction and the bland cards it's hard to feel the theme in the game. Still, from a gameplay perspective I quite enjoyed it. Chaotic, definitely, but fun. Also, not nearly as hard to grasp or play as I had thought.

I will say for the record that Shemp destroyed as in both sessions. This is untrue, of course, because Kozure and I each won a game, but since I miss reported a few of his wins in previous weeks this will be my olive branch.

Pus is a harsh mistress (Chaos in the Old World, Steam)

Pablo joined us and made it a foursome, allowing me to select Chaos in the Old World... a game I like a lot but only ever want to play with the full complement. We followed with another game that doesn't play well with three: Steam.

Oddly, despite both game being typically 1/1.5 hour affairs, both took 2 hours each.

Chaos in the Old World

I played Slaanesh, Shemp was Nurgle, Kozure was Tzeentch, and Pablo was Khorne. I had never played Slaanesh, the "prince of pleasure and pain", so it was fun to explore. Speaking of which, as much as I enjoy the game, I still can't get past the corny theme. I'm sure there are people out there that think it's the coolest thing ever, but I have to say that I personally wish they could retheme this game.

Oh well, whatever.

The old world cards that came up where definitely favoring me because quite a few heroes were popping up around the land. Since heroes and nobility give me bonuses, i had a much easier time than I otherwise would have getting my dial ticks. Pablo was doing his best to knock us around but I think Khorne becomes more difficult to use as players get to know the other gods... it seems like getting away or neutralizing the attacks is relatively easy. Anyway, Kozure and Shemp were running away with the VP track so I had to try to get there with a dial victory. On the last turn, three players satisfied a win condition. Lucky for me, dial victories take precedence so I took it.

This game, mechanically, is really good. There is some chaos, and the cards and dice can be swingy, but the better player probably wins most games. Still, I am at a loss for the terrible board layout. Huge expanses of available cardboard real estate are used for nothing while two provinces get crammed into a tiny little space in the corner. This is a fictional landscape, there is no reason why the final layout should have been this impractical!

Steam

This was Pablo's first game of Steam. We played on the USA map and it was a tense game as usual. As with Chaos in the Old World, scores were incredibly close: Kozure in first with me and Shemp tied one point behind the leader. Amazingly, PAblo was just a few points behind us (I say amazingly because in a first game of Steam against experienced players it would be easy to end up in a tailspin and go bankrupt or be way behind). It all boiled down to who had the 6 point deliveries on the last round, and Kozure had 1 and Shemp and I did not. Very close.

The strip is a harsh mistress (Lords of Vegas, Dominion x2)

this week marked the triumphant return of our good friend Bharmer. He had abandoned us briefly in a quest to gather "knowledge". We roundly criticized him, and then got started.

Lords of Vegas

I was really happy to be able to play this with 4, as I was very curious if the dealmaking possibilities would open up even further. Also, I was hoping that a game played without the game being messed up by spectacularly bad shuffling on my part would go.

In the end, I didn't note much difference as far as deal making. This game seemed to have less, if anything. The properties ended up clumping earlier than normal, which probably contributed. Kozure was the victim of poor luck on a couple of occasions (he should have known he was in for a rough ride when he sprawled and drew that tile on the next turn...). For my part, I once again ended up with a large casino in the center left of the board but there was quite a nail biter in the final rounds because Shemp owned the 6 property adjacent to me and my large casino had no sixes in it. Lucky for me, no casino tiles of the right colour remained. Unlucky for me, Kozure was about to renovate one of his casinos which would have put three back in circulation... I was out of contention by that point, but for Shemp it could have meant winning the game, the only worry was that the game was going to end any turn now and he was afraid he wouldn't get to act. On his turn, he drew the game end tile and missed out! Actually, Bharmer had made a bargain with me that would have made it difficult for Shemp to win anyway, but that's just details. It was a memorable ending.

Must admit I wouldn't have predicted Bharmer winning, though!

Dominion

we finished up by playing two hands of a random setup from the basic dominion cards. We ended up with a whole tableau of cards that allow the trashing of one card to get another. The end result was a setup which led to very lean decks and huge trash piles. It also led to me clearly forgetting how to play the game because not only did I come in last in both games, but DEAD last. I had ridiculously low scores. I think Shemp won the first one through a tiebreaker, and Bharmer the second (though my memory is hazy).

Blight is a harsh mistress (Dominant Species)

We finally played a full game of Dominant species last week.

I played the insects, Kozure the mammals and Shemp the reptiles. In our two previous games, "Blight" came early and in all three cases I grabbed it to make sure no one could use it on me. Unfortunately for Shemp, he was the recipient this time and it was difficult for him to recover the loss of sun tokens on the board. For my part, the land was awash in grass tokens so it was comparatively easy for the insects to assert their dominance in many regions (what's more was that the grass tokens where mostly aquired through Wanderlusts I was able to associate with water and wetland hexes). Lady luck was shining on bugdom that day and I won. Kozure was right behind and Shemp... well Shemp didn't get lapped, so that's a kind of victory, isn't it?

Every game i've played so far i've felt compelled to go for tundra dominance. It's so obviously a huge source of points. Also, if you have at least a single dominant tile, it's almost a requirement to place on the Dominance track to scoop up first choice in cards... There always seems to be a hugely powerful card available. It's nice that each player gets so many actions, though, because it allows room for important and less important actions to take place.

One thing: I didn't really feel that playing the full game was an improvement. The way points scale means that the value of the tundra scoring gets too high, and the endgame bonus for majorities is overpowered (and somewhat redundant... What are the odds that the player with the most majorities isn't a already the player that will win?). I think my favorite was playing to 5 fewer cards. I might also suggest eliminating Blight and a few other particularly crippling cards.