The men who saved, and then sold, the world (Fairy Tale, Pandemic, Traders of Genoa)

Remember Fairy Tale? We played it almost exactly three years ago when Jaywowzer brought over his copy. I felt it was a good game, but nothing spectacular. I recently received it as part of my last math trade, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. Guess what? Nothing's changed. It's decent.

Next, we played Pandemic. Reinforcing my theory that the luck of the draw is a rather overwhelming factor in the game, we followed a two game losing streak (6 if you count Kozure and Tili's games at Tabscon) with a rather easy win tonight. It didn't start off well, as Bharmer's first player card was once again an epidemic card. Lucky for us, however, we had very little difficulty getting sets together for cures, and the pandemics never really got into chain reaction territory. It was great finally registering a win, though, so I'm not complaining. Lots of fun.

We finished the evening with a game of the venerable Traders of Genoa. Predictably, I went with an ownership marker strategy. I managed to get one on the cathedral (ownership markers), the post office (messages) and all four goods buildings. They paid off.

Thankfully, too, because other than delivering messages I wasn't accomplishing too much. As the game wore on, I felt that I was quickly losing the lead my marker business had given me. I decided to use a "start anywhere" marker to start in the middle of the board and therefore shorten the game by a round. I did win, but it was very close (795, 770, 720, 695). 

Luch has to win a prize for most complex turns. He managed to play the entire tower on a couple of occasions by playing a flurry of additional action chips.

Ironically, Glory to Rome was the game we had all picked as the carry-over game from last week. It didn't make it on the table this week, but maybe next week?

Well. that's better. (Glory to Rome, Princes of Florence, Pandemic)

After last week's embarrassing session of Princes of Florence, we felt we needed to redeem ourselves by playing again correctly. However, I had just picked up Glory to Rome and Pandemic, so I wanted to play those as well. From what I had read, trying to learn Glory to Rome late at night can make your head explode... so we started with that instead.

Glory to Rome
San Juan should be pretty flattered. Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome are both very close cousins to the card game implementation of Puerto Rico. Whereas Race is pretty much a more complicated version of San Juan, Glory to Rome uses a similar basic system but strays a bit further in terms of gameplay.

Let's get some first impressions out of the way: the art on the cards is pretty bad. Really pretty bad. It's a kind of cartoony art that seems like something out of Munchkin. It's odd, too, because the actual layout of the cards is quite thoughtful, so someone was clearly thinking about presentation. Part of the problem with the art is that it gives the impression the game is going to be funny or light. It is isn't either. The only argument I can think of in favour of the comic style is the fact that the game features real, live, direct player interaction (sometimes referred to as "screwage"), which is often not welcome in the more serious euros.

Like San Juan, the basic system involves choosing from various roles in an effort to build various buildings, each of which confers special abilities to the player once built. Most VPs wins. The execution is pretty different, though. Whereas San Juan is balanced, elegant and peaceful, Glory to Rome is complex, unbalanced and interactive. That's neither good or bad, it's just different. An indication of the differences can be seen in the basic roles... There's gathering materials, there's building buildings. There's also stealing materials from other players and hiding goods meant for the reconstruction of Rome in your vault. The buildings add further chaos by providing different ways to mess with the other players' games and altering the rules in pretty powerful ways. The game also introduces a new kind of resource, "clients", which allow a player to do the action of the chosen role as many times as they have of the correct client. This means that a player could conceivably set themselves up to take many times more turns than the other players.

Our first game went remarkably well. Considering everything going on, the game plays smoothly and logically. Kozure built the Forum about mid-game, which gives him instant victory if he can manage to gather one of each type of client. All he needed was a merchant, but we all worked together to prevent one from coming up. In the meantime, Bharmer built a Basilica which allowed him to steal cards to his vault directly from his hand. Let's just say we were all so focussed on preventing Kozure's automatic win that we didn't notice how many points Bharmer was stowing away. He won the game by a significant margin.

Our initial reaction to the Forum was that it was too powerful. Turns out we might have been wrong after all. We've only played one game, but I suspect we will get to see many cards and combos that seem too powerful, only to then find the antidote. Glory to Rome manages to be fun, thematic and strategic despite it's appearance. It should be a fun ride getting to know this one.

Princes of Florence

We played correctly this week. It's such a wonderful game when things are working! It was quite a close finish. Luch was ahead for the entire game, but he had no Prestige cards. On the final round, Bharmer and I tied him. Unfortunately for them, I did have some prestige VPs left to score (though I only completed one of my two cards successfully). I won by a slim margin.

Pandemic

Pandemic was the second new game of the evening. I played a few rounds a couple of days before, and the whole thing seemed pretty easy to pick up. Seemed perfect for the final game of the evening.

Turns out "easy to pick up" doesn't equal "easy to win at".

Pandemic is a cooperative game where players work together to cure 4 major diseases spreading like wildfire across the globe. Each player takes on the role of a specialist (a medic, a scientist, etc). Cubes in four colours are seeded at the beginning of the game to start things off and right away the pressure is on to do some damage control. Each player's turn, the infection spreads (cubes are added to the board). When a cube would normally be added to a city that already has three, cubes are instead placed in each adjacent city. In the meantime, players try to accumulate 5 cards of each colour to find the cures and eradicate the diseases. One of the most innovative mechanics in the game is that the cards which are flipped to determine the spread of disease are shuffled and placed back on top of the deck everytime an "epidemic" card is drawn. In other words, the sick places get sicker. And fast.

Our first game started poorly. The first card drawn was an "epidemic" card, so the board got ugly pretty quick. Our inexperience led to an out of control epidemic within a few turns and we lost pretty decisively. We immediately wanted to play a second game, however (good sign), so we tried again. Although the second game also felt pretty rocky, we seemed to be holding our own (though the experience quickly and frequently careens from cautiously optimistic to nearly hopeless). Coming down to the wire, we had cured the red, yellow and blue disease. Black was left but we were one turn away from curing it as well, for the win. It came down to the draw of Bharmer's last card. There were only three left, and one was an epidemic. He drew the epidemic. If memory serves, Moscow was the last city to pop, ending the game.

Playing Pandemic felt a little like playing an old 80s video game, like Arkanoid or Berserk. You try to act fast, try to respond to what is being thrown at you. It doesn't feel terribly deep and there's lots of luck, but you can definitely hone your skills and improve. Also, it's fun.

I like that players truly have to work together to succeed. I like that it's not easy to win (we were playing on the normal difficulty with 4 players. I'm told it's easier with fewer players, and obviously if we had played the introductory difficulty we might have won in our first games). I also like that it's pretty short and simple to teach. Another good game.

Princes of *Teh Suck* (Goa, Princes of Florence)

It all started innocently enough...

Goa was the carry-over game from last week. I had mentioned last time that I would try to see what could be done by advancing the money and ships track, since I never seemed to use them much. With the extra money, I was able to make a couple of very strong bids. Of course, the money goes to another player, so I'm not convinced it's a good strategy in the long term.

It was a ridiculously close game. 35, 35, 35, 34. Kozure won the game with the most money as the tie-breaker.

Next we played Princes of Florence. Well, it may be more accurate to say we played some game using PoF game pieces. What it was we actually played is anyone's guess.

You see, we couldn't find the rulebook. PoF is one of m favorite games, and we've played it quite a few times as a group, so it shouldn't have been such an obstacle. Little details were hazy, though. We weren't sure what the starting money was. We figured it must have been roughly 1800 florin. We were wrong (it's 3500). Things went downhill from there.

In the first auction, everyone felt poor and Luch picked up his Jester for 200 florin. We should have packed up then and there, but we didn't.

During his second turn, Kozure realized he had made a mistake. He and I spent a considerable amount of time trying to reconstruct his previous turns, though in the end neither of us were really sure our conclusions were correct. Again, we should have just started over, but we didn't. Incidentally, we discovered later that our calculations were entirely off.

I normally do very well at PoF. This night I sucked. I was constantly having to spend prestige points to be able to afford my actions. I couldn't set myself for future actions to save my life. On the 5th round, I won a jester in an auction on purpose, just before I remembered that what I NEEDED was a park. That move meant I couldn't satisfy one of my prestige cards and couldn't complete more than one work over the next 2 rounds. I briefly calculated I lost 22 points.

Lastly, Bharmer realized (in a weird flurry of activity) that he was both miscalculating his prestige score AND scoring works as though he had features he didn't. It was at this point we came to the conclusion that the results of this session were entirely fictional and that it was impossible to determine the real winner. There was a fit of slightly maniacal laughter amongst the group as we tried to understand what had gone so wrong.

I *think* Luch played the whole game correctly, and so we declared his second place finish as the win.

We will be playing Princes again next week, if only to redeem ourselves.

Oh, and just to rub salt in the wounds we found the rules as we were putting away the game...

Cards, Cards, Cards

First games night at my new house was a bit of an understated affair; Bharmer arrived late, Agent Easy was taking care of his sick wife and Shemp Duchamp is still taking time off to be with his wife and newborn child. Ouch, however, managed to both find the new location and show up on time. No matter, we killed time by eating leisurely and watching "Bender's Big Score" - the first Futurama TV movie.

Since we didn't have a quorum until around 8:15 PM, the night got off to a late start. We played two games of Race for the Galaxy, followed by starting (and almost finishing) a game of Plunder.

I'm still enjoying RftG, despite its reputation as a sort of auto-pilot solitaire game among some detractors. I do think that it will benefit from the additional player interaction promised in the expansion. One of the things I enjoy about it is the double-think aspect of role card selection, combined with trying to time your scout/develop/produce/trade/consume phasing to give yourself maximum advantage and -ahem- "screwing" your opponent.

If you don't pay attention, there's definitely a sense of auto-pilot in the game, but the random card draw also sometimes forces you to adapt or wholly discard strategies, especially if you aren't drawing the cards you need. Alternatively, you can go for the "deep search" seven (or eight with some exploration modifier) draws to try to get exactly what you want.

For a quick playing and well-themed game, there's also a decent amount of strategy, I feel, so I quite like this one.

I won the first game with a military strategy for Alpha Centauri - 37 points. Bharmer took the second with a pretty descent market economy strategy and 35 points. I came in a close second with 33. Ouch is still getting used to the game and is consequently not scoring quite as high as the rest of us.

I dragged out Plunder for the third (and final) game of the night. I'm certain there's a decent game in there somewhere, and this - if I recall correctly - third or fourth session of this game seems to have gone fairly well. I did modify the starting set-up somewhat, adding two additional open sea cards NW and SE of Tortuga. After this play, I think that this is a average-decent game that needed one more pass to make it good. It's still the best Pirate themed game I own/know of, unfortunately, that doesn't really say much. My friend Captain Physics has acquired a copy of Blackbeard, but I think that level of semi-wargame complexity is probably beyond the realm of preference for this WAGS group.

A good night, if a little abbreviated. Also, we ate a lot of Japanese themed food - yakitori chicken skewers, miso-basted salmon, Japanese white rice and green beans, as well as yummy PC wasabi-honey rice chips.

Give the man his camel (Goa, Aladdin's Dragons)

JayWowzer made his way up to our fair country once more. Meanwhile, a carpeting snafu kept Kozure out of action. That made us a foursome for the evening.

Goa

We started with Goa. Luch has been trying to get this on the table for quite some time, but something always seemed to come up. I'm glad we did get around to it... it's a great game. I have to admit that I find the auction a bit strange, though. I've never really been comfortable with auctions that have players exchanging money rather than paying to the bank (Modern Art does this as well). I'm not sure why, but there's a feeling of futility in there. Bidding a certain tile up hurts the bidders, but benefits the auctioneer. A player who spends all their money early in the round frequently gets it back during the auction because the money they spent goes to another player who, flush with money, will likely spend it on an upcoming tile. Anyway, it's a small detail because the game works despite this weirdness. The rest of the game may be multiplayer solitaire, but the decisions are interesting and the game never seems to play out the same way since the tiles you win during the auction combined with the expedition cards largely determine the most effective course of action. Another odd thing: I don't think I've EVER advanced the money track or ship track past the 2 step. Are there winning strategies which depend on money or ships? I suppose in my next game I'll have to try it, but off the top of my head I can't think of how it would go.

I won the game having maxed the expedition and production tracks, founded all four colonies and collected a triple in my expedition cards. Luch, frequently the winner at Goa, came in second.

Aladdin's Dragons

We've played Aladdin's Dragons a few times before, and I think I'm going to have to go back and read those session reports because I don't remember what we had said. I remember liking it, but I don't think I loved it. For whatever reason, this week's session was really good and I distinctly felt that it was a better game than I remembered. Clearly, there are a few things which could go wrong: Because the winner is the player with the most tiles, it can become mathematically impossible to win a few turns before the game is over. Also, the spell cards are fairly chaotic in their effect. Conversely, the counter-spell artifact feels at once too easy AND to difficult to play (and that essentially depends on whether you plan on using an artifact that round or not, because if you do you probably NEED to use that other artifact and therefore can't afford to waste that opportunity). Anyway, it may be just a case of having equally skilled players playing the game and balancing out the rough edges, but none of those "problems" really came up for me and ruined the game.

It's funny, too, because even though I won I constantly felt like I was losing. You simply can't win everything you want and so I was seeing all the opportunities I was missing as my blind bids proved to be too small or my guesses about what other players were going for proved false. I suppose the same thing was going on for everyone, though. Jeff seemed to be picking up a lot of artifacts, so I had him pegged as the winner. He also held the camel 80% of the time. I went more than one round without artifacts, but I picked up two on a couple of occasions.

The last round was the most memorable. There was only one artifact left, which obviously created a situation where everyone put everything they had onto the same space (with consideration to the gems they had to spend and those they hoped to win).
What threw a wrench into the whole thing was that the palace guard turned out to be a 10, so those of us without any "spare change" were eliminated from the running in the palace. In this case, JayWowzer SHOULD have been the the highest bidder and happy winner of the last artifact, but he ran out of money and Luch picked it up instead. That tile would have tied JayWowzer with me, and probably won him the game on the strength of the tie-breaker scrolls (I only had one, I think he had two).

Very close...

Games concerning the absence of food (Corn - The Civgame, In the Year of the Dragon)

This week the group indulged me by agreeing to play my prototype, "Corn - The Civgame". I constantly dabble in creating games, but rarely get anywhere with them. My last attempt, Corn-22, was not particularly good. I had high hopes that this one would be better...

Well, first of all, this one isn't supposed to be goofy. It's a fairly rules-heavy civilization builder. I wanted to make a game that combined exploration, technological advancement, war and politics that didn't need a huge board, 8 hour playing time or millions of little bits. Also, setup time bothers me, so I made quick setup a goal.

I'll get this out of the way up front: It wasn't very well received. Despite this, I was happy with the experiment. Beyond the problems which came up due to unresolved rules, unpredicted combinations, etc, a few things were working against a pleasant first run-through:

- It's got lots of rules, and I didn't explain them particularly well.
- The playing pieces were very poor. To small, too light, not particularly user-friendly.
- Critical play-aids were missing. This is probably the biggest mistake I made. The missing list of buildings was the worst offender.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the turn order/ action selection mechanism (it's not perfect, though: earlier versions restricted the the number of cards players were dealt, and I added to that substantially for the playtest. In retrospect, it was too many). I felt that the exploration was working and the development was working reasonably well. We didn't play long enough for the different player's civilizations to butt heads, or for the political aspect of the game to really take off, but at the very least I was able to get a sense of certain things that need to be worked out. Though no one will know this but me, the balance of resource production vs. building costs has improved substantially over previous solo playtests.

I hope that the group will be willing to try it again, and I'm really hoping that we can have a conversation here about thoughts on what worked and what didn't.

A few changes I need to make before it gets played again:
- It used to be a requirement that a port be built in order to embark onto water (at a lake or river). When I eliminated it, I didn't realize it made bridges obsolete (since it is quicker and cheaper to gain the water transportation technology and cross wherever you want). I will be reintroducing ports. Also, I was counting on certain landscape features (lakes, rivers and mountains) to provide natural boundaries that would define the regions in the game. However, under those rules Wonders found in water exist in BETWEEN regions, and therefore couldn't belong to anyone. I think the only solution in this case is to remove the ability to discover Wonders in water hexes. Also, I will have to require that Wonders not be discovered on river hexes, just to overcome a placement issue (placing the wonders obscures the rivers, and there's no simple way to eliminate that). It's not an unreasonable limitation, so I'll just choose the simple route. Lastly, I will be requiring the presence of cubes on resources to have them produce. This will eliminate ownership questions and, conversely, allow others to come and use them if they are crafty.

When Kozure arrived, we put away the prototype and played In the Year of the Dragon. I tried to see if the war parades could be put to good use (get ahead in the people track by putting on parades and then choose the powerful older workers without being forced to fall back in the turn order). It seemed to be working pretty well, and then THE BAD MOVE happened.

In the month the droughts was upon us, I had the first move. In a fit of idiocy, I forgot I had no rice and instead chose to BUILD A THIRD PALACE. The drought happened, I lost 3 people and the palace I had just built. Ugggh.

I figure I bounced back pretty well. I had a good lead until then, and ended tied for second with Kozure. Bharmer cruised past us to victory on the strength of 5 palaces and many people working in them.

I'm still quite happy with this one. It feels rather malleable in the sense that there always seems to be several ways you COULD go. While planning for the upcoming disaster is the main driver for the game, building a good monthly points engine, staying ahead in the person track and going for straight points are all viable and important at different parts of the game. Good stuff.

Your face is in the way (Taj Mahal, Ra, Phoenicia)

Hmmm.

Taj Mahal

It was just me, Luch and Bharmer playing the first game. In this session, I tried to see if I could win Taj Mahal by focusing mainly on connecting provinces. The short answer is No.

It may be possible to do well at Taj with this strategy, but it would take a specific board layout. In this game, the numbers were very disconnected, so despite the fact I was very successfully placing the palaces I needed, the province chains just weren't that long. Sadly, the 3-4 points I was getting couldn't keep up with the points both Luch and Bharmer were getting from goods. When I finally connected the provinces in the middle, I had two successive turns netting me 10-14 points, but it was too little, too late. Bharmer and Luch were way ahead, and Bharmer won it.

Ra

Kozure and Kozure's Kuz (ahem) showed up just as we were putting away the board. We decided to play Ra, because, well, it's a great game. Not so much with 5, but still good. Anyway, as usual I spent the 2nd and 3rd round with very low suns (note to self: why does that always happen?). I therefore was an auction calling machine. It worked for me, and I managed a huge haul of pharaohs and rivers which won the game for me. Anyway, the Kuz seemed unimpressed for most of the game, but I think he was starting to like it near the end. We'll see if chooses to come back!

Phoenicia

It was do or die for Phoenicia tonight. It died.

Kozure once again managed a small lead by the second or third round and held it until the end. Obviously, he understands something about the game that eludes the rest of us, because as much as I believe seating order is important it can't be a coincidence that he keeps killing us. He always has the lead early, and never lets it go long.

Anyway, despite the fact that there is obviously skill involved, the whole thing feels scripted and boring. It's a short game, yet the winner seems obvious far too early. I don't know, it's just not that much fun for me.

To the trade pile!

Beauty and the Beast (Shogun x 1 and Phoenicia x1)

Clever Production Design vs. Poor Production Design in Games

Phoenicia and Shogun were the games of choice this week. We've tentatively adopted a new format where we play one game from the previous week each week, so as to allow a better exploration of the strategic depth and other subtleties of the game.

Phoenicia on second playing has improved in terms of speed and smoothness of play, but, for me at least, some of the initial interest has worn off. Although it seemed intriguing at first, this system seems to suffer from a marked runaway-leader aspect, a sameness of play and a inevitability of a certain winner which I can't really see any remedy to without major rules changes.

As mentioned in the previous review, the person who leads each auction is the VP leader from the previous round; in case of tied high scores the first player marker (in this case called the Overseer) is passed to the closest tied player to the left of the current Overseer. The benefits of being the auctioneer are that if you have the money, (which you often will, if you are leading in production) you can buy what you need right away without much interference from the other players. Since you control the auction until you give it up, you can conceivable buy a number of low cost items all in your turn if one or two of the other players already have bought an item or are otherwise out of cards or coins.

If you are the last player, you can often buy the one (or choose from the cards remaining) and buy it at cost. However, at that point, your selection is usually so limited as to severely limit your tech path options.

If you get the right combination early and grab the VP lead, you can more or less race to the end and leave the other players wallowing in the 18-24 point range.

Then again, maybe my two wins were a fluke… I'm not certain. I recently read a criticism of Agricola (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/307192 )which, although I cannot comment on the accuracy of it in relation to Agricola, I can apply some of the same criticism of specific feelings about the game to Phoenicia here.

To quote the review:

"There is a whole class of games where the opening setup determines the likely winner. Card games. They have a few other characteristics (at least for good ones): 1) they are short, 2) you play many hands to reduce the luck (or determine the better player). Good players will win more than their ‘fair’ share of games, but won’t win every hand.

Agricola is a single deal card game that takes 90+ minutes to resolve."

…

A good game should take as long as required to determine the winner, and no longer. Bridge (a great game) would be farcical if you spent 30 minutes playing a hand. Agricola is chess between even players where you may be randomly up a knight or down a queen, but don’t know until halfway through the game."

In Phoenicia's case, although you aren't dealt a secret hand of cards for asymmetrical player ability purposes, once one player pulls away, it seems to have a definite snowball effect. The winner seems to be determined early. Add to this the fact that attempting to block another player's strategy by purchasing the card he/she most likely wants is often either impossible or not viable as a strategy. If you did, you'd most likely torpedo your own strategic path, so the prospect of blocking another player by spending your own much-needed resources to stop her/him from getting it is the gaming equivalent of suicide bombing: you may (or may not) stop your intended target, but you'll almost certain kill yourself in the process.

Given that the only direct player interaction is the auction and everything else is player mat optimization, you're left with a game where everyone is left doing their own thing. If you buy the right card combo (often by virtue of where you're sitting for the first auction) early on, you win by snowball effect and the outcome seems pretty fixed. Though I do think I made some savvy choices early on, and shifted production strategy (from improved hunting to improved mining) at the right time to maximize my returns, it really didn't feel tense after the third or fourth round. Once I had money coming in, it wasn't much of a stretch to get more.

Specifically, getting the tracker allows improved hunting, which is a pretty cheap production path for points and production, (tools 2 vs. farming 5) and also affords reduction on the caravan, which is a great boost for points and production. I then gunned for the shipyards (and bid high), which gave me increased hand size, VPs, production and discounts on future improvements. Moving from there to Fort, Smelter, Shipping Fleet and City Walls just sealed the deal.

Easy's observation that the second and third seat players seem to have a definite disadvantage in the auction set-up also seems quite accurate.

Combined with the well-documented graphic design problems (shared VP/production track, poor iconography, low visibility for some critical icons and values) and poor rules-as-written ruleset, this makes for some very difficult obstacles for the enjoyment of the game. However, and this is a big however, it still seems worth playing again for some reason, at least one more time. Faint praise, but one feels like playing Phoenicia because it's a simple, relatively quick playing civilization game with some modicum of theme and tech development - not overlong like the sprawling Civilization or Through the Ages games, but not overly abstracted like Vinci or Tempus. At the same time, it's not a very good quick medium-lightweight civ game, it's just that there's not many successful ones out there. Even Antike, which is in my mind one of the more successful medium-weight civ games, is quite long by comparison.

Does Phoenicia just boil down to a straightforward auction game with tech tree and resource optimization? Pretty much, but it's quick. It lacks other components which (to me) are important to a successful-feeling civ game - exploration/discovery and direct competition. Plus, the art and iconography are mediocre at best, and confusing at worst.

Compared with Phoenicia's graphic layout, Shogun seems positively sparkling. Cleverly thought out balancing factors and a number of very interesting mechanics - cube tower, turn planning, bluff, hidden auction, etc. - remind one what a well thought through system can feel like by comparison to one which feels both graphically and mechanically unpolished. In Phoenicia's defence, Shogun has had one previous incarnation (as Wallenstein) to work out kinks, so it's like comparing a concept car to the fifth or sixth year version/model of a proven car design. The polish of Shogun's art and design definitely makes this the "beauty" of this pairing of beauty and beast.

Shogun balances powerbase-type strategies by awarding points for building types spread across several regions, allowing for players with scattered region cards to benefit. The cube tower also mitigates randomness in attacks and defense that might otherwise result from dice or table-based combat. Overall it is a nicely balanced game, but it still fails to engage me on some level - there isn't much "movement", if you know what I mean.

Last night's game has also underscored for me the concept that it's often better to focus taxation/rice unrest markers in one well garrisoned province rather than trying to spread your forces thin to quell potential unrest across your holdings (the old "You can't make all of the people happy all of the time," maxim). It also reminded me of the possible combination punches of getting reinforce, move and attack orders during a turn.

This game was much closer, and it was near to impossible to predict the winner. It feels like you're more in control, but there is much less movement. One minor criticism I have of this game is that it seems to end just as you're getting going - despite the fact that "getting going" has required 90 minutes already.

I like Shogun, but it remains a game that I don't really look forward to playing when it's selected. I don't dread it, or groan when it's mentioned, but it's still not something that I look forward to playing, like Railroad Tycoon or many of my other highly rated games. I did enjoy this game, as it was pretty close and required attention and careful strategy, but perhaps for the lack of dynamic movement that I previously mentioned, it's never quite as exciting as some other of my favourite games - it lacks as many highs and lows.

One day we'll find a civ game and a waro (weuro) that I like. For now, the search continues.

Diggin' a hole (Thebes, Phoenicia)

We played two new games this week, Thebes and Phoenicia.

Thebes

JayWowzer brought along his copy of Thebes for us to try. Despite the fact that most games that I hear about don't interest me much anymore, Thebes had picked my interest. Having played it, I'd say the design has a lot going for it, but the luck is a little more than I can handle.

The game is quite attractive, with a nice board, thick cardboard chits and very nice discs which are used to determine a player's ability at digging for artifacts. My favorite components were the very nice bags used for drawing the artifacts... a nice touch. I had heard a lot about the time mechanism used in the game, and it does work quite well. It's very much like turn order in golf: Whoever is in last plays until they are not last anymore. In Thebes, players have 52 x2 turns which represents 52 x2 weeks. Every action requires a number of weeks to perform. Some actions are worth quite a bit but take several weeks to perform. In the meantime, another player could choose to do a series of shorter actions instead. It's not a mindblowing mechanic, but it works well and (other than in golf) I don't think I've seen it used before.

I found the tension in trying to figure out how long to do research vs actually going to the dig to be very entertaining. Going first likely means you have fewer draws (unless you were particularly effective at specializing your knowledge), but players that come later get worse odds at drawing anything good. So far, so good. I was really enjoying the game.

Problem is, in the game we played the player who won (me) did it by being lucky at artifact draws. It seemed to make all the stuff which happened before sort of irrelevant. I thought about it afterwards, and I think I decided that the problem I have with the scoring isn't the random draws or the sand mechanic. It's the value of the artifacts.

I wonder how the game would play if the value of all artifacts was 1. The luck of the draw would still be present, but that luck wouldn't be compounded by the fact that a 7 is seven times more than a 1. The rest of the game stays the same, but I suspect exhibitions would become more popular. Another possible variant would be to allow the 3 most valuable artifact drawn (between all players) to be worth it's value at the end of the game, but the others are worth 1. If we did this, I would suggest that exhibitions consume the relics displayed (exhibitions would have to be worth twice as much as they currently are to offset the lost artifacts). This way, the advantage of drawing a high tile would be counterbalanced by the fact that a player is unlikely to use it on an exhibitions (where it would be lost).

So, I did like it. If I can ever find a copy cheap or for trade, I'm all over it.

(a note for posterity: Bharmer drew 20 sand tiles in a row over 3-4 different expeditions. Not one artifact. He didn't stand a chance. As for me, I had 45 points worth at the end of the game. I suspect that's a big haul.

Phoenicia

On paper, Phoenicia seems like a Puerto Rico clone with a bonus auction mechanic. It plays 2, which is good, and it plays in about an hour normally. Very positive. However, I found the rules confusing (although the Nova rules from BGG helped immensely). To make matters worse, there graphic presentation leads to errors and confusion. Critical icons are placed on the scoring track, which invariably end up beneath player tokens and therefore illegible. The symbols are thin, small and difficult to interpret. There's probably a good game in there, but even the game setup made me wish I was playing something else.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll try it again, but it's a definite addition to the trade pile for now.

I wanted to talk a little about an error we made. We are supposed to start with a worker in the first space of hunting and farming! This is why the scoring track starts the way it does (3 production, 2 vps) . Now my mind can rest.

Kozure was running away as the leader for most of the game until the final few turns where I made a valiant attempt to catch up with him. It almost worked, I was 1 point behind him!

Man is the dumbest animal (Wildlife, Race for the Galaxy, Ra)

Only three tonight. Myself, Kozure and Bharmer.

Wildlife

Wildlife is one of Kozure's favorite games and since we hadn't played it in quite a while he picked it as the main course for the evening. It's odd that this game, designed by Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande, Princes of Florence, Tikal), seems to have flown completely under the radar on BGG.

Kozure was Man, I was the Eagles and Bharmer was the Bears.

In the beginning, the bears came across the forest and climbed up the mountains.
The eagles soared across all earthbound terrain.
Man dominated the plains.

It was then that Eagle learnt how to thrive in the water. There, it fought with Bear over the fluvial realm. Man could not be bothered with such trivialities as evolution, food or advanced intelligence. It spread out to the desert and the forest.

It was then that the Bear and Eagle were dethroned. Man cut the vast kingdom of the Eagle in half and learned much about aggression, defense and the importance of foodgathering. When all was said and done, man stood victorious.

It was a good game. It seems that Wildlife plays pretty well at three (though picking the wrong starting races could change that). We spent a good amount of actions simply exchanging the advancement cards, particularly the defense ones. If I had one complaint about the game is that those cards don't quite feel right in the game (too powerful?). Anyway, it's a small complaint. Wildlife is a good game.

Race for the Galaxy

This is a shoe-in for most played game this year. I once again tried a military strategy after being dealt New Sparta as my starting planet. I managed to place quite a few military planets down, but since my production was zero and I didn't manage to get the related "6" development out I came in a distant third.

Two funny stories:

1) I had a hand of 5 cards, and they were all planets. I was sure Kozure or Bharmer would pick development that round, so I chose Explore +5. Guess what, I drew 7 more planets.
2) In the final round, I skipped drawing cards in the explore phase since I knew I wanted to play a "6" development from my hand (capitalizing on the small amount of ALIEN technology I had). Just for fun, afterwards I looked at the cards I wold have drawn... the military "6" card I needed was the second one! Counting the difference it would have made in points, I would have tied for second instead of coming in 15 points behind second place! Bharmer won, but he made a mistake in his interpretation of one of his cards and made repeated "production" errors. I therefore declare his win null and void (Ha!).

Ra

Ahhhh, Ra. Nice to see you again.

Civilization tiles came hot and heavy in the first era (15 of 25 tiles, in fact). Bharmer ended the 1st with a huge stash of points (including 15 points for 5 civs). Despite the fact that Kozure and I had 2-3 suns left and 6-7 RA tiles left to draw before the era ended, we essentially wound up with nothing as RA after RA were drawn.

The 2nd era was kind to no one.

In the third, Bharmer sealed his victory with 30 points from buildings. Scores were closer than I expected, but he still won comfortably.