Ketchup (Vikings, China, Clans, King of Tokyo, TransEuropa)

We thought we'd be five players this week, but then, before I knew it, we were back to three.

Pablo, Shemp and I gathered around a large bag of games. Our dictator was absent, but ordered us to play a very specific sequence of games in his absence. Then, the sequence was revoked. In our confusion, we ignored all instructions and chose to play a large number of short games so that Pablo could rip through his unplayed list that much faster.

We started with Vikings, which is a game I like very much. It packs a lot of game in a small package. Unlike a lot of games that try to insert a random factor in the hopes of making each game "different", Vikings succeeds at forcing you to consider each new round carefully once the tiles and Viking combinations are out. I was rocking this game, and built a very efficient set of manned islands. I started the evening with a win.

We followed with China. Another game that feels like a big game in a slim package, China never fails to conclude in approximately 1/2 hour and still provide a nice strategic experience. Shemp was gunning for me, and prevented me from completing any chains but a misunderstanding of the rules regarding emissaries caused him to fail his blocking strategies there. Pablo did manage a long chain, but ultimately I had enough majorities to pull win #2.

Clans followed. In my mind, anyone who enjoys China should also enjoy Clans. The games are completely different from a gameplay perspective, but they have a similar strategic weight, play length and semi-abstract nature. I goofed a few too many times during the game, and ultimately kept setting up the wrong colours. Shemp dominated this one.

Next up was King of Tokyo, the first repeat play for Pablo. I went first, and snagged the tentacles. Shemp stayed in Tokyo most of the game, but I was rolling lots of 3s and made it to 15 points without spending much time in the city. Shemp knocked us down with the -5 vp card but it wasn't enough... I used the tentacles to steal the jet pack from Shemp, forcing him to step down and I gathered the last few points required for the win. Pablo was yearning for hearts throughout the game but he couldn't roll them to save his life. On the other hand, he managed huge smack downs of 5 attacks on at let two occasions... This is a very fun game that achieves exactly was it's going for. Bravo.

Lastly, we played TransEuropa. In our first round, Pablo, in his first time ever playing the game, ended while Shemp still needed 8 links and I needed 5! Shemp managed to hang on a few rounds with his 3 lives before succumbing. In the last round, Pablo and I ended up tying so it was a shared victory for the final game of the evening.

The King with Wings (Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena x2, Lords of Vegas, King of Tokyo x2)

Kozure, Shemp and I gathered this week to play an evening of Vegas games. It didn't work out due to a lack of available time, but what can you do.

Roma/ Roma 2: The Arena

As Kozure was in charge of his lads that evening, Shemp and I played two rounds of Roma. We pitted the two decks against each other to see how that went. We'll certainly have to play several more times to really know if one is stronger than the other, but it certainly seems to me that the original Roma is a swingier deck, with more opportunity to score big points when things work and potential to get none at all if things don't. Roma 2 seems smoother, with better odds of getting useful cards but a slower overall pace.

In our first game, I was getting creamed because I couldn't get any VP generation going. I was down to one vp if i'm not mistaken. Luckily, Shemp lost all ability to roll the dice he needed, consistently failing rolls that had a 5 in 6 chance of working. I didn't lose that last point and in fact landed two forums and started reaping the rewards. A few short rounds later I bounced back and won the game. I did realize one thing, though... Once the opponent is close to winning, getting VPs can be a bad move if it ends the game before you have more than the othe player. It was necessary to bleed out VPs from Shemp before claiming them. Tricky.

Our second game was more even, and I don't remember who won.

Still enjoying this two player game. Long live Herr Feld!

Lords of Vegas

With the kids in bed, we started our game of Lords of Vegas. As the game developed, a few patterns emerged...

1) I once again started growing a large casino in the big center-left block. I seem to do this every game.
2) Kozure once again received a disproportionate amount of disjointed properties.
3) I got into a war over a casino with Kozure. Normally, this happens between me and Shemp. Although in the end I managed to wrest control from Kozure and end the game with two decent casinos, the constant re-rolling of the casino dice drained both our money and made it hard to stay competitive with Shemp.

There wasn't a huge amount of trading this game. Not sure why... The opportunities seemed harder to find (though Shemp tried his best!).

Shemp won by quite a large margin. Kozure and I were in a tight race for second.

King of Tokyo

Tom Vassel and Michael Barnes have both recently talked up King of Tokyo and so when I saw it I thought i'd give it a try. It's a very simple and mostly silly game about competing monsters trying to destroy Tokyo and each other. Although there aren't a ton of games with this theme, it's also not really particularly original. What sets this game apart is the simplicity and focus of the design. You are either a creature in Tokyo, dealing damage to all the monsters outside of Tokyo OR you are a creature outside of Tokyo dealing damage to the monster currently in Tokyo. Since the monster inside Tokyo cannot heal, it creates a natural cycle of monsters entering Tokyo, trying to stay as long as possible, and then leaving to lick it's wounds. The game is won by either accumulating 20vps or being last monster standing. It's a dice rolling game where you can either roll wounds, healing, VPs or victory points. Each player rolls three times, hoping to get dice in the combination they are trying to achieve, yada, yada, yada. A deck of cards representing upgrades spices things up as players can save up energy to purchase them and slowly transform their creature from, for example, a simple giant dinosaur to A GIANT DINOSAUR WITH TWO HEADS, WINGS AND ALIEN METABOLISM!!!. It's easy to teach, it's short and a lot of fun to play. Big thumbs up from me and easily the best boardgames Richard Garfield has done since Robo-rally.

In our first session, Shemp dominated Tokyo for nearly the whole game because he managed to snag the "wings" upgrade early, which allowed him to spend energy to ignore damage. I think Kozure won the second game, but I'm not sure.

Bilkis' sacks of sand (Roma 2: Arena, Macao, 7 Wonders + Leaders expansion x2)

Roma 2: Arena

When I purchased Roma, I actually thought I was purchasing Roma 2: Arena. I remembered reading that one had text instead of icons, and that the same one had more paths to victory, but I didn't know which was which. When I saw Roma at j&j cards in Waterloo, I looked at the back and saw that the cards were text based, not icons, and purchased it. Unfortunately, the picture on the back of the box is of the German version, which uses text, but the north American version of Roma 1 uses icons. I purchased the wrong one. Anyway, figuring it couldn't matter that much, I opened it and we played it anyway. As it turns out, me and Shemp liked it quite a bit. Sure, many games are lopsided and the only likely path to victory is having Forums, but it was quick and enjoyable. Shemp decided to purchase Roma 2, figuring that at the very least we could try the variant where the decks from both games are pitted against each other. This week, we got a chance to fruit out (the base game, not pitting the decks against each other). It's good. There are definitely more paths to victory, and the game seems less fragile (less games will end because they couldn't get their engine going before they went broke), but the tradeoff seems to be a significantly longer game. I'd say I did like it better than Roma 1, but not by a wide margin.

Shemp won the game by emptying the vp pile, scoring one "phantom point" (I.e. The vp pile was exhausted, but the bank owed him one more vp). The phantom point broke the tie, making the game 19 to 18. Well played.

Macao

I was in the mood to play Macao again, just to see if Shemp's streak is truly over. In short, it is. The game was very close, between me and Kozure, though. A miscalculation left Shemp 1 cube short of scoring big,leaving him behind. Between me andKozure, it came down to the bonus end game points, and I had more.

About 4 rounds in, I activated the artisan. This card allows you to activate one card per turn without spending the cubes (as long as you have the necessary cubes in your supply). Between that card and the various mistressesthatgaveme a free cube in their co our every turn, I was flush with goods cubes. I either played very poorly or Kozure played extremely well, because I should have killed the other two with that combo so early in the game.

7 Wonders: Leaders expansion

We capped of the evening with 2 sessions of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. It's a simple expansion that introduces a new deck of cards representing famous leaders throughout history. There is a pre game draft to deal each player 4 leader cards and before each age players choose which leader, if any, players want to pay to put in play.

The end result is not terribly different from the base game. The leaders allow a little more long term strategy, which is nice, that's pretty much it. Shemp commented that the downside to having these leaders is that it predetermines a strategy for you and reduces the interaction as players concentrate on their cards instead of blocking opponents.

The art continues to be very nice, and the game remains a very fun and fluid despite the additions. I'll probably keep playing with the addition in future sessions but I'm sure I won't really miss it if I play someone else's copy.

I won the first game using a combination military and science victory (as Rome, led by Ceasar, the guy from 300 and Alexandre the Great). Kozure won the second with a more focussed military strategy that apparently also involved burying all the brick in order to prevent others from building.

Spite upon spite (High Frontier, Quarriors x2)

The four of us (Kozure, Shemp, Pablo and I) started with an intro game of High Frontier. Knowing that it's a difficult game, Kozure thought a learning game involving just trying to build a factory on mars would be a good idea to ease Pablo into the system (although, as Shemp aptly pointed out in our email correspondence leading up to the game, "not good" is a very generous description of our skill level with High Frontier). What is it about this game that is so challenging? Every time I play, I spin around in circles accumulating fuel endlessly only to realize that I could have launched much earlier. This game was no exception... I had forgotten how the air break leading to Mars worked, so I was trying to come up with a rocket that could get to the planet and still pay the landing costs. Anyway, Kozure got off to an early lead with a mission to drop of the robonaut he needed to build the factory. I was behind him ( once again wasting my time refueling at a nearby planet, not realizing it would be unnecessary due to the air breaking). Kozure essentially lost his lead by blowing up while going through a danger zone.

Then, out of nowhere comes Shemp with all the parts required for the refinery and successfully lands. Shemp for the win!

Pablo seemed willing to play again. We'll see.

Next up, we played 2 games of Quarriors, the new dice building game from Wiz-Kids.

Quarriors is a game that follows much of the Dominion model... Draw a hand (of dice, in this case), see what you can play from your hand and purchase one die from the center. The fact that the dice represent creatures and that there is much inherent randomness gives the game a very distinctly chaotic and light feel, but for a 1/2 hour game it's fun. I've personally been playing this quite a lot with my eight year old son and having a great time of it. The variety of creatures is very good because they very cleverly include several variant creatures and spells for use with each dice. There are synergies to be found between the dice, which is fun, but since it's a dice game you never know whether the combinations you are shooting for will really pan out.

Anyway, for the record Pablo won one of the games. He was very proud, because it was his first win at WAGS. I think I shed a tear of pride.

A new history (Troyes, Innovation x2)

Kozure, Shemp and I again.

Shemp once again asked us to bring an assortent of games and convince him that what we wanted to play is what he had picked. I don't know that either of us convinced him of anything, but he did ultimately bring games I brought.

Ha!

We started with Troyes, a game that I liked well enough on first play but neither Shemp or Kozure thought much of, apparently. The second play was remarkably easier for all of us, and we all commented afterwards that it was much more enjoyable now that we had a better grasp of what was going on. As far as comparisons go, I'd still have to say it most reminds me of Macao but I still prefer that one better. Either way, I did like it. Both Kozure and I were running short on dice as Shemp concentrated on occupying the main buildings (his secret goal to no one's surprise). I spent longer with fewer dice, however, and this showed up in my last place finish. Kozure was better at snagging VPs throughout and won.

Looking forward to trying this one again.

Next, we played two hands of Innovation. This game is also fun, but I feel like we are missing something because the game never seems to get past the 5-7th age, and once a player gets in the lead it's hard to see how to catch him. We chatted afterwards and discussed that it might be a better strategy to try to just burn through the decks and get to the alternate victory conditions in the late ages if a player is falling behind on achievements. We'll have to try it next time.

In both games, we made good use of cards that stole points from other players. Kozure won the first game and I won the second.

Sometimes, the dice hate you (Duel of Ages)

... and sometimes they just hate Kozure.

We dug up from the vault a game we hadn't played in five years... Duel of Ages.

This is an old favourite of mine. Flawed in many ways but still lots of fun and there still isn't really anything like it that I know of. For anyone that isn't familiar with the game, it's a cross between a tactical wargame and Cosmic Encounter. Two teams of 4-10+ iconic characters from the past to the future (depending on the number of players and their experience) run around on a modular map. They compete to dominate a number of challenges all the while beating each other up. The past to future thing means that Conan the Barbarian might be running around a mall parking lot with a laser gun.

For me, the silliness of the time/ space mashups are only occasionally amusing. The real draw is the tactical game. It combines characters, special abilities, cool equipment, line of site, opportunity fire, terrain, vehicles, etc, etc, in a really fast playing and relatively simple design. The biggest problem I have with the game is the way equipment is handed out... when a character successfully defeats a challenge, the player might get to draw a card (or more) from the stack. The issues arise because the deck is HUGE and the variety is vast. You might draw a turreted weapon, a pet tiger, a powerful gun, a hovercraft, a blowpipe, etc, etc, etc. Since most characters have advantages with certain weapons over others the luck of the draw can get really irritating if you never draw anything useful. Conversely, if you often draw the perfect items for your characters your opponent can be at a significant disadvantage.

I realize and appreciate that part of the charm of the game might be in making the best of what you draw. Unfortunately, some of the stuff i just so much better than the rest that it remains a sore point for me. Going into the game, me and Kozure both had thoughts on how to improve this aspect and we tried two variants. At first, we tried having 8 cards face up and having a successful player choose the one he wanted (with the option to sweep the cards away and draw a facedown card). This led to a somewhat overpowered game, and reduced the surprise that normally comes with revealing your equipment to your opponent. About 3/4 of the way through the game we switched to simply doubling the awarded cards and then keeping half of what we drew. In the end, I think that this was the better solution and I think I'd definitely play this way again.

As for the actual game, we played with 8 characters each on 4 platters (the modular game boards) for 3 hours. I had a fairly brawny bunch with characters that where good with weapons (like a couple of cowboy types) and a few terminator-like futuristic robots. I would say Kozure had a pretty well balanced party, with a better representation of characters throughout the ages.

As the game developed, Kozure poor luck was astonishing. He was failing easy challenges with alarming frequency. Combat almost never went his way. I know he will likely comment that he doesn't like to blame luck of the dice for his losses, but this was embarrassing. I, on the other hand, was benefiting from extreme and unusual luck. I succeeded all but two challenges, often rolling "amazes". I was flush with equipment, without any casualties and ahead in 3 of the 4 challenges. About halfway through, I asked if he wanted to concede but he said he'd keep playing. About 1/2 hour before we scheduled to finish we decided to call it quits (Kozure had a plan to retake a challenge and executed on it, but failed another simple roll and lost his chance. It was the straw that broke the camel's back!).

I still really enjoyed it, though. The funny thing about DoA is that even if you are getting hammered points can be really close. There are only 5 points to be had in the base game (leading in the ancient, the colonial, the modern and the future challenges and having the most surviving characters). Because of this, it's possible to be down to 1/3 of your original team and still be winning (if you had been successful in the challenges earlier in the game). It's possible to play a defensive game and just block the entrances to the challenges with your dwindling team and hope to hold on until the time runs out. Still, the fewer characters you have the harder it is to keep the other player from gaining on you so it's still a big advantage if you can destroy the other team.

They played Android (Android)

Shemp and Kozure played Android. Apparently, it was fun but plays better with more than two.

Re-writing history (Civilization)

It took a lot longer than I had anticipated, but we finally pulled out the new Civilization for a second try. In our first game way back in January, I had really liked it despite few concerns regarding combat, the culture mechanic and general thematic wonkiness. In our second play, my opinion has changed somewhat... The military system didn't bother me this time. Now that i understand it better works fine. The randomness injects a little riskiness to battle but generally the superior force wins. It's still a process that introduces downtime in an otherwise remarkably downtime free design (for a game of this genre), but it's nowhere near as egregious as Fury of Dracula. Culture did not play a huge role in this game, at least not the "take that" aspect that bothered me last time (though I don't know if it's because Shemp and Kozure refrained from using those cards because they disliked them or because they were genuinely less useful. I was the culture guy last game and I was playing those quite a bit, because even though I didn't like that style of play it was the avenue i had pursued and I didn't see a better easy available to me). Hopefully they'll chime in and let me know. The one aspect of the game that bothers me the most, however, is the trading, or lack thereof. In the Eagle games version, trading is central. In this one, the system OSS tight thatthereseemslittle reason to do it. Units and work value aren't tradeable, so that really only leaves "trade", resources and promises. Problem is, since resources are random and rare, so it's unlikely and unusual that you have one to trade AND other than temporary alliances there aren't much promising opportunities available that I can see. This leaves trade as the only commonly available resource, which doesn't work since two different currencies are required to make an exchange.

Otherwise, it's a game that has managed to marry quite a number of civilization elements together in a fun and playable package. I look forward to playing it some more.

(in our game, I was Germany, Shemp was Egypt and Kozure was China. Unsurprisingly, I went military/ science. Shemp went Culture/ Science and Kozure went Economic. I was doing well, but I stalled outside the gates of one of Shemp's cities because i was having a hard time balancing my discoveries with the need to press the attack. I kept distracting myself with unit upgrades and ignoring movement bonuses and increases in my stacking limit. Eventually, i decided to march but realized it was too late. I did crush the city, and would have crushed Shemp's capital, but I was one space too short. Kozure won an economic victory the same turn that Shemp would have won a cultural one. It was very close! The funny thing is that if I had realized that even having developped "flight" I couldn't reach his capital that round, I could have played differently and won a scientific victory with Space Flight. Oh well, I deserve what I got for missing an opportunity!

New's last gasp (Power Struggle, Junta: Vive El Presidente!)

With Shemp, Kozure and Pablo available, I took this week as an opportunity to play the last few unplanned games in my collection.

Power Struggle

First up was Power Struggle, a game about climbing to the top in a large corporation, by any means necessary. To many, this theme would be unappealing but at least it's not another game set in medieval Europe! I personally find it humorous because iWork in that environment, and in my opinion the theme has been integrated quite well.

Before I start, I have to say that explaining the rules was tough. I've taught hundreds of different games, but for some reason this one stands out. It's one of those games that offer many options AND where each rule seems to require the explanation of another rule to make sense. Also, it's a game where players have hidden objectives, so you want to minimize question asking in order to avoid giving things away at the wrong time. Once I muddled my way through a rules explanation, we started but we all knew nobody had any idea what they were doing (including me).

I'll give a very high level summary: the game board depicts a large corporation building, showing offices, manager's offices, the executive board room and the chairman's office. Throughout the game, players will populate and manipulate the offices in order to get their guys promoted to divisional manager and up. It boils down to a kind of area majority game, in a way. The trick is that there are several ways to go about what you want to do. Departments can be shuffled, merged, etc, divisional managers can be promoted to the board of directors and take their staff with them or exit the company and become outside consultants. Bribes can be offered to get the power of another player's division temporarily, etc. The upshot is that there are a number of score tracks that measure influence, investments, consultants and even corruption and each player must make it to a certain level in 4 categories before everyone else (each player also has a secret nemesis and can gain a victory point by simply being better than him/ her in certain categories).

In our game, after flailing about aimlessly for a few rounds we finally started figuring out what was going on. I started creating main departments and bribing other players at every occasion I had. After dramatically over bribing Shemp early, I reduced 90% of my bribes to the minimum because really I just wanted the corruption and the game punishes players for not taking them (one of the target's employees leaves). I did manage to win, having reached the target in influence, main patments, corruption and having beaten my nemesis, Kozure, in the required fields.

Initial confusion aside, I think I liked it. It will definitely take another play before I feel confident, though,andireally hope idon't need to teach it to a new player next time we play!

Junta: Vive El Presidente!

This one is a much simpler game, but also about terrible bosses. Some southern American country has a military dictator, and all the players want to build up their wealth and replace the dictator.

The game involves the presidente drawing cards and making secret offers to each player from those cards and then those players deciding if they want to attack another player or the president, defend themselves or the president, etc. If an attack on the president is successful, the attacking player becomes the presidente. Iftheattack is unsuccessful, anybody who didn't attack the presidente gets to keep the promised cards. We started with the ask game but quickly migrated to the advanced game... The main difference is that the presidente can also distribute dice along with the cards, and those dice can be programmed to attack other players, etc.

Pablo was our first and most successful Presidente, managing to keep the role for a few rounds. I earned the "worst presidente" honor after I kept giving cards to the player that couldn't defend me (like Shemp with only a single dice when Kozure had four!). In the end, Kozure won the game, funded heavily by my short terms as presidente no doubt.
Anyway, itwasfun but certainly not a "wow"

No more new! (Nightfall x2, Tribune)

The recent math trade and birthday gift certificate have led to a particularly large influx of new games recently. 100s of games into Wags, the group appears to be reaching their limit with new games, so a point was made to replay a few games we had recently learned (I'll admit to really enjoying learning new games and seeing how they tick. I still have two unplayed games in my collection, Junta: Vive El Presidente! and Power Struggle, but i'm waiting for a night with 4 players at least to try them out).

Nightfall

Nightfall hadn't really clicked with me last time we played, but tonight it really did. Shemp and Kozure are less enthusiastic, but seem to like it well enough. For Shemp, the fact that no effort was made to accommodate colorblind people such as himself makes the game harder to enjoy off the bat. Kozure mentioned that he felt that Dominion was still the smoother, more elegant game. I agree with that, but there are things that Nightfall does much better than Dominion in my opinion:

1) Dominon plays smoothly because it's mostly multiplayer solitaire. The interaction that exists in Dominion i'm not a big fan of, because the effects tend to be irritants rather than actual interaction.
2) I like some of the mechanical design choices, such as making parts of the pool of cards private to each player (increasing the variety between games further) and the victory condition of having the least wounds (solving the ganging up on the weakest problem common to this type of game). It's also clever how the game always starts with a generic starter deck which allow a decent buid-up of defense, boosts influence, etc to get the game going right away.
3) the chaining mechanic, although extremely weak thematically, is original and I enjoy building my deck around possible combinations of cards. In dominion, you have to look at the available pool of cards and decide what combination will allow you to get to hands containing 8 gold as quickly as possible. In Nightfall, like in Thunderstone, there is a wider variety of approaches and part of how you choose your cards has to involve anticipating how certain cards will chain into others, and whether their effects will be complimentary.

All in all, it's a game I quite enjoyed. It's true that there is something to the sequence of operations that feels inelegant or anti-intuitive... Three games later we still seem to struggle to not forget phases, or doing some of them in the wrong order. It's not hard, just a little clunky.

I won both games. In the first, I focussed on combinations that led to large amounts of direct player damage. The game ended rather quickly as I was accumulating a number of 3 direct damage cards and we were whipping through the wound stack. The game ended so quickly that we decided to try again. This time, I focussed on selecting cards that eliminated wounds from my deck. Tis worked quite well, but the highlight of the game for me was playing a card which allowed me to choose the target of an opponent's effect and sending 3 wounds Kozure's way as a result. With final scores being 10 vs 9 vs 8, that move won me the game!

Tribune

In our second play, Tribune continued to impress as a Smooth, elegant euro that manages a nice mix of strategy without brain freeze. I lost any chances I might have had to win on the final turn when I failed to bid for the chariot to protect my vestal virgins from takeover. I needed them to get the tribune, and by losing them my temporary favor of the gods went away as well. Shemp was the happy winner when all was said and done. So far, this is turning out to be a winner.