You Sank my Battleship! (Midway:Avalon Hill)

Is it just me, or are wargames making a comeback?

So many blogs I've been reading seem to be focussing on them lately, I can't help but think that their popularity is slowly resurfacing. Personally, I haven't ever played them, but I am curious. I was therefore fairly excited when Kozure suggested that we play Avalon Hill's early 90s wargame "Midway". This particular battle involved the Japanese trying to take control of the island of Midway for use in the war. The Americans were defending. He introduced it as a game specifically designed to appeal to less "hardcore" players... a good thing since we were complete newbies. Note: It's supposed to be a 2 player game, but we played it 4 player by forming teams.

First reaction: Hmmm. Lots of tiny cardboard pieces. Very low production quality. Poor graphic design. Not a good start. Still, it's an older game, and a wargame at that. I was willing to get past it.

There are three gameboards. 2 are identical maps of the waters directly surrounding the island of Midway. Similarly to Battleship, players each secretly set up their pieces on the board, with some constraints (A gamescreen showing turn order and game modifiers keeps each player's board hidden from the other). The third board shows a magnified view of a section of water, for use during battles. Many counters make up the carriers, battleships and airplanes (though I bet it's a very small number by wargame standards).

Kozure and I played the Japanese, leaving Luch and Shemp as the Americans.

The bulk of the first few turns involves each player sending out planes to "scout" the ocean, trying to pinpoint the location of the enemy. Once located, fighter planes, Dive Bombers, etc can swoop in and attack the carriers. The game takes place over 4 "days" (approximately 20 turns) and victory is determined using VPs gained by sinking opponent's ships. The searching and sneaking part I enjoyed, the combat...not so much.

It became immediately clear that the Americans had far superior reconaisance capabilities. They swept the board looking for us, and we could only go so long before they did. Scout planes seemed to outnumber ours 4 to 1! Still, we made some headway before they cought us. We managed to have our inferior forces sink some of the American boats, without getting hit too hard in return. When we called the game, we were ahead in VPs, giving us a technical win. I'm sure that the tide would have swung the way of the Americans had we continued to the end, however (we were simply too outnumbered... made worse by the fact that we lost many planes to get what we did).

Impressions: For wargamers, this may indeed be light fare. For eurogamers (... me anyway), the fiddliness and lack of polish took it's toll. My biggest problem with he game was the constant shuffling around of the tiny stacks of cardboard from one map to another. I didn't like that I needed to do it, and I liked even less that it didn't seem like the location of tokens on the enlarged board mattered much. To compound the problem of shuffling pieces around, the fact that the "home location" of the tokens isn't always indicated makes it easy to misplace parts between turns.

Disclaimer: We didn't finish the game, and surely many potential events didn't happen. Any of those things could have explained the necessity of some of the design decisions I am questioning. Also, right to the end of our game, I wasn't clear on how our goal was supposed to play out (was the battle at Midway, had we reached it, going to be the same kind of sea battle we had been doing the whole time? Would we win automatically if we reached it? Would the enlarge map be used differently in such a ship to ship combat?

I think that a modern redesign of the game could yield a very fun, and much faster, version of the game. For instance:

1) Revamp the graphic layout of the tokens, reducing their number and making them somewhat larger if necessary. Each should now have symbols to represent the purpose of the stats.
2) The 4 step turn order was not terribly useful, but waiting on each other for each step took a fair amount of time. Since both teams are operating in secret, it would be much faster to simply call 1 phase "upkeep", then handle searches according to initiative (and combat if necessary).
3) The balance of the d10 rolls seemed wrong. When the game hangs so much on whether you've matched, doubled or tripled a result, it seems odd that this die is used. You don't need to roll particularly well to triple a 1, but a 10 is an entirely different story. The roll is entirely secondary to the bonuses. Now that I think about it... that's proabbly the point (though it's not how I percieved it as I was playing)
4) In practice, the action on the enlarged board was fairly repetitive. Carriers were always placed for maximum coverage by other ships, and they were almost always the target of attacks. There is therefore very little difference between this and having just one token representing the entire fleet and adding a bonus to represent the remaining firepower of the fleet. As the fleet is damaged, the coverage bonus would dwindle (representing the loss of those allied ships defending the carrier). The enlarged board could be eliminated entirely! This would reduce the game to two boards, a dividing screen and the tokens representing the fleets (the tokens representing individual planes and ships would be eliminated). Markers for "scouted areas" would make nice additions. I bet that game could be played in under an hour.

Now, I know that the multitude of counters (and the particular stats of each chit) is part of the attraction for wargamers. Clearly, that's not who I'd be aiming for here.

Anyway... I enjoyed trying one of these types of games, even if it didn't turn out to be my cup of tea. Did it dampen my enthusiasm to try out other wargames? No. Rather, I would say that it added "focus" to my search. Having read the rules to a few "block" games, I think that they might do exactly what I enjoyed about this game, while avoiding much of what I didn't. Besides, they are interesting as history lessons if nothing else.

Conspiracy. Intrige. Paranoia.

3 games. I think the "theme" is clear. Italian Sausages, clearly a "suspicious" food, provided sustenance.

In attendance: Easy, Kozure, Luch, Shemp, Sonja.

Kozure hadn't yet arrived, so we started with Conspiracy (a 4 player game). We settled into our roles (I was Paris, Shemp was Tokyo, Luch was Washington and Sonja, new to the game, flexed her command of the German language as Berlin).

Brief recap: Conspiracy is a game where each player represents a major power who wants to reclaim a secret briefcase located at the center of the board. 12 spies (each with a terrible pun for a name), occupy the board... but they aren't controlled by particular players. Instead, the players are given $10 000 to "bribe" the spies to do their bidding. Since bribing is secret, no one ever really knows which spy is working for who until someone tries to make a move someone else doesn't want. And since additional bribes can be made throughout the game, loyalties shift.

As is often the case in this game, the likely winner changed several times over the course of the game. There aren't many "steps" between the center of the board and a player's home base (3 being the shortest route, I think), so it's not uncommon for the briefcase to move a single square and have everyone suddenly realize that a particular player is suddenly in a position to win.

My memory is hazy (as always), but I beleive I blew "Peking Tom"'s cover fairly early on... a character several players had invested heavily into. With "Miss Behavin'" nearby I tried a quick snatch and grab of the suitcase towards Paris but was intercepted. Soon after, Shemp looked like a threat as a series of characters under his sway gathered near Tokyo and seemed unstoppable. Through cooperation, we managed to get it out... and into Sonja's territory. She was within one move of winning, but it was not to be.... Luch, who's initial large investment in "Rock Bottom" seemed to be going to waste (since NO ONE was moving him anywhere), was pleasantly surprised to see that character suddenly find himself with the case 2 squares from his base. We had no way of stopping him.

Next up was Intrige. This was our first game with 5 players (Kozure had arrived by now), and the dynamics are quite different with an odd number of players! In a 4 player game, 2 pairs of players usually end up helping each other (using the term loosely!). With 5 players, things aren't quite as even, and "Friendships" (again, used loosely) come and go much faster. Backs were stabbed all around, and I can't think of any particular alliances which lasted more than a turn or two (Though my France saw a lot of Shemp's American employees, and vice versa, until the final few turns). Shemp had the unfortunate luck of being deemed the leader early on and was hopelessly shut out for the 2nd half of the game because of it. Sonja and I managed to accumulate quite a bit of wealth as things went on, but I ended the game with a very tiny lead for the win.

Last up was was Paranoia, Mandatory "Bonus Fun" Card game. I was pleasantly surprised last time as this seemed to be a decent game, for a "Take That" system. I liked that the "missions" focused the card play rather than letting it be a free for all. I liked that each player had objectives which would naturally lead to backstabbing, chaos and "general hilarity". It seemed to work, and we laughed a lot, so I was happy with the purchase (despite some of the obvious shortcomings concerning graphic design and play length issues). Having played it a second time, though, I'm not so sure. For whatever reason,things weren't "clicking". We kept forgetting the fiddly rules about discarding treason counters for exposing/killing traitors. We missplayed the way characters are meant to come back to the game after they get killed. etc, etc. I looked through the ruledbook too many times for a game of this "weight". Also, I had more hands filled with cards I couldn't use than last time. All these things contributed to a hand that wasn't much fun. I hope to try it again, with a cheat sheet at my side, but it's not likely to get many more chances if it goes like that again.

The same... but different.

Ahhh, two well loved games... but each with a twist making them feel "new" again.

Puerto Rico was first up. I've had the expansion for quite a while, but never felt like I knew the base game well enough to give it a try. Dictator Luch was tired of waiting, and so we threw it in. What do you know? It was pretty good.

Playing Puerto Rico without knowing the buildings was a strange and daunting feeling. Now I know (again) what it's like learning this game from scratch... pretty intimidating. The new additions were not all included, as the rules call for a "draft" of the buildings to start. Essentially, if the base game had 2 buildings which cost 3 dubloons, then the game with expansion is limited to the same (etc, etc). This ensures that some of the balance is maintained.

The new buildings have a broad range of effects.

Some explore new variations on old ideas (like the one that behaves like a factory, but gives bonuses to multiples of the SAME good)

Some bring new but straightforward concepts (like the forest plantations, which give discounts to buildings without needing to be manned and without the limits of quarries but take much more effort to aquire)

Others offer very strange ideas (like the black market which allows you to get discounts by trading in workers, victory points or goods... or the Union Hall which gives you victory points for pairs of goods before they are shipped... or the guest house, which allows up to 2 workers to reside until the player decides he/she wants them to be moved to somewhere else (a very powerful way to avoid having to wait for the mayor phase to occupy buildings or plantations))

Tili joined us for the game, giving us a full complement of players. I chose to try a "Corn Strategy" bolstered by the new Union Hall and the Guest House. In the rush to place the new buildings, I completely forgot to make sure the Wharf was available! Normally, focussing on corn and not getting a Wharf is deadly but (lucky for me) it didn't go too badly. We all suffered from "New" shock... we're not used to playing 5 players, and the new buildings threw us. This basically ensured we all played equally poorly, and spent most of the game just "trying stuff" (in fact, Shemp mentioned on many occasions that he couldn't formulate a strategy). Shemp and (to a lesser extent) Kozure tried to accumulate Forests. Tili played a straight game, but frequently found herself at the wrong end of the trader or captain, losing valuable opportunities. Luch got good mileage out of his aqueduct. I managed to accumulate many VPs through the Union Hall and shipping. The Guest House allowed me to man the corn fields as soon as I aquired them. I ultimately won the game, though it's only by luck since we were all shooting in the dark and I happened to pick a combination which worked well.

Next was Power Grid. Again, we've played this before but always on the Germany map, so we decided to try the USA. The South West was randomly determined to be out of play (hurricanes?). I placed in the far East, thinking no one else would follow suit since it was so heavily constricted from the "out of play" areas, but to my dismay Luch and Shemp both set up camp on the mid east. This left Kozure with the entire West half to play with (which is expensive at the Rockies, but it was quite an advantage none the less). Sure enough, as the game progressed the three of us in the East where fighting for every scrap of free space, and Kozure slowly absorbed the rest. Both Shemp and Luch eventually branched off into that half, taking 2nd and 3rd stations in western cities, but I was hopelessly stuck behind masses of unavailable conduit. Lucky for me, I always had JUST ENOUGH to do what I needed. I often had to overspend, but at least it was possible. At the end, Kozure made a critical mistake and only realized it too late (he forgot that in the 3rd phase he could buy powerplants from both rows, and instead purchased a lower capacity plant). I seriously lucked out and was able to buy the "50" power plant (a "green" plant which powers 6) uncontested late in the game which vaulted me back in contention. Shemp and I were both within striking distance and both went for the kill by going to 17 cities with the ability to power it all. It came down to cash... and Shemp had 1 DOLLAR MORE THAN ME.

1 dollar.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I lost a photo finish, but it was fun!

Power Grid is a very good game, and clearly a favorite in our group. It's not a personal top 10, though, and I'm hard pressed to figure out why. The only thing I can think of is that the game feels more like a "race" than anything else. Everyone is jockying for position, trying to make it to the finish line first (giving ground to the leader during the game where it is strategically effective), but it can feel a little like multiplayer solitaire. Other than indirect conflict, such as blocking a route of purchasing fuel another player needs, everyone kind of goes their own way (and the tight money supply pretty much ensures that making a move which doesn't benefit you just to "screw yr Neighbour" is pretty risky and rare). The most important part of the game, in my mind, is manipulating player order to try to stay in last place as long as possible... but EVERYONE is following that strategy, so again it's kind of a race. Funny, because Princes of Florence has the very same criticism: "there is little competition, it's essentially a multiplayer solitaire race to see who scores more", yet it's one of my favorites. All I can say is that in PoF, there are far fewer moving parts, the system is more elegant and the game is shorter. Different people will have different opinions, but that's mine.

One last note: Am I the only one who finds the mid game power plants basically useless? Every game, we just wait for them to cycle through until we get to the good ones. Not a huge criticism, but something I have been feeling is a bit "odd" in the game design.

Anyway, while Power Grid is not in my top 10, it's in my top 20, so I don't want to make it sound like I don't like it (and games right into the top 30 are ones I love to play).

Just thinking out loud...

Ideology + Unexploded Cow

The theme this week was "Fanaticism!!!"

The games were "Ideology" and "Unexploded Cow". Food was "anything HOT or EXTREME"

I'll let you all decide how well those work toghether.

First up was Ideology, the game of world domination which went over quite well the last time we played. The cast of characters included "Capitalist Easy", "Imperialist Shemp", "Communist Luch" and "Fascist Kozure".

A few comments, now that we've come back to it:

1)The starting powers and penalties add nice flavour to each player's opinion without making things complicated. I had previously complained that only the communists had real "character". I take that back... the other positions are possibly more subtle but they each seem to work.
2)The phase order, which also initially bothered me (because I felt it could have been simplified) has revealed itself to be very important. The game forces players to commit their scarce resources (the cards in their hands) first to themselves, then to neutral countries, then to opponent's countries (hostile takeovers). It's important because cards are not worth too much if unplayed, so a player must constantly ask him/herself whether it's "safe" to spend cards early when the temptation to expand to new countries is just around the corner, and when the threat of hostile take-over looms at the end of the turn. Had things gone the other way around, players would simply use up what they needed to defend their country and/or expand, and then spend the rest on developing themselves just before the turn ended.

In this session, we all feared the communists for their "iron curtain" ability (essentially, any attempts to influence communist countries are erased at the end of the turn unless the country in question is fully wrested from their control that turn). Poor Luch had a very hard time getting a hold of new territory as we all made a concerted effort to keep him from getting anything. The Fascists pulled out to an early lead through slow and steady internal and external gains. The Imperialists made the most of their ability to easily control small neutral countries and snatched quite a few of them. I, as the capitalists, tried to place my military influence on as many neutral countries as possible (due to my restriction from playing them once the coutries where owned, as they require me to declare war). I did fairly well this way, though I was pulling the rear with the coomunists for much of the game. As the Imperialists threatened to end the game, I surged forward by developping Weapons of Mass Destruction and grabbing two small countries. Alas, the Imperialists also made big gains and despite the efforts of the Fascists and Communists to stop us we ended on a tie. Ties are broken by the player with the most advancements, and that was Shemp.

It was a very fun game!

My only complaint is that the end game is still a little too "kill the leader" for my tastes. There are very few restrictions for attacking a player, and points are public knowledge, so I'm afraid that games could degenerate into "he's almost winning, let's attack him until he's down. Now someone else is almost winning, let's take him down, etc". Our last few turns were spent doing this, but it didn't last long... not sure whether getting better at the gaem would improve or aggravate the issue.

Next up was "Unexploded Cow". It's an amusing and simple game which we've played before, so I won't spend too much time on it. Luch had a good time playing cows just to stampede them into other player's fields (forcing them to pay him the value of the cows). Shemp had a pretty impressive run of cows which were set up to blow his entire field if activated. I focused on getting the high city cards, which I managed to do, but I was so far behind on cash that the endgame bonus was far too little too late. Mad bomber Shemp carried the game with a narrow win over Stampeder Luch (but a huge lead over me, and Kozure too I think)

Perfect 10

I thought it would be fun, now having played a hell of a lot of different games together, to share our top 10 games as of today. A year from now, if we are still doing this, I'll ask again to see if anything has changed.

I'll start.

Easy:

1. Ra
2. El Grande
3. Princes of Florence
4. Tikal
5. Lord of the Rings
6. Duel of Ages
7. Robo-Rally
8. Carcassonne
9. Tigris & Euphrates
10. Jyhad CCG

Top 11-20 (in no particular order)

Puerto Rico, Traders of Genoa, Power Grid, Modern Art, For Sale!, Ticket to Ride, Domaine, Intrige, Pueblo, Pirate's Cove

Special Mention: Deadwood/ Witch trial (They are not a great games, but they are the only "humourous" games which, for whatever reason, really work for me)
Heirs to the throne: Through the Desert, China (I think these are both top 20 games, but I haven't played them enough yet)

(wow, we've played so many great games! I can think of several which narrowly miss the list, such as Conspiracy, Blokus, Memoir '44, High Society, Bohnanza, Tower of babel, Way Out West, etc)

Luch:

Top 5 (no particular order)
RA
EL GRANDE
TIKAL
DOMAINE
PUERTO RICO

Top 6-10 (no particular order)
POWER GRID
CARCASSONNE
TIGRIS & EUPHRATES
TRADERS OF GENOA
BOHNANZA

Kozure

Top 10

1. Puerto Rico
2. Power Grid
3. Tikal
4. Pirate's Cove
5. Star Trek: Tactical Combat Simulator
6. Theophrastus
7. Twilight Imperium / Civilization
8. Firepower
9. Memoir '44 / Battle Cry
10. Ra

Top 11-15

11. Ticket to Ride Europe
12. Way out West
13. Princes of Florence
14. War of the Ring
15. Traders of Genoa
16. El Grande
17. Lost Cities
18. Hera & Zeus
19. High Society
20. Tigris and Euphrates

All Hail the Idiot King!

This week's directive from the dictator was interesting:

1. Venue is chzczo?~?~
2. Games is Conspiracy, traders of genoa, and some fillery thing or stuff.
3. me brain no work gud.
4. food~! TBD
5. Snazx bring
6. didn' t i tel you AD cance3lled last wk/
?

idoitkingS

Among other things, Shemp acknowledges existence of (and enthusiasm for) food. More importantly, he declared himself "The Idiot King".

Sadly, I managed to mess up half of the only lucid thing he said... In packing my bag of games for the evening, I got too caught up trying to choose "fillery" games and forgot Conspiracy. The rule of Shemp was denied (or, as he rebutted, "differently realized"). Oh well.

I arrived a little early, so after chatting a little Kozure, Tili and I started a 3 way game of For Sale! until the others arrived. They hadn't played before, but as you can imagine they caught on quickly. Baby Boy was along as spectator, and I think all 3.5 of us enjoyed it.

As Shemp and Luch arrived, we cleared the table and got ready for Traders of Genoa. Shemp reaffirmed that he was the Idiot King, and explained that doing other people's paperwork was slowly making him unable to think. He's right... the only thing that sucks more than paperwork is OTHER PEOPLE's paperwork.

4 player Traders of Genoa. Wow. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP. And a little stingy besides. Deals, probably 75% of them, never exceeded $5. Sharing in the benefits of the action (i.e. splitting the 2 goods), was just about the only common method used to sweetent he pot beyond that. Offering $15 or more for an action virtually ensured you WOULDN'T get it (a suspicious lot, we are). Shemp and Kozure traded privileges, I concentrated on fulfilling orders and dominating the ownership markers and Luch routinely sacrificed cash by ending turns early to deny players any actions. I've done the ownership marker strategy before, but on the other hand I don't think I normally do well at this game, so I'm not sure why I keep trying it. Lucky for me, it worked out this time... I RAKED in cash from my markers and also managed many orders of all types, and won the game just a touch ahead of Kozure (who himself had a fantastic run of large orders and privileges). It was a good game.

Does anyone else feel that the latitude for deal making isn't as wide as it should be? It might be a result of our frugal attitudes, but i'd love to think of a way to find different angles for negotiating (Shemp and Kozure were making interesting trades with their privileges, though). Shemp also introduced the notion of "future consideration", something he once had good success with in Monopoly. In a way, I think the miniscule value of most goods, compared with the undefined value of the action cards and the perceived enormous value of ownership markers and privilege cards makes them hard to trade for one another. It occurs to me now that a clever trade might be to offer a card for which you don't have the appropriate good(s) but the acting player does. Thoughts?

The Idiot King's next proclamation was that he was hoping that others would make game choices for him, and then make it seem like it was his decision all along. So, we reminded him he wanted to play RA.

The first time I played this game, I loved it. That was way back in April, in Jay Wowzer's inaugural session. Others were more lukewarm, but I actively sought after it and eagerly anticipated Uberplay's re-release so I could buy a copy for myself. In the meantime, I taught myself the BSW interface in order to play online. I then enlisted Luch, and I think he now shares my enthusiasm for the game. Lately, Kozure and Tili have joined us occasionally online and, again, I think they really like it (they certainly both showed a knack for the game, beating both me and Luch one most of the games they've played against us).

So... Shemp was the last frontier.

First, a few notes on the new version. I'm working from memory, but I beleive the board and tiles are roughly 30% bigger than the original. That's not a change I appreciate, because the tiles take up room to sort in front of you in addition to the larger board (and creating a player mat to help new players will be challenging unless 11"x17" paper is used). Since there is no advantage to having them larger, the inconvenience is annoying, slight as it is. The new bag is a nice touch, though it barely fits all the tiles. The tiles which remain as players go from one epoch to another are marked with a small red "X", which is nice (but wouldn't the reverse have been more intuitive?). The board has a summary of the scoring and tile distribution, which is also nice (though, again, it could have been done more intuitively... for example, the distribution for the river tile is marked 25/12(2). THis denotes 25 rivers, 12 floods and 2 droughts, but that's not explained anywhere) To make matters worse (and this is a little unbeleivable), the board isn't represented, explained or even talked about in the entire rule book! This will be confusing to new players for sure.

All in all, the reprint is very good but not great (I'm talking component quality, gameplay is identical to the original). It's still very attractive, because the pieces are all of very high quality, but a few design issues could have been done better. To be honest, though, I'm just glad to own it.

The 5 player game started well for me. I managed quite a few points with a good Civilization set, some gold and a God tile. The others were locked in a pharoah war... I thought I might have an advantage not competing in it. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any river or monument strategy working and I ended the game with essentially the same set I had at the end of round 1. I think my familiarity with the game hurt me, though... New players are far more likely to let the pot grow to 7-8 tiles than experienced ones, so my strategy of "get in, grab what you can and get out" which normally works well with 5 players worked against me (my meager aquisitions would have lost me the game under any circumstances, but with this group the disparaty was shameful!!!). Shemp played very well for a first timer, appearing to be the leader for the first few rounds before being passed by Tili and Luch. In the end, Luch garnered many points for multiple monument sets... beating out Tili's impressive reign of Pharoahs and HUGE river.

I think Shemp liked it too.

We finished off with a few more rounds of For Sale! Lots of laughing and groaning. Kozure decided he sucked at the game. I can't remember who won, but it was a nice way to finish off the evening.

Attack of the middle weight Euros!

Six, count 'em... SIX (6) games played last night.

We focused on 3 middle weight games: Through the Desert, China and Tower of Babel.
I call a game "middle weight" when the rules are relatively simple, playtime is relatively short but there is still a depth of strategy to the game.

For context:
Light = For Sale! (very light), Caracassonne, Ticket to Ride (this is borderline)
Middle Weight = Settlers of Catan, Modern Art, Ra
Heavy = Tigris and Euphrates, El Grande, Puerto Rico

It's arbitrary, but it works for me.

Anyway, Through the Desert was first up. It was new to everyone, and I was really looking forward to it. First reaction (I bet you can't guess!)... Pastel camels... hmmm. Why did they have to be pastel? The colours blend in anything but bright light, and for Shemp (or resident colour blind player) a few were nearly impossible to tell apart. Not sure if they were trying to maintain a "bleached" look to keep in theme with the whole desert thing, but I wish they were easier to tell apart. The rest of the components are decent but unspectacular (plastic palm trees, thick chips for water holes and score markers)

The game is quite simple. Everyone has 5 starting camels on the board, one of each colour. on a turn, two camels are placed to extend on of their existing "caravans" (or lines of camels). Points are scored for crossing water holes, connecting to oasis or enclosing areas. End game points are scored for longest caravans of each colour. Other than a few placement restrictions (such as not being allowed to place a camel of a certain colour adjacent to another player's camels of the same colour), that's it. Game ends once all camels of one colour are placed.

In our first learning game, we stumbled along semi-randomly trying to figure out what to do. AS with many Knizia games (and german games in general), there is always far more things you WANT to do than you CAN do. Should I snatch the 3 point waterholes sitting right in front of my pink camel, or connect to the oasis before I get blocked? I went for water holes and oasis at first, but I did secure a medium sized piece of the desert. Kozure was unfortunately cheated as I forgot to mention that enclosed areas could not have any other camels in it. Luch ran away with the victory by successfully doing just about everything... getting long caravans, connecting to point sources and securing areas! Our second game was more thoughfully played. I managed to grab a corner of the board from under Kozure's nose. Luch's enormous green caravan didn't help him too much, and Shemp was still confounded by the colours. Despite not connecting to very many oasis, my long caravans and waterhole chits managed to give me a narrow 2nd place. Kozure won the game by 3 points (a very sneaky land grab near the end won him the game!).

China came next. I had played this at BSW as Web of Power, and liked it for being a nice straightforward strategy game. It's been called El Grande light, and I can understand the comparison, though it's pretty thin (it's area control...on a map...that's about it). Gameplay is pretty simple: Play 1 or 2 cards into a province of China. Place that number of houses or advisors. When the province is full, score it. At the end of the game, check if any player has a majority (or a tie for majority) in neighboring provinces for bonus points. Connected series of 4 or more houses are worth points too. (Game ends once the deck has been run through twice). The trickiest thing about the rules is the odd scoring for majority of houses... 1st place player gets points equal to the number of houses in the province. 2nd place gets points equal to the number of houses the 1st player has. etc, etc. This has a great impact on the strategy (in a province with 8 spaces, if 6 are controlled by red, and 1 by blue, red would get 7 points and blue would get 6. While there is little/no benefit for either player to fill the last space, a third player could swoop in and tie for 2nd with one house and swiftly pick up 6 points as well). Since the game moves so quickly, and opportunities disappear faster than you can react to them all, it's important not to overbuild unless you need to do so to block.

For an area control game, it goes incredibly fast. There are important decisions to be made, but not too much information to take in, so decisions can be made quickly. In the first game, I confined myself to the southern provinces and concentrated on establishing a network of advisors, and won. However, we discovered that Shemp and Kozure were playing under the impression that ties didn't count as a majority, so that hindered them. In the second, I tried to go for 2nd or 3rd place in as many provinces as possible but didn't succeed very well. Luch successfully grabbed a few house and advisor majorities, giving him the win. It's clear that advisors, used properly, are very powerful. I wonder whether the advanced game, wich introduces a monument which doubles the points from one province, is an attempt to balance that. Either way, I suspect that future games will see us being more aggressive in preventing advisor majorities.

I liked this version of the game, but a few comparisons to Web of Power are in order.
While the 3-4 player board is a bit more constricted, the 4-5 player board (which we used) is WIDE open. In contrast, Web of Power has a very "slanted" distribution of connections, alliances (and, I think, card distribution). I think this means that China is easier to jump into right away, but I bet Web of Power has more inherent flavour (i.e. taking control of France necessitates playing a different game plan than going for Italy, for example). I'm not good enough at WofP to know that for sure, but it's my impression. 2nd, scoring provinces once they are complete seems to weaken the building strategy somewhat (in WofP, the provinces are scored both times the deck is exhausted... meaning they are scored twice versus the "Advisor" and "Road" scorings which only happen once). Again, I can't be sure but I think I the older version might have been more balanced. In the end, though, these are minor criticisms. The game was very well received and does what it is trying to do very well!

Last was 2 additional plays of Tower of Babel. Our first game left me feeling a bit puzzled and dissapointed. While I can't say that I have warmed to the appearance of the game, the gamePLAY has gotten much better. I still find it difficult to process all the ramifications of my bids: bidding high places me on the board if I get accepted, and gives me victory points if I don't, but it allows the "building" player an easy chip, a bonus card and he can keep many of his cards. Bidding low increases my chances of getting on the board for 2nd or 3rd place points, but the building player will get the majority and the bulk of the benefit. Even more difficult is the "trader"... sometimes it's best used to "sour" an offer you don't want the other player to accept, other times it's a shrewd way to trade away a majority for a chip you might need for a set. I don't think I'm doing any worse than any other players, but I often only realise the impact of my offer AFTER it's been revealed and the opponent has chosen. Similarly, making an educated decision on which "wonders" to build, and when, is eluding me somewhat.

In my mind, I keep making comparisons to Domaine: The game WANTS to be broken, I think. Just as Domaine leads to a win by "large land grab" unless players actively play to stop it, Tower of Babel encourages players to hoard cards until they can build on their own and to offer as many cards as possible at every auction to get easy victory points. I'm not sure what the best way to fight these strategies! I suppose a that all things being equal, the player who acts quickly and makes smart collaborations to build could build a lead that way. It also seems that one ways to defeat a player who constantly offers a large number of cards for every bid might be to actually accept them... he is then stripped of using them again and winds up with very little scoring power until he rebuilds his hand. Anyway, not sure. I can't quite wrap my head around it.

In the first game, Shemp led for most of the game on the strength of his building strategy (and had enough sets of tiles to seal the win). For whatever reason, most of us spent much of the game with huge hands of cards... I think we were being too stingy to accept large offers of cards, wanting the majorities ourselves.

In the second, I tried to see if it was possible to compete without going for the matching tiles, and instead trying to score as many points as possible on the board. Aided in no small part by a "take a 2nd turn" card I completed a few monuments and placed in many others. I had NO points from the chips when the game ended (I only had 2), but the others weren't able to catch up so I won.

A final note: The graphic designers for this game need to be disciplined on two counts. 1) Bland Bland Bland! (I've said this before) 2) The illustrations for the bonus cards make no sense. I'm all for language independent cards, but at least make an effort for the symbols to match the effect. The "take a 2nd turn" card is unforgiveably missrepresented! (this is a fault of another recent knizia game with semi-random and language independent bonus cards... Amun Re)

I loved being able to get in so many games into one evening, I think these will come out a lot.

Through the Desert: 7.5 (really an 8, but knocked back for the colour issues)
China: 8
Tower of Babel: 8 (revised from 7)

Speak Not Of Tlaloc.

That was Luch's advice. Only, I think that we weren't actually talking about Tlaloc, but rather Mictlantecuhtli. Who it would be even a less good idea to speak of.

Why were we speaking of fleshless Aztec death gods? Well, because that kind of follows naturally from talking about scientists who had their faces ripped off, and scientists who have had their faces ripped off figure semi-prominently in DOOM: The Boardgame, which was the sole game during last night's session.

Kozure took the role of the adversary (or something; I'm likely screwing up the terminology here, somewhat)...

(The above fragment was recovered from writings regarding the evening of July 20th, 2005. Apparently, one should not speak of Tlaloc, Mictlantecuhtli, or DOOM, for this entry remains fragmentary; unfinished. Nothing further will be typed.)

Tikal, the Domaine of Paranoia!

This Wednesday, Luch decided to pick Domaine and Tikal. I brought along "Paranoia, Mandatory *Bonus Fun* Card game", a fairly recent acquisition, as filler.

Domaine has been a staple in our group for some time. Initially, I was put off by the big land grab at the end which was always determining the winner. With a few plays, this simply became part of the strategy... try to keep other players from getting such a windfall, while trying to line one up for yourself. The other issue I had was that we never got the rules right. Even after several plays, the rule which prohibits using the chancery after all face down cards have been drawn kept getting forgotten! This session was the first where we played 100% correctly.

I started out with my usual strategy... aim to capture as many mines as possible. One of my initial placements, right in the middle of the board, was adjacent to 3 different mines. I was able to take them quite early and had plentiful income for the whole game because of them. The other players weren't far behind (typically 2 apiece), however, so the advantage wasn't that great. I wound up with a really good shot at getting a large chunk of land, but didn't draw the cards I needed to close it up. That, and the other players noticed it in time to make sure they weren't helping! I did eventually get a large chunk of land out of it, but by then it had been cut nearly in half by the others. Meanwhile, as Shemp, Kozure and Luch built fairly powerful kingdoms across the board no one noticed the end run Kozure was planning on. Before we could react, he closed of a large chunk and won the game. Another fun session of Domaine!

Next was Tikal. It was Shemp's first go at the game, and after a brief rules explanation we off exploring! I started pouring explorers onto the board, thinking that I it would give me an advantage over time to be out early (this is normally a good strategy in El Grande). I combined this with a plan to set up "corridors" and base camps at choke points to give me near exclusive access to sections of the board. Unfortunately, each and every one of these decisions turned out to be bad ones! The mass of of explorers at the beginning of the game haunted me because it's very difficult to maintain a majority there since it's so wide open and accessible to everyone. To make things worse, they are low value temples which require a significant investment to improve. As things developed, the map did have many corridors, making movement quite difficult for everyone. I managed to get base camps far enough down those corridors to get me there faster than other players could, but Shemp (drawer of all volcanoes this game), kept laying them in ways which effectively reduced those corridors to dead ends. My explorers had a very difficult time to get anywhere. The others had much more effective strategies of reaching and holding harder to access temples. In the end, Kozure had his pieces well distributed at many otherwise abandoned mid level temples and ran away with the victory (Shemp, in his first playing, came in second closely followed by myself and Luch in a tie for last). A wonderful game!

Last was Paranoia. This is a new game by Mongoose Publishing. I didn't really know what to expect, because there weren't any reviews for it (even at BGG!). I mostly bought it because I really liked the old RPG.

This appears, at first glance, to be a fairly typical "Take That!" type game. The result is better than I expected, but I have a few reservations:

The world of Paranoia involves a "Brave New World" type future, with a computer in charge of keeping everyone happy. Unfortunately, the computer has been reprogrammed too many times and has now gone insane. It is now paranoid and thinks that "Commie Mutant Traitors" are everywhere. Problem is, they sort of are. In fact, each player is a mutant and part of a secret society. Second, the Computer wants everyone to be "Happy", by lethal force if it has to. You get the idea. For the purposes of the card game, most of this is unimportant, but it puts things in context (powers and secret societies are alluded to in card text, but don't directly come into play).

Players represent "Troubleshooters", citizens of Alpha Complex unfortunate enough to be charged with accomplishing impossible missions for the Computer. Each character has a security level, which determines how many hits they can take, how much treason they can commit before they are deemed "Traitors", and how many actions they can perform (i.e. the size of their hand). One player is the "Team Leader". He starts with a higher rank, which would be an advantage, but one of the best ways to improve your character is to kill the team leader and become one yourself, so it's pretty hard to stay alive. Incidentally, all players receive 6 clones, or "lives" in video game speak...

Each round, a "Mission" card is revealed. The card identifies what the characters are told to do by the Computer, what happens if they succeed and what happens if they fail. Players hold "Action Cards" which are dealt at the same time as the mission. These are the only cards they get for the entire mission! On a player's turn, they may play one card, either on the mission or another player. Each "Action Card" contains several boxes, each containing instructions for the cards effect depending on if it's directed to yourself, another troubleshooter or *gasp!* the mission. The mission ends once any player runs out of cards, once all characters but one have died, or once the mission is accomplished. At that point, survivors get their bonus or penalty depending on the success of the mission and any characters who have too many "Traitor" counters are executed.

Then, a new Mission is revealed and new "Action" cards are dealt to each player according to current security level.

Keep doing this until one player runs out of "Clone" tokens. At that point, the highest security level character wins.

I didn't have terribly high hopes for the game after reading the rules and examining the cards. Surprisingly, I had a very good time playing the game! This might be because the basics of the game are fairly simple (All card effects and missions boil down to just three things: gaining or taking away rank, traitor tokens and/ or wound tokens). The cards are funny, but more importantly the game play is funny... with characters framing other players, attacking each other, getting screwed by "out of turn" cards which cancel or redirect effects. The sense that most missions are hopeless, and that the best way out is to backstab your friends is well preserved. On top of that, the "Mission" cards and limited hand of cards seem to focus the play a little bit (In a game like "Chez Geek, there isn't much rhyme or reason to playing your turn... you just do stuff to other people and hope to get ahead). Once players match up what's in their hand with the results of potentially succeeding or failing the mission, each one will need to try something a little different to come out ahead (or alive).

Of course, it's got issues. 6 lives is probably too much, you can wind up with a hand of cards which aren't useful and the components aren't exactly world class (though the cards are a fairly thick plastic). The biggest problem, though, is the graphic design. All instructions are rendered in text. With so many potential applications of a card, and several cards in your hand, it's just too hard to know at a glance what you can do. The frustrating thing is, since the game is reduced to just a few concepts it would have been very easy to replace most of the text with easy to understand symbols. In fact, point form text would have been an improvement! ("+1 treason" is much easier to see that "Assign 1 treason token to any player"). I'm tempted to make paste ups for the cards before I play again.

We'll see how it stands up to repeated playing, but for now I'm pleasantly surprised.

Luch won the game, and we had lots of laughs. This is not a game to take seriously. It could have been done better, it could have been done worse, but what we got was a fairly clever and enjoyable game of "Screw yer Neighbour"

Paranoia:(provisional) 7

WAGS is for SCARY

Ah Holloween...

So long as many brains consumed, we are happy.

With this in mind, we reached for two All Hollows Eve favorites (?)... Betrayal at House on the Hill and Zombies!!!

We started out with Betrayal. After lowering the lights, putting on scary music and surrounding ourselves with as many black and orange snacks as we could think of, we delved into the madness which was: Invasion of the Firebats!!!!

As the priest, I had a mostly uneventful run searching the house. I would gain a point in something, only to lose it immediately in the same room. I had no equipment, no omens, nothing. The house was developing in quite a wide open fashion, but there was this one... long... dark corridor. It was there that Luch, as big, bumb "Ox", stumbled across the omen which triggered the haunt. Only, it wasn't him who went insane, it was I. An evil portal to HELL was opened in Luch's room, and Firebats started pouring through. He ran, as did the others. Craftily, the forces of good headed to the rooms which would allow them to exorcise the demons and close the gates. It took too long for me to find an effective weapon to attack them with, and the firebats couldn't come fast enough to prevent them from acheiving their goal. It was a victory for the forces of good.

In our second game, I switched my character to the professor. There was a little boy, a fortune teller (Madame Zostra!) and a jock. We searched the mansion and were suddenly confronted by... OURSELVES!!! Our evil twins singlemindedly pursued us until we were able to finally take them down with our "very sharp axe" and "Pulsating Spear of Power". I'm happy to note that I killed no less than 3 of the devils.

Last year we played this and it didn't go over very well. I had since played a few games with another group, and had enjoyed it more. Figuring that just about anything is worth a second shot, Shemp Luch and Kozure agreed to pull it out again for the occasion. Luckily, it went over much better this time! It's still not a very good game, in the sense that it's poorly balanced, poorly documented and not nearly as scary as it wants to be. What it does do, however, is succesfully capture the goofy "b" horror movie experience. I still feel that the game doesn't really get going until "the Haunt", and the process of stopping, reading the book and finding the appropriate pieces for the scenario can really slow the momentum (in fact, I would attribute last year's poor reception largely to the delay caused by the scenario we played, "Bugs", which had a huge amount of counters to find and special rules to absorb). Still, I have to compliment the designers for finding so many different fresh experiences for each haunt. So far, no two I've played have been similar, and many have been quite original. This game isn't about thinking too much, it's just about having fun while you're on the ride.

Speaking about not thinking too much... thought requires a brain. Brains, well, they're meant for eating.

Next up was Zombies! I'm not sure if we've ever reviewed this here, but I won't bother. All you have to know is that you are in a city hopelessly surrounded by hordes of Zombies. Luckily, you have bullets. Unluckily, you have very few. Players are racing to rack up a number of kills (which vary by # of players), or find the helicopter pad and be the first to reach it. As everyone started on their killing spree, I headed for a corridor of zombies which I intended to take down for a quick body count. Unfortunately, the only body count to be had was mine... Others were more successful, with Luch emerging as the leader and Kozure not far behind. We all ganged up on Luch, which knocked him pretty hard and left him struggling to get to 20 (the goal for 4 players). Meanwhile, the Helipad was revealed and it became a two horse race (Me and Kozure) to get there before Luch got the last kills he needed. I held back my ace in the hole... a card which let me control another player's movement for a turn, until after Kozure cleared the path to the Helipad for me. I then played the card and dispatched 2 or 3 zombies to board the helicopter and win!

We played with some "quick play" rules we downloaded from Boardgamegeek. I'd say the game is significatly improved by them, as mauch of the useless and distracting dice rolling is eliminated in favour of fixed values (ex: at the end of your turn, choose 3 zombies to move 1 space). It was fun, many brains were eaten, and that's what matters.

See you next week.