Metroburb Gamers

Playing and Loving Fauna

2011-10-11T17:03:00.000-04:00

Friedemann Friese's game Fauna is finally out with English units and text on the cards and board so I immediately sought out a copy. It is surprisingly hard to find at the online retailers but I finally ended up coming by a copy through an amazon.com reseller. It was full price but I was OK with that.

The game is a bit like Wits and Wagers. It has a board with a map of the world divided into regions. At the bottom of the board are several scales showing a broad range of size and weight measurements. During the game you will use cards which feature an animal. The card box shows the animal name and in how many areas in the world it can be found. Then the players use cubes to make their guesses on the board. You can guess where the animal lives, how much it weighs, how long it is, and how long its tail is. This is done by placing a cube on the map or on a section of one of the scales. Only one cube can be in any location or spot on a scale.

Once everyone has placed all their cubes or passed the other half of the card is revealed and compared to people's guesses. You get points for being in or adjacent to the correct areas and being in or adjacent to the correct spots on the scales. You lose any cubes that were placed on incorrect guesses but you will always have at least 3 to play with and will gradually gain cubes that you have lost back if you guess correctly.

We've played the game 2 times so far and it has been thoroughly enjoyable. The kids and adults both love it. It's not a gamers game but you can play the odds and game it up a bit by watching where people are placing and trying to get points by placing next to them. You score for each correct area on the map so if you are confident and are not blocked out of areas you can recover alot of points and catch up by piling into the right regions of the board.

In our games we were using only about 6 animal cards to complete the game. This obviously varies by how well you know the particular animals because the game ends when a certain point total is surpassed.

Given that there are 180 cards and they are double sided (easy side/hard side) I think this game has more than enough plays in it to last a lifetime. You also learn how surprisingly little you know about the animals. I couldn't believe how wrong I was about how big some animals are or where they live.

To play this game the players all need at least some knowledge of the world and of how to estimate size and weight. With my younger son we would ask him to compare to something he knows, like the size of his dad or himself. "Do you think a giraffe is as tall as 2 Dads or 3?", "Do you think a Turtle weighs more or less than you?", "Does this animal live in the Desert or the Jungle?". Then we would show him the points on the scales or the board that corresponded roughly to his guesses. It has worked out well since he won one of the two games ;-)

Non-gaming adults should like this game a lot but I wouldn't play it at a metroburb game night unless everyone requested it for some reason. For kids the sweet spot is probably 8 or 9 years old.

Highly recommended!

Rating: A

What a Great Hobby!

2011-10-07T17:00:00.000-04:00

Board gaming has been making me extremely happy lately. I know all good hobbies should do that but for a while gaming was feeling a bit flat to me. Lately though, it has come back strong and I'm really loving every minute of it.

I just want to take a few paragraphs to talk about what I've been playing lately and what I've thought about those games. I'll work in reverse chronological order for the sake of my memory.

Lego Heroica Castle Fortran (4 player with kids)

My son received this game for his birthday. The game is exactly what you would expect: a roll and move with a fantasy theme done with legos. But you know what? That's A-OK! There are some character abilities and weapons you can use to upgrade your lego-dude and my kids don't need a bit of help to play the game at the same level as an adult could. In my book that's a win. There will no doubt be expansions to this showing up under the Christmas tree this year.

rating: B

Call of Chulhu LCG

I am very heavily invested in the A Game of Thrones Living Card Game from Fantasy Flight but I recently bought a starter set of Call of Cthulhu on a lark and managed to get it played a couple of times. It was good enough during those plays that I picked up an additional core set so I could have more than just unique cards and so I could play single-faction decks (the core set has you playing 2-faction decks where every card is unique). Since then I have played the game another half dozen times and I really like it. I think it is very light for a dueling game and the story mechanic really works well to add variety to the game. As with most CCGs some plays are blow-outs and are over in 10 minutes and others have great back-and-forth action and last half an hour. The game seems reasonably well balanced in general though because even if you lose two stories early on you will often gain them back and end up fighting it out over the third story. The art work is killer too. I'm not a big Mythos fan but this is a nice game. With 7 factions in the core set I think there is quite a bit of play in it and if you can afford 2 core sets I think there is a nice selection of cards in that package to keep you busy for a good while.

rating: B+

Wasabi (3 players with kids and mother in law, 2 players with kid)

I bought Wasabi second hand and although I love the production I have considered selling it several times. What keeps me from letting it go is that my older son is in love with it. I think he's mostly just smitten with the production but that translates into him requesting the game often and into me keeping it in my collection. I think the game is too chaotic with its full slate of players but with 2 and 3 players it's a really nice game and it has the distinction of being a true gateway game that any non-gamer can understand and enjoy. I think it is a great representative of this great hobby to new gamers.

rating: B+

Troyes (online 2 player)

I've been playing Troyes on www.boardgamearena.com frequently lately. I'm sticking to 2 player games with a very patient and non-judgemental friend for now since there are still aspects of the game that I don't quite get. But I am learning and my score is slowly climbing in the past several games. The game is good and has a nice nastiness to it that most Euros don't have. The flip side of that is that the game is pretty non-intuitive so it's hard to explain to people which is why my physical copy has never seen the light of day. Maybe now that I'm used to it I can attempt to teach it to the group. We'll see...

rating: A-

Rune Age (solo and 2 player)

I bought this deck-builder from Fantasy Flight the day it was released. In general I'm glad I did. The game is quite a chameleon. This is due to the way it is driven by different event decks with very different objectives where some have you trying to co-operate with the other players and others make it in your interest to fight the other players to give yourself the advantage.

There are different races in the game and each race gives you several piles of cards to buy that only you have access to. There is also a shared set of cards in the middle of the table including money and neutral units as well as foreign cities you can conquer. The cities are a very cool aspect of the game. There are 3 currencies: gold, strength, and influence. Gold is used to buy your racial cards, influence is used to buy the neutral cards and strength is used to fight other players, and event cards as well as to conquer the afore-mentioned neutral cities.

As I said the result is a good deal of variety in the box including a pretty capable solitaire incarnation. The downsides are that most of the racial cards have pretty obvious combo machinery and some races seem like they pretty useless with some sets of event cards (I'm looking at you Elves!). I would love to see FFG do some print-on-demand event deck packs for the game. In fact I could even imagine LCG-style bi-monthly releases for this game where you spend $10 to get either a new race and a new event deck or some additional cards for the existing races and neutral cards. I'd buy them for sure. I think expansions can only make this game better.

rating: A-

Elder Sign (solo)

I played this game two times. Both plays were solo. One play with a single investigator and one with two. I found the game really charming. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't wait to try it with more players. I definitely would keep it at 4 or less though. I love the production of the game and the only negative I have to talk about was that it was tough to remember to move the clock and flip the mythos cards which I guess is my fault but I think maybe some sort of board would have been a better way to run this part of the game. Some investigators are useless without other investigators to play with so look through the cards and avoid those if you are playing alone.

rating: A

Israeli Independence (solo and with kids as generals)

This was my first Victory Point Games game. I bought it after listening to the I've Been Diced! podcast and hearing an interview with the founder. I remembered Moritz from The Dice Tower complimenting the game and it was cheap so I bought it. It's boring and the decisions are mostly obvious. I also bought Levee en Masse so I hope that one is more interesting. I did appreciate the card text for the first two plays of the game and my kids like to play it. On the plus side I found the production just fine and that would not stop me from buying Victory Point Games in the future.

rating: C+

Pick Picknic (4 player with wife and kids)

Holy Crap I Love this Game!! I wish it wasn't out of print because my younger son creased one of the cards while he was wiping the floor with me. All kidding aside this game is a classic on the same level as For Sale! and Stefan Dorra is a genuis. It's a ton of fun in a tiny box.

rating: A

Pirates Cove (4 player with kids)

I've been holding on to Pirates Cove for a long time because I knew my kids would like it whether it was a good game or not. That assessment turned out pretty correct. The kids loved it and I'll be keeping it in my collection. The production is fantastic and it's an easy game to play but the fighting can be brutal and I had to adjust it so my younger son could handle the game. It's fun to build your ship and win the treasure and cards though.

rating: B

Battlestar Galactica (4 players and 5 players)

Two games of BSG in two weeks. One I was a human and the humans lost badly. The other I was a human for the first half of the game and then got both cylon cards (I was Boomer) at the mid-game. I screwed up the rules and when I revealed myself I revealed that I had both cylon cards so no-one had any reason to suspect the remaining humans. It didn't matter though because the jump cards were all high numbers and the humans won with no problem at all. I'm realizing that this is a mediocre co-op game that is saved only by the traitor element and that enjoyment of the game is based largely on how much the players act up their roles. That type of game generally isn't for my group. I have also realized that I don't want to up the complexity of the game at all so I should not have bought the expansions.

rating: B+

Defenders of the Realm (4 players with kids, 4 players with game group)

I've played 3 games of Defenders of the Realm now and despite having lost them all they have cemented the game's position in my collection and my heart. This game, despite being a pandemic ripoff at heart feels totally different. In fact it feels like a Talisman that does not drag on forever and suck the life out of you. I have bought all the character expansions and I cannot wait to get this to the table again and hopefully score my first win. I think as my kids age I will get quite a bit of play out of this game.

rating: A

Duck Duck Bruce (2+ players with kids)

A push your luck game that I've been playing with my youngest almost since he could talk. It's great and I would play it any time. In fact I think it's a great game for non-gaming or classic-card-game-playing adults as well. Great fast fun.

rating: B+

Dweebies (2+ players with kids)

A nice tactical card game for kids with great art work. Also plays very fast and doesn't wear out its welcome. I'd love to see more games like this from Gamewright.

rating: B

So there you have it. That's most of what I've been playing. I'd love to hear comments on what you guys are playing and what you've thought of them!

Keep gaming!

More Throwaway Boxes and Inserts Please!

2011-09-13T15:58:00.000-04:00

Dear Game Companies,

I have far too many of your wonderful products. I realize that you need to have a compelling package to display on store shelves but I am obsessive and cannot throw away the beautiful boxes to your games.

So I need your help...

Fantasy Flight Games has finally solved this problem and I need you all to follow their lead. The specific Fantasy Flight Games products I am talking about are the expansions for the Battles of Westeros game.

These are fairly large expansions that contain usually a sheet of terrain and/or counters, several minis and their bases, cards, and a rule book. This all comes in a box that is about the footprint of a standard big box 12 inch square, but with a depth of only about 2 inches.

Most importantly, the box is flimsy cardboard like a card tuck box and extra support is added by a cheap corrugated cardboard insert.

When I buy these expansions I take the contents from the box and put it in the main Battles of Westeros Box (sans insert) and throw the box away.

AND I DON'T FEEL BAD ABOUT IT!

If I wanted to, I could even keep the box because they collapse flat if you throw out the corrugated insert.

Congratulations Fantasy Flight Games! This is how ALMOST ALL EXPANSIONS SHOULD BE PACKAGED!

I now have an entire stack of Dominion boxes that are all nice Board Game Box quality and a similar slew of Thunderstone and Carcassonne expansion boxes that I feel that I can't part with. There is no reason most of these expansions could not be packaged in this FFG packaging and added to the original game box.

Another terrible offender in the expansion box packaging realm is Defenders of the Realm. Not only are the prices for these games borderline atrocious but the boxes are ridiculous. You could drive a truck over them. That's fantastic for the base set but all of the expansion collateral so far still fits in that giant initial game box. The Dragons expansion and each Heros expansion is in a super sturdy box of its own and the Dragon Expansion box could fit the better part of the original game into it.

On the subject of inserts I used to be aggravated at FFG for making useless inserts until I realized that they are essentially intended to be discarded. So that is now what I do whenever needed. Mayfair, one of my least favorite publishers uses mostly plain white inserts. Gone! No regrets! Way to go Mayfair!

I also need to applaud a select few other expansions for how they are packaged.

Here is a short list:

1) Power Grid board expansions - Shrink wrapped board and rules. No box at all. Plus you can buy a nice PG box to store them all... Fantastic!
2) Age of Industry expansion - Ditto except without the extra storage box.
3) Steam expansion - Board, counters, and rules. No box.
4) Hansa Tutonica expansion - Board and cards. No box.
5) Bang expansion - Throw away card tuck box a-la Magic the Gathering starter decks.
6) Mansions of Madness print on demand expansions - Plastic clamshell - easily recycled.

Maybe eventually I'll just bite the bullet and throw away all my Dominion and Thunderstone boxes... but I really don't want to have to make that choice when there are better options that most likely would decrease the cost of the expansion to boot.

Please, game publishers - make the move to FFG BoW-style boxes wherever possible.

And while I'm on the subject, FFG - could you please use this format for your large LCG expansions and your small board game expansions as well please? That would be fantastic.

Cheers!

Session Report: Pantheon

2011-06-29T09:33:00.001-04:00

I know it has been a while and as usual I apologize. I haven't really been burning up the charts with new-to-me games lately. The three that stick out in my mind are Automobile, Airlines Europe, and Pantheon.

The one I played most recently is Pantheon and I would like to just briefly discuss it while it is fresh in my mind. This game is from Hans im Gluck and by the designer(s) of Saint Petersburg and Stone Age. This is apparent in the feel of the game almost immediately since the game has that sort of easy-going, highly mechanical, lots of ways to score points vibe throughout. As such it's a pretty relaxing and nice game.

On the other hand the game feels under-developed and sloppy to me in comparison to the other two games.

Rules Rundown

1) You need to score points to win. There are two major scorings involving your pieces on the board and minor god tiles you collect during the game. You also score points every time you acquire a major god and when you cause an epoch to end.

2) The actions in the game are: move, buy stuff, draw cards, acquire a god. Moving takes feet symbols and wooden pieces (feet and columns), buying stuff takes gold (and potentially wooden pieces), drawing cards takes nothing, acquiring a major god takes sacrifices (permanent or throwaway (cards))

There are 6 epochs during which one of the 8 possible civilizations will come onto the board. Each civilization brings an event with it which is usually a bonus of some sort. The board is then seeded with some loot and some gods (number of players + 1 of each). The epoch will end when either of these sets of tiles is exhausted.

You pick up the loot by moving. Moving means paying feet (in the form of cards and possibly supplemented by your god/loot tiles) to place your feet and columns on the board. The feet must lead back to the start of this epoch's civilization. The columns stay on the board and give you points at the two major scorings. The more columns you have the more points per column you get. If you get to a loot tile you take it and get its benefit which may be immediate (draw cards, get money, get a sacrifice tile, get a free major/minor god, get more wooden pieces, etc) or ongoing (extra feet for moving, etc).

You acquire the gods by having sacrifices. In an oddly unthematic choice you may buy sacrifice tiles which you keep forever. This can be supplemented or entirely replaced by cards which are discarded when they are used. Each god calls for a certain number of sets of sacrifices. It doesn't matter what they are. So you might need 5 of one and 2 of another for example. Gods give you the same sorts of instant or ongoing benefits as the loot tiles and also score you points equal to the epoch you are in.

Money is used to buy sacrifice tiles, buy more feet and columns from your stock into your supply, and to pay to place them on the board outside of a movement action. It's important to note that up to two players can have their pieces on the same hex but the second player to arrive must pay extra gold or steps to place there.

How it Plays
I look at this as sorta an easy breezy game that doesn't deserve to be agonized over with respect to deep strategy. There are lots of ways to score points and it is enjoyable to do so. The turns are very fast and the game goes by quickly. The gods are a mixed bag in my opinion. Some gods are almost worthless and others are pretty powerful and this problem is exacerbated by the time during the game in which they come out. Some gods that would be almost game-breaking in the early game are pretty much useless in the end game. This is offset somewhat by the increasing amount of points you score by acquiring them.

Another problem with the random loot/god tiles is that sometimes you get a bad draw and none of them are any good. When that happens the epoch just becomes a race to see who can get the most columns down and end the round as quickly as possible.

It is important to go into each epoch with a hand of cards that gives you the most options to deal with the type of gods and loot that come out and enough available wood (or gold to buy them) to execute your turn. It is very important to have steps either in your engine or in the form of cards to be able to move on someone else's movement turn. It could be argued that it is equally important to have money with which to buy movement on your turn thereby not giving your opponents the free movement turn.

The game isn't terribly deep but I think there are enough levers to entertain the group for a while and this game is a true euro which seems to be a dying breed as of late so that's a good thing in my mind.

What Do I Think?

Well frankly I think this is a 10 plays and out game. Alternatively, it could be a game to be played with euro-saavy non-gamers. I would not call it a gateway game but for people who have some experience with the Ticket to Ride/Carcassonne/Settlers of Catan triumvirate this should be manageable and it has enough randomness that anyone could pull out the win as long as they are making the best of their opportunities as they come.

For those looking to get deep into a game I think this game doesn't offer much. I know this is pre-mature (that's what I specialize in after all ;-) ) but I think deep player scrutiny is liable to reveal more flaws than depth in this game. It feels under-tested and I think you will see lots of situational rules clarifications and variants reduce the randomness of the gods and bonuses appearing on the geek.

Don't get me wrong. The games is VERY PLEASANT and I would recommend that everyone play it a handful of times. It's downright relaxing to play without being dry and it deserves much credit for that. I just don't think it has staying power and I don't think it deserves your attention as a strategy game.

Pantheon for me is a 7 that I firmly believe will settle into a 6.5 over time.

If you love the vibe of games like Stone Age and Saint Petersburg this game will give you that in a package that is different enough from either of those games to find a place in your collection. I think both of the afore-mentioned games are better but this one can hang with them. If you don't love those other games I think this is a game where you should just play someone else's copy and you'll be more than satisfied.

Session Report: Shipyard

2011-06-03T13:50:00.000-04:00

Well almost a year since its initial, 2 person, flawed play Shipyard came back to the table. This time we played with 3 and we made sure not to forget lessons learned so long ago. Will that be enough to keep it in the collection? Read on and see!

Jake, Geoff, and I saw a rare opportunity. We were looking at a small 3 person session including only the most patient members of the MBGS. Realizing we could not possibly pass up such an opportunity we quickly started discussing heavier games we should try to play. We finally decided on Dominant Species only to back out of that decision for fear of not having enough time to finish the game once begun.

Jake suggested we revisit Shipyard. This appealed to me for a couple of reasons. First, having played it before there would not be such a rules learning/teaching burden and second, I had seen some potential in it the first time we played and it was a shame we had not played it again.

The Game

Shipyard is a rondel game. In fact, to call it a rondel game is an understatement. There are so many rondels on this game it can make you dizzy. Do you like what I did there??? The game is about building ships and trying to gain the most points in the process. The theme, although not a terribly exciting one, is very well represented for a Eurogame both in terms of the mechanics and the production.

You build your ships on your shipyard board and, once complete you take the ship on a shakedown cruise and score points for it. Ships are also saved for the end of the game where government contracts will grant you hopefully many more points for the ships you built throughout the game.

There are zillions of tiny cardboard pieces in the game. These pieces represent canal sections, the ships themselves (bows, middles, and sterns), smoke stacks, propellers, sails, cranes, and cannons, captains, soldiers, and businessmen, rail cars of raw materials, and employees. Even the turn actions are themselves cardboard tokens.

Ships score points based on their speed and on having particular equipment on board when passing certain points on the shakedown cruise. Naively, what this means is that you want a nice fast ship loaded with lots of one or more commercial, military, and safety features, and you want to run it through a nice long canal system along which you will earn extra points from business people for the commercial aspects of your boat, military people for the military aspects of your boat, and government officials (or maybe the public?) for the safety aspects of your boat.

Practically though, you will want to roll with the punches and launch whatever ships you can do best with given the availability of canals and ship parts and what actions you are able to get on the action track. It's a delightfully difficult balancing act and it wasn't until mid-way through the game that I really started to get into the swing of things.

The Actions

Let's talk about what you can do on the board. All of these things are represented on the action track which itself is sort of a rondel and sort of a game timer. An action tile for each action is arranged on the action track and people choose those actions by first picking up their meeple off of their previous action and moving that tile to the front of the line. After doing so the person may choose any action except those that have other meeples on them or the one they just moved. The action track is also the game timer. It goes around the circle several times and then the game ends.

The actions you can do using the track are:

1) Buy rail cars: these are raw materials that can be traded for money or other goods.
2) Take ship sections
3) Rent a canal section
4) Take equipment
5) Take crew
6) Hire employees
7) Cash in your rail cars

I'm writing this from memory but I think this is all of them. Of these actions 4, 5, 6, and 7 are all done on rondels. When you take the action you MUST advance the pawn one space on the appropriate rondel and you MAY pay for additional moves of the pawn. The only exception to this is 7 where the pawn only ever moves one space. The stops on the rondels represent what you can get from that rondel, be it the type of equipment, crew, or employee, or the trade-in value of the different types of raw materials rail cars.

When you take rail cars you can take any car you like. The same is true of canals. When you take ships you can take up to 3 pieces but they range from 0 to 3 ducats a piece.

The Good Parts

So what is interesting here? Well quite a lot actually. The game is all about timing. It's also about building up your engine so you can more efficiently build certain types of ships. What types of ships those are depends largely on either your canal network or your government contracts. You start with 6 government contracts: 3 blue and 3 green and you must discard one of each color each time the action track loops around. So in the end you will be left with only one of each color which will score you bonus points based on the types of ships you have built throughout the game.

I personally really like the employees portion of the game. The employees are your engine. They make it such that you can do things like take extra equipment or crew when you choose those actions. They also do things like increase the trade value of your raw materials and let you attach items to ships in places where they can normally not go. So you can see that they can drastically increase the value of your ships and the efficiency with which you build those ships.

During this play I also found the economic aspect of the game quite compelling. On any turn you may purchase an extra action for 6 ducats. This can be either before or after your chosen action. This extra action also includes actions that are currently occupied and therefore unavailable to you.

To get money you need rail cars and you need to be able to trade them in. I was quite frequently frustrated by the cadence of this sequence of turns during the game but I found it intriguing. It seemed like I was always either without rail cars to trade or without the option to choose the trade action to acquire money. When done right however you can reap large financial rewards that can improve your ability to select ship parts and give you several extra turns during the course of the game.

Some Parts I Could Live Without

It should be clear by now that there are a ton of moving parts in this game but the game is NOT DIFFICULT. This is great, but there are so many knobs and levers to your operation that it can be truly bewildering. One part I truly could have lived without was the purchasing of canals. The canals determine what types of ships you will get the most points for and also whether or not you can successfully launch your ships at all.

The timing and balancing involved in canal selection was the most mind-boggling part of the game for me. You want to build ships that will earn you the most points. This is done by making them fast and by loading them with equipment and crew that will score you the most bonus points when running the ship through your canal section. This does not even take into consideration your end of game bonuses which ideally will also leverage some of the same attributes.

So what are your options? Well you could build really fast ships and take whatever canal sections you want. As long as the ship can run at full speed in the canal you will score the ship and that is a good thing. Another option is to build a certain type of ship and hope that canal sections giving good bonuses for that type of ship become available, taking them when they do. A third option is to buy a certain type of canal and then hope the appropriate ship parts become available for you to build. Both of these latter choices telegraph your intentions to your opponents who can then deny you those canals or ship parts.

All of these options require many turns to accomplish and sometimes it just doesn't work out. You have to make some decisions without full knowledge and it can really backfire. Your best hope is to at least be contributing to your government contracts while you gamble on the other stuff. To top it off, once a ship is complete it HAS TO LAUNCH so if you don't have the appropriate canal system built when that happens you score nothing for the ship.

This is all to say that I think the canal rental portion of the game is my least favorite part followed closely by the system by which you can build several ships at once but only if they can legally be built on the single-file line at the bottom of your shipyard board. This is tough to explain so I won't. Suffice it to say it makes sense thematically but adds another wrinkle to think about in the game.

The final issue I have with the game is that although I would not say I have seen any overpowered government contracts I have seen many many severely underpowered ones and I swear in this game I had them ALL. It would not have mattered what I threw away during the game. I was looking at contracts that were going to yield me only 10-15 points at the end of the game on average and that was far worse than what either Jake or Geoff had.

Summary and Expansion Idea

So to summarize, I love the employees and the market part of the game and I like the ship provisioning aspect but I think the canal aspect adds a restrictive element to the game that I could live without. I think a simplified version of the game where your ships were scored outright instead of via the canals would be a nice change. Another option is perhaps an expansion where the canals are presented as random boards that everyone has from the beginning of the game. That way you could see what types of builds would score you and your opponents the most points and you could build ships to match while trying to starve your opponents of the parts they needed. Of course this would have to come with a specialized set of government contracts specific to each board so there could be some hope of synergy between in-game and end-of-game scoring. You might even be able to make this expansion yourself by having a canal and government contract draft at the beginning of the game.

My Opinion

Well here we are at the end. Oh and by the way I lost the game by many many points... Anyway I like it. It still doesn't really grab me but it is a very good game. It is not difficult but there are an overwhelming number of choices in the game. The play time is very good for a game of this depth in my opinion.

I would really like to see more wood and less cardboard in the game. There are tons of tiny chits which in my copy did not punch out cleanly. I think this is a function of the number of chits per board rather than me having received a bad die cut but I'm not sure. In any case I think much of the crew and equipment could be replaced with wooden tokens and that would improve both the look and tactile feel of the game. Some fo the chits are indeed very hard to pick up.

I'm not sure if I will keep this in my collection forever because after two plays it doesn't have the sort of spark I like to get from games. It somehow does everything right but fails to really excite me. I do want to play it at least 2 more times before I render final judgement though and I will happily do so as it is an extremely well designed game.

Session Report: Caligula and Sultan

2011-05-04T16:06:00.000-04:00

This week I was hoping to play two Rome themed games: Caligula and Tribune. Tribune is a game I really adore and have only gotten to play a few times and Caligula is a game I bought, then had remorse about, then decided I should really give a chance to before sending it on its way.

Caligula

Caligula is from Elfinwerks, the company who brought us Kingsburg. The game seemed to have some good buzz when it originally released but was fairly expensive for what it is (basically a deck of cards and some counters) and after the initial release thinks went quiet quickly surrounding the game. It was on and off my radar for a while and I finally picked it up during the Boulder Games going out of business sale about this time last year.

The rules for this game are pretty confusing despite the game being fairly simple. It is the type of game that you would think quite straight forward if you were taught by someone intimately familiar with the game but there are some subtle things going on, especially the conspiracy bidding element, which are simply difficult to explain. There are also many different powers represented on the card and the rulebook is organized in such a way that you have to read much of it without context. You basically need to read it twice. On the second run through you will have cross-referenced enough concepts to piece together the rules to the game. Still we did have some clarity issues and I did what I would consider a pretty poor job explaining the game.

Overview
For those who don't know much about this game here is a quick run down. The game is basically a bidding/worker placement game using several small decks of cards. Your goal is to get the most points by supporting the emperor at the end of each round. In fact the only ways to get points in the game are by supporting the current emperor, by overthrowing the emperor, and by winning the bid on a few action cards during the game that grant you a single point.

Supporting and/or overthrowing the emperor is accomplished by bidding with the two types of hand cards available in the game. The bidding part of the game is a very interesting process where first you bid to be part of the conspiracy and to be the conspiracy's leader using one of the two types of cards. Once the conspiracy is established the leader picks a candidate to succeed the emperor. Then each conspirator can support the contender OR possibly be sneaky and support the existing emperor. Then there is a second round where the non-conspirators can play a single card each to protect the current emperor followed by the conspirators playing as many cards as they desire to attempt to kill him. If the attempt succeeds the leader gets a point and each player who played cards to kill the emperor gets a point as well. The current emperor leaves play and anyone who was supporting him gets their support tokens back. The contender moves into the emperor's position with whatever support tokens were added to his card by the conspirators.

Each emperor card has a number of victory points he provides per round to his supporters. It is also important to note that each emperor card only has room for a certain number of support tokens so it is frequently possible that the conspirators cannot decide to support the emperor and even possible that one of the conspirators will be left not being able to support either the current or future emperor.

The bidding is pretty subtle and you lose any conspiracy cards you bid in the first part of the conspiracy so it is important to know how far you and your opponents can go. You cannot be part of the conspiracy unless you buy in with at least a number of cards equal to the current leader. Once in the conspiracy you are not required to actually contribute to it unless you want to get the extra victory point. You can just go along for the ride.

I think this part of the game works very well and provides a lot of potential for crafty play and negotiation... or backstabbing.

The rest of the game is driven by 5 small decks of action cards and a deck of round cards. The action cards form a sort of grid where the decks are all at the top and there are two revealed cards from each deck at a time below them. In a row below all of those cards are the round cards. These are shuffled at the beginning of the game and only move when someone uses an action that lets them swap two of the cards.

The round cards are important because they specify in what order the action cards will be activated. There is also one card which causes the turn order to be changed and one card that gives all the players a free conspiracy card.

The action cards represent influencing different factions in Roman society. You bid on these cards using a set of tokens numbered -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and you do not begin the game with your 5 or 6 token. Each card says whether it is for only the highest bidder, any bidder who meets the minimum bid, or whether it is a penalty that applies to anyone who fails to meet the minimum bid.

The actions are things like trash another action card of a specified color, switch two action cards, switch the two turn order cards, switch two round cards, switch two bidding tokens (you cannot see the values), add one of your tokens to an empty slot, take one or both of the conspiracy cards, etc. There are even a couple that provide victory points or a choice of two different actions.

The cards have bidding slots on them so it is possible to be blocked out of a card.

Once everyone has used all of their tokens you go through the round cards and resolve them in order, activating any applicable action cards along the way. In between each round card players can choose to start a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor. If they succeed the new emperor is safe until the end of the round. Only one successful overthrow is allowed per round.

You play until you cannot refill the action cards, then you have one final attempt to overthrow the emperor and see who has the most points.

Opinion
I think I am in the minority among the group who played the game but I think it is a very good game. I would like to play it one or two more times before declaring whether I like it or not but I think it's solid and has many solid mechanics and opportunities for smart play.

I do not think the game evokes the theme at all. This is not really a problem for me. I also do not think the components of the game are good enough. This IS a problem for me in this case. The cards are nice quality but the colors and iconography could be much much better. The rulebook is technically correct but badly presented and does not help the game's cause.

Most importantly, I think the game needs a board in order to function properly. Even though the game is just several decks of cards and plays OK directly on the table a board would be really helpful for managing the fiddlyness of the game of which there is more than I would like. Having a simple board with spots for the action cards, decks, and round sequence cards would be a big help. Also having some board space for the conspiracy bidding would improve the in-game book keeping and having spots in between each round sequence card to indicate that it was time to potentially start a conspiracy would improve the pacing of the game.

The other problem with the production, which is much more important than it will sound, is the tokens. They are small and are coated with a very slippery plastic. Since you are using them to bid you have to keep them in a cupped hand for the entire round so the other players don't see them. People must have dropped them on the floor a dozen times in our game because they are so smooth they fly out of your hands when you are trying to pick them up or place them. They are incredibly hard to turn over when resolving the bids on the cards as well. These would be much better as wooden cylinders or rectangles with the bid numbers screened onto the bottoms. This is an upgrade I might do myself with either some stock wooden pieces or by just gluing dowels to the existing disks.

So in the end I think this game has real potential. I don't think people were in the mood for it but I sure would like to try it again now that everyone is basically familiar with the rules since I think it would play a lot more quickly and with less controversy. We'll see whether the group will humor me on this one because I don't feel comfortable firing it based on my initial play. Instead I'm looking forward to trying it again.

Sultan
Due to what I can only assume is my poor rules teach and a somewhat late start, Caligula ran almost 2 hours (it should be 45 minutes to 1 hour). What this meant was that no one wanted to start Tribune and we had one player who had never played it so the rules teach would have been longer than desired.

So I brought out Sultan, a game which has relatively poor reviews on the geek but is recommended by Chris from www.gamerchris.com. It's a blind bidding game where everyone has a hand of 5 cards from a personal deck numbered 1-15. Players are bidding on gems trying to get the most valuable gems or make sets which are worth lots of points.

Opinion
I really enjoyed this game. We played twice. I believe I finished in second place and then third place but I had a good time doing it. The game is blazing fast and requires just enough thought to be interesting without taking itself too seriously. What this game gives you in the way of information is 1) your own cards, 2) any card counting you can do on your opponents' plays, 3) the type of gems your opponents are collecting and 4) when you are the start player you get to pick which 3 of a potential 4 random gems will be auctioned. Since the bonuses are worth so much you can watch for people going for large sets of cheap gems. It's also pretty easy to recall about how good your chances are of winning with one of your higher cards based on which of your opponents' cards are already out.

Between this and Revolution I think maybe I need to reconsider my position on blind bidding games. Don't get me wrong, Revolution is much more of a game and I would recommend that to blind bidding game haters. This one I absolutely would not. You can get card hosed and as with all blind bidding games you can be completely stymied by erratic play by your fellow players.

Session Report: Cargo Noir, Ra, 7 Wonders, Random Kids Games

2011-05-02T13:37:00.000-04:00

Wow! 0 new games played this week. Being a card carrying member of the cult of the new this was a tough pill to swallow but at least there was no rules teaching. That's always a relief.

Since I have covered all of these games in previous posts I will be brief.

Cargo Noir

I fear that I am coming to the end of my probationary period with Cargo Noir. I have now played the game with 2, 3, 4, and 5 players. I think it's a great looking game. It is easy to explain and quick to play. But this game is honestly just killing me. For the last 3 games I haven't even been able to gain a single extra ship. I played 4 turns before being able to buy a single item this time and had 0 fun as a result. Later I made a single additional big score and ended up a reasonable second in the game end scoring. But you know what? I did NOT have fun doing it.

You know what makes this game fun? It's not bidding on a spot on the board and succeeding. It's not placing your ships out and it's certainly not gaining money. It's collecting the damn goods tiles. And in this game I did very very little of that. It seems like in this game there are always pairs of players fighting it out over ports which costs valuable turns in a game which is simply too short and now and then there is someone who is overlooked and walks away with a big score. If this happens a couple of times a game that person will walk away with the game.

In this particular way the 3 player game is the WORST configuration. Unless the balance between players alternates back and forth so there is always one person gaining something and two others fighting it out for certain ports someone is going to run away with the game. If you plan poorly or get caught up emotionally with the bidding this is even more likely to happen. So it was that Jake and I went back and forth overpaying for relatively little only to notice Geoff grabbing 3 of the available ports in a single turn a few times during the game. If you don't notice this and both plan for it with appropriate amounts of money and actively work against this happening just to keep the game in balance bad things will happen. And honestly there are so few turns in the game that any turn you play defensively to up the cost of the bid for someone else feels completely wasted.

I have had exactly one enjoyable play of this game: the very first game, a 4 player game where no one knew what they were doing and everybody was getting lots all the time as a result. Since it got competitive it has been pretty much 0 fun.

So here is my plea. Does anyone know how to BOTH play this game well AND get the satisfaction of collecting a healthy amount of goods to trade in? I ask because right now it seems that competitive play and enjoyment are completely at odds in this game. That's a pretty huge problem and frankly it pisses me off.

Ra

God I love Ra. Or maybe I should say Ra I love Ra? In any case this was a good game. Jake got hosed and Geoff ended up eeking out a surprise victory because I was too conservative going after my 8th monument in the final epoch. Good times.

7 Wonders

This is the first time 7 Wonders has hit the table since Richard left us for der Vaterland. I really like the game with 3 players. I did not come close to winning but I blame that on the choice of Wonders rather than my sub-optimal play.

This game also saw the Man-he-can-piss! Promo wonder board from BGG hit the table. It was good fun but I don't think new wonders can help the game as much as additional cards and I am very much looking forward to the Leaders expansion.

Kids Games

I got some kid gaming in this weekend for the first time in a while. We played Gumball Rally, Have you Herd, and On the Dot.

Have you Herd is a weak game. I'd say it's better than the average American mass-market game but it's not all that fun and can be frustrating. But the kids got the game and the dice were rolling in our favor so it did not overstay its welcome like it sometimes can.

On the Dot is a puzzle game. I don't know why I keep trying these. I don't like puzzle games and I don't think I ever will. This one was OK but too hard for the kids. It also has an annoying tin that is 6 times the size of the deck of cards that is the entire game. I might sell it.

Gumball Rally is a game I tried before and did not particularly like but this time I quite enjoyed it. It has an interesting hand management aspect and the kids picked right up on the game. I have 2 extra copies from a Tanga deal I need to offload but I'll be keeping one. This game is a solid 6.

Incoming
I got several new games last week.

1) Lord of the Rings LCG base set
2) 51st State
3) Shadows Over Camelot Merlin's Company expansion
4) Alien Frontiers with Promos (and radiation)
5) Official copy of the Carson City New Beginnings expansion sheet
6) Sun, Sea, and Sand
7) Showmanager

I have no idea why I caved and bought LotR. I read the rules and the game looks solid but I don't need another LCG in my life. I'm hoping it's good on its own and doesn't need to be expanded. I'm currently actively buying into the A Game of Thrones LCG and have the base set for Warhammer Invasion.

51st state has confusing rules but the game looks like a solid Race for the Galaxy clone. I'm eager to try it and it looks like it will play well with more than 2. I prefer Race with only 2 so this may be a good counterpart to that game.

Shadows Over Camelot is a guilty pleasure game for me and I really wanted the new knights so I finally broke down and bought the expansion.

Alien Frontiers is a game I am embarrassed to admit that I missed the first time around. The production is beautiful and all the details right down to the box are just great. The rules make the game seem a bit heavier and harder to teach than I had hoped. Also I have heard this game compared heavily to Kingsburg. In face many people say it obviates Kingsburg. Having just read the rules I think the games sound VERY different. I hope I will like Alien Frontiers but I'm already fairly confident that I will both still enjoy and play Kingsburg AND that I will continue to like it BETTER than Alien Frontiers.

Carson City New Beginnings. This is probably the greatest expansion idea I have ever encountered. I can't wait to try it.

Sun, Sea, and Sand. This is a heavier-than-it-looks Cwali game in the same box as Basket Boss. I really think it will be good but it's quite rules dense and I'm not looking forward to teaching it. Hopefully it won't gather dust.

Showmanager is a classic I never owned. I love this game think this new edition will see a ton of play. However I am NOT HAPPY with Queen games lately. They are frequently delayed and atrociously overpriced. The components are very high quality but there is not enough of them to warrant the prices they charge. The Fresco expansion and the Shogun expansion were the first expansions that have ever exceeded my cost/value threshold enough to prevent me from buying them at all and Showmanager and Samarkand have essentially done the same thing for full sized games. If this trend continues I will be buying many less Queen releases in the coming year.

That's it for now. See you next week!

Session Report: Mansions of Madness

2011-04-25T16:39:00.001-04:00

After a very long yet unfinished first play of Arkham Horror at a game gathering in Providence I was excited to get Mansions of Madness to the table.

I would not say Ameritrashy, theme-heavy games are my thing. It's not that I don't want heavy theme in my games. I do. It's just that it seems you can't have heavy theme without a ton of rules, a very long game and some clunky mechanics with a lot of luck thrown in for good measure. I don't want to get too far down the road exploring my feelings on the subject. Let's just say that if somehow we could have a 90-120 minute game dripping with theme and great mechanics without too much luck I would be completely on board.

With that background in place let me say that Mansions of Madness is a bit of a stretch for me. I am not a huge Lovecraft fan but I do like the fiction. The game is big and expensive. And, most importantly, the game has not been as well-received by reviewers as I had hoped.

Then along came my first Arkham Horror experience. I actually really liked it despite having to sort of muddle through a never-ending first game with 6 players. I wished that I could have that sort of experience in a shorter amount of time with some modern mechanics. So it was that I somewhat hesitantly ordered MoM.

It showed up. I punched out the pieces... for a long time. I assembled the monsters with their bases and inserted the monster tokens. Question for FFG: why have such nice art on the monster counters when they are hidden inside the monster base for their entire lives? I read the rules. They were long but not too bad. Actually, they were rather well organized for FFG rules. I read them again. I read the Investigators guide and Keeper's Guide introductions and first story setup guidelines.

Then the night came for me to try the game. We had 4 players including myself which I think is a good number for the game. We setup for the first story with me as Keeper. I made my story choices. I setup the board. I told the players how to select their characters and promised them that I would teach the game pretty much as we went. I think this is one of the strong points to this game. There's no reason to have a 20 minute rules explanation. You can pause the game the first time each situation arises and teach the game in parts as needed.

I took it a bit easy on the investigators because I wanted them to not feel like the Keeper is oppressive and has all the fun in the game. In hind sight and now that I know the rules of the game and some of the cards better I would have been a bit rougher on them.

I quite liked the game. Alex who is a fan of theme in games liked it as well. Jake who is more of a strategy gamer complimented it on its merits and said it was nice for a change. Geoff wasn't into it at all but he was also falling asleep having returned from China not many days before.

Here are some of the highlights for me.

1) I liked the combat system. For combat you draw cards from a pile appropriate to the monster you are dealing with, until you find one that matches the attack an investigator is making. The top half of the card tells the investigator what skill to test and/or what happens. I thought this was very clean. All tests are resolved with the roll of a single d10. The bottom half of the card is for the keeper for when the monster is the attacker rather than the defender and has some fun flavor and the effect of the attack.

Also the monsters themselves are randomized. The keeper selects a random monster of the appropriate type but they may have very different health and damage ratings. Neither the keeper nor the investigators know this until they damage the monster in combat.

2) I really liked the spell system. There are only a few spells in the game and there are several copies of each. When you gain a spell you are not allowed to see what the spell does until you cast it. The back of the spell card has the test and pass/fail effects of the spell and you don't get to look at the card back until you decide to cast it. Once you have cast it you discard the card and draw another of the same spell. So now you still don't know what the spell will do. Cool. Of course playing the game several times you will come to know what the possibilities are but this is still a neat idea.

3) Mansion Board and Exploration system. The mansion board is modular and offers good variety. Each room is pre-loaded with exploration cards including lock cards and obstacles. You can explore the entire pile of cards for a single explore action assuming you can get past any locks and obstacles. The story dictates the setup of these cards on the board and some of them contain clues that drive the story.

4) The plastic monsters and investigators. They are some of the nicest figures I have seen in an FFG game.

5) The story flavor. The mysteries are cool and choosing the story points as the keeper is very interesting. As you watch the investigators go through the story you see how the choices you made are carried out in the game. And they are which is interesting in and of itself.

Some of the not-so-good.

1) The investigators don't really develop. I'm not looking for RPG level character buildup here. I don't even play RPGs but I think it would be more fun for the investigators if they had some additional choice either before or during the game with respect to picking up additional weapons and skills. The only upgrades in the game are those planted in the rooms by the keeper as instructed by the setup manual. In the initial story the things the investigators could find in the rooms were pretty limited and not that exciting so they were basically stuck with what they started the game with which wasn't tons of fun. I still think following the clues to the story is fun but it would be more fun if you could power up with more neat stuff along the way.

2) The keeper's monster summoning ability is very limited. In the initial story you will summon at most 3 types of monsters (at least for the story points that I chose). These are at most two Zombies, some Maniacs and potentially a Shoggoth. I was not able to summon the Shoggoth until the game was almost over and the investigators were going to win (or lose. It was up to the pre-set story at that point.). I could only summon additional Maniacs when one was killed and the two Zombies were miles apart in their appearance. So most of the time I was piloting a single monster around.

3) The trauma and mythos cards are where a good part of the fun for the keeper lies. That's fine but I felt like many of the trauma cards were too punishing to impose on the investigators and would suck the fun out of the game. The mythos cards were generally good and added to the atmosphere of the game. Now that we have the initial play out of the way I'd like to try playing more of the trauma cards.

4) I said I liked the spell system but it really didn't come into play in the story I chose. I think this is a negative continuation to the problems I mentioned with monsters in point 2)

5) The keeper action cards are very limiting. As with points 2) and 4) above. You get a small set of these cards for the story you choose and that is what you are stuck with as the keeper. Mine were something like

"Draw a Trauma and Mythos Card"

"Move a Monster"

"Take a Sample" (needed for me to achieve my goal)

"Summon a Maniac - If there isn't one on the board"

"Move an investigator"

Not a ton of action to be had here...

6) Horror checks SUCK. I got so tired of having to tell the investigators to roll for horror checks every time they entered a room with a monster. It's boring even though it only takes a second and I don't think it's very thematic to keep taking horror every time you see a monster you already saw before you moved out of its room. I feel the same way about evade tests but at least those make thematic sense to me.

7) Setting up the board was not fun and it takes a while. I enjoyed making the story choices but I did not enjoy finding and stocking the rooms with cards for the game. This was also quite nerve wracking since if you do this step wrong the whole game falls apart.

8) There's only one really meaningful story choice and that is the first one you make. The other choices just change small details in the game.

In addition there is really only about 15 plays worth of game in this box. There are 5 stories and, I believe, only 3 choices for the major point of each story. Once you have seen what happens in all of these cases I don't think there would be much point playing the game. Knowing FFG this just means there is a gap to be filled by expansions but it's worth calling out that a game that costs $80 retail and $55ish online has limited plays in the box.

9) In our game the investigators were clearly doing better than me but they still could have lost if I had picked another story. They won because the game ended and for the choices I made the result was a win for the investigators. The weird thing is that even though they were kicking ass they might have lost exactly BECAUSE THEY WERE KICKING ASS. This seems like a real problem.

Here's the deal: I was not completing my objective very well. The objective was to take two samples to an altar and summon a Shoggoth. I kept getting killed by the investigators and not getting my samples to the altar. This meant that the investigators could not fight the Shoggoth because I could not summon it. The only way for the investigators to really win was to either kill the Shoggoth or keep it from escaping the foyer. Since the Shoggoth spawned so late in the game it wasn't anywhere near the exit and they could not kill it. So I believe they won the game because the card said "If the keeper chose 2) the investigators win". There was no way for them to achieve a true win because that would have required me to be playing better. That seems like bug in the story to me. Maybe I was playing this part wrong.

Conclusion

Even though I listed twice as many negatives as positives I liked the game a great deal and want to try more of the stories with different people playing the keeper role.

I think MoM might be the best exploring/fighting game I have ever played. Its mechanics make it sufficiently modern so as not to frustrate the players. The downside is of course less choice and character development. The game feels a bit like a role-playing game on rails as investigators race through the mansion following the clues and trying to fight their way out alive.

I personally can't wait to get it to the table again.

Catch-up Session Report: Lots of Games

2011-04-07T09:42:00.000-04:00

Wow, I can't believe it has been almost 3 weeks since my last post. I've played quite a few games during 3 or 4 sessions during this time so let's see if we can hit some highlights.

Cargo Noir

First, some further exploration of Cargo Noir. I played two 5 player games and one 2 player game of this. I enjoyed them for the most part but I lost all 3 and both of the 5 player games were lost by a wide margin. I felt like I had very little control in the 5 player game. It seems like in configurations with more players erratic play by new players can really give the game to a single person. In this case the recipient was Geoff who wiped the floor with us. I am so flummoxed by the game that I can't even tell you which other player or players were contributing to this route. It may even have been me! The long and the short of it is that it felt off. Geoff was getting the biggest lot far too frequently and when he wasn't he was utilizing his syndicate to great effect. During the second game I played the whole game with only 3 boats because I had a tremendously difficult time putting sets together in the first three turns of the game and I figured it was too late to upgrade my engine at that point so I just went after points. It was a slaughter.

The two player game was pleasant and fast but lacked tension and was really a matter of luck and timing. I led most of the game but Mark pulled out the win in the end.

So I'm going to declare that 3 or 4 is the sweet spot for this game if it even has one. I'm starting to feel like the game simply isn't worth the mental effort of trying to do well. It's fun when you are just sorta slinging your ships and money around based on your instincts but trying to play it well seems to be an exercise in frustration. The game is simply too short. The speed of the game gives you an incentive not to get into bidding wars with other people unless you simply cannot allow them to have a particular lot but that can be financially devastating and requires a consistent approach from all of the players in order for the burden not to fall completely on a single opponent thereby ruining his chances for success.

I want to give this game another 6 or so plays in 3 and 4 player configurations but at that point I may have to give it its walking papers. Playing the game more is not giving me any additional insight as to how to play it better and the fun is decreasing with each loss.

For Sale!
For Sale is a classic. I taught it to the guys and I think everyone enjoyed it. This should be on every gamer's shelf if possible. I have the Uberplay version but the Griffon Games version should be good too.

Famiglia
Got another play of Friedemann Friese's Famiglia in. I love the look of this game and it's really neat but I'm still on the fence as to whether there really is any control in the game or if it's all just an illusion. One thing is for sure. You need to play this game moderately well in order for it not to bog down and suck or the last 25% of the game. This is not a problem once each player has one or two games under their belt. It's a fun game for sure but can be frustrating if you make mid game mistakes that can really hurt you down the line. I tend to rate games higher than the BGG average but I actually would rate this game slightly lower than the 7 or so that it currently gets on the geek. I'd say it's a low 6 for me right now.

Resident Evil DBG Solo
When I was sick I played several games of RE:tDBG solo. I played both story mode and mercenary mode and varied my character selection quite a bit. I think I actually like story mode better than mercenary mode but the mercenary mode is quite interesting. Instead of the standard starting deck you get a character specific starting deck. You then have a fixed number of turns in which to accumulate the most points possible. The problem is the fixed number of turns means that you really have to go the mansion every turn and that in turn means that you are likely to die. Very likely. In more than half of my games I did not make it through. And when you die in this version of the game it ends. You do not respawn with less life. In the mansion deck you may find time bonus and combo cards. These cards give you free turns and multiply your rewards for every turn in which you successfully defeat monsters. It all hangs together rather well except for the fact that you are pretty underpowered and could encounter several powerful monsters in a row right away. Some of the most powerful monsters are removed from the deck but it's far from easy.

I actually really like this game now, at least in solo play. In the first play it suffered due to some misunderstandings where the rules didn't quite match with the Dominion rules and the rulebook was not clear. I do think the card set in the base game is fairly boring. This is especially true with the action cards. Most of the interesting cards in this game are weapons and the characters themselves. I hope the expansion adds some interesting action cards. If it does I may pick it up. If not I'll be sticking with what this original set and nothing else.

Hansa Teutonica East Expansion Board
Twice in the last three weeks I managed to play during the weekly sessions of the Guy Stuff Gamers. This is always nice for a change mainly because there are lots of people who buy games and want to teach them so it's a nice break from rules explaining for me.

When I arrived a group of 4 had setup to play Fresko but kindly packed that up in order to include me in a 5 player game.

The game was the fantastic Hansa Teutonica but with the East Expansion board. We did not play with the extra cards.

Wow!

If you like HT you need this expansion. This thing is exactly what an expansion should be. It's cheap. It comes with no box (just a shrink wrapped board and a few cards). It fits right into the original box.

And most importantly: IT CHANGES THE GAME IN SUBTLE BUT AMAZING WAYS.

The best part about the expansion is that it requires basically a 30 second rules explanation for anyone familiar with the base game and does NOT CHANGE THE PLAYTIME OR COMPLEXITY. You can easily start playing right away.

The expansion changes the routes on the board including the routes used to upgrade certain skills. It also adds some sea routes at the top of the board that require merchants and have permanent bonuses associated with them. There are also cities on the board that you cannot build kontors in without completing one of the sea routes to do so.

It's all very cool. It's really like having two equally great games to choose from. This is NOT at all the type of expansion where you would say "that's so great I'll never play without it again". It is an equally great but different way to experience Hansa Teutonica.

This is truly something I have never encountered in an expansion before except possibly with the Thurn and Taxis Power and Glory expansion (but that one had a separate full sized box and cost a lot).

I guess my only caveat is that I haven't used the cards yet but hey they could be worthless and I'd still say this board alone is worth it.

I rate both HT and this expansion a full 10.

Foppen
Foppen is a Friedemann Friese trick taking game. The loser of the trick gets the Foppen and has to play it instead of a card during the next trick. This is bad since you want to go out. I lost horribly.

The game is OK. I don't really think it distinguishes itself from the zillion other trick taking games in the world. I give it a 5 after my initial 5 round play.

Citadels
I played Citadels and won. This made me very happy. I really have to start playing this game more. It used to be a favorite of mine and really doesn't get enough love.

Maori
Fast forward to this week and another GSG session. Maori was already on the table when I arrived. It's a neat looking and simple game where you are trying to fill your ocean board with islands that have features on them worth points. To get the tiles you move a boat around the edge of a 4x4 grid of tiles and then take a tile. Tiles at the edge are free but tiles at the interior cost shells. You can also use shells to move more spaces.

The game is a pretty abstract affair but very pleasant. At the end you receive points for palm trees, huts, flowers, and can receive bonuses for boats and shells

There is also a few variants in the box which I don't know anything about.

I'd give the game a 6. I thought it was good but it's not something I'd request.

Valdora
Next came Valdora. This is a game I have owned forever and have not gotten to the table. To be honest it seemed confusing when I read the rules. It turns out it's not at all confusing. It also turns out that it's a fantastic game.

I bought this game in the summer of 2009 from Germany along with Die Goldene Stadt. I was not a big fan of Golden City in my initial plays. This game is MUCH BETTER.

This game has that magical family euro feel going for it where everything is just super satisfying. You are walking your guy around the board buying tools to let you mine different kinds of gems and buying contracts to let you exchange those gems for points. There are plenty of bonuses and other good things to aim for in the process.

The game is absolutely gorgeous, played very quickly even with 5 and was great from start to finish.

I will be teaching this at the next Metroburb Gamers session for sure and I am now glad I coughed up the absurd price for the tiny expansion.

This may be my new favorite Michael Schacht game.

I rate it an 8 after this initial play.

David and Goliath
Then came David and Goliath: a game I have fold memories of from years ago. This is another interesting little trick taking game. The problem is I got my ass kicked again. The only time I won a hand I had very different cards from all the hands I lost so either I only know one strategy and couldn't do it with the hands I was getting or the luck factor in the game is too big.

This one drops to a 5 after this play. I may just swear off trick taking games entirely.

Hotel Samoa
Ah Hotel Samoa. This was a Tanga game and it was one I almost immediately wished I had not bought. It's a good thing I did though because I thought it was pretty darn good.

The game has a lot of the feel of For Sale somehow and shares with Valdora that feeling that everything just sortof works. It's a family game that you can just relax and play and it all feels very comfortable.

In the game each player has a hotel with 6 rooms, some starting money, and a set of bidding cards. Players are bidding on tourists which will give them money for room rent, and buildings which cost money.

The cards are split in half with the room price on one half and the amount you are willing to pay for a building on the other. Everyone selects a card and they are all revealed. First the highest building bids get to buy any available buildings if they want. Then the lowest bids get to choose from the available tourists and be paid that rate for each rented room.

The wrinkle is this: once in your hotel a tourist will not pay again and will stay until the next batch of tourists from the same country arrives.

There are plenty of special powers in the game between the buildings and the bonuses provided by tourists of different types which adds to the fun.

One important factor I left out is that there are a set of tiles with flags on them that are shuffled and laid out at the beginning of the game. This is the arrival order of the tourists. So you can see when you are bidding on tourists how long you will have to keep them in your hotel.

It all hangs together quite nicely and it plays a wide range of players though I'm not sure how well because I've only played with 4.

Anyway I'd rate this one a 7 for now and I think I might like to show this one to my parents. It's good fun and I regret regretting the purchase!

Conclusion
Well I think that mostly catches me up other than my zillion plays of Pokemon recently. My kids have really gotten into it. Luckily they don't realize that you can collect all the cards and are happy to just play with the theme decks for now.

Cheers!

No Session This Week... but Still Plenty to Report!

2011-03-18T14:29:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I was sick as a dog all week this week and did not get a session in.

I did however play some games with my kids. For those who like reading about such things here goes.

Huntik TCG
Huntik was a kid's show on the WB that was imported from Italy and created in tandem with a trading card game. The show was pretty interesting, having an Indiana Jones, Mummy feel to it but based I believe in modern times. The characters run all around the world in search of the main character's missing father and recovering artifacts. The artifacts are usually amulets which contain titans. Titans are the Pokemon of this show. They have different powers and fighting abilities. The good guys in the show are the Huntik Foundation and are called Seekers. The bad guys are The Organization and most of their minions wear dark colored suits and look generally like Mr Smith from The Matrix. They of course want the titans for themselves.

I picked up a starter set of the game back when the show was on because my older son liked the show so much. It turned out he was a bit young for the game at the time but I always thought the game sounded like a potential gem so I didn't let it go. Recently he found an old episode of the show on TiVo and watched it which rekindled his interested and prompted him to request the game.

I'm happy to report that it was very fun this time. In fact I might seek out some boosters for the game since they are probably more or less free at this point. The game and the TV show seem to have disappeared from the US but I think it is still alive and well in other countries.

So what of the game?

Well it has a couple of things that set it apart from other collectible card games. First, it is mission based and is played on a mission map. The mission map is just a set of 5 rows called zones. A mission usually involves putting some objective on the map and having your characters get to the objective and then do something to win the game. Usually one player is the offensive player and the other is the defensive player usually but some missions feature both players going for the same mission goal simultaneously.

In the intro game we played the good guys needed to escape from a mansion while the bad guys had to stop them. The Mansion Door card was put into Zone 3 and the Escape the Mansion mission card was laid next to the board.

The game is 7 rounds long with a different player having initiative each round. The goal for me was to escape 3 of my characters from the mansion before the end of the game and the goal of the other player was to stop me.

Each round you play cards and take actions until both players pass. This ends the round and begins the next. The cards consist of Major Heroes, Minor Heros and Action cards. Each round you may only play one Major Hero card. It goes into your Zone 1. Each round you may play as many minor heroes as you want. They also go into your Zone 1. The other things you can do are to move a ready hero up to 2 Zones in either direction, or play actions cards. Moving exhausts a hero or taps it in MtG parlance. There are also actions that require you to exhaust a hero and actions you may take any time without exhausting a hero. These are in the form of both action cards and actions printed on the heroes themselves.

When you move forward you cannot move through a zone containing an enemy. You can however move into it and optionally start a combat. In a combat you add up all the attack numbers of each hero in the zone and all the defense numbers and kill off cards as appropriate. So a single 5/3 hero versus a 1/1 and a 2/2 hero would destroy both of the enemies but would also be defeated himself. Pretty simple. There are also Combat Action cards and abilities but the starter set has none of these. My understanding is that if you are playing with these abilities you play them in turns similar to the main round turns and then resolve them all in the order they were played similar to MtG's stack based resolution mechanic.

I lost.

I could not for the life of me get anyone out of the mansion. My son just kept loading the zone containing the door up with his guys and although I had no trouble killing them off I never had any of my own guys left to exit the building when all was said and done.

I really thought the game was fun though and I'm eager to get it back to the table. It's a bit like the synthesis of a dueling game and a tabletop miniatures game. The mission pack that came with the starter is also pretty sizable so there are more missions to try if I still can't crack the escape mission. I actually think the game has some things in common with the recently played Summoner Wars. Summoner Wars has a grid rather than simple zones and you attack adjacent units rather than units in the same space as you but the feel was similar in terms of movement and special powers. Obviously Huntik is simpler but that's a good thing. I'm going to look online to see what some of the other card abilities are and then perhaps see about those boosters.

Blink
For some reason I have not one but two copies of Blink. Blink is a game I have never played. OK I may have played by myself once or twice. It is a speed game which I generally loathe but hey it's over in 30 seconds and takes longer to shuffle the cards than to play.

I came across it while I was combing the collection for games to sell off and left it on the table until the kids saw the neat red box and asked to play it.

Well the kids loved it. Specifically my older son. My youngest wanted to love it but was unhappy about getting his ass handed to him over and over by my older son who still for some reason has not figured out that taunting his little brother causes nothing but pain and suffering, not to mention creased cards and generally damaged games.

Anyway my older son plus my mom, my dad, and myself probably played Blink 40 times in one day. By the end I didn't want to play anymore because I was rocking the proverbial house but the parents and kids continued to have fun.

So I guess Blink is a good game. Not really for me but if you like that sort of thing or really just derive joy from watching other people enjoy a game this is a real winner. And now I think you can get it for almost nothing at Target which, now that I think about it, is why I have two copies. One is the original large cardboard box from Out of the Box and the other is a tiny tin from Target. Go with the tin if there is any choice and give this game to all of your kid-endowed friends.

Mummy's Treasure
I'll start with the verdict on this one.

Fantastic. If you are trying to rear gamer kids immediately go out and buy this. It is also good for a light adult game.

This is a Haba game from the fantastic Marco Teubner, not to be confused with Klaus Teuber of Catan fame. If you are a consumer of Haba games you will find Herr Teubner has designed several of the best ones.

Here's how the game works. Each player has a nice little dig site board with a 4x5 grid on it which they are trying to fill with artifacts. There are 5 dice with each side depicting one of the artifacts. There are also 6 stacks of tiles with different mixtures of symbols on them. The tiles are 1 square, 2 squares, 3 squares straight, 3 squares as an "L", 4 squares 2x2, and 4 squares as a "T" like tetris pieces.

On your turn you use the tried and true dice mechanic where you get 3 rolls, optionally setting dice aside on each roll. At any time you may stop and if your dice match the symbols on one of the tiles you can claim it. The tile you claim goes on your board and has to fit without moving the existing tiles around. For younger kids you can allow them to be moved. There are other variants as well. The first person to fill their board wins.

I don't think there is much to say about this game that is not readily apparent from the rules description but boy is it a nice little game. Having the tiles in stacks with only the top tile available is genius, as is the board placement aspect. My older son pretty much played conservatively and tried to buy all of the one and two square tiles at first before realizing that he could not fill his board that way. My younger son was frustrated by not moving the tiles once placed so we decided to let him move them around for now and that is just fine.

Teaching kids a bit of probability and the mechanic of rolling dice and then setting some aside in an attempt to get a certain tile is a great future gaming skill and the production of this game is just great as is the size which is about the size of the Fantasy Flight small Silverline game boxes.

I even picked it up from amazon.com for 10 bucks and free shipping. You should too.

Monza
I bought Monza, another Haba game, quite some time ago, and my older son never really took to it. Honestly I was a bit underwhelmed at first myself. But, as time goes by, my younger son has really taken a shine to it and he is quite good at the game which makes me happy. I've started to like the game more as well.

Monza is a nice little racing game with lots of dice and wooden cars along witha small board full of colored spaces and a few obstacles. The board looks like a Formula De track with differently colored spaces.

Each turn you roll all of the dice and try to sequence the die colors to move your car the farthest it can go. This can be challenging even for an adult depending on your options but I don't tend to bother deeply analyzing all the permutations and kids seem to really internalize it and have no trouble instinctually choosing something close to the best sequence.

The games are fast. It's fun rolling the dice, and it looks great on the table. You might get smoked by several bad rolls but you'd be surprised how fast you can catch up and as long as everyone is playing their turns promptly the game doesn't overstay its welcome.

This game is recommended as well.

Conclusion
Despite not getting in any metroburb gaming this week it seems I have played quite a few games. This selection wouldn't normally satisfy my gaming urges but I'm still in the stage where I'm so happy to have my kids playing and enjoying more substantial games that I enjoyed it nonetheless. Hopefully we'll get back to the meatier stuff this coming week.

And One More Thing...

Resident Evil Deck Building Game
I played several solitaire rounds of RE:tDBG this week. I played about 1/3 in story mode and 2/3 in mercenary mode.

I've started to enjoy the game more for what it is which is definitely NOT dominion. The story mode was pretty winnable by the time I went through the game a few times but the mercenary mode which is only 15 turns long by default was brutal. To beat your high score you have to go to the mansion almost every turn right from the start of the game and you can die pretty easily doing so. If you die in this version of the game it's game over.

It's interesting trying to both build a usable deck AND explore the mansion to collect points with a game restricted to so few turns.

So yeah, I like it. Specifically I like how you need to combo with the goal of increasing your Explores and being able to power at least two big weapons to get more than one kill per turn. I also like how the player powers can really be significant in the game. The mercenary mode ups the ante on this even more by giving each character a unique starting deck.

The only downside I see to the game right now is that the cards are all extremely simple and don't provide much variety. When you mix them all together interesting things happen but in general I don't even feel like the cards cover as much ground as the base dominion set in terms of the "oh that card is neat" factor. I'd love to see what they are going to put into the expansion and wether things will change in this regard.

Cheers!

Short Session Report(s): Innovation, Carson City, Cargo Noir

2011-03-13T16:59:00.000-04:00

We had another slightly sad and low-turnout showing this week in which we played Innovation and Carson City. We were going to play Tinners' Trail again but I really need to start killing off some of my unplayed games so I decided to go for broke and introduce both of these games.

Innovation
We played Innovation first. This is the card game you have probably been hearing about due to the apparent divisiveness the game incites with respect to how people feel about it. What I mean is that it seems no one has a moderate opinion of the game. It is either considered a very fine game indeed or utter chaotic dreck.

I may in fact be the first person ever to think it is just a pretty good game... which is what it in fact is. It's a solid 7 as they go on the geek. The game is billed as a light civilization building card game and I'm not sure it delivers on that but that doesn't stop it from being enjoyable.

I'm about to generalize a great deal here but if you want to imagine this game here is what I would propose. 7 Wonders meets Fluxx in a bar and they have a kid. This kid is Innovation.

The game really isn't anything like either of these games on their own but when you play it I think you'll get this feeling. Now, let me say that I do not like Fluxx. I'm not one of the Fluxx haters who thinks noone should ever own or play the game but I do feel strongly enough about it to avoid it in all but the most pressing circumstances.

But, as I said, I did enjoy Innovation so take that for what you will.

The game is unique. I can't think of many others like it. You collect cards from different ages that have icons and text on them. You can only have one top card of any of the 5 colors in the game but some card actions let you splay the cards left, right, or up. When you do this you reveal some of the icons on your covered cards but still only play the text of the top card. When you exercise the text on your top card of any color there is an icon associated with it. If it is a positive effect anyone with the same or more of that icon displayed can also do the action. If it is a negative effect anyone with the same or more of that icon can ignore the effect.

It's a pretty quick game aside from the initial reading of the cards. There are not that many cards either so I imagine after a few plays this would fly right along.

Let me get this out of the way. The game is decently chaotic. Effects on cards can steal the game away from the leader (this happened to me), rob you of good cards, etc. But I don't think this is unpleasant in any way because the game is light and it doesn't overstay its welcome.

I would recommend this game to all but the most hard core strategy game player.

A note on packaging as I'm always: this game should be in a regular two deck card box. The box the game comes in is significantly larger than it needs to be. I don't know the exact dimensions but the box is the size of the Cloud 9/Tutankhamen boxes that Out of the Box used to produce. I would like to see it packaged in the standard double deck card box with the lid instead. Perhaps they were trying to justify the price of the game which is I think $30 or perhaps they are just giving us room for expansions and I'm being an ass. If so, I apologize. Either way, I'd appreciate an insert to keep the cards in place.

I'll give this one a 7.5 which might be a bit generous but I genuinely liked the game.

Carson City
What can I say? I've had Carson City since its first US release. Since then they have printed a much better second edition that I'm too cheap and annoyed to buy. Having now played the edition I have finally, I don't see any reason to upgrade even though I did like the game.

This game has been characterized as Caylus with gun fights and that's pretty apt. The game feels much lighter and faster than Caylus in my opinion. In fact the pace of the game may be my only real complaint about the game. I'm sure this would be less of an issue with more players but our 3 player game was over in just over an hour including rules explanation and for the most part was pretty uncontentious. Of course I also lost by a mile so I'm sure that's my problem, not the game's.

In the way of rules explanation, this is a standard worker placement game with the added wrinkle of having a board where you can place your workers to claim spaces in addition to the action track, as well as the ability to challenge someone for the space they have claimed by placing into the same space.

The goal is to grab tracts of land, build on them, earn money from those buildings and buy victory points. You can also get points for the number of unbuilt tracts you own and from the size of your posse.

There are character roles in the game that give you an extra ability, determine turn order, and tell you how much money you can carry over between rounds. This killed me in two out of the 4 rounds as I earned a lot more money than I spent and lost much of it.

The game is pretty fun. It's very fast, easy to explain, and has a good amount of think to it. I really want to get this to the table with more players as soon as possible because I think it would be a much more competitive game with 4 or 5 than with 3. Plus I want to pay more attention next time and see if I can be competitive. There really aren't a lot of actions in the game so you have to make sure to make the most of every one.

Carson City is a 7 for me right now and could go up or down with future plays. I like the theme and the quickness but I'm not sure if the game has enough control to consistently play well.

Cargo Noir
OK fast forward a day and I have the new Days of Wonder joint in my hands. As usual I force my family to play this game (adults only). My standard Days of Wonder test group is my wife, my parents, and myself. I read the rules of Cargo Noir a while back and declared that it looked like a hit to me. Since then it has received a pretty harsh welcome from the BGG crowd so I was a bit apprehensive bringing it out.

The game is pretty. I DO NOT think it is up to Days of Wonder standards of quality which I think have gone steadily downward since Shadows Over Camelot but the art and design are nice. The insert appears to hold everything perfectly except for the giant bag of tiles that has NO PLACE IN THE BOX. You read that right. You just flatten out out on top of the components as best you can and the box lid rides a good 3/4" above the closed position. Yuck! No stacking on this one. The cards are good quality as are the boats and tokens. The boards are thick but mine are already warping spontaneously. The rules also didn't seem as debugged as I would expect from Days of Wonder but that still leaves them a cut above 90% of rules you will read in a board game.

The game is simple. That's capital "S" Simple. What surprised me after having read the rules is that this game is much less a light auction game and much more a worker placement game and I think it suffers a bit for that.

We played the game in 70 minutes with the rules explanation so it's fast.

On your first turn you put out your 3 ships. Ships can get you 2 bucks at the casino, a random tile or tile swap at the black market, or a bid on a lot of cargo at a port when you include some coins. The coins are awesome by the way. They are the nicest money I have ever used in a game.

On subsequent turns you resolve all of your ships, taking money for ships at the casino, swapping or taking random tiles at the black market, and taking a lot of goods if you are the only ship remaining at a port. If you are not the only ship remaining at a port you have been outbid since your last turn and must either up your bid or take your ship back, reclaiming all your money and giving up the right to go back to that port this turn.

After doing this you can trade in sets of goods - either all the same or all different - for credit to purchase victory or upgrade cards. The upgrade cards give you more ships, money for walking away from bids, or more warehouse space to store goods between turns (any excess of 6 is lost if not traded in).

Then you replace your ships and the next person goes. On the final turn you can supplement your traded sets with your leftover money. So if you have 36 points worth of cargo and need 40 for a card you can throw in another 4 in coin. This is the only time money is used for acquiring cards.

At the end of the game you count your points on the cards and the person with the most wins.

So did I like the game or not? Yes, I did like it. However, I believe this game to be the simplest game Days of Wonder has ever produced and as such I don't see it being a hit with even the hard core Ticket to Ride crowd.

I plan on playing it a lot in the coming weeks so I'll revisit this admittedly premature opinion. Hey, the fact that I'm committed to playing this another 5-10 times before declaring whether I'm wrong about its apparent shortcomings should be proof enough that it is not a bad game. I will not play a game I don't enjoy more than twice before firing it.

Here are some things I noticed right off the bat.

1) A first and last turn first player advantage. The first player does not rotate. In fact this would break the game so it's good that it doesn't. But that does mean that the first player has a clear board upon which to place his ships at the start and the ability to blow up everyone's auctions at the end of the game if he so chooses. The official line is that between the other players knowing that this is possible and the fact that in most cases the advantages of not blowing up the other auctions outweigh the advantages of blowing up the auctions this won't be a problem. Maybe what this really is is a first player first turn advantage and a pretty serious last player last turn disadvantage.

2) The auction component isn't as strong as I would like it to be. Because the game is short, you only have 3-5 ships, and money is at a premium in the game there really isn't a strong incentive to stick it out in auctions for round after round just to guarantee a lot to yourself and/or deny it to someone else. There is usually another port you can go to that will cost you less and get you most of the way to where you wanted to be with goods. This is the only real failing of the game in my opinion because I was really thinking this game might be to Ra or Medici what Small World was to Vinci which I think would be a really amazing world beating sort of game. I'm hoping with repeated plays as players really start to internalize the cadence of the game and pay attention to other players' boards this will prove to be a mischaracterization on my part.

3) Wonkiness alert: there are 9 types of goods plus wilds equal to the number of players in the game. There are 14 of each good. If I am reading the rules correctly when goods are cashed in they do not go back into the bag until the bag is empty. I'm not sure if the wilds should go back into the bag at all. What this means though is that you can watch what people are collecting and cashing in and be aware of what is left but this also might go out the window if the bag ever gets completely emptied and all of the tiles are put back in. There could be a huge swing if someone sits on a couple of sold out cargo types until the last couple rounds and then gets the other 12 of them re-infused into the system.

All this critical analysis might be misleading because I really did enjoy the game. I was just hoping it was going to be a really strong performer and I'm starting to think the 6.5+ ratings on the geek are not far out of line and that just makes me sad.

I promise to revisit this as I play the game more with a variety of different player numbers.

Two Player Session: Martinique and Summoner Wars

2011-03-04T13:42:00.001-05:00

Schedules were tight again this week and we ended up with only Jake and myself for games. This is certainly not a bad thing since we have plenty of two player games to wade through in the coming months and would also like to get a couple of the hits back to the table.

This time I decided I would try to keep it light. I wanted to get Summoner Wars played and I was hoping to get Resident Evil the Deck Building Game back to the table to see if we could smooth out some of the wrinkles and give that game a fair shot.

Right before Jake arrived however I noticed the game Martinique sitting on my shelf. I had played this game a couple of times with Mark right after it was released late last spring and found it to be a pretty unoffensive title. I figured I would give it a shot with my wife before casting judgement but I guess Jake got the honors first.

Martinique

OK. Let's get the easy stuff out of the way. Martinique is a two player game with very nice production value from ZMan Games and Emanuele Ornella. It is part deduction game a-la Sid Sackson's Sleuth and part victory point game.

The theme of the game is that you are pirates wandering around the island of Martinique all day picking up souvenirs and clues about where the big treasure is. Along the way you can trade in combinations of your souvenirs for small treasures which go into your ship's hold.

As I alluded to before the game looks really nice and comes with a good amount of stuff for a very reasonable price. I'm finding this to be the hallmark of ZMan games lately. They have controlled their game costs better than any other company in my opinion, but that is another post. The game features a board which depicts the island with a grid superimposed over it, two victory point tracks and a bar running down one side. There are 16 square treasure map tiles with 8 letters and 8 numbers on the backs. Of these one letter and one number are removed and the rest are placed onto designated spots on the island. The rest of the island is filled with random souvenir tiles drawn from a bag. Three small treasures are also made using tiles drawn from the bag.

You have four wooden pirates which you move around the island to claim the souvenirs and treasure maps. The way this is done is similar in some ways to Hey, That's My Fish. Each tile has a number and you walk your pirate that many spaces orthogonally then take the tile you were previously on. You can walk over empty spaces but if you end your turn on an empty space or in the four center squares, that pirate is done for the day and goes to the first empty seat at the bar. Once all the pirates are at the bar you stop collecting and start guessing where the treasure is.

If someone guesses where the treasure is he wins. If no one does, the game is decided by victory points. You get victory points by collecting sets of souvenirs and matching the small treasures. When you get a match you discard your souvenirs and take the small treasure into your hold. You then replace the small treasure with tiles from the bag. You may only claim one small treasure per turn. At the end of the game you get the face value of all your small treasure tiles, plus 2 points for having the most small treasure stacks, plus 2 points for any pair of matching tiles you did not cash in for small treasures.

The odd thing about the small treasures is that the face value of them may be worth much less than the tiles you are trading in. There's nothing to be done about this as any set of two tiles is worth a minimum of 2 points so there is no need to say keep them to generate pairs in front of you rather than taking them but I have to say it feels weird handing in high value tiles only to take low value ones.

The only other mechanic worth mentioning is that when you pass by your opponent's pirate you are allowed to turn up one of his collected treasure tiles. This of course gives you more information about where the treasure is.

When all the treasure collecting is done you take turns in the order of the pirates at the bar placing the pirate at the coordinates on the island where you think the treasure might be. Then you reveal the location and if anyone is on that tile they win. If not you check points and the highest total wins.

Opinion
The game is pretty unassuming and I hate to give it a poor review as it clearly has quite a bit going for it. It is fast to play, features deduction, set collection, and tricky board play, looks great on the table, and doesn't cost a lot. Hell, even the box is on the smaller side which is something I'm always begging publishers for.

The problem is the game just doesn't excite me at all. Some games can be completely solid and still lack that spark that makes me want to play them and this game falls completely into that category. It makes me feel somewhat sad when I play a game like this. Whereas it is easy when you either really like or really dislike a game, with this game I feel almost nothing.

I feel like I should like the game for all of the logical reasons mentioned above but in the end I just don't. It's like being in a relationship with someone who has all the right qualities but with whom you have 0 chemistry. There's nothing more to say really. This game goes on the trade pile with me knowing that it will make someone very happy.

Summoner Wars
Summoner Wars is another game we played that has left me with some internal conflict. This one I'm a bit more excited to explore though.

Summoner Wars is like playing Memoir '44 using a deck of Magic the Gathering cards as units.

I don't think I can be any more clear when describing this game. You have a deck of cards and a battlefield with rectangular spaces. You move and fight in a way very similar to Memoir but your units are a lot more varied and have special powers. You need to spend cards to put new units on the battlefield and those cards come from a magic pile that is comprised of defeated enemy units and anything you wish to discard from your hand to build it up.

There are currently 6 race decks in the game plus a couple of reinforcement decks. Jake played the Guild Dwarves and I Played the Cave Goblins.

The strength of the Cave Goblins is that most of their units cost nothing to summon and they have several event cards that give them movement and attack bonuses for swarming an enemy.

I wasn't really able to discern what the particular strength of the Guild Dwarves was but they had some units that could more easily attack walls and some units that could pin your units down if they got too close.

I forgot to mention that each person has a Summoner on the field who is essentially the general. The goal of the game is to kill your opponent's summoner.

So this is how the game went. In the first game I used superior numbers (and superior dice rolling) to crush Jake in a very short period of time... and it was pretty fun, for me if not for Jake.

Jake pronounced the game broken so we played again and we discussed how to play against the Cave Goblins. We both thought just hanging back and letting me play through my deck before really attacking might be the answer and that's exactly what he did. I made a couple of runs at his summoner but the dice were not with me this time and he held me off long enough to bring out his champion who I could not get near with any of my units. Then he attacked and killed my summoner and the game was over.

Conclusion
So I won one game and lost one game. I enjoyed one and did not enjoy the other. Here's the thing though. I didn't enjoy the game I won because I won. I enjoyed it because it was fast and furious and a good deal of fun. The second game by contrast was a frustrating slog which was over at least 3 turns before it was finished.

This game has a bit too much chess and a bit too little Magic the Gathering for my taste.

Given the mixed experience I had I DO very much want to play it more and I will. I want to play this game at least 2 times with each race before I fire it. If I find the magic (no pun intended) in the game I'll keep it and possibly even buy the master set coming out. But if the game is exactly as it appears I will be getting rid of this one as well.

Incidentally this game made me think of another unplayed game I have: Battleground Fantasy Warfare. Can anyone comment on these games comparatively?

Summary
So in the end this game night was a real mixed bag. One game is clearly off the island and another that I had high hopes for had a somewhat disappointing showing for me. I hope to have more to report soon.

Three Player Session - Tinner's Trail and China

2011-02-25T15:07:00.001-05:00

Lord Boddington bailed on us last night. The British nobles can be fickle as you probably concluded from my previous post on Richard III and Bodds is no different.

I had Tinner's Trail all setup figuring games where you can both screw people and sell pasties would be a big hit so when Alex bailed we went ahead with it as a 3 player game. This was only the second playing of the game but it actually seemed like a more ferocious 3 player game than it was with 4 during our previous play. In any case it's a pretty great game. The game is very simple to learn and fast playing with a minimal amount of fiddliness, a rarity for Martin Wallace.

Last night I won pretty handily but I never felt like I had the game in hand. I had a great first round when the price was high for both Copper and Tin. I had two decent mines and was able to mine and sell a lot. This gave me 36 victory points right off the bat and left me with a good amount of money for the second round.

I started the second round off competently and had things under control but ended up making some bad bids on empty regions that didn't pan out at all. Still I managed to stay above water and get some tin sold. Prices were low for this turn and in fact stayed low for the remainder of the game.

In the third round I accidentally let Geoff bid me out of my time points which left me unable to sell and without much money. Luckily I was able to go first in the final round and get many of the good developments. This let me mine most of my metals for free during the last round of the game and buy into a healthy amount of victory points.

Still I was outclassed in the final half of the game by Geoff who cunningly bid me into using all of my Mines for some very poor areas. Jake was strapped for cash for much of the game but still managed to come close to Geoff's score.

There's nothing much more to say about this one. It all hangs together very very nicely and makes for an exceptional game. I can't think of anyone who likes moderately serious games that I would not recommend this to. It's a true gem.

Since we were 3 rather than 4 I decided to pull out China, a former favorite that hadn't seen any action in the last five years. I thought it would be fun for Geoff and Jake and I wanted to see if it had aged well. I'm happy to report that it hasn't lost much of its charm for me.

I didn't even compete sadly. I think I made the rookie mistake of opening up the regions for the other players to jump into.

We played back to back games and I did even worse in my second game.

As far as my specific feelings about the game going back to it after all these years I'll expound a bit. First and foremost this is an extremely efficient game. It's simple to teach, fast to play, and pretty deep. That said this isn't exactly a super fun game. I don't have any illusions about that. Every choice I had to make in the second game seemed to be between bad and worse choices and that ground me down after a while. But it's still a great game. I think I want to try to get it to the table a few more times soon to see if I can recover some sort of strategic edge in the game.

I also want to get The Golden City back to the table. I had a couple of unsatisfactory playings of that game and I reviewed it as an average China wannabe on boardgamegeek. Now I'm eager to get back to it to see if It really doesn't compare or if my opinion was the result of not really loving China that much anymore.

If anyone has opinions to share on either of these games or even Golden City please offer them as comments.

Cheers!

2 Player Session Number 2

2011-02-21T10:53:00.003-05:00

One of my unpublished New Year's gaming resolutions was to get together with Jake more often to play meaty 2 player games. Most of these end up being light war games that I have been collecting. In the past we have played Through the Ages, Memoir '44, and 1960: The Making of the President and pretty much every session has been a hit. The problem is just that I don't often have time for two game sessions a week and I always prefer to have a full Metroburb meetup so these sessions have been limited to only those weeks where everyone else cannot make it.

Well in 2011 we decided to try for a once monthly dedicated 2 player session in addition to the normal weekly full game session and so far we are 2 for 2. Our first session was a pretty successful 2 games of Twilight Struggle (which is great but I might actually prefer 1960 but that's another entry) and last night we rolled out Richard III and Resident Evil the Deck Building Game.

Richard III
Richard III is a Columbia block game by the designer of Hammer of the Scots. I don't own HotS and I have never played a block war game so this was all new to me. I received the game as a Christmas gift in 2009 right after its release and I had never managed to play it despite repeatedly reading the rules.

Last night with some hesitation we sat down and knocked it out. After a few turns it flowed pretty well. The rules make the game seem pretty complicated and forbidding despite being relatively short. They are dense and full of exceptions which are hard to keep track of. I also think they could use some help keeping their terminology consistent and clear.

Like most games though, you can really drive yourself crazy over rules minutiae that simply don't occur that often in the playing of the game. This is definitely the case here. The number of exceptions would lead you to believe that exceptions are frequent when, in fact, they really aren't.

I won't go into great depth regarding the rules except to say that both players have blocks representing nobles and armies with a strength, an initiative, and a firepower and that the goal is to be king at the end of the game which is 3 campaigns long.

The turns are driven by a small deck of cards from which each player has 7 cards each campaign. Some cards are events and some are just action points. You spend action points moving and recruiting and when blocks from both sides end up in the same area after all the moving of both players is done you battle.

Battling consists of rolling dice equal to the strength of the block in initiative order with defenders rolling before attackers. Any roll of the block's firepower or less is a hit which causes the enemy block to rotate 90 degrees and lose one strength, meaning that that block will roll less dice when they fire. Nobles get a defensive firepower bonus when they are in their home region.

You battle in rounds until someone defeats all the blocks or retreats all of their blocks.

That's basically the whole game. You play all 7 of your cards then you count the nobles, royal heirs, churches, and control of london (1 point each) on the board. Whoever has the most is king and the other player is the pretender and must start the next campaign in exile and fight his way back onto the board.

At the end of the third campaign whoever is king is the winner. You can win earlier if you eliminate all of the royal heirs on the opposing side.

There are some other interesting mechanics worth mentioning. One is that each side has a set of nobles that the other side also has. These are nobles that can change sides during the game. If you are in a battle with the king, the pretender or, Warwick against one of these nobles you can perform a treachery roll instead of firing. If you roll all even numbers the noble jumps over to your side.

The other interesting mechanic is that blocks can enter battles from different areas but only the blocks coming a across a single border may fight in the first round. The rest, whether they are attackers or defenders are reserves and are considered to have arrived at the battle late. They don't participate until rounds 2 and later.

And I should mention that while you are doing this only you can see your blocks, stratego style, so until you fight you don't really know who is in any one space.

Thoughts
So on to the important part: what did I think of this game? Well first of all it's pretty fast and pretty light and fun in contrast to what you would think reading the rules. Now it is possible that this was only because we were new to the game and playing pretty fast and loose. It's possible that once you get to know this game and are playing with more strategy the pace of the game would slow down greatly.

I'm not sure if we were playing every rule correctly but it all felt pretty smooth and we didn't really encounter a lot of exceptional situations which was good.

The game seemed to me pretty difficult to play well. I had no idea what I should be doing to succeed and how to accomplish that goal. The basic goal of the game is to keep your nobles alive and on the board while simultaneously lowering the number of nobles your enemy has on the board. The difficulty here comes in not knowing exactly where everyone is. Also there are some nobles that come back at the beginning of each campaign and some who do not. Basically the heirs and dedicated nobles once destroyed are out of the game while the city levees, mercenaries, and potentially treacherous nobles come back at the beginning of each campaign. Since mercenaries and levees do not count for victory and respawn you can play fast and loose with them but using your royals and loyal nobles in a lopsided battle is a prescription for disaster.

During the game I had Jake pretty well under control but then in the final campaign he had several high valued cards and managed to chase my nobles into the upper corner of the board and destroy just enough of them using superior numbers (and superior dice rolling!) to have the game end in a tie. I was the current king so I won anyway but it was pretty tight. If you don't permanently destroy some valuable nobles in the earlier campaigns there is no such thing as a certain victory in the final campaign which is interesting.

The dice were firmly on Jake's side for most of the game. It was a rare roll for him that scored 0 hits which is pretty ridiculous. I on the other hand had some good luck but also had some mind boggling rolls of 12 or more dice with only a single hit.

Anyway I liked the game a lot and want to play it again as soon as I can to keep the rules fresh. I suggested next time we revisit Twilight Struggle and replay this game in the same session and I think that will be a great, if slightly long, combination.

This game is a 7 for me right now.

Resident Evil the Deck Building Game
Let's get this out of the way right now. RE:DBG is dominion with character abilities, a Resident Evil theme, and an extra thing to do each turn (kill infecteds). The card quality is poor. My cards all spontaneously warped beyond believe while sitting in the box. The box layout is nice: better than any other deck building game. The art work is ok. The card abilities feel sorta sub-par and the rules are pretty atrocious.

The game has 3 modes of which we only played the story mode. In the story mode you build your deck dominion style while also working through the Mansion killing infecteds. When the big bad comes up and is killed the person with the most decorations from killing infecteds wins.

Thoughts
First let me say that in general I liked the theme of the game and more or less enjoyed it as we were playing.

But there is a big but here... We played this game for over an hour and were nowhere near finishing. Since the goal of the game is to kill infecteds you need weapons and ammo. The ammo doubles as gold for buying cards. Jake and I diligently built up our deck for card drawing and buying power and were thinking we would convert to weapons later in the game. Well this turns out to be a horrible idea. We both had great decks for acquiring cards after an hour and were nowhere near suited for killing bad guys in the mansion.

This is a problem that is easily remedied by just learning from that and changing the way you play the game but it was annoying to experience.

The other problem is that several things in this game are not quite what they would be in dominion.

The first rule problem that I had to consult board game geek to resolve is that, unintuitively, ammo can be used each turn for its full ammo value AND its full gold value. I can't say this deeply affected the game for us because we often didn't have the weapons we needed to use the ammo with anyway but we did not figure this out until about halfway through our hour of play.

The second rule problem, and this one is my bad because it is in the book... at the end... in the glossary... is that trashed cards in this game go to the bottom of the resource piles rather than out of the game. The only card that let you trash cards in this game was a stack of just 5 cards and the card required itself to be trashed upon using. When we used them we trashed them out of the game and once they were gone we lost all ability to eject unwanted cards from our decks. I'm sure this slowed the game down alot.

There are piles of cheap weapons in the game. Things like knives and handguns. These are relatively low power and didn't look useful but I get the impression now that I should have been buying them frequently to have lots of options for firepower in my deck.

Oh well, live and learn. In the end we aborted the game because it was way late and were were nowhere near done.

Does this mean I'm through with this game? No. I'm rather intrigued in fact. I want to get this game out a few more times and see if tweaking my approach makes the game tractable. Once I'm there I'll pass final judgement on the game. Right now though, I have to knock the game on it's rules presentation and its ability go to off the rails for new players. Dominion would never go this way even if someone was buying all the wrong cards.

What did I like about this game?

Theme - I liked the theme even though I'm not big on the horror genre. I still think this game HAS a theme which is more than I can say for Dominion.

Characters - Having levelable characters that have special abilities is cool and I liked it very much.

Mansion - I like the explore mechanic. It felt sorta like the monster mechanic from Ascension but I liked it a bit better.

What did I not like about this game?

Ammo - The dual nature of ammo is confusing when building your deck

Low Power Weapons - I don't know what to make of the low power weapons in this game

Low Power Cards - All the cards in this set seem like the first 10 cards in Dominion. They just don't do much exciting stuff.

Mansion Order - Since the mansion is just shuffled you could encounter the big bad on your first turn and if you do you'll be dead. Dying is pretty harsh in this game. You miss a turn and come back with a permanently lowered health.

No Tokens - You have health in this game and there is no way in the box to track it. You need pen and paper or some tokens of some sort. I don't like when games do that. I realize this is common for CCGs and this is from a CCG company but it's not a CCG.

Rules - They just didn't get the job done and the layout is terrible.

Quality - Not good enough. Sleeves are a must for this game and I don't think the box will hold the sleeved cards. Also the box is thin and mine is pretty banged up from shipping.

I rate this a 5 until I can play it a few more times. I don't see it going above a 6.5 but if it gets a least that high it can live at my house. We'll see. There is also an expansion coming that could improve the game if the cards are right.

Revolution!

2011-02-17T14:40:00.001-05:00

OK part 2 of yesterday's session report is on Revoution! by (gasp!) Steve Jackson Games!!!

Yeah I guess I should get over the fact that SJG has created a game I liked. I quite enjoy Zombie Dice as well but that is a game I can see SJG making whereas Revolution! seems like a pretty large departure for them as a company.

Whatever the reason behind SJG's move to produce this game it is indeed a good one. It has instantly joined the almost empty category of blind bidding games that I like.

So what is this game all about? Well without going into the rules too much I'll explain the game thusly: you are starting a revolution. To make your revolution succeed you will need to use force, blackmail, and bribery to gain the control of important people in the city. Influence is the victory condition of the game and you gain influence by controlling the characters and by controlling locations in the town. It's actually surprisingly thematic.

On each turn you will use three types of currency to try to control up to 6 of the 12 characters available in the game. From weakest to strongest the currencies are gold, blackmail, and force. So one blackmail will beat any number of gold and one power will beat anything but more power. One added wrinkle is that certain characters are immune to certain types of influence.

This is pretty thematic too actually. For example, the General gives you only a single influence point if you convince him to help you but he will give you a power (presumably some troops) to bid with next turn, and a spot in the fortress. The Captain gives you a point, one power, and a spot in the harbor. For both of these characters you may not bid using force. After all they control the army and the navy so they are immune to your force.

The Inn Keeper and Magistrate will give you some blackmail and the Aristocrat and the Merchant will give you gold, and the Printer will give you a whopping 10 influence points but nothing else.

So you get the picture: the characters will give you a combination of influence, bidding currency for the next round, and presence in various important places in the town and it all very much makes sense what you are getting from whom and why certain types of currency do or do not work on them.

At the end of the game big points can be had for majorities in parts of the town. Two characters, the spy and the apothecary allow you to replace an opponent's cube in a part of town or swap cubes from two parts of town respectively. These abilities become important as the building spaces fill up and the game draws to a close.

In our game Jake was one of the few people who had force and used it to guarantee the services of the printer for most of the game. There was a ton of jostling for position in the various town institutions and I thought I had a good handle on this with majorities in several innocuous buildings which I parlayed using the apothecary into majorities in several important buildings only to be booted out at the last minute by dark horse winner Geoff.

The game is super-fast and very fun. Each round everyone reveals what they have to bid with and no one is allowed to save currency from round to round so you are only bidding with what you won in the previous round. If you were unlucky and have less than five tokens of any kind to bid with you receive patronage in gold to make up the difference. So even if you are completely blocked out in a round you will not be broke and you will be able to claw back in.

The only thing to be warned about in this game is the potential for a slow player to blow it up. Our game was pretty short. Definitely less than 45 minutes but Jake, who is the deliberator in our group, was taking turns of a length that bordered on making the game un-fun. His turns were not terribly long but I would estimate he was at least 1/3 slower than the rest of us on all but a few occasions.

This game should be played with a light and raucous attitude for maximum enjoyment. At the same time it is a pretty rare blind bidding game in that there is plenty of information to tell you what people might bid on and how much they might bid... assuming your group makes rational decisions... but that's another post. I'll just say that one of the reasons I think Bang! and Shadow Hunters and other secret role games don't go over well in our group is that people don't play their roles like you would expect so it all ends up seeming totally random.

In any case Revolution is a great game night starter or finisher and is entirely solid and, most importantly, fun. Very much the same feel as our current darling Lords of Vegas.

I rate it a 7 and can see it going up with further plays.

Ad Astra (and Revolution)!

2011-02-16T16:11:00.002-05:00

Two games off the unplayed list last night: Ad Astra and Revolution! I'll post about revolution later because I have been giving it quite a bit of thought.

Ad Astra is a game I've been sitting on for a very long time. I believe I threw it into a Boulder Games order in order to qualify for free shipping. It was very expensive even at internet prices if I remember correctly. It probably wouldn't seem that expensive now that every game seems to cost almost $40 even with internet discounts.

Anyway this game is by Serge Laget and Bruno Faidutti. In the game you are playing for points which are gained by scorings that the player's control. There is space exploration, resource generation, building, trading, and action selection using a deck of cards each player has. If it sounds like Race for the Galaxy has a baby with Settlers of Catan that's a pretty apt comparison. In fact same-y-ness was probably one of the main reasons it stayed on the shelf for so long. Well that and a rule book that makes the game seem a bit harder than it really is.

In the end though this is unfair because the game really is a good one. The action selection is done on a planning board. Each player places down cards in slots numbered 1-12 and that is the order the cards will come up in. So you might want to ensure a build later in the round and hope that other players are going to play some production cards so you can get the resources you need to do the build. Or you might want to lay down an early build card so you can lay a scoring card later in the round and take advantage of your improved position.

The action deck consists of 3 different produce cards with 2 resources on each, 3 different travel cards with 2 star systems on each, 3 different scoring cards with 2 types of scoring each, 1 build card and 1 trade card. You get all the cards back each round except for the scoring cards which you only get back after playing them all. This is a nice way to ensure that someone doesn't build up a lead in one of the scoring elements and then repeatedly play the scoring card to run away with the game.

For each of the cards with two elements on them the owner of the card gets to choose which is in effect. So I can choose which of the two resources are produced and which of the two scorings occur on my card. Movement cards allow each player a choice of where to move rather than having the owner choose a destination.

Usually the owner of the card gets some benefit. For build cards the owner can build many times but everyone else may only build once. For movement the owner can move all of his ships and the other players may only move one. You probably get the picture.

I really like the movement mechanic. All stars have a system of planets around them which are resource producing worlds or alien worlds which produce only points and bonuses. When someone plays a movement card you can pay energy to move to one of the systems on the card and explore the planet, picking one to land on. Having a ship on a planet allows you to gain resources from it and to build a permanent colony on the planet to continue to gain resources after you leave. You may also build factories and tera formers. Factories give you more resources and tera formers give you points.

The scoring cards allow you to score for how many systems you have presence in, colonies and factories, tera formers, and resource cards (discard cards for points). Each type of scoring gives a bonus to the leader so you can really rack up the points.

The game plays to 50 points or until all of the planets are explored. The game feels a bit like a race as you are really just quickly trying to build up your civilization and get your scoring cards out as quickly as possible for the win. The rule that you cannot reclaim your scoring cards means that you will need to play some cards that will likely benefit other people in the process of getting back the card or cards that score the most points for you.

I was surprised how much I like this game. It is pretty light and plays quickly. I won't be pulling it out frequently but I hope to get it out regularly at least as it is a game that isn't too taxing on the old noodle but provides you with a feeling of accomplishment as you are running it through its paces.

I rate it a 7.5

Survive!

2011-02-14T20:19:00.001-05:00

Survive!

Well this is how sick I am... in the head, I mean. I just posted recently that I would not be buying Survive! because I just felt that I didn't need it. Well it showed up at my door last week. Apparently I pre-ordered it and forgot. Wow.

That's how it goes when you buy way too many games I guess. Anyway this turned out to be a very fortunate accident. I punched the tiles, read the rules, and looked at all the neat wood that came with the game then dropped it on the shelf until the weekend.

On Saturday I brought it out and played the game with my wife and kids. My older son was able to play with no help at all and my younger son needed minimal guidance so clearly this is a pretty light game. But you know what? It was awesome. Seriously fun. I have not had that level of sheer glee playing a game in a long long time. When we finished everyone commented that the game had been a capital "G" Great experience and we should play it again as soon as possible.

I was proud when my older son compared the island sinking mechanic to Forbidden Island, another game that he likes quite a bit but not nearly as much as this one.

Battlestar Galactica! (In survive the ! is part of the title. In BSG it's just there because it should be.)

I bought BSG when it came out what 2 or 3 years ago now? The game didn't seem terribly complex but I read that it was best with people who have seen the show and that it was best with more players and that it was a long game and... fill in the blanks. In any case it remained on the shelf and was the subject of many a failed weekend games day plan but never made it to the table.

Fast forward a long long time and I meet Mark who not only loves games but loves and frequently plays BSG. The lazy part of me shined through and I asked if he could run a session for us and teach the game. Well he graciously agreed and we finally played last week.

We only had 4 which I guess is a bit light for the game but it was pretty great nevertheless. The game is fairly typical co-op fair with respect to running around undoing all the bad things that happen in the hope that the game will not eventually crush you. The difference here is the integration of theme. The game really honestly felt like the show... for better or worse. Sometimes it was just brutal and punishing and hopeless. Sometimes it was exciting and epic. I don't think I have ever seen a game that pulled off its license or theme so damned well. This is helped of course by the fact that the show has hidden traitors just like the game. No innovation required there really. The way you resolve parts of the "bad things happen" part of the game is through skill checks which are augmented by some random contributions as well as the contributions of your fellow good guys and the potential bad guy or guys really works.

In the end we lost but the whole game was very cinematic and it totally lived up to its reputation. It's not a game I could see myself playing every week but I would very much like to make a regular date to play the game.

Bedroom De-Gaming

Games were starting to collect embarrassingly in my bedroom and my wife had had enough of it so she told me to move them downstairs to the vault with my other games. I really couldn't fit them. I ended up generating another box of games to sell some of which I'd really rather not part with.

I did go back and fill in some of the spaces in crates where games had left the building and not been backfilled though so it wasn't all bad. In the end though there are way too many games. My goal is to get as many new games played as possible in the coming months so I can make some more hard decisions and move them out. In fact I'm hoping for some duds so the decisions are easier.

I'm up to a good 15 games for sale on BGG and I have another pile of 6 or 7 that I'd like to get played once more before I give them the boot.

One game I came across in the bedroom was Tales of the Arabian Nights. This was a game I enjoyed a lot but it is long and really not so much a game as it is a way to spend a few hours with friends. I'd like to keep it but it's huge and I haven't played it once since the initial two plays it got. Should I work on getting this out more or just let it go?

To Glue or Not to Glue... and Once Glued where to Store?

2011-02-06T21:41:00.000-05:00

Battles of Westeros

Those of you who have or have played Battles of Westeros. Did you glue the figures into the bases? If you did what kind of glue did you use and how did you fit them all back into the box afterward? If you did not is the game really playable without gluing the figures to the bases? I'm pretty morally opposed to throwing away box inserts but most of the FFG inserts seem almost supposed to be thrown away.

C&C Napoleonics
I stickered and sorted Commands and Colors Napoleonics recently and the game does not fit in the box anymore. Is one supposed to carry C&C games in a tackle box and just store the empty boxes on the shelf? I have not had this problem with C&C Ancients but that is only because I have the edition without the mounted board.

Kids are Scary Sometimes
My kids are starting to like a variety of good games that I'm happy to play with them. They are also interested to try almost any game I put in front of them. Once in a while though they express an interest that I find slightly terrifying. This weekend it was the utter glee that Sitting Ducks Gallery caused in my 4 year old as he blew the tail feathers off mine and his brother's ducks... He insisted on playing the game no less than 3 more times. We also tried a game called Beat the Count which I reviewed on the Geek ages ago rating it a 3 only because I sorta like the cards. This game is abysmal. It feels like multi-player speed war. We played for about 15 minutes, were nowhere near done, and I said "You guys wanna stop? This is pretty bad isn't it?" Both boys agreed and the game was gone. Now this game is a tough one. I think I paid 11 dollars for it when I bought it. I only bought it because there were no reviews on the geek and no indication about what kind of game it was on the box but it was from winning moves and I thought maybe there could be a game in there. Wrong. Oh well. So what does one do with an 11 dollar single purpose deck of cards that no one could possibly want? Keeping it for use in other games if possible is my only thought.

Games Sold
I've sold a few games in the BGG marketplace. All in all it is working out well although I think all I'm doing is assuaging guilt because I'm not getting much for any of them and the effort to pack and ship them is ridiculous.

Here is what I've sold so far and their status in my collection.
1) In a Pickle - A party game I never once played. I carried it to family occasions for a while years ago and it never came out of the bag. So I decided to let it go.
2) Pizza Box Baseball - I really wanted a baseball game to love but this one wasn't it. I played one aborted session of the game. The easy game was boring and the advanced game was not worth the effort... or so it seemed.
3) Gloom - Read the rules a bunch of times and carried the game around with me but never got it to the table. My friends don't like these types of games and it seemed sort of boring and like it would overstay its welcome. Sadly I payed full retail for this which was $30 I think.
4) Surf's Up Dude! - I haven't written this game off yet. I played the advanced version once. The game has big-time component design issues which I think hold it back a lot but I actually somehow had 2 copies of this game so one is still in my collection and I'd like to correct some of these problems and try the game again before selling the second copy.
5) Midgard - Selling this game made me sad. My enjoyment of the game was severely hampered by a couple of people in my group really not enjoying this game. The game play is really tight and fast and the game has a ton of good things going for it but for some reason all the good things about the game didn't add up to a good time for me. So I had mixed emotions letting it go. I would be open to buying this game if it reprinted with different graphics or preferably a completely different theme. If there were a game that was Small World to this game's Vinci that would be just perfect. I let it go for a song too...
6) Saga - Kramer game from Tanga that never made it to the table. It looked pretty nice but in a collection the size of mine it just didn't make the grade.

I'm hoping these games and the games I want to sell but have not as of yet will make some people very happy, otherwise I honestly would be better off delivering them to the dumpster in terms of the value of my time and effort. Most of the bigger stuff I'm trying to get rid of is still lingering in the BGG marketplace.

Revolution!
...and of course I did buy Revolution! I'll report back on whether it's any good soon. I predict it will be played this week.

Cargo Noir Looks Like a Hit to Me

2011-02-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

I just finished reading the rules to Cargo Noir after reading a bit of background and opinion on the game at Bruno Faidutti's blog. I already knew I was buying the game but who knows if it will have any staying power right? Well I don't think that Cargo Noir has the endless expansion capacity of Small World or Ticket to Ride but I do think it has the potential to be a sort of classic auction game in a-la Ra.

The game is extremely simple and revolves around bidding on lots of goods which are then traded in for victory points and/or special abilities. The rules left me thinking something akin to a less harsh Medici with a more compelling theme. That is a very, very good thing folks.

I absolutely cannot wait to play it.

In other news do I need to buy Wallenstein if I have Shogun? I really love Shogun but I always heard the Wallenstein map was better and that the extra special abilities in Shogun where just needless complexity. So to those of you who know please comment. Is Wallenstein distinctly different and/or better than Shogun?

Another thing on my mind lately is the expansions for Zooloretto. I'd love to hear if anyone has played XXL, Exotic, or Boss... I have all the tiny expansions to the game as well as Aquaretto but some of the bigger expansions actually seem really cool if not a bit overpriced. I'd love to hear from anyone with experience.

Keep in touch.

What's Coming Down the Pipe

2011-02-03T10:35:00.000-05:00

Hot on the heels of talking about all the games I've managed NOT to buy here is a quick run down of the games that are known to be coming out and where they are on my radar.

I'd love to hear what games you readers are looking forward to. Feel free to just reiterate some of these or add to the list in your comments!

DB == Definite Buy
RR == Read Rules
NB == No Buy

Shogun: Tenno's Court expansion (DB)

This is a must buy for me. I love Shogun so unless this is crazy over-priced I'm not even going to read about it before I get it.

Rails of New England - (RR/DB)

I need to read more about this game but I heard an interview with the designer and I'm a New Englander and love anything related to local history. I'm really hoping this game will be a keeper. All the old New England companies in the game sound really neat and nostalgic. If the rules are published before the game comes out I'll read them with an open mind but if they do not I may just buy the game sight unseen.

German Railways - (RR)

A Queen revamp of Preussische Ostbahn by Winsome Games and Harry Wu. I like Chicago Express a lot and the 90 minute play time of this game is intriguing. It's definitely a read the rules before deciding game but I could be easily swayed toward buying this one.

Survive! - (NB)

My feelings about this game might change if I ever get a chance to play it somewhere but for now even though it's absolutely awesome looking and nice and light, it is not a buy for me.

Automobile - (RR)

I have heard that the economy in this game is brutal. Ridiculously brutal. But I REALLY LOVE THE THEME. This is a game I hope to get my hands on the rules for before I have to decide whether to buy it or not but because it is a Martin Wallace game and even the reprints seem to sell out and be hard to get, I may have to buy it. At least I will get free shipping and be able to sell it at a premium if I don't like it.

Sun, Sea, and Sand (RR)

This is another Cwali and Corne van Moorsel game. Basket Boss was a nice light game and had a high fun factor. I'll be trying to track down the rules to this one and see if it's up my alley. I sorta hope it won't be because it is sure to be expensive. I think this one is already in stock at Game Surplus.

Show Manager (DB)

I liked this game a lot when I tried it. I don't think it deserves the production and price tag Queen will put on it but it is a flat out buy for me regardless.

Ticket to Ride Alvin and Dexter Monster Expansion (DB)

I have all the Ticket to Ride permutations and expansions even though the original is the only one that sees any real table time. Who am I kidding? I'm buying this.

Cosmic Encounter Cosmic Conflict Expansion (DB)

I have the FFG reprint of Cosmic Encounter and Cosmic Incursion. I have never gotten it to the table but I will. I think this game should go over well with my group. I will buy this expansion.

1830 (NB)

I'm sure this is a fantastic game. One of the best of all time in fact. But it is too long and too unforgiving sounding for my group and play style. Games like this just remind me that I need to get games like Power Grid to the table more often.

Cargo Noir (DB)

Days of Wonder non-party games are all definite buys for me. They missed with me with Mystery Express but I still liked it better than many people. I don't know much about this game but I like the publisher and designer and that's enough for me to give it a try.

The Resistance (NB)

Social psychological games do not go over well with my group. We didn't like Shadow Hunters. We don't have enough people for Werewolf and if we did I'm pretty sure the group wouldn't like it. We can get away with a game of Bang! here and there as well as Cash N' Guns but neither of those are favorites. I'd love to try this sometime with another group of people but it's a no buy for me.

Haggis (RR/DB)

I passed Haggis over the first time but I think I'm going for it this time. Also need to start getting Tichu played in the group. I think they will like that with enough plays and we will have 4 frequently now that Richard is gone.

Triumvirate (NB)

I've gone back and forth on this as I have heard different reviews. I'm sure it's good but I don't get the feeling I need to have it.

Lord of the Rings Living Card Game (NB)

I am heavily invested in the Game of Thrones LCG and I'm not getting my money's worth out of that. I also have the Warhammer Invasion core set which I have never played. I will not be adding another LCG to my collection.

Dungeons and Dragons Wrath of Ashardalon (DB)

I preordered this when Castle Ravenloft came out. I like the theme better than the Ravenloft setting and I enjoyed Ravenloft. I am a bit unhappy with the shelf space required for these games though.

Carcassonne Castle - The Falcon (NB)

Is this an expansion for Carcassonne the Castle? I won't be buying it if so but that reminds me that I do like that version of the game and should get it back to the table as soon as possible.

Mansions of Madness (NB)

I've pretty much had it with big FFG games. I'd like to give this one a try at someone else's expense but I won't be buying it myself (unless they blow it out for $25 at next year's holiday sale like they did with Android this year)

Battles of Westeros Lords of the River (DB)

I have bought the base game and the two current expansions for Battles of Westeros. I still need to get it to the table but it seems right up my alley so I'll be picking this up too.

Struggle of Empires (RR/NB)

A classic game that has been extremely hard to find. I've heard mixed opinions about it. Some seem to think it's the best game ever and others compare it to watching paint dry. I need to do alot more research on this one before it comes out so I can decide whether it might be for me.

El Caballero (RR/NB)

I love El Grande but this one has mixed reviews in its past. I'm going to research this one thoroughly before I decide whether to pick it up. I'm leading toward not buying it right now.

Dschunke (RR/NB)

I passed up an old copy of this game when I was in Montreal a few years back and I really regretted it at the time. Now this game might be getting a bit long in the tooth. I need to revisit the reviews and rules and see if it is still of interest. I am sorta hot and cold on Michael Schacht games but this one seemed very good when I was first getting into the hobby back in 2004.

Thunderstone Dragonspire (DB)

Despite having never managed to get it to the table I have all the current Thunderstone expansions and I will be picking this on up as well. I need to get this game played as soon as possible and unload the whole collection if it doesn't go over well. Like Dominion, Thunderstone is a game that is aggravating in the size of its boxes. Please please please sart selling these card games in something more like a baseball card long box. There is no need for a 1 foot square box for every expansion. If you must have the space for art and marketing why not just do what Hasbro does for Magic the Gathering. Put it in a big flimsy paper box that is meant to be thrown away and embed a smaller keeper box inside. The way MtG does its Fat Packs would be completely ideal for Dominion expansions. It would save shipping space and shelf space and the boxes are practically indestructible. For anal retentive people like me who simply will not dispose of a box it's the only solution.

K2 (DB)

Heard great things about this surrounding Essen and have been waiting for it to show up on this shore. It's a definite buy for me. I'll sell it if it doesn't go over well.

Eminent Domain (RR)

I have heard quite a bit about this game and it seems like it is up my alley. Looks very much akin to Race for the Galaxy. I'm going to actually let this one land and see what the community says about it before buying it though. I have enough engine building/deck building card games. If I miss the initial print run of this one I think I can deal with it.

Dominion Cornucopia (DB)

Read rant on Thunderstone boxes. I've played a ton of dominion online but I usually play only the base game in person so this is just me being a completist.

Star Trek Expeditions (RR/DB)

I'm not usually a Star Trek fan but when I see WizKids and Reiner Knizia doing a co-op board game with hero clix miniatures I have to admit I'm intrigued. I'll be keeping a close eye on this one and if it starts to look positive I'm going to pick it up.

JAB Realtime Boxing (RR/NB)

Crazy looking Boxing card game that seems like it has a very central speed element. Weird. Probably won't be buying this because of the realtime nature but I am very interested to see what people thing and to try it if possible.

Alien Frontiers (DB)

I don't know how I missed this one the first time around but I sure am sorry I did. I'll be picking up this Kingsburg in Space as soon as it is available.

Vinhos (DB)

I've been totally sold by Doug Garrett's raving reviews of this game. I'm definitely picking up the Z-Man print of it when it becomes available.

Troyes (DB)

I've wanted this game since first hearing about it around Essen. Sounds like another great dice mechanic and I can't wait to try it.

Wraping Up

Well that's all the games I currently know about and there's 14 definite buys in that bunch and quite a few fence-sitters. Once again I hope reading the rules can push at least a few of those off of the list. Of the definites I am most excited about Alien Frontiers and Troyes. Those are two games that sound like they were basically made for me.

Next time I'm going to peruse my unplayed games list and discuss which games I would like to get to the table as soon as possible.

I have a good number of games for sale on BGG and more are sure to go up soon. Sadly, many of them are unplayed. Check them out if you are interested.

Cheers!

On the Avoidance (and Lack Thereof) of Purchasing Games

2011-02-01T20:02:00.000-05:00

Readers of the blog know I spend a lot of my time researching and shopping for games. Usually I do this based on reviews and general community buzz. If I was on the fence I might try to track down the rules and give them a read prior to the purchase.

Well recently I have been reading the rules to a lot of new games before buying them and I have to say that it has successfully resulted in my not buying at least 4 games, saving about $160 if purchased online.

These games were all Z-Man joints. I love Z-Man Games, especially the card games, and to be honest these games all sound pretty good but having read the rules I knew I could live without them. I'll give a quick run-down here as well as talking about a couple of games I do want to buy.

Luna

It was quite a surprise that I managed to resist this purchase. I am a HUGE Stephan Feld fan and I believe I own every other game he has designed. He has some real gems such as Notre Dame, Speicherstadt, and Roma. I own Macao and Great Wall of China but have not gotten them to the table.

Luna looks like a game of great quality. The components look great and it's pretty cheap at under $35 internet. I commend Z-Man for keeping their prices fairly low in comparison to most new games. If you pay $40 e-tail for a Z-Man game you can be sure it has a ton of bits in it and the less expensive ones are also very nicely produced.

The game too looks like it is pretty solid. It features a fairly straight forward worker placement mechanic which you are of course using to build a bit of an engine to score points. From my reading of the rules however I detected a fairly dry game of abstract placement with a theme that didn't grab me. I know, I know theme isn't that important. Just look at Hansa Teutonica which I love. But the theme can either work for you or not and I sensed that this one would not. In addition the point scoring in the temple seemed extremely abstract and positional in nature and I tend not to like games of that sort.

So the verdict here was this: since I love Feld I'll definitely jump at the change to try this if I see it at a game night at some point, but after reading the rules I felt very comfortable not buying it, which is saying a lot for someone who constantly jumps to buy things before they go out of print or what-have-you.

First Train to Nuremberg

Martin Wallace games are far from an automatic buy for me but I will usually buy his games if they are either very well reviewed like Steam/Age of Steam, or if they have a theme that really grabs me like London or Brass. I'm considering Automobile but the jury is still out on that one mostly because it just sounds brutally tight in terms of the economy of the game.

First Train to Nuremberg is a slight riff on Wallace's Last Train to Wensleydale. This was a game I heard about around Essen but did not know anything about, except of course that it was a Wallace train game. First Train to Nuremberg supports a 2 player game, has a nice graphic redesign, and has a double sided board with the Wensleydale map on one side and the Nuremberg map on the other.

Again the production looks beautiful and the price is fantastic. Way to go Zev and company! Upon starting to read the rules I was very intrigued. This indeed seemed like a game I could get into. The game requires you to win auctions for different kinds of influence which allow you to leverage larger railroad companies, purchase second hand engines, and work with municipalities and local businesses to run your little railroad company.

This is an intriguing take on the train game. The rules started to lose me however when they discussed the details of building track and moving goods and passengers. I couldn't see myself teaching this game to the crew and other than the auction mechanism the game seemed a bit fiddly for my taste.

So again I felt comfortable not buying this game given the rules reading. Again, I would love to try it but on someone else's dime and shelf space.

Inca Empire

Inca Empire is a reprint and tweak of Tahuantinsuyu which came out a few years back and was the subject of a Board Games with Scott show. I have to admit I had no desire to pick up the game back when Scott reviewed it but again when I saw the BGG ratings, the price and beautiful production of the game and when I had learned a bit more about the game I was thinking I would be picking it up.

Unlike the Wallace game this game looks pretty streamlined and understandable. I think I could definitely teach the group this game and although it's a two hour affair it seems like it would go pretty quickly.

In this game you are building routes to expand the Inca Empire and building various beneficial structures along the way to score more points. There is also a neat looking deck of event cards that come into play during each round to help or hurt the players in various ways.

I can't really put my finger on why I stayed away from this game except that I think I have games I would rather play with a similar feel. So in this game's case it really was dictated by my existing collection more than anything that turned me off about the game from the rules reading.

Merchants and Marauders

Ok here's the big dog. I have wanted this game, or so I thought, since way before it was available. In fact I almost pre-ordered it. It's a big beautiful production with lots of direct player interaction, ship miniatures and that ever-important pirate theme. What's not to like?

Well the rules were a bit long which I guess is to be expected for a game of this length. In fact the game length is the primary turn off for me. I get the impression that with the luck involved in the game I would not want 3 hour game. I guess that makes me a bad pirate. I also got the impression that the turns would be a bit slow and that unless you were fighting in ship to ship combat you wouldn't be doing much on those turns.

I wouldn't say I was tremendously turned off reading the rules to the game. I wouldn't want to have to teach it true but they seemed pretty sensible for the most part: roll dice subject to your captain's skills and your ship's traits and do piratey or merchanty stuff for a few hours. Periodically engage another ship in a fairly lengthy combat and possibly lose everything you have as a result. In the end though I wanted the game less and not more as a result of reading the rules and that was enough to push this game off of my most recent order.

Of all of these games this is the one that I think has the highest chance of showing up in my collection. There are just not enough good pirate games out there and this one seems to be about as good as they get. The downside is of course the play time and lengthy rules which make the game not as suitable for my group.

What I Did Buy and What I (Probably) Will Buy

In the end I coughed up for just one game. Navegador. Navegador is a rondel game about exploring the world with a heavy focus on the economy revolving around settling and producing and selling raw materials and goods. I don't know what made this game feel like it would click more for me from just reading the rules but it did. I think I could sense that the game mechanics would be very smooth and easy but that the game would also have a ton of depth and tough decisions. I also very much like the look of the map and player boards. I have played only one other rondel game and that game was Shipyard. That game is loaded with rondels and I thought it was pretty good. I really need to get back to it because we played with a major rule error that would have made the game much faster.

So Navegador is on the way.

While I was hunting for something to potentially bring my order up to free shipping I bumped into Steve Jackson Games Revolution! and I'm somewhat intrigued by that as well. It's a $25 game of blind bidding with 3 different currencies for the assistance of various characters. I am not normally a fan of blind bidding games but having read about this one I'm convinced that there is enough information to overcome that prejudice. I also think the game is supposed to be very very fast and with a blind bidding game that is a virtue.

This game is available from amazon.com with free shipping so there's no need for me to throw it in with an order so I didn't pull the trigger. The other thing keeping me from this game is the box size. I don't think a game of this nature deserves the full size 1foot square game box treatment. Space is at a premium in my house and I'm annoyed at games that take up more space than they should.

Auf Wiedersehen Richard

2011-01-28T11:36:00.001-05:00

Well last week we said goodbye to our venerable resident German Richard who is off to Der Vaterland to be the big shot CEO of a spiffy new technology company. Richard is a founding member of the Metroburb Gamers and will be greatly missed.

Since we had the Martin Luther King Jr. day holiday we got an afternoon start and managed quite a few games including breaking for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant with significant others and kids in tow. It was a great way to celebrate the group. It was supposed to be a second to last meeting but it ended up being the last so I'm happy we pulled it off.

We played some great games too. The early crew, which did not include Jay (neither session included Geoff which was too bad) played the new favorite Lords of Vegas followed by Egizia. After dinner Jay joined us and we brought out the old favorites Winner's Circle and wrapped up with Bohnanza and finally 7 Wonders. I wish we could have played a few more games but I'm happy with all of our choices and I think the evening flight especially was a great way to send Richard off with some of the group's all-time favorite games.

Lords of Vegas

I'd like to talk a bit about Lords of Vegas because I think the game is special. If you have not heard of it, Lords of Vegas from Mayfair games is something of a hybrid of Acquire and Chinatown. It is driven by a deck of cards which give people ownership of lots within blocks on the strip in Vegas. You can pay to build casinos on the lots, merge them with other casinos, remodel your casinos, try to take over a casino you have interest in but are not the boss of, bet, etc. Oh and you can negotiate and trade almost anything.

I'm pretty terrible at the game so far. I have never won but I always have fun playing. The game doesn't overstay its welcome, you are always involved, and there's enough luck and plenty of negotiating to keep it interesting. The game is about points not money and the only way to get points is to be the boss of larger and larger casinos as they come up in the deck of cards.

It's a good time. A very good time and I can see it coming out frequently during the next few months. I do wish it supported 5 players and I don't know why it couldn't. I would encourage anyone who isn't put off by some luck in a game to give this one a shot.

Lords of Vegas is an 8 in my book right now and could go up.

Egizia

To fulfill our JASE (Just Another Soulless Euro) quotient I decided to teach Egizia. This is a game I have been champing at the bit to get out for a long time and have put off due to us almost always having 5 players. I thought between being earlier in the day and being a 4 player crew this would be an ideal time to bring it out.

First let me say one thing. Despite being a relatively simple game the game is pretty hard to teach. My group gets worker placement games so there was no trouble explaining the mechanism for claiming the actions on the board. The issue in explaining this game is that it is utterly unintuitive. There's just nothing to relate the game to when explaining how to allocate workers to the buildintg projects and how you scored points as a result.

So the game was slow to get going which dragged it down. Alex, our friendly neighborhood dry game hater, soured on it initially which is unsurprising. We kept on though and the game does play pretty fast and smooth as you get moving. We didn't manage to finish it before dinner but left it setup and wrapped it up right after. I had a strong lead in the game and ended up I think in last or second to last place due to having gotten 0 sphinx cards during the game. Oh well, live and learn. I did not like this game as much as I hoped I would but it was good enough to bring it back and explore it more. Hopefully by the time you internalize all the scoring mechanisms the experience improves.

Right now Egizia is about a 6.5 for me. I can see this game being a 7 in the future but I predict it will not cross into the 8's.

Winner's Circle and Bohnanza
I won't discuss Winner's Circle and Bohnanza except to say that the Black horse actually won a race in honor of the departing Richard. Wow is all i can say about that.

7 Wonders
7 Wonders continues to be our go-to short game. What more can I say about it. It doesn't seem like such a great game but it's just so easy and fast to play and provides you with such a nice range of choices. It's got that certain something I can't put my finger on. One thing is for sure. The more the group plays it the less I win. This is a disturbing trend.

7 Wonders is an 8. I can see this being a 9 or a 10 for some people and maybe in a way it deserves it but it's just too simple to score that high for me.

Anyway we have come to an end of sorts. We all wish Richard well and if anyone knows a German gamer living in Eastern Massachusetts we can use to fill the void he has created please let us know.

Cheers!

Some Thoughts on Cyclades

2011-01-17T08:16:00.001-05:00

We have now played Cyclades either 3 or 4 times (New Year's resolution to get back to tracking plays better) and I feel like I need to write about my feelings on the game.

For those who do not know the game Cyclades is a sorta civilization building game. It's pretty abstracted in most aspects except for the battles which seem to be the centerpiece of the game. The goal is to get two metropolises (metroploli?) and hold them until the end of the round.

I say it is a pretty abstract civilization game despite a very thematic looking production featuring big boards and nice figures (which break all the time).

The game board is a large sea with several islands in it. Each person starts with 2. Certain spaces on the board have cornucopias (conucopiae?) and how many of those you own is your economy in the game.

There is also a building aspect where you can build forts, ports, temples, and universities. The first 3 give you an advantage and the last is simply a building you must build. When you get one of each building you turn them into a metropolis.

You may also get a metropolis by collecting 4 philosopher cards or by attacking someone else's already built metropolis.

You build up armies and fleets and use the fleets to build a bridge between islands so you can move your armies around and battle. Battles are simple. Number of troops plus 1d6 plus any modifiers (fort, port, etc).

The main mechanic in the game is an auction for the favor of certain gods. Ares lets you build armies, move armies, and build forts. Poseidon lets you build fleets, move fleets, and build ports, Zeus lets you build temples and buy priests. Athena lets you build universities and buy philosophers. Apollo gives you money and improves your economy.

The auction mechanism is Amun Re style where you bid on a separate track for each god. The hitch is if you are outbid you must leave the track and bid on another god. As soon as everyone has bid the auction is over so you must be very careful about your initial bid lest you not get another chance to get the action you want.

This auction is very challenging and can be frustrating. Last game I got Ares exactly once and even though the game is balance enough to allow you to compete when this happens I can't say it's a ton of fun when you never are able to generate any offensive capability. Money is also incredibly tight in the game.

The other major aspect of the game is a deck of mythological creature cards that you can buy when you win any auction except Athena or Apollo. The creatures add balance by providing rule breakers like the ability to move troops without Ares or move fleets without Poseidon. They also can destroy other player's armies or buildings or protect your island.

The whole game finally came together for us last time we played. Our previous plays came to very abrupt ends. The two metropolis end condition and the various ways to get there can really sneak up on you and you absolutely cannot put your head down and play your own game ignoring other people. The whole group needs to watch for the leader and either individually or collectively make sure they cant simply end the game.

In the most recent game Jake was going to win with a metropolis from buildings and 4 philosopher cards. I was about to write the game off because this time we had been trying to watch for this and still were unable to prevent it but what ensued was a great fury of bidding and card purchasing which totally changed the landscape of the game. Within two turns Jake went from almost winning to out of the running and Geoff and Richard were left fighting for dominance. Suddenly the creatures were super important as was the implicit turn order battle resulting from the order of the god auctions. (The first god on auction also is the first person to take their turn, and the creatures are only refreshed at the beginning of the round so if you have the money and are in danger from the creatures you really want to go early in the turn and either use of flush them).

OK what does this all mean? Well first of all I'm terrible at the game. I have never even come close to winning. In our first several plays this was a real drag since the game ended without much fanfare. In this game however there was plenty of interesting stuff to watch and I could participate in speeding up or slowing down the game with my play even if I couldn't necessarily win. And in the end I actually could have won this one. All of the jockeying for the win let me more or less unwatched and I was about 2 turns away from building my own metropolis and taking an undefended one from Richard.

So it was a lot of fun this time (though probably not for Jake who got ganged up on). But that ganging up was the beginning of seeing the game in a new light for me and really improved the game in my opinion. We also know now that a lead is not as safe as it might appear which is a good thing.

Now for the plastic pieces. My copy has tons of broken or cracked pieces. This is especially true for the female figures. I've glued them several times and they don't hold. I tried ordering replacements but Asmodee is not a fun company to get replacement parts from in my experience and this game was even more frustrating because apparently Matagot (the original publisher) did not consistently use the same color for the same sculpt. Each race is a different sculpt and in my set the female race is the black pieces but when I ordered black replacement pieces I received black figures that were the sculpts of my green figures. I can't for the life of me figure out why a company would make a game this way...

Anyway I don't know if I will keep the game or not. It has a lot going for it. It isn't long. It can obviously be very dramatic. This game certainly was. It has nice pieces and a very interesting auction. On the down side it is subject to the sort of anticlimactic victory problem. If the cards had not been right for us in this last game it would have gone down exactly as the previous ones had. It also has a pretty large box which is a big negative for me but probably doesn't matter much to other people.

So in the end the jury is still out but I want to get it back to the table for a couple more plays before I make final judgment about whether to vote it off the island.

Quick Thoughts on 7 Wonders

2010-12-17T14:47:00.001-05:00

We have actually had the opportunity to play many great new titles lately but I received my copy of 7 Wonders this week and last night we broke it out so I'd like to say a few words about the experience while it is fresh in my mind.

Part 1 - Wherein 7 Wonders is Not Dominion

Let's just get this out of the way. This game resembles Dominion in exactly 0 ways... except that there are cards. I think the fact that this game first started generating Dominion-like happy-buzz in the community amidst games like Dominion, Thunderstone, and Ascenscion was where I initially got that impression but that impression is wrong.

The game consists of building a little point generation engine (nominally a civilization) over the course of three ages in which the entire deck of cards is dealt out and then drafted in simultaneous turns, taking a card, playing it, and passing your hand either clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on the age.

On second thought, I guess if I squint my eyes, the game looks somewhat like you took Dominion and shuffled all the cards into one big deck, dealt them all out, and handed them around in circles to play them...

Part 2 - Wherein 7 Wonders is Demonstrates Its Magic

The magic of the game lies in a couple of main areas.

First, aside from the first couple of turns when everyone is learning what is going on, everything happens simultaneously. This means that the game plays from 3-7 players in about the same amount of time, disregarding how long it takes you to scan other people's card tableaus to see if you are passing them something that is going to give them lots of cheap points.

The second magical game element is that you purchase goods, have military conflicts, and potentially score points with various buildings based upon your immediate left and right hand neighbors. Again we have a game mechanism that makes for the ultimate in scalability. As large as the game gets you are concerned largely with these people and not the entire table.

In the end you have a game that was coming in well under 30 minutes for our 4 player games after just one game and not much over 30 minutes even in our first play.

The final magical element is that the game is almost inexplicably fun. Most of the cards are nothing particularly innovative if you have been playing modern games for a while yet for some reason it was really exciting seeing all the cards and exploring the different available paths to victory.

Part 3 - Wherein We Question 7 Wonders' Longevity

Given the relative simplicity and speed of play of this game I think it begs the question "How long will it stay interesting?". I think the answer might just be "Who cares? I like it!". Seriously, the game is amazingly fun and I cannot put my finger on why.

But honestly, what is there to think about in this game? Quit a lot actually. First there are quite a few cards to get the hang of. The cards are either production cards, victory point cards, military cards, science cards, commerce cards, or guild cards.

Each person gets a unique starting wonder which represents their civilization. The wonder must be built in 3 or 4 stages and gives victory points for stages 1 and 3 but gives a different and unique advantage for stage 2.

Unless you ignore your wonder, which is totally fine, your wonder gives you a hint at what direction you might want to go with your other buildings, which in turn tells your neighbors what cards you will be wanting and what resources you will need to build those cards, etc.

The production cards produce one or more of the many types of goods in the game which allow you to build things and for which your neighbors must pay you in order to use them.

The victory point cards are blue and usually just grant points.

The military cards are red and give you military points. Military is compared at the end of each age to your immediate neighbors and you will either gain or lose points based on how you measure up.

The science cards give you points for sets at the end of the game in Ra-monument-like fashion, i.e. the more of the same symbol you have the more points, and the more sets of each of the 3 symbols you have, the more points... They also give you free non-science buildings in some cases.

In fact, many of the cards have no cost if you have built certain cards in prior rounds. It is important to look at what your opponents have built in each round so you do not hand them free buildings.

The commerce cards give you advantages when trading, or additional income. This can be simply money or reduced prices or a one time cash intake based on cards that you or your neighbors have. It's pretty cool.

There are also purple guild cards which are randomized in each hand. These cards like the purple buildings in San Juan generally give you end of game bonuses for things that you or your neighbors have built up during the game.

The other options you have on a turn are to bury a card under a stage of your wonder or to discard it for money. Money is very important in the game because it is used to pay your neighbors for the use of their resources so you can build things and because every 3 money is a point at the end of the game. Burying cards is very important because it keeps your opponents from using them to... er... bury you.

From our 3 game set I would say there is no single path to victory and in fact it is difficult to win the game without generating points in at least a couple of different disciplines. If there is one type of card that can get you a ton of points if your opponents aren't paying attention I would say it might be science, or perhaps to some extent the victory point cards.

Twice I totally ignored science and followed a military and resource heavy strategy and did not come close to winning. So I would say you have to do at least two things well to win. Also you do not need to dominate militarily. You just need to have more than your neighbors to get full points and the most you can score in the game is 18 points via military without some kind of end game bonus which I did not see.

Part 4 - Wherein I Render Judgment

It's an instant classic and, more importantly, it's tons of fun. Everyone should buy two copies because this one is sure to get worn out.

Great Games with Young Kids - Part 1

2010-12-07T09:29:00.000-05:00

I ended up having a lot more to say in this article than I thought so this will be part one of an ongoing series on games with kids.

Part 1 - Games for Very Young Children

I bet almost everyone who games and has kids hopes to raise children who at least appreciate the hobby and possibly end up gamers of some stripe themselves. I'm no different. I advise great patience because the first mistake is to go too deep too soon.

I'd like to use this article to explore some of the games I have had the most success with with my kids, how I feel about those games, and the appropriate age to introduce them.

First a warning: in my experience kids under about 2 and a half years old should stick to the absolute simplest games around. There are a couple of games in this category that won't make you pull your hair out but it's not an age where you're going to derive deep gaming satisfaction from your kids.

Some games that worked well for my kids from about age 2 on are Go Away Monster, Hiss, Froggy Boogie, and Can You See What I See. I also think that Candyland is a fine game for kids this age because it teaches things you might not think about like how to move around a board and how to take your turn. When I play Candyland I like to stack the deck so the game ends in a reasonable amount of time and so my kids don't get sent back too many times during the course of the game.

Go Away Monster is a very simple game where you need to feel around in a bag for pieces of a certain shape to put in your room. There are lamps, beds, teddy bears, and the like and monsters that are similar in shape. If you accidentally pull out a monster you throw it away and say "Go Away Monster!" this step is optional but highly recommended. We used to play cooperatively: if someone pulled out a piece they didn't need but someone else did they could give it away. When you play this way you need to play until everybody's room is full rather than having a winner.

Hiss is a game where you flip over tiles that have differently colored sections of snakes on them. You need to match the card to an existing snake or start a new one and ones a snake has a head, at least one middle, and a tail you can collect it. The person with the most snake tiles when no more snakes can be made wins. Despite it's simplicity this game is very fun and we still play it even though my kids can handle a lot more game these days. Very highly recommended.

Froggy Boogie is another take on the memory game. The production is awesome. The game consists of a bunch of frogs heads which are one solid color with a splash of another color. Each frog gets two wooden eyes at the beginning of the game. One eye has nothing on the base and the other has a picture of a frog. The frog heads are arranged in the center of a ring of lilly pad tiles and the players put their baby frog pieces on the start pad. The object of the game is to hop all the way around the circle without being seen. This is done by rolling two dice which have colors on them. The color combination rolled is the frog head you must use for the turn. You want to pick the eye on the indicated frog head that does not have the picture of the frog on the back. As you play the game and different combinations are rolled you need to pay attention and remember the location of the frogs so you know which eye to choose. Thematically the frog heads are the mother frogs and picking the eye with no frog on the back means you've successfully evaded being caught by a mom. You can move until you choose the wrong frog. You get caught a lot in the beginning but as the game progresses and the memory solidifies things move along faster and faster. The kids are great at this game since their noodles work better then us old people. I'm not fond of memory games so I don't love this game but it's pleasant and fast and the kids love it.

Can you see what I see is sort of like Eye Spy the game. There are two ways to play this game one of which is more competitive and the other more like an activity. We play the version that is more like an activity. At the beginning of the game each person gets a set of random cards with scenes on them like you would see in an Eye Spy book. There is a central stack of item cards which are hidden in the pictures. You take turns flipping the item cards and eliminating your scene cards if they contain the item pictured. The first person to eliminate all their cards wins but we always play until everyone finishes. It's an activity I don't enjoy doing even though it doesn't satisfy the gaming itch. Young kids get a great sense of satisfaction from it too since they can play it on the same level as adults.

I'll end this section with some mass market games that I like for very young children. Memory is always good and, as I mentioned before, Candyland definitely has it's place along the path of learning how games work. I'd like to warn against Chutes and Ladders. The game can be absolutely soul crushing and I think it actually teaches kids that board games are out of your control, randomly rewarding and punishing you for things. If they get lucky and finish without being set back too many times they might enjoy it but if the other extreme occurs, and it often does, you'll have some tears to deal with. This is a bad bad game.

Honorable mention goes to Chicken Cha Cha Cha. This game is very similar to Froggy Boogie but the memory items in the middle are a set of cute pictures of chickens, worms, and flowers. The same pictures form a randomly arranged track around the center tiles. In this game you move forward by remembering where the picture of the next item on the track is. I like this game and it has cute wooden chicken pieces it's really a matter of personal preference whether this or Froggy Boogie is better but I like the dice in Froggy Boogie. Froggy Boogie is also smaller and less expensive.

Other gamers have mentioned Gulo Gulo as well. I own this game and think it is fun but my kids find it stressful and really don't enjoy it much. It's a dexterity game that equalizes adults and kids because the dexterity part of the game is easier for small hands while the board movement decisions will actually tilt the game toward the adults. Nice idea and a fine game.

Homesteaders, Hansa Teutonica, and Leaping Lemmings: the Lost Session Report

2010-10-01T11:19:00.001-04:00

It seems, dear readers, that I missed a session report. Last week was a week off and this week I sat down to right the session report but then remember Geoff saying I had missed one from two weeks ago.

So I'll start with that.

The group was just Matt, Geoff, Jake, and Jay for a couple of weeks straight as Richard and Alex, the Englishman and the German, were apparently off reenacting various world wars in their respective homelands.

I have already reported on the session in which we played the now infamous Founding Fathers, which, like Ra, seems to be getting more hated the longer we go without revisiting it. The forgotten session featured some fairly controversial games in its own right.

The games for this night were Hansa Teutonica, upon which there is 0 controversy, Homesteaders, and Leaping Lemmings.

I won't beleaguer the point by going into great detail. Hansa Teutonica is simply one of the finest euro-games ever and that fact is not changing with repeated play. In fact, even though the experience is quite a bit more plodding as every player comes to fully understand the system, the experience is just as tense and enjoyable as ever, if not more so.

Hansa Teutonica is now a 10 in my book. Is it the perfect game? No, and it is probably not even a game everyone will or should like. But if you, my friends, are, in any way, a fan of classical euro-style games this game is simply one of the best ever. In my book that makes it a 10.

Homesteaders is a game Jake, Jay, and I played once before. It is an economic engine game and I gave it very high marks as being a game from the Martin Wallace school which is both rules light and strategy deep and includes deliciously painful monetary decisions.

This time we were playing with 4. There were really no problems explaining the rules. They are short. Really just two pages but again through no fault of the game, the building powers and market conversions present a real mental avalanche that is not for the faint at heart.

The game felt a lot harder to me this time. I'm not sure if it was the increased competition of 4 players or what, but our 3 player game felt decidedly more relaxed and fluid compared to this game. I went way into debt and so did Geoff and it was almost to my surprise in the end when I was able to unload all of my debt and win the game.

In fact this has happened to me in both of our plays now. I enter the final reckoning near the bottom of the pack but then trade away all my tradable goods and lo and behold I'm now in the lead. I guess I should learn two things from this: first that I'm not good at judging what my buildings will do for me long term vs what they do for me from turn to turn, and second that trade tokens are far and a way the most valuable asset in this game. In both playing I amassed an obscene amount of trade tokens which I could not use immediately because I was not producing enough goods but by games end these tokens allowed me to convert almost everything I had to points.

In fact I missed a few card benefits during the game that would have put me even more ahead. That is another slight problem with the game. Once you get more than a few buildings in front of you it is difficult to keep track of all of your powers. My tableau was comprised to a large extent by buildings producing money, points, and trade tokens. This made acquiring resources hard but at some point I bought several large VP buildings and a ranch. Cattle are very powerful in this game because if you have enough trade tokens you can convert them into almost anything including gold to pay off your debts and points for the end of the game.

So I once again liked Homesteaders but Geoff did not. I'm not sure what Jake and Jay thought this time around but we all agreed that the game was much tougher this time and the extra player was the only reason I could immediately come up with.

Homesteaders is a 7 for me. It's showing it's fiddly side after the second play but it is still a very strong game.

We finished the night with the most controversial game: GMT's Leaping Lemmings. This game is an oddball from the mostly-war game company GMT. It has fantastic production value for a GMT game with a nice mounted board with good graphic design although very goofy art work and it was inexpensive despite coming in the GMT bomb-proof box that Twilight Struggle and Washington's War both come in.

In this game you are racing your lemmings across a field to jump them off the cliff and score points. The game ends when the deck of movement cards shows the game end card and the person with the most points wins. Each player has 10 lemmings they are racing across the field. There are two eagles controlled by one player per turn. The eagles circle the field in two places and eat any lemmings they come across. Lemmings can stack protecting the lower lemmings from being eaten and can also hide in bushes to keep the eagle from seeing them. If lemmings are stacked and the eagle attacks he eats the top lemming and scatters the rest which can be helpful or harmful to the lemming players.

The game is super light. The eagle player pilots the eagle and then flips a movement card which applies to all of the players. It is just a number of spaces everyone is allowed to move one of their lemmings. The way to get points is to get your lemmings close to the cliff edge with a lot of remaining movement points because that is the number of points the lemming gets for the dive. There are also power cards and bonus chips on the board to be had.

I thought the game was very fun. It's light and fast and goofy but there is control and I had a good time playing it. Every single other person at the table pretty much hated it. I'm not sure why exactly and I hope they will comment on this post.

Do I need to keep the game in my collection? Well need is a strong word and the answer to that is definitely "no" but I have to admit that my impression of it was much stronger than the groups and if they like it I would definitely keep it. As it is I don't think it will see the table which is sad because I think it's a very nice game.

I want to try the game again with Alex and Richard who are more open to silly games with a screw your neighbor element. If they agree that it is mediocre at best I'll sell the game. If they like it I might keep it to play with my kids or on certain group game nights.

Leaping Lemmings is a 6.5 which is brought down to a 6 for me because of how sour my group was on it. I'm not sure how it rates in a world filled with so many good games but on its own merits I think it is a success.

New Game Fatigue

2010-09-15T10:30:00.000-04:00

I have new game fatigue.

Let me elaborate. I love new games. I love researching them, watching the online shops for the first sight of them, jumping right out and buying them when they hit the shelves. When they get to my house I love punching them out, reading the rules right away and deciding when to slot them into the group's rotation.

Here's the thing:

First, I'm really truly honestly out of space in my house. I need to get rid of games I have, nevermind slowing the pace of incoming games.

Second, when I first entered the hobby back in 2004 there really weren't that many AWESOME GAMES. By this, I mean if you read reviews and pre-read some rules you could identify the games worth owning or at least worth playing and safely pick them up assuming you were financially able. The number of new games coming out each year was much smaller, at least it felt that way, and I could seriously buy EVERY new game I wanted to.

Things have changed.

The hobby is much bigger now and companies are producing a lot more games. The last bastion of the old way of things are companies like Days of Wonder, and to some extent Ystari games. With these two companies, if you generally like their games, you can pretty much buy them on auto-pilot.

You couldn't really ever do this with Rio Grande games but you could usually identify the games that were for you and those that were not, ahead of time, and the remaining game selection was, again, small enough to just buy.

Now Rio Grande is producing a bit more than before and the games have tended to concentrate in style and weight into my wheelhouse.

Z-Man games, always sortof hit-or-miss for me in the past had a run of great middle-to-heavy weight games that put me into a mode where I was buying everything they made.

The same is true for Fantasy Flight games.

But recently Z-Man and Fantasy Flight have been producing just tons of games and honestly I can't keep up anymore. I simply cannot ingest the information fast enough to make good decisions around buying new games from these companies unless the game is a reprint of a title released the year before in Germany or something.

This is an interesting point. It is possible that because I usually wait for English editions of games I was relying on the fact that most games would come out in Germany in October of the year before they were released in the U.S. As a result there were always plenty of reviews and critiques of games before they were ever really an option for me to purchase.

I've mentioned before that I do not attend conventions and I do not belong to a group where random people buy games and bring them. I am for the most part the game buyer and any other games bought are trickle-down purchases of things we know and love.

So now I'm in a position where two things have happened.

1) The board game hobby and market seems to be growing to the extent where it is more akin to books, music, video games, or movies. I would NEVER try to buy every good book, CD, DVD, or video game. There are simply too many.

2) Games are almost always produced simultaneously or nearly so in Germany and the U.S. so there is no built-in vetting period for games prior to being presented with the opportunity to buy them.

And here's the kicker. The problem of games going out of print is still present. Because of my compulsiveness I'm really anxious about missing a great new game which isn't quite great enough to warrant a second printing. This is the lynchpin of my problem: the right thing to do is wait and try to find someone with the game to play it with or at least to let several trusted reviews accumulate, but by the time this happens the game may be unobtainable.

What brought me to writing this article was the recent deluge of Z-Man card and small box games that have been hitting the shelf. In addition to reproducing several German games Z-Man has published a ton of card games and small games of its own. Initially I just bought all the card games sight unseen because of their low price but when the flood didn't stop I started reading all of the rules prior to any purchases.

Some games that have come since then are: Malta, Hornets, Burrows, the King Commands and Chaos. When I went to the Z-Man site there were also closing in on 10 BIG BOX games I had never heard of coming soon.

I'll make sure to read these rules as well because after having done so I have bought exactly 0 of the recently released games.

I have played a ton of games at this point and I'm a pretty good judge of whether I'll like a game based on the rules (I'm also a pretty good judge of whether the rules give you enough information to decide that).

Here is a synopsis of my rules readings for the new Z-Man games.

Hornets - sounds neat but I have other games that do about the same thing. I'd recommend this game to someone with fewer games than me because it sounds fun but I don't need it.

Malta - crazy sorta abstract game which is definitely not for me.

Burrows - this one I almost bought. It sounds really good and you could play it with kids but it certainly doesn't have much to recommend it over all the light to middle weight games I already have and enjoy. I may end up flip-flopping on this later and buying it.

The King Commands - take-that card game which sounds less hectic and more tactical than other games of this nature but my group really isn't into games like this and I don't think this one would overcome that inertia.

Chaos - crazy crazy crazy sounding card game that might be great but reading the rules made me absolutely fear teaching it and that's saying something.

While I'm on the subject Intrigo from Asmodee is a game I really need to get my hands on the rules for and I need to spend some time reading about Constantinopolis from FFG. Both of these games seem totally up my alley but they sound very similar to other games in my collection and, especially with Constantinopolis being on the expensive side, I need to see something special to pull the trigger on it.

In my unplayed games of Constantinopolis' ilk are Endeavor, Vasco de Gama, Macao, Cuba, and many many more...

And what of co-operative games? Castle Ravenloft is getting great buzz but I'm not a huge D&D fan. Is this game good for someone without a D&D background who has almost every co-op game from the last decade or so? I also see that FFG has released a small box version of the Knizia Lord of the Rings co-op. This is the grand-daddy of all the modern co-ops. Do I need that?

On we go to the Dominion children. Here we have Heroes of Graxia, and Ascension. HoG is eliminated because of all the counting and the slowness of play with more players. Ascension sounds great but is on the expensive side, has cheap cards and ugly art work but in general sounds like a game I would like. Let's also consider that I have never played in person any of my already owned Dominion expansions or Thunderstone.

In conclusion, the amount of games coming out recently is making me stressed and cranky and that's not what a hobby should do to you.

Too many games, too little (time | space | money).

At some point even reading the rules is going to be something I need to curtail because of the time commitment. Reading rules has already replaced reading books for me in most of my free time and that doesn't seem right at all.

Discuss!

Session Report: Founding Fathers, Nile, and Parade

2010-09-10T20:06:00.002-04:00

We had an ideal 4 players this week and chose to spend that time on 3 new games: Founding Fathers, Nile, and Parade.

Founding Fathers
Founding Fathers is a game from the designer of Twilight Struggle and 1960: The Making of the President, two fantastic card-driven games in the style of classic card-driven war games. The designer has also created Campaign Manager 2008. This is important because in weight, feel, and fun-factor Founding Fathers is much more akin to Campaign Manager than the two prior CDGs.

I'm really trying not to use this blog to rehash rules so I'll try to keep this summary to a minimum. In this game you are trying to get points by playing cards to bet on the winning factions in arguments over the articles of the constitution of the United States.

There are three ways to score points in the game (well actually 4 I guess).

1) By being on the winning side of the vote for a particular article.
2) By having a majority in the committee room at the end of a round.
3) By having a majority of a particular faction marker at the end of the game.
4) By playing certain event cards which give you points

The game is super simple. You have cards which represent states, factions, and events. On your turn you can either play a card for its event, play one or more cards and an influence marker to vote for or against an article, or play one or more cards to move up the debate track for a particular faction.

Why do you want to do this? Well for points but more specifically being on the winning side of a vote provides you points, being on the losing side of a vote gives you a way to get into the committee room where you will get points if you have a majority, and being first on the debate track gives you a faction token which, if you have the majority at games end, gives you points.

There are 4 factions: federalist, anti-federalist, large state, small state. The former and latter two are opposed to each other and this determines to some extent where you can play the cards bearing that faction symbol. The limitation in voting is that you cannot vote opposite to the faction. So if an article is federalist you can vote for it with federalist, big state, or small state or against it with anti-federalist, big state, or small state. It's pretty simple. The faction also matters when debating. The only way to move up the track is to play one or several cards with a matching symbol.

The events are all over the place and are all rule-breakers of some kind. Some of them are pretty zany and do things like end the round immediately. This happened twice in our four round game.

So what did I think of the game? Understanding that I have only played it once here is the my reaction:

Meh.

I don't think this game is bad. I think it is the sort of game that is just fine. Unfortunately just fine is not great in a time when there are so many good games coming out.

To be more specific I thought the game delivered an incongruous experience. It is a game that is wrapped in a great deal of theme and production but is, in the end, a pretty light and simple game. In addition there does not see to be a great deal of discoverable strategy in the game and the result is greatly dependent on the cards. There simply aren't enough turns in the game to develop any sort of meaningful strategy. There are some very obvious tactics of course and the mechanics are interesting enough I guess but I think that utlimately isn't good enough in this game.

In addition I think the game has a graphic design problem in the information on the card backs. It is fairly important but fairly hard to see by quickly looking around the table.

I think the game is just too gamey. There's no reason for you to support one faction or another throughout the game. You happily skip from whatever faction you think will get you the most points to another. There is also no alternate history of the US being built in this game. If the opposing side wins on one of the articles it flips to the opposing side's faction icon but there isn't any flavor text to suggest what the alternative might have represented in the government. This is a nit pick but I would have liked it.

The events seem at once too powerful and meaningless. They don't seem to have any sort of significance thematically and can produce wild swings in the game.

In all of these ways this game reminds me very much of Campaign Manager 2008 and what I realized playing that was that it is the narrative that I like in Jason Matthew's games not the game play per se. So when he makes games like Campaign Manager and Founding Fathers that are more euro-game in nature I just don't think they stack up against other euros.

1960 is and will always be one of my favorite games and I'm still fully intending to buy 1989 when GMT releases it but I'm going to approach all of Jason's non-CDG games cautiously from now on because I think I see a trend developing.

I intend to give the game two more plays before I fire it from the collection because now that I know the game and have played it I do think it is a pretty short and unoffensive game but if I don't discover something special about it in the next plays I'm going to have to give it its walking papers.

Right now Founding Fathers is a 5. It's not a waste of your time and it's not broken but there's really nothing to make it shine.

Nile
Nile is a game that I gather used to be a print and play. It has elements of Ticket to Ride the card game, Bohnanza, and Archaeology the Card Game in that it is a set collection game with some interesting mechanics surrounding how you collect the cards.

First let me say that the cards are pretty nice looking but noticeably poorer quality than most modern card games. The box is similarly nice looking but just a tuck box. The cards are very bending and thick feeling and unfinished at the edges. Some have already started to fray a bit after my one play.

The game has 5 crops you are collecting and hoping to harvest for points. Here is the kitchen sink list of mechanics borrowed from other games.

1) The most/least scoring mechanic a-la Knizia. At the end of the game the person with the most of their least crop is the winner including having none such that if someone gets all 5 and no one else does they win.

2) The crop harvesting is like the train collection in Ticket to Ride the card game. You plant your crops and you cannot plant a color unless you plant more than someone else in which case they lose theirs. You harvest your crop one card at a time when a card of the same type is flipped up at the beginning of the turn. This card becomes safe in a pile called your store.

3) You plant cards either all in one new crop with at least 2 and more than any other current player OR exactly one each of two crops one of which can be new, OR as many as you want onto existing crops.

4) A plague of locust card that kills the biggest field even if people are tied. Reminds me of the sand storm cards in Archaeology even though those cards effect your hand and there are more of them so maybe it's not similar at all ;-)

Now for the interesting parts: speculation cards, trading, and offering.

Speculation cards are mixed into the deck and have more than one type of crop on them. If one is flipped up at the beginning of the turn it represents both types of crops to be harvested rather than a single crop. If someone plays one from their hand instead of planting it is a bet on which type of crop card will be harvested next turn. If the person is right they get three cards for each of the potential two speculation cards they played so a maximum of six cards.

Trading can be done on your turn as many times as you like. When you trade you discard two cards from your hand and/or your store and draw a single replacement card.

An offering is discarding two cards from your hand and/or store and flipping up another card to be harvested.

The real meat of the game is in these pieces and how they play with the basic mechanics. If you don't use the trade and offer options especially the game essentially plays itself and you'll get whatever score you end up with but with the trades and especially the offerings you can control the harvest a bit more and control to some degree what seems like an uncontrollable game. The speculation cards are the same way. If you pay attention to what the recent harvests have been and hold your speculation cards until the probability of a score is high you can really do well with 3 or 6 extra cards.

I don't mean to make this game into something it is not. The game is very light and does not differentiate itself in many ways from other not-so-light fillers. But it is a good game and good game that almost anyone can play and enjoy. As I said you can play the game on autopilot or you can work your store to maximum advantage play the game more tactically. This ends up being really interesting.

You really want to make sure to have at least one card of every color and you ideally more than one card of every color but what you will get many times is a lot of a few cards. This is where you want to start planting small fields of several types and then spending some of that accumulated but probably useless extra store to cause more harvests and get the cards you need into your store. We didn't do much of that in this game and I can see how it will get much more competitive when played this way.

Nile is not a classic in any sense of the word but in a crowded field of light card games it is a classical example and very enjoyable. Those who do not already have 2 or 3 dozen games of this kind in their collection would certainly not regret picking this up and those who do... well will you really turn down one more?

Nile is a 6.5

Parade
Parade is another light filler. At first blush it seems to be a super light filler like Escalation or No Thanks! but in practice it ends up being slightly heavier.

In this game as in many, your goal is to play your hand and take as few cards as possible. There are 66 cards in 6 suits numbered 0-10.

The mechanic is ingenious. There is a row of cards with a start and and end. The row starts with 6 cards in it. On your turn you play a card to the end of the row. The number on the card is the number of safe cards in the parade that you will definitely not have to take. Cards past that you have to take if they are the same suit or if the value is less than or equal to the card. So if I play a red 6 on a parade that is 10 cards long I skip the last 6 cards then look for reds and cards valued 6 or less in the front 4 cards and take them.

It sounds easy but in practice it's more thinky than it might initially appear. The game ends either when the deck runs out or when someone has collected cards from every suit. At this point you figure out how screwed you are. ;-) you get negative points equal to the face value of your cards EXCEPT if you have the most cards in the suit. If you have the most cards you only get one point per card taken. This is a big deal. Incidentally the rules don't specify whether ties are friendly but we assumed that they are NOT.

So this is a pretty cool little game. Do you play your cards to take low values of various suits and try to end the game? Do you try to play high cards and take nothing or play cards that will only get you cards from a couple of suits? Clearly the cards in hand and the cards others play will determine this to some extent and it is not in your control to a great extent.

The game reminds me of Coloretto. It plays nothing like it but somehow the feel is similar. There is also the agonizing feel of 6 Nimmt where you hope to be able to play a certain card and then watch as your opponents do nothing like you expected and your plans go to hell in a hand basket.

The only downside to the game is that it wants to be super fast and easy and I found it hard to quickly scan the parade and figure out what the best play was at any time. So there was a lot more counting and thinking than expected which slows the game down somewhat for the worse.

Ultimately though this one is a winner and a half.

Parade is an 8.

Thoughts on Chicago Express

2010-09-06T16:39:00.001-04:00

Aside from a lack of motivation and vacation one of the main reasons for the having 0 blog posts in the month of August is that the group has widely caught the Dominion bug and Dominion games don't really make for interesting session reports.

I think the group's enjoyment of Dominion, even among the people who never buy games, is very exciting and something to be encouraged. Hansa Teutonica lit the fires of the group quite a bit too but not to the point of anyone running out and buying it to play at home. It is very satisfying when we can play a game that rises above the feeling that we are all just playing games to hang out for a while or because Matt has all these unplayed games he has spent a ton of cash on and wants to play. It's a good thing and I hope it can happen more.

Along with this you may have noticed that the old classic Acquire hit the table a few times recently. Given this fact I thought perhaps the group was ripe for another rules-light, fast-playing, economic game, so finally we had a chance to play Chicago Express, a game that has been gathering dust on the shelf for a long time.

The Queen Games production of Chicago Express is a thing of beauty: a beautiful board with dials, stock certificates and nice paper money (usually one of my biggest pet peeves in a game but it just feels right in this game), and lots of wooden trains. Added to this is the rule set which is so succinct that I had no problem teaching it to the oft-impatient metroburbers, and a playing time that clocked in at just over an hour on our very first play making this game something very special indeed.

The premise of the game is simple. There are several rail road companies you are going to invest in and grow in order to make the most money by the end of the game.

Each company has a unique and limited number of shares to buy and trains to build routes with and the game will end when 3 of the 4 companies either have no more trains or no more shares, or when there are 3 or less improvements to be built, or if Detroit is completely built up.

Each person begins the game with some cash and one of each company share is auctioned with a unique starting bid to begin the game. There are so few shares that this initial auction phase has affects the entire game thereafter. Each company has an initial offering price and bids escalate until all but one bidder has dropped out. That person pays his money to the company (not the bank) and takes the share.

It is this money that will be used throughout the game to build routes and improvements on the board thereby raising the income of each company and increasing the dividends which in turn provide you with the income that is the victory condition of the game. There is no final selloff of the shares so the dividends you earn throughout the game are your only route to victory.

Already you can probably see that the stage is set for some serious gaming here. Let me recap. The money used to buy the share goes to the company. Anyone with shares in that company can use this money to build train routes or improvements to raise the company income. So by buying into the same company as someone else you are forming a sort of alliance with them whereby you can both work to improve the state of the company to increase your fortune. You can also just try to go along for the ride which can be very frustrated for the other investors. The variation in the number of shares in the companies (from as little as 3 to a max of 7 shares) means that in a game of 5 players there will be a few people who do not have an interest in 1 or more of the companies. It then becomes a challenge to figure out how to compete with these people when they can co-operate to push that company to great heights.

I should probably return to telling you what your turn is like. Each turn you can either auction a share, extend a company's routes on the board, or improve the board. Building routes costs money from the company coffers and is limited to 3 hexes per turn, improving a space does not cost you anything but you can only add one improvement per turn to the board.

When you auction a share the auction is the same as the initial auctions in the game however if no one bids on the share it simply goes back to the company rather than going to the auctioneer.

When you expand a company's route you must pay the amount specified on the board in order to place a wooden train there. It's very simple. Also certain spaces can have a train from each company on them while others once occupied cannot be entered by another company. To perform the action you simply add up the cost in each hex, pay it, and put the trains down. When you enter certain areas the income of the company increases as well. This is also printed directly on the board and you simple move the company income marker up by the total.

When you improve or develop a hex you simply put a wooden house on the hex which adds to the income of all companies present on the hex. If you develop one of the industrial cities they can be developed several times and the income will grow each time. Forest hexes provide cash when developed instead of a an income bump. To develop any location at least one company must have a presence there but you need not own an interest in that company (I think you'll want to though).

Each time you do any of these actions you move the corresponding dials on the board. When two of the dials are in the red zone at the beginning of someone's turn a dividend happens before the turn occurs. During the dividend each company's income is distributed to its shareholders evenly. It's that simple. Then the dials are reset and the game goes on. Detroit is also developed automatically when dividends occur.

It is important to note that you may choose an action and not perform it. This has the effect of pushing the dials toward a dividend and not changing company incomes, improving the board, spending company money, or potentially giving a rich player a shot at a company share prior to a dividend phase.

Not doing this killed me at one point in our game. I had a majority of shares in one of the companies and decided to auction off another share which I lost and which subsequently watered down my interest in the company when a dividend occurred immediately afterward. Boo!

One part of the game I won't go into in too much detail is that when a company reaches Chicago a 5th company Wabash enters the game and a special dividend is payed to the company that reached Chicago. This is a really big deal in the game and Richard trounced us using it.

Anyway that's pretty much the game. The game is fantastic. There's cooperation, and competition happening simultaneously all the time and a constant balance between spending money on shares and to finance the railroad you want to succeed and saving money for the game end. The game is so simple to understand and so hard to play well because of all the elements that it's just wonderful. It's also EXTREMELY FAST and looks fantastic on the table.

I give Chicago Express a 9 and with further plays it might be one of my few 10's.

Session Report - Glen More, Wasabi, Small World

2010-09-01T20:44:00.001-04:00

Freshly back from vacation I really wanted to start getting some unplayed games to the table. I really wanted to give Glen More a shot and I recently acquired Wasabi and Boomtown second hand. Given that Glen More is slightly heavier than the latter two I thought it was a good combination.

Alex was running late due to problems with the trains in Boston and we were only slated to have 4 for the night anyway so Jake , Geoff and I sat around and talked for a good while until the arrival of Lord Boddington. Given how long we should have played some filler games but it was nice to just shoot the breeze too.

New Games
I've been binging pretty hard on games lately after a long period of time where my buying patterns were almost that of a normal person who is really into board games. Among the new games in the collection waiting to be played are Founding Fathers, Defenders of the Realm, Thunderstone Wrath of Elements, the expansions for Nefertiti and Saint Petersburg, Dominion Alchemy, and World Without End to name just a few. Hopefully I'll have something to report on all of these games in the coming weeks but for now I can tell you about two other games: Glen More which is new-ish and not available in English at this time and Wasabi which is new to me.

Glen More
Glen More is an Alea game that I remember hearing about back in the Essen time-frame I think which makes it not so new. When it popped onto the new games in stock list at Game Surplus I snatched it up thinking it had been released in English but was surprised when it came and was the German edition. I guess I should have been tipped off by the price of $28 which is high for an Alea small box game. The game is in the same box as Witches Brew. I don't recall whether there is a smaller Alea box than this or if games like Palazzo and San Juan are also in this box size but anyway I digress.

The theme of Glen More is refreshing. You are a Scottish clansman who is building your village and earning prestige by making whiskey and sending chieftains to parliament. The game is not deep in its theme and is very much a game from the German school of games but I still found the theme nice and the game is full of interesting mechanics.

The game has quite the kitchen sink of mechanisms but when all is said and done manages to be pretty simple to play. In the game you will find tile placement, a sort of rondel for choosing tiles combined with a turn mechanism where the last person on the track is always the current player a-la Thebes, resource production and trading with a market, building powers, and several interesting scoring mechanisms which are really the most intriguing part of the game.

The game consists of tiles which are displayed on a track and are used to build your village. The tiles all give you some benefit in the form of clansmen, resources, victory point generation, or special abilities.

Everyone starts with a village tile with a clansman meeple on it. The village tile also has a river running in one direction and a road in the other direction. Each turn you move your meeple to the tile you want to take and place the tile as part of your village. When placing the tile must be adjacent to a space with a clansman on it (either orthogonally or diagonally which is nice) and you must not violate the flow of the river or the road. There are no bends in these and they will simply form a straight line vertically or horizontally throughout the game. Some tiles do not have either of these features and may be placed anywhere that does not block the river or road.

When you place a tile the tile activates and all the tiles adjacent to it (including diagonally) do too. When this happens you get the ongoing production benefit of the the tile whether that is producing a resource or turning resources into points or whathaveyou.

The scoring is cool. There are 3 scorings during the game when each of the 1, 2, and 3 stacks of tiles run out. The scoring is for whiskey, parliamentary chieftains, and special buildings and the score is based on the differential between your score and the lowest score. So you get the most points when you have alot of something and someone has none of it. It behooves everyone to try to stay competitive in all of these categories to keep someone from running away with the game during the end of round scorings but going after these scorings when you see your opponents are not is a valid strategy.

Other ways to get points mostly include activating point-generating tiles. These are tiles that allow you to trade in resources for points. You can get the resources from your tiles or from the market.

The market is another interesting aspect of the game. There is a market for each type of resource with three available slots. To buy a resource you put coins in the next available slot if there is one and take the resource. So the first resource will cost 1, the next 2, and the final resource of a type will cost 3. Once all 3 slots have money on them no one can buy that resource without someone selling one. When you sell a resource you simply take the stack of coins from the highest slot. You are not allowed to buy resources when you don't need them so there is no way to starve people out of the market artificially but it happens anyway.

Some special buildings give end of game bonuses and coins count for one point each at the end of the game as well.

But here's the real killer. At the end of the game you lose 3 points for each tile in your village above the number of tiles in the smallest village! In our game Jake kept jumping ahead on the tile track (which by the way is not recommended because he had very few turns as a result). Because of this everyone else was taking about 3 turns for every two of Jakes. In the end it looked like Jake had lost the game by a mile but because his village was so small I lost 18 points (16 tile village to Jake's 10), as did Alex, and Geoff lost 12. In the end Geoff won because of that while the whole game seemed to be looking like I would run away with it. You are allowed to take a tile you cannot place and discard it as a turn and perhaps I should have taken this option a few times as I was definitely taking tiles I did not need when the opportunity to take extra turns arose.

In the end I don't think the group liked the game much but I really thought it was excellent. I'm hoping for a repeat with a shorter play time due to knowing the rules (which really aren't difficult at all). The game is fiddly though. Sometimes you place a tile and it activates lots of interesting other tiles and you are allowed to resolve the tiles in any order you like mixing in visits to the market for buying and selling so resolving your turn can be a chore to watch sometimes but it's fun when you are on the receiving end!

This game is a 7.5 for me and I can see it hitting 8 after a few plays.

Wasabi
Wasabi is a game I have considered picking up multiple times before but have begged off because at its heart it is an abstract game and I'm not fond of that type of game. But the game is an unbelievably awesome production with great art work and neat menus and little wasabi bowls so I've always sort of still wanted it. Recently it popped up in someone's for sale pile for $15 and I just had to have it. I'm glad I did because it's a fun light game.

I won't do a full rule run through on this post but basically you are trying to place sushi ingredients on a board so that they form rows which fulfill recipes that you draw. There are action cards you win as bonuses when you complete recipes and you get extra points for completing the recipes in the order they appear on the recipe. Each recipe earns you points and when the board is full the person with the most points wins.

I had fun with the game but it was pretty chaotic with 4. I would like to play this with 2 or perhaps 3 to make it a bit more predictable but it's a really cute little game and it looks fantastic on the table.

I wish publishers would start putting stuff like this game into smaller boxes. I know other people don't have the game buying problem I have but standardizing on standard box dimensions and generally squeezing more game into less box is something I would really like to see in the future. I would like to see no box larger than the Agricola box (except for games with tons of miniatures) and I would like to see a lot more games in very small boxes. I don't mean to pick on Wasabi because there is a heck of a lot of stuff in the box whereas some boxes are really nothing but air. But Wasabi is such a light game I think it should take up less space on my shelf if possible. They could even make the ingredients and board smaller to achieve this and it would not lessen the game experience.

Small World
Geoff and Alex were dragging by the end of this second game (our throughput is never what I hope it will be) and decided to take off but Jake the ubermensch was still up for more. I was borderline so I thought a good compromise would be a game of Small World on the iPad. This was a perfect solution. If not for the iPad I would probably have just called it a night because I didn't feel like setting up and cleaning up a game. With the iPad we banged out the whole game in less than 20 minutes. Oh and I won which never happens. It was a pretty boring game for the most part though. Around turn 6 I picked up the Amazons and somehow Jake never managed to push them or my first race off the board much so I just left them there fully distributed, earning 10-14 points per turn until the game ended. I won 111 to 98 or something.

I recently bought the Tichu app and I'm hoping to learn the game from the AI. I did that with Mu which is another game I could never figure out from the instructions. I'm really liking the games for this reason.

I have heard the Medici app isn't great which is too bad. I'm still waiting on Ra and I'm cautiously optimistic about Samurai. I have both Money and High Society and like them a lot. I do wish these games would have dedicated iPad versions. Oh and I hate the trend toward selling add on expansions after you buy the core game app. I have avoided Keltis for that reason... and because it's an iPhone app.

At some point I need to blog about Keltis Orakel which is by far my favorite Keltis variant and is so good I intend to order it from Germany at some point. This game is fantastic!

Ok that's a rambling post but I was feeling guilty for neglecting the blog for so long. Now go play some games!

Session Report Catch-up T minus 3 Sessions: Hansa Teutonica, Alea Iacta Est

2010-07-29T15:42:00.001-04:00

Wow it's scary how fast time goes by. I apologize for being out of touch for over 3 weeks. Rest assured games continued to be played while nothing was being written or added to the blog. I know it's small consolation when you've got nothing good to read.

Let's turn back the clock to 3 sessions ago when we had 5 players including the recently returned and ever-regretful Geoff 2.0 for a session involving Hansa Teutonica and Alea Iacta Est. I've blogged about both of these games before so I'll stick to the session.

First Hansa Teutonica is a brutal game with 5 players. I was choked out of many of my strategy avenue. For the first time I chose to spend time building up my skills, and owning some of the Kontors in key skill cities. This did win me quite a few points during the game but I ended up missing connecting my two biggest trade networks by one route. This lost me several points. I was also one bonus token away from maxing out my bonus token points which alone would have tied me for the lead. So given another one or two turns I could have tied or won the game. This has happened in almost every game I've played of HT and it is no small part of why this is a great game. Everyone is in the running right up to the end and everyone is either trying to accelerate to the end of the game or delay that end to their own benefit.

In the end the game was a tie between Alex and Richard and I was in second place. Alex was thrilled because there is no tie breaker and if there's anything Alex could possibly like better than player screwage during the game it would be drawing a game with Richard when there is no tie breaker. Richard is infuriated by games with out infinite tie-breaking ability.

Another thing I noticed about this game is that I'm pretty certain that everyone missed some Kontor points at one point or other. We need a better system for scoring those when trade routes are completed: either the direct understanding that it is the responsibility of the person scoring the route, or the person owning the Kontor, or a designated third party. During the game we often had the "Did you give me points for that?" "I think so... Maybe not" or "Oh I already gave myself the points. Did you give them to me too?". Anyway in a game where the scores are so tight and the game end is so dependent on these points we need to pay more attention.

When we wrapped this up I brought out Alea Iacta Est. We played this game a while back and liked it well enough. Check out that session report for a description of mechanics. Unfortunately it was so long since our last play that I had alot of the same problems with this game as before.

Namely this: the game is mechanically light but has many elements which require a deep familiarity with the game in order to enjoy it for the light dice roller that it is.

This is both a blessing and a curse for the game. On the one hand if you played this game say 5 times in 5 weeks, you would start to remember a few key things about the game. One is the composition of the people: colors, values, male or female. This is important to know because you have to put the people in to a location to gain any points from them. Conversely you need to know the color mix of the places, duh. The last think you need to know is the effect of the various senate cards. The thing that makes this game drag with new players is that the senate cards, some of them in particular, have some pretty unintuitive behaviors and in order to select one you need to read a paragraph of text on a cheat sheet. To do this for several cards each round really slows down the end of the round. Also the iconography doesn't really help your understanding in most cases.

The upshot of this is that this game is unique in that it really is a dice game with meaningful choices and strategy within the confines of the randomness of the dice and the shuffling of the people, locations, and senate cards. The only question that remains is "Is it worth getting over the hump with a game of this weight?". In this case I think the answer is yes. Experienced players can reduce the play time of this game to that of a true filler and for a game of that length this game has a really compelling strategy to fun ratio.

But in general I'd love to hear the opinions of readers on this subject.

Here is the scenario:

You play a game that shows signs of a really interesting light game but your first play was a slog that took twice the listed play time.

You realize that if you play the game a few more times you'll get over the hump and might be rewarded by a very solid fast light game.

What is your reaction?

Do you want to play it again to get over that hump or do you walk away?

I'm of two minds on this. On one the one hand games of this weight should usually not have this high activation energy associated with them. In a way they have failed as a filler if they require several plays in order to become the light games they really are. On the other hand you might be denying yourself a really nice high-density-filler game experience if you apply this logic universally.

Beach Blanket Gaming

2010-07-13T08:33:00.002-04:00

Well not really but I did manage to play a few games at my family’s house on Cape Cod last week. Jake was on furlough so he made the drive down on Thursday and I really wanted to finally get Through the Ages to the table. We hit the beach for a few hours and then high-tailed it back to the house and got out the game.

Through the Ages

Through the Ages is a whopper of a civilization building card game. It has 3 levels of play: the simple game, the advanced game, and the full game. I've read enough to know that even though the simple game isn’t supposed to be all that good, you should not skip it and try to dive into the advanced or full games right away. So the simple game is what we played. The rules warned that even the simple game could take several hours and I don’t know if we were playing something wrong or what but it certainly didn’t take hours. It definitely took between one and two hours but we were also reading along with the rules as we played the game for the most part. It is possible that we just didn’t understand the game enough to spend the appropriate amount of time reading and choosing the cards during our first play. This would certainly not be the first game to play fast the first time and get slower upon future, more thoughtful, plays.

In any case, simple game or no, I really enjoyed Through the Ages. Before my glowing review causes you all to go out and buy the game, let me say that the game certainly isn’t for everyone and I’m not even sure if I’ll like the advanced or full game yet since I haven’t played it. The game has quite a bit of in-game accounting that will certainly bother some people. This fiddlyness is managed as elegantly as possible in the game but it does leave you wishing you had a computer to do it for you at times and it is sometimes error prone.

The basics of what I’m talking about are that you have lots of little round discs in the game which are used to manage various aspects of your turn and your civilization. This is done on a combination of your individual player board and on the cards you buy to build your civilization during the game. The discs are very small and very… round. If you don’t grasp them firmly they go all over the place. I would have preferred cubes.

In any case the discs are used to manage your turn by telling you how many civil and military actions your current form of government has. Everything you do costs either a white civil action disc or a red military action disc. Population is managed by moving yellow discs and resources are managed by moving blue discs. The game is actually pretty simple except for all of the disc shuffling. You have to pay food (a blue resource that comes from a farm) to get people to use as workers. You can then spend other resources (a blue resource from a mine) to morph the workers into more mines, farms, temples, or labs. There are lots of cards in the game representing various improvements to the game including buildings that can generate their resource more efficiently than your initial slate of buildings.

The state of the civilization is tracked pretty elegantly on the main board. The main board has a culture track which manages the point mechanism in the game, a place for lots of cards to be displayed and bought, a track for science points, and an area to track your civilization’s ongoing military, science, and culture points. This smaller area represents the state of your personal board with respect to military, culture, and science point generation. Every turn you simply promote these to the main culture and science point tracks. So my civilization consisting of my current cards and player board might be generating 3 science and 4 culture points. At the end of my turn I simple add 3 to the science point track and 4 to the culture point track. The science points are used to build upgraded technologies.

As I mentioned before the game is all about the cards which are divided into different ages and get progressively more interesting and powerful as you proceed through time. The cards represent better buildings, different forms of government, leaders, actions, wonders, and military units and technology. They allow you to build the engine you want for your civilization by giving you lots of neat bonuses.

On your turn you’re going to move discs around and do some combination of buying cards, playing cards, and moving people and resource discs around your board to accomplish your goals. The game went by quickly since it is based on the card decks running out and in the simple game you are playing with only the Antiquity and Age I cards. The more cards that are purchased the faster the game plays out since some cards are removed and the card track is shifted left and filled on each player’s turn.

I got my butt kicked in this game but I thought it was really neat. I can see how becoming comfortable with the card powers in the game would make for a really interesting game and I can’t wait to try the advanced game which includes conflict between players and the cards from Age II among other things. I’m not sure if I’ll ever try the full game which uses all of the cards but it’s something to shoot for.

Castle Panic

In addition to Through the Ages we played a game of Castle Panic with my kids. Castle panic is a cooperative tower defense game that I picked up at Christmas. The kids loved the game and I quite like it as well. We lost when a single remaining monster got into our castle ring and no one had any of the powerful castle cards to play to repel it. This game is supposed to be played semi-cooperatively as it is an “everyone loses if you lose but only one person wins if you win” game but I’ve always played it straight up co-op and still have not won. It’s pretty luck driven with respect to the cards and monster draws but it doesn’t overstay its welcome and the fact that my 6 year old can play completely on his own makes this game a winner in my eyes.

Dominion and Jaipur

Later on we played 4 hands of Dominion and a game of Jaipur. I split the Dominion games which made me happy and I finally won Jaipur which also makes me happy. I know I sound like a broken record on this at this point but Jaipur is simply the best two player card game there is. If you have a significant other or a frequent 2 player gaming partner you need to own this game.

The normal Metroburb sessions should be back in action this week so hopefully I’ll have more to report later in the week.

The Boston Massacre!

2010-07-01T00:08:00.003-04:00

I can’t talk too much about it right now but let it be known that Alex, the infamous Axel Lord Boddington swept the table tonight using his treachery as only an Englishman can. In Hansa Teutonica he put himself in the middle of every important trade route and executed hostile takeovers of several important Kontors. In Acquire he unceremoniously drove his competition out of business leaving only his giant WorldWide Hotel behind. In Bohnanza he manipulated the novice player and pulled the rug out from everyone else’s deals. This can only be remembered as the Boston Massacre. The British have come… and taken all the games!

Session Report: Dominion, Forbidden Island, Jaipur

2010-06-28T22:29:00.001-04:00

We had another small session of the Metroburb Gamers. Jake, Alex and Matt.

Dominion

I had planned on a few more rounds of Dominion so I brought that out first. We played Size Distortion and boy did it make for a slow game. I spent the entire game trying to get income from non-treasure cards. I pitched my 1 victory point cards and most of my coppers thinking that slimming down my deck would lead to some good combos coming up. For the most part it did, but I couldn’t seem to generate more than 6 income on any turn and I was getting clobbered by Jake and Alex with witch cards. I wasn’t able to trash many of them either. I grabbed one 6 point card and several 3 point cards and then tried to run the game out by buying up piles of kingdom cards but the extra cards threw off my hand and my scheme came to a screeching halt near the end allowing both Jake and Alex to pass me. In the end I finished last but the highest score was a mere 25 points.

This set was annoying to play. Maybe I have the wrong attitude. Certain sets make me want to explore them and learn how to win with the given cards but this set just sort of sucked the fun out of the game for me and didn’t leave me thinking about trying it again at all. It also took a long time to play due to the low income.

Forbidden Island

Everyone in the group except the German is a pretty big fan of co-op games in general and the great Pandemic in particular. Regardless of being pretty bad at these games (we’ve only beat Shadows Over Camelot once with no traitors and Pandemic twice on the easy setting) we like them a lot. When Pandemic came out it was easily our most played game for months. Alas we have yet to try the expansion I was so looking forward to.

When I heard Matt Leacock was making another co-op with Gamewright I knew I’d be buying it. I preordered it from Amazon for a great price, $14 I think, and I received it right when it came out. I played a couple of games with my wife and kids and found it pretty fun and Alex had requested it so we brought it out after the Size Distortion game soured us on Dominion for the night.

The game is a great production, easily the nicest looking Gamewright game I have seen. Congratulations to them on this. This is even more impressive when you think about the price. I’m not sure what the retail price is but for under 15 bucks online you get a tin with an insert that fits the game nicely, some cool plastic treasures, a few small sets of somewhat thin but nicely finished cards, nice thick cardboard island location tiles and water-level indicator, and nice wooden pawns. The artwork in the game is outstanding throughout and really helps to bring the theme to life.

The game play borrows much from Pandemic. You have an island comprised of location tiles and two decks of cards. One deck is treasure cards, special action cards, and waters rise cards, the other deck is location cards. Each player has a role which gives them some special abilities in addition to the basic turn abilities. If you have played pandemic this should be sounding familiar to you. Keep listening and it will keep sounding more familiar.

The goal is to collect sets of 4 treasure cards for each of the 4 different treasures on the island, go to one of two locations where you can cash those cards in for the treasure, then get back to your helicopter and play an airlift card to leave the island. Instead of diseases and epidemics you have flooding and waters rise cards. Each turn you draw two treasure cards and as many location cards as the current water level. Any location card you draw floods that space. If a space that is already flooded floods again it sinks and is out of the game. You lose the game if both of any location associated with a certain treasure sinks, if a player is on a tile that sinks and has no adjacent tiles to swim to, if the helicopter pad sinks, or if the water level maxes out. I don’t have the rules in front of me so forgive me if I’ve missed a condition.

On your turn you can move orthogonally, shore up tiles (the one you are on or any adjacent ones), give cards away, or trade in cards for treasure. There is also a hand limit which adds to the pain.

The game was light and fun and had that Matt Leacock trademark balance where the game is always seemingly won or lost on the last turn of the game. We go three of the treasures pretty easily but had to discard too many cards from the fourth treasure type and that meant going through the treasure deck again to get those. Ouch. In the end we barely won by shoring up the helicopter pad and then huddling on one of the last remaining tiles to get the final treasure and then air lifting ourselves over to the helipad and then out of the game for the win. It was exhilarating.

All in all I think this game is a winner but Pandemic is tons better. If you want a game that you can play with children (I have a pretty brainy 6 year old who would handle the game at least mechanically but I would recommend at least 7 or 8) this could be a better choice. The theme of this one is also a bit more adventurey and that might appeal to certain people. It’s also shorter than pandemic and easy to setup and cleanup as well as being cheaper and in a smaller box. I guess what I’m saying is if you regularly buy games there’s no reason not to pick up this one. It would be great to use to introduce your non-gaming or lightly gaming friends to the co-op gaming genre as well. I can’t say it’s going to get a ton of play in the group but it has already pretty much earned it’s cost back in enjoyment.

Jaipur

The losing streak continues. I wonder how much longer I can keep enjoying this game when I literally never win it. I’ve won a total of 1 game and about 4 individual hands. It’s brutal but I’m still eager to get it out all the time. I don’t know it’s just a special kind of game for me. This session’s games were with Jake after Alex took off. He notified me of the elusive hand limit in the game. Mark and I were playing without regard to this at work and BOY IS THE GAME HARDER WITH IT! There is a 7 card hand limit which, I think, is only mentioned in the “Rules Easily Forgotten” section at the end of the rule book. With the hand limit the occurrence of 5 card sets was pretty much 0. It slows the game down a bit but it also adds to the strategy because you can tailor your play to your opponents hand size. If you take camels when he is maxed out for instance you are going to give them a difficult decision regarding whether to break up sets they are working on or leave all the tasty new cards that come out for your next camel-filled turn. This is a fantastic game.

So that was another small but good session. I’m hoping we can get the full group going again soon because I am eager to get Cyclades to the table with a full 5 people. I read the rules last night and the game looks fantastic.

Keep playing those games!

A Bit of Dominion

2010-06-19T21:09:00.000-04:00

We had a small session of the Metroburb Gamers this week due to the Celtics and the World Cup. It was just Jake, Alex, and Matt. I decided to show the guys Dominion. They had not played it and Jake has been champing at the bit to buy it but wouldn't pull the trigger without trying it first... an admirable trait that I totally do not identify with.

We played 3 games of Dominion. The first was with the teaching set of Kingdom cards. It went pretty well but somehow Jake ran away with the game without me even knowing. In fact I thought I was winning by a mile and that Alex was my main competition while Jake was actually trouncing both Alex and I. I really have no idea what happened but it was still a nice game and super easy to teach.

For the second game we played the big money set of cards. I walked away with this one by using throne rooms and adventurers. I was seeing alot of my treasure every hand and it was no problem to buy provinces. It was probably the most efficient hand of Dominion I've ever played and the game ended quickly.

There were some grumblings about multiplayer solitaire and lack of interaction so we played the interactive set of cards for the last round. I found this set frustrating. You don't want to collect money because it will just get stolen from you so you have to build up enough value in money on the kingdom cards to actually buy things. That's fine but it took a while and wasn't a lot of fun in my opinion. I tried to end the game by exhausting 3 stacks of kingdom cards because I knew I had the lead but I only managed to exhaust two decks before I ended up with hands flooded with useless cards. I think I had 7 of the moats by the end. I'm sure if I gave this set more time it would grow on me but for me I like the faster sets better.

So how did I feel about this session? Well it was a really good session in that everyone was happy and relaxed and enjoyed the game. Now as far as Dominion itself goes I have some mixed emotions. For me Dominion is a "nice" game. By this I mean I find it sort of relaxing to play. This is a strange way for me to feel about a game. When I really like a game I'm usually alot more jazzed about it. With Dominion I always enjoy it, I would play it pretty much any time, and I'm glad I own it but the game doesn't excite me one bit. Is this bad? It doesn't feel bad but it is interesting. I don't think I know of many games of a similar weight for me to compare my feelings to. One thing that may be playing into this is that I've played quite a bit of Dominion on BSW and I'm spoiled by the instant setup and teardown time, the absence of shuffling, and the helpful accounting of actions, buys, and money. Perhaps Dominion is a game better managed by a computer than in person. I think if you subtracted alot of the annoyances I just mentioned from the face to face game I would be left with a game that took a lot less time and that might be enough to raise my feelings from merely satisfied to genuinely excited.

I hope to play a lot more face to face Dominion with alot more of the cards and see if this modifies my feelings at all.

Until next time, keep gaming!

Foray into Collectible Card Games and… ahem “Living” Card Games

2010-06-13T23:20:00.001-04:00

Those who know me and probably anyone who reads this blog knows I have a really hard time with self-control, especially when it comes to acquiring stuff and extra-especially when it comes to acquiring games. In fact, there is hardly a week that goes by that some sort of game doesn’t enter my house.

There have been at least a dozen times where I have said “I’d really like to try Magic” as in “Magic: the Gathering”, the mother of all wallet-devouring gaming habits. Whenever I say this my friends (and good friends they are) always groan and say “Seriously… Do you really think you should try that?!?!”.

They are probably right. I used to collect baseball cards and I sorta collect basically everything that I like. But on the flip side I also have a serious problem with feeling like I’ve been ripped-off and I think spending $4 a pack on Magic boosters only to open them and find dozens of the same commons I already have I think would probably be enough to keep me in line with respect to CCGs… maybe.

Magic: the Gathering

In any case, at some point, due to some podcast or other, I decided I would just buy the 5 intro packs that Wizards of the Coast releases whenever they start a new block of Magic. In this case it was the Magic 2010 block which promised a virtual reset to the game and an opportunity to welcome new players. For those who don’t know what a huge investment MtG can be Wizards releases a new core set every year and 3 expansion sets. This is something on the order of 1000 cards and each of these sets has a 5 pack of intro packs to go with it as well.

I found a place online that sold the full set of 5 intro packs for about $35 bucks and pulled the trigger. This was almost a year ago now. When I got the cards I rifled through them, read the text, looked at the pictures, and read the rules. Oh and I also opened the single booster packs that came with each starter deck. Then the decks went into a box on the floor of my bedroom and there they stayed for over 6 months.

Why did they sit there? Well first of all I had no one to play with. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell my wife would play MtG with me and no one in the Metroburbs was the slightest bit interested. I asked Richard at one point because he is into RPGs and had once bought into the A Game of Thrones CCG a while back but he was not interested and admitted that he sold off all his AGoT cards for lack of opponents and had no interest in other CCGs.

At that point Richard said he would buy the new AGoT “Living Card Game”. The LCG is a format invented by Fantasy Flight Games where they release a Core Set, monthly decks of cards and periodic large expansions. It still costs a lot but it takes the collecting out of the mix. So Richard went ahead and bought the AGoT core set as well as some of the chapter packs and we proceeded not to play those either.

Fast forward to April this year when I started a new job and met another gamer at work. Since then a ton of 2 player gaming has been happening at lunch and lo and behold when I mentioned wanting to try MtG Mark knew how to play, having been an avid player in a previous life.

I went home that night, sleeved my 5 intro packs, and brought them in the next day. I think it took a couple of days to get up the courage to try it. I honestly was a bit put off by the rules and the card text. It all seemed a bit loose to me and I was worried that I would have too many options and/or not understand how all the card texts interacted with each other. This is another reason I never attempted to teach this game to anyone else. I am used to board games: stream-lined European style board games with only a few very clear options for my turn. In Magic we have all these different phases and types of cards: cards you can play on your turn, cards you can play anytime, etc. as well as all the abilities on the cards. The game has grown so organically over the years that they seem to have added rules for just about everything. The rule sheet that comes with the game is a single foldout sheet but the “real rules” on the Wizards of the Coast web site are pushing 75 pages I think. It’s daunting at best.

So when we sat down I was surprised to find out that the game is actually quite easy. We did have a couple of questions about the way to apply the card text in a couple of instances but all in all it seemed like an almost stupidly simple game. It plays really fast for the most part and it’s good light fun.

Since then we’ve played a couple of hands of MtG several times a week. We use the starter decks and cycle through them seeing how they fare against each other. It’s pretty interesting stuff. At this point we’ve gotten used to the themes of the 5 starter decks and the style of play that goes along with them and we’re definitely playing better as we now know what cards are in the decks and what we need to create interesting combos. There’s even a thrill of victory as you draw the cards you need in time to snatch the win just before your opponent can do the same.

One thing people tell me is that a lot of the fun of MtG comes from just creating decks of your own to try to achieve interesting combinations and tweaking the deck so that it can be used with the widest variety of opponents. This all sounds like a bit much for me but I would like to see how a deck behaves when it has 4 each of certain cards. The starters are only 40 card decks (official decks are 60) and they have at most 2 of any card in them (official decks can have up to 4).

I know of people who do booster drafts where they throw a party and buy a box of boosters and draft to build decks as part of the experience and then play with those decks. This sounds fun but I think you’d really have to know the cards to have this work. I can’t imagine putting together a decent deck from a smattering of boosters filled with cards I’ve never seen before.

So the takeaway is that I give the intro packs a big thumbs up. They make intro packs for every expansion and they have something like 4 expansions a year so I will not be buying more. These ones are just fine thanks. Someday maybe I will try building my own decks and see how that works but I bet without a lot more experience the intro packs are going to be generally better anyway. Maybe the thing to do is just drop a few targeted cards into the intro packs and build the 40 card decks into 60 card decks. It’s worth a try.

A Game of Thrones LCG

At about the time I started playing MtG in work I also finally got together with Richard to play the AGoT LCG. We played with the core set which comes with 4 decks, Lannister, Baratheon, Stark, and Targaryen. For some reason I pulled out the Targaryen and Baratheon decks for us to play rather than the Stark and Lannister decks which are always suggested.

We played through the game twice so that we could get a feel for the decks we were using. This was good and bad. First let me back up and talk about the game. I’ve already said that LCGs are CCGs with fixed installments. That’s good. The bad part is that for tournament players the installments and the core set are still problematic. For tournament deck building players will want up to 3 of each card. The core set does not give you this and the installments give you 3 each of 10 and 1 each of another 10. So if you are hard core you need to buy 3 core sets and 3 copies of every chapter pack. I believe FFG is remedying this for the chapter packs but not the core set by upping the count to 3 copies of every card in the chapter packs.

The game can also be played 4 player and I think with the core set this is probably the better way to play it. The 4 player game uses titles in addition to the house decks used by each player. The titles create relationships between the players each round that add an additional dynamic. Some titles also grant additional powers to the person using them. This must add a very interesting element to the game and I think with the decks in the core set this style of game would be more appropriate.

The game design is interesting, especially in comparison to Magic. The first interesting thing is the plot cards. These are a deck of cards each player has and each round the players choose one of the cards to put into play. The cards generally modify the round in some way for the players and also determine your base income, initiative, and rewards for winning challenges in the round.

Speaking of challenges there are 3 different types in this game: military, intrigue, and power. The aim of the game is to get a certain amount of power to win. Military challenges kill opponents characters. Intrigue challenges cause your opponent to discard cards randomly, and power challenges cause you to take power from your opponent. The characters that can participate in challenges of certain types are denoted by icons on the cards. You can only initiate or defend against a military challenge with characters bearing the military icon, for instance.

The challenges are pretty simple. There is no offense/defence numbers like in MtG, just a single strength value. Attackers win ties. Also if you lose a military challenge you can choose who dies rather than the defenders explicitly being eliminated by the attacker. This is simple and elegant if somewhat anti-thematic.

Cards are put into play using gold which is taken at the beginning of the round based on the number on your plot card and any gold modifiers on your permanent cards. This gold must be spent in the round or will be lost. Some abilities require gold so you might want to save some for the combat phase or you can just spend it all putting cards into play.

Another interesting part of the game is the setup phase. At the beginning of the game players are allowed to put up to 5 gold worth of cards into play face down. They then draw back up to their full hand, flip the cards face up and start the normal game.

One part of the game that I found a bit strange is that the only way to get power is from your opponent. You never win power from the supply except for undefended challenges and for characters with the “renown” keyword. What this means is that during the first several rounds players sort of attack in ways they opponent cannot or will choose not to defend against to build up their power pools. At this point the game has a sort of economy of power and can flow but the ramp up is weird. It seems like players should start with a certain amount of power.

Now on to the actual play. I personally thought the rules and the text on the cards were not as clear as MtG. The game is not more complicated but the cards aren’t as user friendly in my opinion. I had a lot of the problems with this game that I feared I would have but did not with Magic. I think this will go away with more plays and some time spent discussing particular card abilities on forums.

The other thing I noticed was that the Baratheon deck just trounced Targaryen both times we played. The Baratheons have many powerful characters and characters with renown. They also have attachments that are paralyzing if the opponent does not have a deck built to remove them. This was the case for the Targaryen deck. My only conclusion is that these problems would be mitigated by the multiplayer game with the titles which would create a situation where the Targaryens would have a defender. There were also a few cards that would only make sense in the multiplayer game. These cards usually said “Put this card into play free and once it is used in a challenge put it in front of you”. This type of card clearly is meant for you to play into an ally’s tableau so they can gain a quick benefit and you can then take the character for no cost before your next turn happens.

The art work is fantastic and the theme really comes through in the game. Having read the first two books in the series I could totally feel the theme in the card text and abilities. They did a really good job with this.

My conclusion here is that the two player game with the core set is a bit clunky and unbalanced but the game shows its potential both in terms of 2 player games with constructed decks and, I think, for the possibility of a very fun 4 player game with the titles. In fact that is the way I want to try it next. The game is pretty short so I think it could make a good starter to a night of gaming.

I don’t know if I’m just being swayed by the theme but I’m going to give this game a good long try before I decide there is anything bad about it. It has its warts but I thoroughly enjoyed it in spite of these problems.

Conclusion

Having never played any type of trading card game before I’m pretty pleased with these two games. I do think they have more of an investment factor both monetarily and mentally than many board games but I think they can be enjoyed casually with off-the-shelf decks.

I apologize for not coming back with my Shipyard session report. I have a lot to say about that game. I’ve also had a chance to play Reiner Knizia’s Municipium and Arena: Roma II recently and I’m looking forward to talking about them.

I’ve also been playing alot of games on the iPad and I’ve found some really enjoyable stuff I’d like to discuss there as well.

Until next time. Play some games!

A Game of Thrones - the Card Game

2010-06-06T11:04:00.013-04:00

Well...it is about time I post a game review here. And it seems very fitting that this game is themed after the successful "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series by George R.R. Martin.
What has made the books so special is that it is technically fantasy with the usual trappings of medieval European history but the author chose to focus his story entirely on the development of his characters. In the World of Westeros there is practically no magic, no monsters or anything familiar from so many other Fantasy books. Instead we learn about the fate of various characters who are tied to some of the great houses that rule the land.

Those families (particularly the Targaryen, Lannister, Stark and Baratheon families) are the basis for the themed cards of the starter box (additional card packs allow to vastly expand the game following many aspects covered or hinted at in the books). For anybody who has read the books - which is by no means required to play this game - there will be the familiar characters and places and FFG has done a good job in getting the stats right for each one.
As with practically all collectible card games it is all about building a deck made up of events, places and characters. The difference in the AGoT game is that there is a pre-defined set of complete decks and one does not have to buy random booster packs (inevitably ending up with useless cards piled high) in order to get all the cards available.

The game allows for four player play (supported by a simple game board and a handful of tokens), but for our first run Matt and I met for a two-player session. Thankfully he helped me through my inertia of owning the game for 6+ months without ever having read the rules. So we broke out the game board and card decks and quickly walked through the setup:
Each player starts with a hand of cards for his "house" (Martin's term for the family clans in his series) and a set of plot cards which are essentially themes that can be used each round to influence certain strengths and weaknesses of each house as well as determine the starting gold and initiative values for each player. The initiative also determines who gets to lay out cards first.
I won't go into all the details of the game mechanics - there is a good summary of these at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones_%28card_game%29 - but rather comment on how it "felt" to play the game.

First off - I felt right at home and the theme-ing was excellent. I am not necessarily one of the theme-obsessed board gamers but for this particular game the theme is the key piece for me and I was well satisfied.
Matt and I had conveniently ignored the suggestion to first play the Stark and Lannister houses against each other - instead he had picked the Baratheons and I went with the Targaryens.
In the books the Baratheons are primarily a family of charismatic knights - strong, in love with combat and tournaments and natural born leaders. The Targaryens are an ancient clan whose strength and fate was tied to the dragons they controlled in the old days but as stated above: Martin chose to not use any monsters or magic in his books and had merely described all this as historic background while in the story the dragons had left the lands of Westeros resulting in the Targaryen family having lost all power and becoming landless fugitives.
During our first game the luck of the draw (you re-draw cards into your hand from the shuffled deck) resulted in Matt having multiple of the strong Baratheon characters on the table while I had mostly event cards out which are pretty useless unless you can bring out characters to drive the actions with. Unsurprisingly he smashed my Targaryen deck within a few rounds.
We decided to stick with the same decks and this time things were reversed: I had nothing but Targaryen characters come out but no events. It appears the Targaryens really need a good balance of both card types to unlock their special abilities.
Meanwhile Matt ended up "attaching" (special feature of certain cards) multiple negative effects to the characters I had laid out, effectively canceling several of them out.
Again...Matt won the 2nd game convincingly and while I was left feeling thoroughly clobbered up I also realized the designers had done a good job of converting the characters into the game's mechanics.

In sum, I am definitely intrigued by this first run and want to keep playing and testing out the other houses as well as some of the extra card packs I bought already.

For now I'll give AGoT - tCG a 9 for theming and a 7 for rules (I have a certain aversion to the massive permutations that come with the entire concept of these card games, but I am willing to ignore that for the sake of playing in my favorite fantasy book setting).

Again with the Session Reportlets – Too Many to List

2010-06-02T22:17:00.002-04:00

Once again I’ve lost my posting rhythm. It has been just over two weeks of gaming I think and I have played quite a bit in that time. There were two sessions of the Metroburb Gamers, one session with my wife and another couple, and tons of two-player lunch time gaming action at work.

Hansa Teutonica

The last reasonably full meeting of the Metroburbs featured Hansa Teutonica as the main event. Jake and I had our first play under our belt from joining the Guy Stuff Gamers a couple of weeks prior and Jay and Alex were the students. The game was great again but this time felt totally different than it had previously. In our first game everything was wide open and people pursued their different goals more or less unimpeded. This game featured a lot of piece displacement and jostling for position. It was a lot meaner. Jake won the game using the merchant points in the bottom left corner of the map to his benefit. I missed the “across the board” route by one link and suffered badly for it. In both of my games the game has ended one turn before I would have been able to deliver a big strike. In that way it is starting to feel like a race game. This game didn’t have the fluid rhythm of the first game but was no less enjoyable. I think this game has many more plays in it and I can’t wait to get it to the table again soon.

Once again I suggested an immediate second play but was shot down. Jay doesn’t like to play two rounds of the more challenging games in a row. Maybe he can comment on why.

In any case Hansa Teutonica is a 10 for me right now. It is not the perfect game for everyone but I cannot think of a pure-euro style game that I would rather play. It’s great.

Mamma Mia

Mamma Mia had been a big hit the previous week with everyone but the venerable Jake so it came out again. We had missed a crucial rule (that you can amend an order from your hand at the time it is being resolved at the end of a round) and that added a lot to make this more of a game. It wasn’t quite as raucous and fun as it was without that rule but it was much more controllable. I enjoyed it so much I brought it over Jays house that Friday and we played again with Jay and his wife and my wife. Everyone had a good time. This game was played once ages ago and has been collecting dust since then. I’m so very glad I decided to bring it out. It is now one of my favorite fillers.

Escalation

It had been quite some time since our old friend Escalation has seen any action. There’s not much to say about this game really. It’s the lightest of light, more in line with Uno than with any euro-filler but it’s perfect mindless fun for the end of the night and never fails to incite a good time as people delight in a round where a single individual amasses the entire deck. Still a good one.

Ra

Jake and I got together for some two player games on Memorial Day. This was mostly an excuse to play Shipyard, a game that I pretty much dreaded explaining to the group and that is supposedly better with 2 players anyway. When Jake arrived my kids were still up and my parents were at the house so I brought out some lighter stuff for us to start with. We ended up chugging through 4 complete games.

The first of these games was the old standby Ra. Ra has made a big comeback for me recently as I realized it could be played two player and was actually enjoyable that way. I also decided to buy the new Rio Grande version of the game as well as Priests of Ra. This was the inaugural play of the Rio edition.

Ra is good stuff. What else can I say. It’s a tough game with a lot of randomness but that’s what makes it great. The scoring for our game was very low due to a bunch of disaster tiles and a really abrupt second epoch but it was still great fun. I can’t say enough how much I like the art in this game. It’s strange that a game with basically no theme can benefit so much from the pretty pictures on the tiles but it does. I can’t imagine playing this with more abstract artwork or a different theme.

Ra is an 8 for me.

Priests of Ra

I was taught Priests of Ra by Mark at work during a lunch game. I really like it. In fact, even though I don’t think it’s as good a game as Ra, I think I actually enjoy it more. It is just a tad simpler and it’s easy to score a lot of points which makes it more exciting in my opinion. For those who haven’t heard much about this game it is just like Ra but with different tiles. Weird statement I know. Basically you have civilizations, buildings, priests, plagues, and pyramids. Many of the pieces are double-sided. When they are they will have Blue/Yellow or Red/Green. It’s easy to remember. When you draw them from the bag you pick a side and place it on the track that way. And that’s how it stays. Priests are worth 2 points, go away at the end of an epoch, and allow you to flip a tile you already have, buildings are worth two points per same colored pair and stay for the game, civs are worth 5 points if you have at least 2 and more than anyone else in a single color and go away, pyramids are worth points only at the end of the game based on how tall they are (you literally build all your tiles into a single pyramid shape throughout the game) and how many sets of same colored room tiles you have in them. You can also get mega points for having a set of complete different colored buildings and you get ankhs for having a set of different colored civs. The ankhs are worth big points at the end of the game as well. The plagues stay with you the whole game and lose you points each round depending on how many you have. Three priests allow you to get rid of one plague.

The game is super fun. I will definitely show this to people I would not show Ra to. It’s still a bit confusing what scores when and what stays and what goes but in general it’s a bit easier than Ra. I like the art as well. It’s more cartoony than Ra but it’s a nice production. So far I’ve played it only two player with three different people. In that configuration at least it is a wonderful game. It should not be overlooked.

Priests of Ra is a 9 for me right now but may go down. We’ll see.

Jaipur

I’ve been playing a ton of Jaipur. In my opinion it is the single best two player light euro game. That’s right Lost Cities, I’m talking to you! Seriously though, I like Lost Cities. This game is pretty much identical in weight and style but I’m completely in love with it. I’ll teach you the game right now. There are goods cards and camel cards in the deck. There is a market of 5 cards and you have an initial hand of 5 cards. On your turn you can take a card from the market and fill it from the deck, take all the camels from the market and fill it from the deck, or take as many goods cards from the market as you want and refill the market using a combination of your camels and goods cards from your hand, or you can sell as many of one type of good as you want. When you sell goods you take a token of the matching color for each card you sell. The round ends when three of the goods token stacks are gone or the deck runs out. You need to win two of 3 rounds to win the game. That’s pretty much it.

The meat of the game is in the tension of when to take camels, when to use camels, and when to sell sets of cards. The goods tokens are worth differing values so selling early will get you the higher value tokens but selling larger sets will get you bonus tokens.

When you are considering your turn you have limited options but the camels are the key to the game. You can collect them and use them to get large sets but when you take the camels you are going to show your opponent several new cards in the market as a result. If he has any camels himself he might be able to get a haul of high-value goods or a large set of low value goods in the process. It’s all delightfully excruciating. I’ve played this game a dozen or more times in the last couple of weeks and won only once but I still want to play the game all the time. I’m not alone either. My next game order contains two copies of the game for two different people I’ve played it with. I’d also like to reiterate that the game is beautifully produced with great components. Check out my previous post on it with photos to see.

If you have any use for a two player game you best go ahead and get this one. It is the best of it’s particular breed. The best.

Jaipur is a 10 for what it is.

Shipyard

OK the more I think about it, this game has to have a post of its own. Spoiler alert: it’s good but surprisingly little fun ;-) More on that in another post. In fact I’m spent for now. I’ll try to post the remainder of these mini-sessions in the next couple of days.

Cheers!

Board Game Session Report: Basket Boss, Mama Mia, Category 5/6 Nimmt

2010-05-15T17:00:00.002-04:00

We were 5 this week and I had big plans... big plans! But I was also sensitive about the Goa experience last week so I had my eye on the mood of the room. I wanted to start us off with Basket Boss and then finally get Chicago Express to the table. Both of these games are pretty easy to understand and teach and both play in a short time so I had high hopes.

Basket Boss

I started off the evening by teaching Basket Boss. This was my first time playing but I had read the rules through a couple of times and it's a simple enough game. The game comes from Cwali games which is a Dutch company and it is my first game from that company. The designer is Corne Van Moorsel. Cool name! The idea is that you are running a basketball team which you build by drafting players. The production quality is really nice but the art work is very amateurish. I think that is by design and I think it actually works pretty well in this game.

The game is pretty simple:

Draft some players.
See who has the best team.
Award trophies for what place you finished in the league.
Earn some income (also based on your team).
Possibly, hire a specialist (read rule-breaker).
Repeat for a total of 6 seasons.

The board is loaded with players to be drafted. Then the bid starts. The bid is allowed to escalate until everyone passes. The winner pays the bid to the bank and gets the player. The players are the most interesting aspect of the game. They have a position, a height, a strength, and an income. The height is just a tie breaker for end of season ties. The position and strength contribute to your team strength. The teams strength for a season is all the basketball icons on a player card for that seasion plus one point for each different position (denoted by the color of the player card) on your team. So you want a strong team that has players of every position to score the most.

The player cards are divided into rows each row has a number of basketballs on it. When you draft a player you line his top row up with the current season (denoted by your season bar on your team mat). Your team strength is then adjusted based on adding all the basketballs across the row and adding one point for each different position you have represented. The number of basketballs on the players changes from season to season which gives the players a kind of personality. Some players are stars. Some players are inconsistent, providing you with alot of strength every other year and almost none in intervening years. Some players last a long time and some players only last a few seasons and then become worthless. Some players start off weak and get progressively better. When you move your season bar down after each season it changes your team's strength accordingly . If a player ever shows 0 basketballs you turn him over and neither his income nor his color/position count for you. This is bad. The income of a player is seemingly unrelated to his capabilities. Some players are flashy and are worth alot and others are great for your team strength but provide you no income. Your income at the end of each season is unrelated to your team strength and is determined by simply adding up the coins on all of your players.

The specialists are cute. They let you do things like train a player to bring out his potential sooner, win bids by matching the previous bid and pay less when you win, make interest on your money, and break ties. The referee (the tie breaker) is really interesting because when you own him he breaks ties in your favor and when other players want to break times not involving you they can pay him off to do so. Kinda neat.

So the game is pretty cool. It's light and fun. With my group it suffers from the problem that all auction games suffer from: we don't play them enough so no know knows the relative value of anything so the bids are complete non-sense. Some people don't mind this (me and Jake) and sort just try to get better throughout the game. Other people are put off by this (Jay and Alex). I'm not sure how Richard felt about the game but he quietly kicked everyone's ass.

I think there's a really nice little game here. It's not a must have but it is short and light and captures the critical balance between the value of the players you are drafting to your team strength vs their value to your pocketbook. If you are like me you weren't paying attention to that and you peak in the middle of the game and have no income to win bids in seasons 4 through 6. My rise and fall were both pretty meteoric in this game but hey it was a good time. Also it has some parody player names that are funny similar to Hollywood Blockbuster. In fact I would very much compare the weight and feel of this game to Traumfabrik/Hollywood Blockbuster. I'm not sure how the rest of the group felt about this but I thought it was a real winner that we should give a few more sessions to. If we don't find any interesting decisions coming out of it by then maybe it's just a solid 6 and nothing more but right now I think my rating is about 7.5.

Mamma Mia

At this point I was fearing that people were getting "out of the mood" and I was afraid to introduce a game like Chicago Express so I ran downstairs to the vault and just grabbed some filler card games. I was going to go for stuff we already knew but for some reason I grabbed Mamma Mia. I had tried this game before and thought it was kindof annoying but for some reason I said "what the heck" and went for it anyway.

The teaching of the game was simple and I could tell people were a bit leery of the memory aspect but they all seemed game and everyone is willing to give Uve Rosenberg the benefit of the doubt because of our love for Bohnanza so off we went.

The game turned out pretty fantastic. I walked away with the first game and everyone had such a good time we immediately played again. The second game was much tougher and much more competitive. People were bluffing and throwing pizzas around like crazy.

I had not realized this game was quite as tactical as it is. I had forgotten about the leftover ingredients staying in the oven after a round and about the power of the wild pizzas and the 15+ pizza. We even forgot a critical rule: the ability to add cards from your hand at the end of a round to complete a pizza. I also never considered the power of the Mama Mia player in this game. It never occurred to me that that card gives the player the power to fill a wild card order with the ingredient of his choice potentially screwing another player if he can remember the other pizzas coming up.

The memory aspect of this game is really not difficult at all and the other gamier aspects of it help to allay any concerns about memory games that an average player could have. I think this game is actually a 9 for me right now. I don't even believe I'm saying it. A 9!

Category 5/6 Nimmt

We ended the night with a game of 6 Nimmt. I have the Category 5 version as mentioned previously. The game was fun but crazy tense. Richard fell way behind in the first hand and then managed to do very well for the remainder of the game. The selections were insane. Round after round we would end up with all full rows and one empty one. Then the empty one would fill. Then everyone would be taking rows and getting screwed. It happened again and again but it really added to the fun. I still like this game for a super light filler. And no. I did not do well at all. This game is a solid 7 for me. Not my favorite filler but it's up there.

So all was well in the end. I need to find a way to get those heavier games to the table but I can't argue with the fun that was had with the games we played. I had a great time. Next week we'll start with Chicago Express though.

Cheers!

2 Player Ra! Matt X’s Punch Out. Goodbye to Zombies!

2010-05-12T22:44:00.001-04:00

Unsatisfying Punchout

Today I got an order with Shipyard and Dominion Alchemy in the mail. I’m very excited about both of these games.

Dominion is a normal Dominiony affair except this time it’s less cards and it’s in the Ystari-ish size box instead of the standard big square box. I would have preferred even smaller… Like baseball card long box smaller, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Shipyard comes with 8 frames of cardboard with every bit of space used for tons of tiny pieces. This would be a good thing except that the punch out experience was one of my worst ever. Every piece was not cut at the corners. Almost every chit is missing the paper corners on the backs. For a while I tried to avoid it and then I just said screw it and let it fly but readers and friends will know how much this sort of thing bothers me. I even think it is more than cosmetic in some cases since the tiles are essentially marked, some having worse tears than others. I guess I’ll worry about it after a couple of plays if I think it’s a keeper. For now it’s just an annoyance. CGE usually has really great manufacturing. Maybe I just got unlucky. Like all CGE games this one wasn’t especially cheap either.

Giving Summoner Wars a Try. Resisting Runewars.

I’ve placed an order for Summoner Wars. I hope it’s as good as everyone says. I was tempted to throw in Runewars but between the box size and the nature of the game I think even if I might love it it would not be played enough to warrant the space and the cost. Boy does it look fun though.

Ra for 2

Played a couple of rounds of 2 player Ra today. It actually works really well and I liked it despite losing just as soundly as I do in larger games of Ra. It plays super fast and the only difference between 3-5 player and 2 is the sun distribution. The only downside is when you do something wrong it always benefits your one and only opponent where in the larger game the pain is spread out more. I got lapped in both games. The first one because I was just relearning the game, I swear. The second I just pushed my luck too far. So it goes in Ra.

Learning to Let Go

Tomorrow I will be saying goodbye to Last Night on Earth and Neuland. LNoE got two plays of the base scenario and was so highly polarizing to my group that I just don’t think I’ll get any value out of it. For what it’s worth I think the game does what it sets out to really well. I think in the end I could take or leave the whole Zombie thing. We were playing with 6. This was at the now famous Krapfest back in October. In any case it’s making some room and paying for some replacement games. I’ll try to visit it sometime.

I’m also unloading my extra copy of Neuland. I have yet to play the game and had two from a Tanga order. I have a feeling I’ll be looking to get rid of the other copy too but I at least want to try it first.

I’m feeling pretty good about this slight slimming down of the collection. I hope it is the start of a larger sell-off so I can feel a little more like I have a hobby and a little less like I have a habit.

Tomorrow I need to go to the geek and update my collection. I’ve bought a ton of games since the last update and now I need to take one off as well… It’s a start.

Cheers!

Still Gaming… a Bevy of Session Report(let)s

2010-05-10T22:15:00.003-04:00

Due to work overwhelming my life lately the gaming and the blogging have both been spotty. I apologize. That said, I sat down and asked myself what I’ve been doing in terms of gaming and there is actually quite a bit to talk about.

Memoir ‘44 Reprise

There were actually three sessions I didn’t report on. The first was long ago at this point and was a Memoir ‘44 session with Jake. We picked up in the campaign book for the original game and played the next three scenarios. Jake continued on as the Germans and I as the Allies. This time things were different though and Jake took two out of the three scenarios, including rescuing victory from the jaws of defeat at the end of both of his winning scenarios. We’re still having a ton of fun with this game and the experience always manages to be memorable even if the dice and cards seem uncooperative at times. I can totally see why people love the game. I can also see equally well how this game could drive hard core gamers and those who are into heavier war games totally nuts. Luckily, I’m in the former came and I think this is a great way to spend a few hours.

El Grande and Thurn und Taxis

The second session I didn’t report on was an El Grande and Thurn und Taxis session. I love both of these games and enjoyed them both very much. This was Jake’s first play of either game and I think he was suitably impressed, especially with El Grande. We failed to do enough leader bashing and Richard walked away with the victory. Thurn und Taxis was a lot more fun than I even remembered. I’d like to get this game to the table again soon. I believe Richard won this one as well. A good night for the German! I’ve also decided I don’t like the ability to clear the cards in Thurn und Taxis. Jake was abusing it and I was sitting closest to the cards. I felt like I was shuffling the deck about every three turns. It almost became a joke at some point. Let’s make matt shuffle the cards again. Not cool dude. Not cool at all.

Goa… Goa… Gone!

The most recent metroburbs session was the week before last and we played only a single game: Goa. Goa is a game I had played a couple of times years ago and remembered liking very much but this time it went over like a ton of bricks. If I was the type to abort a game this would have been the time but we did manage to make it through after about 3 hours. I really can’t say what went wrong. We got a few rules incorrect. We did not fill the plantations when they were won (I think the rules are confusing on this point). I’m sure that slowed the game down. Worse yet when the game started to slow we started playing less and chatting more which only made it take longer. By the end no one wanted anything in the auctions and it was pretty much a relief to be done. I think we were all just off on this particular evening. Everyone was tired and my rules explanation was not well received. I should have read the crowd better and failed over to a game we all knew for that night. It was the only chance we had of having a good time. In the end I’m not sure what to do with Goa now. I’d be afraid to bring it back out with the same group and I’m not sure who else I would play it with. Does that mean it should go in the sell pile or should I beg the team for one more chance?

Family Games – Zooloretto, Keltis Stones

I also have had a few good game experiences with my kids lately. I’ll have to write exclusively about kids games at some point because there are some kids games I honestly like and have had great luck with but lately my older son and even my younger to some extent has started to be able to convincingly play real games. We had a fantastic Zooloretto game where both of my kids did well with no help on my part at all. I don’t know how well that speaks of my play in this game but I really enjoyed just being able to play with them and not having to manage them so much during the game. My older son also really enjoyed the Keltis stones game I got in my recent amazon.de order and played that without much help at all. I’ll save the report on the more exclusively kid-oriented games for another time.

Games in Work – Battle Line, Jaipur, Shanghaien, Medici vs. Strozzi

I started a new job recently and on my very first day I happened to overhear someone saying they were away all weekend playing games. I stopped and introduced myself and found out that not only was this person a gamer, he had just returned from the Gathering of Friends… and his collection is bigger than mine! I immediately ran home to tell my wife that there was nothing wrong with owning 500 games.

Since then I’ve talked more and we’ve started to incorporate some lunchtime games into our schedule. So far we’ve had a session of Reiner Knizia’s great game Battle Line, an embarrassing game of Medici vs. Strozzi, Michael Schacht’s Shanghaien, and several games of Jaipur.

The only game I’ve managed to win so far was Medici vs Strozzi and in that game we both finished with negative scores. I really want to get a few more plays of that one in to see if we can start to get the valuations right. The game is brutal but intriguing.

Shanghaien is a really fun set collection game with dice and a really neat scoring mechanic where your points in a suit are either the face value of your cards if your opponent has none in that suit or the face value of your opponent’s cards in that suit if he does. I had my hopes thoroughly dashed as I watched what looked like a huge lead evaporate in the last two rounds when my opponent grabbed single low-value cards in all my heaviest suits. This game needs an American print run! It’s an Abacus Spiele game and an Michael Schacht game. It has dice and it’s really fun. So what’s the problem?!?! I really don’t know but I’m glad I have a copy.

Jaipur has been a real winner. This is a two player card game that definitely rivals Lost Cities and other great two player card games. The production is gorgeous as I’ve said before and the game is great as well. It’s a simple game where you’re collecting goods cards and trading them in for tokens and bonuses. What makes the game great is the excruciating but simple choices. There are four things you can do on your turn: take a single card from a set of market cards and replace it with one from the deck, take all the camel cards from the market and replace them from the deck, take as many goods cards as you want from the market and replace them with camels you own and cards from your hand, or sell exactly one type of good for tokens and possibly bonuses. The problem is you really want to do more than one thing and you are almost always going to set your opponent up when you do anything but sell goods.

The camel cards are really important in the game since they allow you to trade with the market without using hand cards but when you do this you are filling up the market with camels. What then usually happens is that your opponent will take the camels and refill the market with great goods cards but now you don’t have the buying power of the camels anymore. Your opponent does. The other delightful pain comes when you trade in a large set of cards. Doing this will gain you a pile of tokens (one for each card) and possibly a bonus for a set of 3, 4, or 5 cards. The bonuses for 5 cards are usually huge. But this leaves your hand depleted which reduces your buying power. Also values of the goods tokens decrease as they are taken so if you hold out for the multi-card bonus your opponent might sneak in and take the best goods tokens before you trade.

The game ends when three piles of goods tokens are depleted or when the deck runs out. In one game I had everything going my way but I miscalculated and the deck ran out with most of my points still in hand. I have yet to win a game of this but I have loved every minute of it. It’s a classic.

Guy Stuff Gamers – Medici, Hansa Teutonica, Bang!, Long Shot

Jake and I were invited to join the Guy Stuff Gamers for a game day this Saturday in Providence. It was about a dozen people including Mark from work. These guys are mostly part of a couple of groups that meet in south eastern MA and northern RI. Everyone was really nice and Jake and I had a great time. I brought a few games and we had a pretty crazy game of Long shot with 7 people. I played one epoch of Ra: the Dice Game. I lost miserably at Medici. I forgot to kill the Sherriff in Bang! AND… I finally learned Hansa Teutonica, a game I have owned for a few months but have yet to play. This was the highlight of the trip for me. The game is amazing. I can’t wait to play it again. It’s a pretty dry game but it has lots of ways to score points and it goes really fast. I loved every minute of it. I came in second by a long margin but I did manage to complete the across the board network bonus which was something I set out to do.

Well that pretty much brings everything up to date. Tomorrow we game again and I’m hoping for a big bounce-back from the Goa experience. Stay tuned!

An amazon.de Order. Light on Strategy. Heavy on the OCD.

2010-04-25T14:06:00.001-04:00

This post is actually about a purchase I made a while ago. The theme here is completeness, an everlasting problem of mine. In the end though what I have is all the parts of some very nice games some of which are only available overseas currently. Let’s discuss!

amazon.de

Amazon is one of my favorite things in the world. This is evidenced by a couple of things.

If I can buy something on amazon.com I will unless it is significantly cheaper elsewhere including shipping.
My buying habits are so apparent to amazon.com that most of the suggested items they offer me are things I already own and bought elsewhere. Scary!
I trust them enough to order from overseas versions of amazon. In this case of course we are talking games and they come from amazon.de

There are a couple of reasons to buy from amazon.de but they are pretty simple. The discounts on games are similar to the discounts they offer on books here in the U.S. so you can get prices that are on par with U.S. internet game retailers. The other thing is that amazon.de offers flat rate shipping of 14 euro so as long as you are ordering say $100 of games you will only be paying slightly less than double what you would pay to ship most U.S. game orders.

I have used this on occasion when I want to buy several games that are not readily available from U.S. retailers. It is a very painless process. I read a bit of German but the layout of the site is identical to the U.S. They even convert your costs at checkout to dollars so you can know exactly what you are paying without having to convert anything yourself.

To top it off I’m on the east coast so I find that the shipments arrive in about a week. Amazon does not have every game but they have most popular games and the prices are great. Small box card games are about 6 euros and medium sized games are about 15 euros and large games are about 20 euros. I’m actually thinking about picking up the sweet newest Kosmos edition of Settlers of Catan at some point. It has nice art and plastic pieces that are actually shaped like roads, settlements and cities but I digress.

So what precipitated this order. In a word it was Keltis. Keltis is a Reiner Knizia game that won the Spiele des Jahres. It is a very light and simple game based on the Lost Cities card game. It is pretty abstract but fun enough and easily understood and played by non-gamers. Ticket to Ride it is not.

Knizia created this game as Lost Cities the Board Game which is exactly what it is and that is how it was released in the U.S. I have this version and it has artwork similar to Lost Cities along with a couple of slight rules tweaks. This game was preceded by Keltis which came out in Germany a few months before Lost Cities the Board Game came out here. Keltis has an abstract Irish theme rather than the Lost Cities explorer theme. I bought Lost Cities the Board Game last spring during a sale at Boulder Games where it was only $14. Before this point I had no inclination to buy it. It’s a big box game that isn’t terribly exciting after all but for $14 I couldn’t pass it up.

The game arrived and I played it a couple of times with the family. They liked it pretty well compared to most stuff I introduce them to so it was a keeper for that reason.

As time passed Keltis won the Spiele des Jahres. What that means for most games is a barrage of expansions and spinoff games and Keltis was no exception. It spawned a simple portable version with tiles representing stones, a card game (kinda wierd since Keltis is the board game version of the Lost Cities card game), and an expansion board. There is yet another spinoff game coming soon called Keltis Oracle or something. The disappointing thing here is that since the U.S. got Lost Cities the Board Game the expansion board isn’t compatible and because of marketing confusion or what have you, the portable game and the card game were never released in the U.S.. I imagine the story will be the same for the new game. In addition to this I had heard repeatedly that the graphic design of Keltis made the game more playable and was all-around more pleasing than that of Lost Cities the Board Game. When I saw a review of the expansion board on Heiw’s Board Game Blog that pushed me over the edge. I checked the prices of all of the Keltis stuff on amazon.de and found them to be very good.

So at this point I’m already sortof ordering something I already have but for pretty good reason. This is where things get crazy. I also heard that the card game version of Ingenious was pretty good so I added that to my cart. Also I’ve been playing with Category 5 rather than the original 6 Nimmt from Amigo so I decided to pick up a copy of 6 Nimmt. These things are cheap so no biggie. Another game I like is Knizia’s Poison but I’ve always hated the Playroom Entertainment version because it has a huge box for what amounts to just a deck of cards. Amigo makes a version that is in the standard card game box so I grabbed that too. The most egregious part of the order was Kreta. Kreta is a wonderful Stephan Dorra game that I have had for a while and paid over $40 for. The game came missing pieces and I have been playing it with coins substituting. Bang. I added a copy of Kreta to my cart for about 15 euros.

So let’s recap. In the end this order was about $130. In this order which contained alot of nice games were no less than 4 games which I basically already had. The only exact duplicate is Kreta which I still have yet to sell off but I don’t care. This order made me really happy. Also, I have to agree with those who say that Kreta is hands down better than Lost Cities the Board Game. It still doesn’t have the spark of a gateway game like Ticket to Ride but it is inexplicably more compelling than Lost Cities the Board Game.

The Vault… and Vault Overflow…

2010-04-18T22:32:00.001-04:00

For a while now the group has been bugging me to post pictures of the vault. The vault of course is the place where I store all my games… at least all of my games that will fit… or are not recently purchased… or have not been recently played.

The vault is in my basement and living in south eastern Massachusetts lately that means I have had to move the vault to higher ground a couple of times recently but now everything is back in place and some new games have even been added. These photos were taken pre-flood so they are already somewhat out-dated. Be that as it may, they are what I have so here goes.

The shelf in the back used to constitute all of my storage but as you can see now it accounts for probably less than half. The shelf is 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall (about 7 to the top of the boxes on the top shelf). Each shelf fits a couple of plastic storage boxes that are approximately 24 inches long, 16 inches wide and 16 inches tall. Unfortunately these containers are not entirely square so rather than having a neat stack of equally sized games in them I usually either have a uniform stack and then backfill the sides with some extra games near the top or I actually put games with a smaller footprint at the bottom and those with a wider footprint at the top. This is not ideal and even though I am careful I have had some games damaged from how they are sitting on top of or beneath other games. I have also had games damaged by the supports on the underside of the covers of these boxes when you fill them too full and then stack the boxes as I have done in front of this shelf. I now watch the clearance and make sure there is space between the top of the games and the box lid to allow for the weight of the stack.

The shelf is not quite ideal as you will note. Each level fits only two plastic boxes and I had to use diaper boxes to fill the remaining space. They do this quite well but I prefer to store in plastic because my basement can be damp. The diaper boxes are also smaller and are not sized ideally for most game boxes. I have however had some good luck with the Hans im Gluck sized boxes in these boxes. They fit quite nicely. I’ll try to post a photo at some point in the future.

Each of the plastic boxes contains a variable amount of games due to the variation in the box sizes of games. I do not usually store small card games in these large tubs with the big box games but any game larger than the standard euro card game box is stored in a large tub like these. Because of this any box could have as few as 6 games and as many as 12 to 15. I would say the average is about 8. This is usually made up of a stack of standard 12” square boxes in one part of the tub and some smaller stuff behind them. In the case of games like Power Grid or Formula de some games will span most of the length of the box and smaller games will go on top of or beneath them.

The tubs that appear more square at the end are my new favorites and I have been slowly replacing the older ones with the more sloped sides with them. The stack of boxes on the floor are some of the tubs I intended to use for replacements but guess what? That’s right they are now filled with new games. This makes me happy and very sad at the same time…

The very bottom shelf in the shelving unit and the leftmost box on the second shelf have three extra long plastic bins that are a blessing and a curse. They hold two stacks of 12” square games and a stack of Hans im Gluck sized games front to back. This is great. The bad part is that the boxes are so long that they actually flex from the sheer weight of the games, cardboard is extremely heavy people. The flex has damaged some of my games especially those at the bottoms of the boxes. I should probably get rid of these boxes but I would probably need 2 of the smaller boxes to make up for the space.

This is just a close up of the boxes on the floor in front of the shelves. You can also seem some books in a book case, a box with a dead Sega Dreamcast and a plastic bag of wood scraps on the floor. I can’t explain these last items at all except to say that I have problems.

The two small boxes on the floor are the lion’s share of my card games. They fit nicely in these boxes but I cannot seem to get these anymore so new card games generally stay in piles or in cardboard boxes that fit them well.

To the immediate left of the shelving unit you can see another stack. This stack contains a single plastic tub near the floor (no cardboard on the floor in my house. On top of this is 3 more diaper boxes. The lower two boxes are the rectangular ones I also use on the shelving unit but the top box is of the long narrow variety that you get diapers for older children in. I’m sad that my kids are both out of diapers at this point because I have recently found that this particular box shape is perfect for games like Agricola and the Ystari games. I store them in these boxes upright. I also line the box with a thin plastic trash bag for moisture protection. One of these boxes contains nothing but duplicate games from Tanga orders where I ordered more than one copy of a game and never sold the others. Stupid I know.

Next to this stack is my work bench which barely qualifies as a work bench anymore. Below it you can see 4 more tubs of games. If you haven’t noticed yet the games are all listed on the boxes. They are not in any order but I have no problem finding anything. There are also a couple of loose games on top of the boxes. This is bad given my basement environment but I’m starting not to care as much. I’ll get them boxed up soon I hope.

Last but not least for the vault we have the top of my work bench. Here I have 6 12” cube cardboard shipping boxes lined with plastic bags for moisture protection and using adhesive velcro for closures. This is an incredible way to store standard 11.6”x11.6”,2.75” games. You can fit 4 of them to a box. I store any games of this size I buy in these boxes now. The only downside is that the boxes are not rigid and you can only stack them two high as I’ve done here. They are an ideal storage solution though because they waste exactly 0 space. Too bad all games don’t come in standard box sizes so I can store all of my games this way.

And now for the overflow. This is my bedroom sadly. This is the home of recently received games, or games I really want to get to the table, and, in the case of those big box Fantasy Flight Games you see, games that simply don’t fit nicely anywhere else.

And finally we have another stack in my bedroom. Again new games and stuff I want to actively try to play. You can see a game hiding behind the stacks under my TV and you cannot see the two games under my dresser off to the left hand side. This however completes my collection. If I had a great big house with a game room I would love to be able to display all these great games. But hey, if I had a great big house I probably wouldn’t be buying all these games.

I’m planning a sale sometime soon. I want to sell all of my duplicates and probably about 50 of my less beloved games. That should get me back under control in terms of space but I am both a collector and a lover of most games so even parting with some of the less interesting stuff is going to be painful for me. And then there’s the work to actually do it. That’s another thing entirely. Selling the stuff, boxing it up and shipping it is all stuff I’m feeling too lazy and overpaid to do right now. But as long as I’m not willing to just toss them in the trash I think that is my lot in life.

I hope everyone enjoys the photos!

Board Game Session Report: Homesteaders, Sumeria, and Mow

2010-03-28T20:12:00.001-04:00

The Metroburb Gamers met with a small but extremely productive group consisting of Matt, Jake, and the ever elusive Jay last week. During this session we knocked out 3 new games ranging from very good to downright excellent: Homesteaders, Sumeria, and Mow.

Homesteaders

Homesteaders is a game from new publisher Tasty Minstrel Games. This game has been maligned for its production difficulties. The company has gone way above and beyond the call to make amends for the problems which consist of things like very damp games and drastically shifted printing on the tiles and they deserve a lot of credit for this. This is especially true and perhaps especially unfortunate because the production design of the game is outstanding and the game itself is equally or more outstanding.

The production of this game consists of lots too many kinds of bits to list. There are piles of chits, wooden bits, and tiles all in a game you can get for under $30 bucks which is a rarity these days. I have no doubt that the second printing will be amazing. The design of the tiles is also extraordinary, conveying a lot of fairly complex information in a very intuitive way. The rules are outstanding as well.

The game is a tight economic game in the vein of Martin Wallace but I found it quite a bit less daunting than most Wallace games. If this sounds interesting then make haste. There is nothing to fear here but the contents of the box itself.

At heart Homesteaders is very simple. You need to acquire land at auction, build on that land, and ultimately generate victory points to win the game. The depth of the game comes from the buildings and the resources used in the game.

The game consists of 10 rounds. During each round some land tiles will be auctioned. The number of tiles is one less than the number of players (either 2 or 3 for 3 and 4 players respectively. There is a two player variant but the standard game is 3-4 players). The auction is the system used in Amun Re and Vegas Showdown where you use auction tracks with fixed values to bid for each parcel. Each round, if you are not leading an auction you need to either outbid for your current auction, move to a different auction and outbid on that one, or pass and leave the auction. When you leave the auction you get a freebie from a track called the rail road track. This is quite nice and can be used strategically throughout the game. You can enter auctions and drive prices up and then bail out and get a payoff from the track anyway! You may bid more than you have for a parcel because you can take debt at any time during the game.

Once the auctions are resolved the winner must pay for the parcel he won. Most parcels merely give you the option to build a certain type of building but some also give you bonuses in the form of extra income or resources or a one time use ability. This is very cool indeed.

Your only chance to build a building on the parcel is right when you win it. Parcels only support certain types of buildings, residential, commercial, and industrial and you may only build the appropriate type of building.

During the game the rounds are divided into three groups, the settlement rounds, the town rounds, and the city rounds. Buildings are associated with these rounds so at the beginning of the game settlement buildings will be available. When round 5 starts the remaining unsold settlement buildings are removed and the town buildings are brought out. In round 9 the town buildings are removed and the city buildings are displayed. Any buildings already constructed by the players are kept.

Buildings cost resources to build. There are many types of resources in the game: including wood, iron, copper, gold, food, livestock, and workers. You generate these resources by using other buildings and trading with the market. The market gives you a way to trade anything for anything else. To do this you usually need to include special trade chits and money. Learning to work the resource market without making your brain explode is easily the most difficult part of the game. Nothing about this process is hard but being able to quickly decide if you can make a particular set of inputs turn into a particular set of outputs so you can accomplish something is tricky especially when you are trying to decide whether to bid on a parcel or buy a building. Just like taking debt you can trade with the market at any time.

The buildings have a huge variety which will lend to great replayability in the game and they are the heart of the matter here. The building tiles have a ton of information on them but it is easy to understand. Buildings have a cost, a point value for the end of the game, ongoing special abilities, and income of two types, worker income and non-worker income. Building special abilities are pretty standard rule breakers like the ability to trade at the market in a cheaper or different way than normal or some extra form of income or points for certain types of buildings.

At the beginning of each round you get to place workers on your buildings. Buildings can have no worker based income, one or more single and different worker based incomes, or even a single two worker income. When a building has more than one single worker income type you can fill as many or few of them as you like but when a single income requires two workers you must fill both spots to get the income. You are never obliged to put workers out but you are always obliged to pay them which happens after income is taken.

Once the workers are placed you collect (simultaneously) all of the non-worker income on your buildings and the worker income for any filled spots. Then you pay your workers one silver dollar each. You can use gold as 5 silver but you don’t get change! Money in this game is tight and you cannot survive without taking debt. On the same token paying off each $2 debt will cost $5 and failing to pay the debt can have drastic point implications at the end of the game.

The game flew by in the early rounds but slowed a bit as we started to get a feel for what we were doing and started putting more thought into what buildings we built what parcels we bought and how to allocate workers. By the way you can buy workers from the market just like anything else.

I had a hard time putting together a cogent set of buildings in the game and felt like it was a clear loss for me, Jake was very methodical and had a lot of points during the game. I on the other hand was just wildly collecting trade chits with not enough other production to do anything with them. It was only in the last income phase of the game that I realized I could use the market to trade back and forth to turn my trade chits into points. That ended up being the difference maker in the game as I won pretty handily.

I really really enjoyed this game and cannot wait to get it back to the table. It’s not a long game, has basically 0 downtime and it looks great on the table despite the problems. This is interesting because I usually don’t love games with such tight economies but I think the variety in the buildings and resource market in this game really make it special for me. I actually suggested that we play it again right away but Jake was fried from thinking so hard in our inaugural game. Too bad.

Sumeria

The next game I brought out was Sumeria. This is another small press game from Riever Games which is in the UK. The production design of this game is much more standard Euro but is still a gorgeous game. There’s none of the problems seen in Homesteaders here. The box is wonderfully small, the board is nicely done and indistinguishable from something you’d find in a Hans im Gluck game. There are nice wooden octagon pieces for 4 players, tiles representing the city-states and chits representing treasures. Everything is beautiful and extremely high quality and again I must stress that the box size is great. I wish more games would strive to fit in this box size and I think they certainly could.

On top of all of this the publisher mailed me rules and pieces for the 2 player expansion for the game along with some replacement pieces when I told them my game was missing some of the wooden octagons. This was unexpected and really great. The 2 player expansion is just some additional wooden pawns and some rules which all still fit into the original box. Bravo Reiver Games.

The game itself is great too. Again this is a 3-4 player game only (unless you have the expansion). This game has less flavor and is more along the lines of the glory days of Knizia or Schacht games like China. The only luck in the game is when the treasure tiles are drawn. Other than that this is a pretty abstract placement and area majority affair and it does this quite well.

You begin the game by placing the city-state cards below the board and drawing treasures from the bag to place above the 3 left-most cards. These are the current most prominent city-states.

You then seed the board by placing 6 each of your wooden pieces in turn. Then the game begins in earnest. There are three turns per round after which the treasures will be divided among the top 1 or 2 players (in terms of majority of pieces) in the 3 most prominent city-states.

Here is where the magic comes in. The moves you can make on your turn are simple. Add one of your remaining pieces to the board, remove one of your pieces from the board, or move one of your pieces along a trade route to the next empty spot. You may follow any branches you like when doing this so long as you place your piece immediately into the first encountered empty spot.

When you do any of these actions the prominence of the city states can change. If you add to or move from one city-state to another. The city-state you added to gains prominence and its card moves left one space. If you remove a piece from the board the city state you were in loses prominence and moves to the right one space. In this way you are both trying to achieve majorities in the 3 most prominent city-states and also to manipulate what 3 city-states are in those positions.

After 3 turns the treasures are distributed based on majorities. In the most prominent city-state the winner gets his choice of 2 of the 3 treasures and the second place finisher gets the remaining piece. In the second most prominent city-state the winner gets his choice of 1 of the 2 and the second place finisher gets the remaining piece. In the third most prominent city-state the winner gets the only treasure piece.

There are only a few types of treasure in the game and your score comes from how big your sets of these pieces are. The more you can specialize in a few types the higher you will score.

After the distribution the 3 prominent city states become the 3 least prominent city-states and the remaining states move left. You then fill the treasure spots again and repeat the process. This is done until you run out of treasure spots. Then points are counted and the game is done.

This game is extraordinary. So simple but with great depth. Do you try to strike a balance between getting a cut of the treasure this round and setting yourself up for the next or do you simply go all in to try to gain majorities in the top 3 this round. You may want to place aggressively onto the board but then you will run out of pieces and will need to remove pieces from the board in order to have the option to place them again later. When you move you’ll want to set yourself up to be able to travel where you want. To do this you need to make sure there are no inconvenient empty spaces along the way. You will often need to place a piece to fill a critical gap simply so you can move a piece out of a city-state and into a critical neighboring one.

The game is a real brain burner. Don’t let the simplicity fool you. The 3 turn rounds are painful as hell and the initial setup phase is critically important to the entire game. The one minor complaint I have about the game is that the more you understand it the more it slows down. At the beginning of the game I thought this would take 20 minutes tops but the more we played the harder the decisions got and the more the game slowed. This is not a bad thing because the game still clocks in at well under an hour but it was a reversal of expectations for me and a bit of a disappointment. I had this same feeling with Homesteaders but the cause is quite different. In Homesteaders you are overwhelmed by choice. In Sumeria you are overwhelmed but the restrictions you unknowingly imposed on yourself while pursuing short term goals in previous rounds.

This is a great game that anyone who doesn’t have to have tons of theme in their games should consider picking up. Please keep in mind though that inexperienced players will get trounced in this game so you’ll want to play with people who are experienced or who are at least wired to think about games a bit more deeply. That’s not to say this isn’t a gateway game at least in terms of the simplicity but it is tough to play well.

Mow

We ended the night with a game of Mow. Mow is a game I have been hearing about since Essen. It’s a simple card game of the same weight as Kramer’s 6 Nimmt or Knizia’s Escalation. In some ways it could even qualify as the bastard child of those two games.

In Mow you are playing cow cards and trying not to take cards because cards have flies on them and flies are points which are bad. Sound familiar? The way this works is that someone plays a cow card which all have a value and some flies. In turn each player adds to the front or back of the row by playing a card with a value higher than the highest or lower than the lowest cow. Some cows are special and can be placed into the middle of a row in between or on top of other cow cards. If you cannot play or choose not to play you take the cards and start a new row.

Repeat until you run out of cards and repeat the round until someone gets a certain number of flies. At that point the lowest score wins.

The game is certainly fun and if it predated any of my favorite fillers it would be a classic. As it stands it is just another in a long line of very nice short filler card games. If you don’t have a lot of these or just have to have every good one Mow is a clear buy for you. If you are happy playing 6 Nimmt and Escalation all the time Mow is an unnecessary addition to your collection.

Board Game Session Report: Formula De, Citadels, and 6 Nimmt

2010-03-14T21:59:00.001-04:00

We had a visit from our good friend Geoff this week and it was an occasion for our now almost regular food and game sessions. This time we had 7 players. Rather than breaking up into two groups (I’m not sure the space in my house is quite cut out for that) I pulled out some games that could handle 7 players. The games I hauled out were Formula De, Sleuth, Saboteur, Citadels, Bang!, and Category 5/6 Nimmt.

Formula De

We spent a good amount of time just eating and drinking and talking but eventually got to pulling out Formula De. This was the first play for all of us. My copy is a reprint but still the old version. I’m not sure if it was Eurogames or Descartes. Anyway, it does not have the fancy gear shifter player dashboards that Asmodee’s new Formula D does. I read the basic rules ages ago and reread the Formula D basic rules and the printed basic rules that came with my game before we played. Strangely I think the Formula D basic rules are even more basic than the ones that came with my version of the game.

I tried to get people right into playing the game with a basic explanation of how the gears relate to the dice and how you need to end your turn a certain number of times in each corner and I told people there were other rules that I would introduce as people started to encounter situations in which they needed them. This worked out pretty well to get us going but we quickly needed to read about the collision rules, breaking, etc. The game was quite fun. Geoff and Jay raced ahead and Geoff played really risky which worked out well for him until the end of the race. Our 7th player showed up part of the way through and since I was behind already after my way too conservative start I turned my car over to him to see if he could make up for some of the lost time. In the end the race was relatively tight and everyone had a pretty great time.

I like how this game doesn’t feel slow despite the single lap race taking quite a while. We got a rule wrong as well. We used brake points properly when using them to simply go fewer spaces in the straights but for some reason spent break and tire points when leaving the corners without actually going fewer spaces. I’m sure this changed the race for those people who spent their points this way. Sorry guys. We did realize what we were doing about 1/3 of the way around but we decided to finish the lap with the incorrect rules and just correct next time.

Hopefully there will be a next time because this game is cool. I can see why it has such a following. I’ll never be someone who loves race games but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I won’t be needing any expansions for this but I wouldn’t mind trading my copy away and picking up Formula D for the street racing rules and cool gear shift bits.

Citadels

Next I introduced Citadels. This is a game I am very fond of. I know it isn’t a highly strategic game but I quite enjoy it. We used to play it all the time but Alex isn’t a huge fan. It had been a long time and I knew it played 7 players so I brought it out. The rules explanation was tough. The game is simple but I had a hard time getting that across. This is unfortunately a common problem for me. I explained the game by explaining that we were trying to build valuable buildings and that on your turn you can either take money or cards and then build. This part was simple enough. Then I explained that we would also be selecting a role each round and that some of the roles could be used to screw over other roles (not players). This is where the explanation always gets harder.

We launched into the game and it really didn’t flow. I made the mistake of showing a YouTube video I thought was funny which caused us all to start pointing out funny YouTube videos which, go figure, interrupted the game. We did eventually get back into the swing of it. Jake wanted to be the King all the time and kept taking the role until people caught on and started killing the King all the time. Jay, being to Jake’s right got very little choice of roles but still managed to do well. I didn’t get the impression he was having a great time at it though. I was to Jake’s left but couldn’t really get rolling. Jake won handily when the game was starting to drag a bit so it was good to get it over with.

The problem with this game with new players is that the role selection is mostly irrational. As a result there is very little bluff and double bluff and thus there isn’t much control when you are trying to prevent someone from winning or steal someone’s money, etc. The game is still a winner but I think I prefer it with fewer players and with more experienced players. I still love the role selection and the art work and it is such a simple game it will always have a place in my collection.

Category 5/6 Nimmt

Sadly, it was already quite late at this point so instead of bringing out Bang! which we have only played once, or Sleuth that requires a good deal of thinking, I brought out Category 5. I have just recently bought the real 6 Nimmt but I’ve been playing the Category 5 version for years now.

This game went over really well as usual. I DO NOT play the game well. I had way too many occasions when I picked a card to put into a short row only to have that row grow to 5 cards before I could place my card. I’d like some pointers from someone who is actually good at this game. If you get a hand of cards with some obvious bad cards, some good cards, and some low cards when is the right time to play each type? On the one hand I feel like you should hold your low cards and your close cards but waiting even a smidge too long could mean that they are useless. On the other hand you could use them all up early in the round only to have to deal with the bad cards later on. I’m really not sure. Maybe I’m not so bad at the game and the game really is that random. Maybe, like Citadels, playing with experienced players causes your opponents to be more predictable and allows you to play more tactically. In any case it’s fun so I’ll keep coming back for more.

The night went quite well as usual. I do wish we could fit more games into an evening and we do need to start getting back to slightly heavier stuff. I still want to get Homesteaders, Carson City, and Endeavor to the table and I have newly acquired Chicago Express (which I think my group will LOVE), Hansa Teutonica (which I’m pretty sure everyone but Jake will hate), Assyria, and Sumeria.

I had a great customer service experience with Sumeria and I will be blogging about that game in my next post. I also received an order from Germany that I’d like to talk a bit about. I think I’ll combine those two and get the post up as soon as I can take some photos.

Cheers!

Board Game Session Report: Havana, Campaign Manager 2008, and Perry Rhodan

2010-03-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

Jake and I got together for another of our awesome 2 player sessions tonight. Although we didn't get as many games played as I had hoped they were all quite good. I was hoping to get Havana, Campaign Manager 2008, Perry Rhodan, and Jaipur to the table and play each of the first 3 twice each. If we tried again I'm sure we could.

Havana

Havana is from Eggertspiele and is based on the Cuba franchise. This basis is only skin deep from what I understand. The game has artwork from the same designer that matches the artwork in the Cuba game but other than that the games are unrelated.

Cuba is a worker placement game where you build a tableau of buildings Puerto Rico style and is a fairly deep game. I hear it plays quite fast though and I'd love to play it. I actually DON'T own it if you can believe that.

Havana is on the surface a very light game. Each player has a set of identical action cards based on different personalities. Each card has an ability and a value from 0 to 9. You start the game by placing two of your action cards face down. Everyone flips up simultaneously and the cards are ordered from lowest to highest. The number formed by the cards determines turn order. So a 0 and a 9 are 9 and a 4 and a 7 are 47. On each future turn in the game each player simultaneously replaces one of their two face up cards. In this way you can have the same ability over the course of several turns.

After determining turn order each player executes their entire turn in turn order. A turn consists of executing the two actions in any order you like and then building buildings if you want. The actions allow you to do things like take building supplies, take money, get workers, steal from opponents, etc. The actions are all for the goal of building buildings and preventing your opponents from doing so.

The buildings are in two rows of 6 in the middle of the table along with some building materials (colored and grey) and money. When purchasing buildings only the buildings on the left and right ends of the two rows can be built. The buildings all cost some combination of building materials, money, and workers and the buildings do nothing for you but provide victory points. Each round 3 additional building materials and pesos are added to the board but the buildings are only replenished when a row is down to 2 or less. When this happens new buildings are inserted between the remaining two buildings. The game is a race to a certain number of points. For the 2 player game it was 25.

The game plays extremely fast and is very fun. The action selection is an excruciating balance between turn order and what you want to do. The low value cards are all much less powerful than the high value cards. If you play the two cards you want together then you will lose one of them as you have to replace one on your next turn. There is a real feeling of accomplisment when you can pull off a string of actions where you can buy several buildings in a single turn. Jake cleaned my clock in the first game and was doing so in the second game but somehow I came from behind for the win.

This is a pretty good 2 player game but I think it would be even better with more. There are several cards that allow stealing from other players and a single card that protects you from this. I think those cards would be alot more meaningful with more players. Also there are some cards that give you a bigger benefit if you are the first person in turn order to use that action. This was hardly ever an issue in our game as we often were pursuing our own goals and not thinking a lot about what the other person was going to play. We did however use the action which allowed you to discard a building from the supply. This ability and going first in turn order make for some good player screwage. At one point I was raking in money for a high value building that cost 9 pesos and Jake stole the turn order and discarded the building.

I think this game is a real winner and I would recommend it for every taste short of the pure theme gamer. The short play time, good player interaction, and high degree of decision making make for a balance you don't often find in games of this weight.

Campaign Manager 2008

Campaign Manager 2008 is the latest effort from Jason Matthews of Twilight Struggle and 1960 fame. Jake and I are huge 1960 fans. It was always clear to me that this game is much more short, light and tactical than 1960 but I had high hopes due to its pedigree.

The game pretty much delivers. Jake and I played with the starter decks but the game is normally a drafting game. Each player is a campaign manager and there is an Obama deck and a McCain deck. From these decks you create a deck of 15 cards (yes that's all) with which you play the game. The cards are used to win battleground states which earn you points to win the game.

Each state has two key issues: defense and economy. For each issue there are some McCain supporters, some Obama supporters and some uncommitted voters. There is a track which shows which issue is the key issue at any point in time. There is also a key demographic in each state. If at any point either Obama or McCain controls all of the votes in the current key issue the state is won. When that happens the points are awarded to that player and a new state is chosen also by that player. When new states are chosen a media event happens which may effect that state or other states.

The cards in your deck give you voters on specific issues or demographics or allow you to manipuate which issue is the key issue or which demographic is the key demographic. On your turn you can play a card and do what it says or draw a card. That's it.

At first things went fast and furious and I was really liking the game but then somewhere in the middle it started to drag. I got a bit sick of the cards in my deck and the fight for certain states seemed to overstay its welcome a bit. By the end I felt like the game went too long and I was glad for it to end. The tention level was not all that high and I can't really explain why. I did like the game and I'm absolutely certain that using the drafting that the game is supposed to use in order to create your deck would add tons more variety and enjoyability to the game. At the same time though I think the cards aren't super exciting and the 15 card deck limits the games enjoyability unless the game ends quickly. Perhaps with practice it will but this play definitely overstayed its welcome a bit. I'm eager to try it again in any case which is a good sign.

Perry Rhodan

Perry Rhodan is a Kosmos 2 player game which is one of the few that did not see an English translation. I believe it is based on Merchant of Venus but I could be wrong. I bought it on a whim a while back and was confused by the rules and too lazy to do card pasteups so it sat on the shelf for too long. Recently I decided I would read the rules again and see if I could make sense of them. Surprisingly the second read through showed it to be a very simple game. Now that I have actually played it I'm pleasantly surprised.

The game is a fairly simple pick up and deliver game with some really neat mechanics. Each player has a space ship and an identical deck of cards. The cards consist of technologies and interventions. Technologies are permanent upgrades and interventions are one time events that are used and discarded.

The board is just a line of 6 planets with the sun which acts as a scoreboard at one end making a solar system. Each planet starts with 5 goods. The goods are simply cards with a planet on them and a value. Cards of the same planet make a set and the cards are double sided so if any of them show the same planet as they are currently on you flip it so it shows a different planet.

Each player starts with a hand of 5 cards and a starting tech card which gives one container and one replenishment. The container allows you to load goods and the replenishment allows you to draw a card. You can not exceed your hand limit of 5.

The ships start on a planet chosen by one of the players. Turns are simple. Take one flight, up to two planetary actions, and up to two interventions. The flight mechanism is neat. You roll a die. Each time you roll a one you continue to roll and add to your previous value. So I could roll 1, 1, 3 and would have a movement value of 5. It costs a point to move from a planet to orbit or to land and a point to move between planets. When you are flying away from the sun its gravity hinders you and you have to stop between each planet. So to move from the surface of one planet to the surface of the next planet out would cost 4 (take off, move half way, move the rest of the way, land). Flying toward the sun you do not need to stop between planets so the same move going in would only cost 3 points.

Planetary actions are load, unload, and buy technology card. When you load you need an empty container. You fill it with any set of cards on the planet you are currently on. Once filled this hold is sealed and cannot be unloaded except by flying to the destination planet. When you do so you get the points on those cards. This is the cool part. You then flip the cards over and leave them on the destination planet. If the cards are a pair when flipped they are discarded. In this way new goods sometimes become available on planets and goods also disappear from the game. The game ends when someone gets 70 points or there are no more goods to move.

Building technology cards involves playing a card to the table and paying points equal to the number of tech cards you started with. So it's in your interest to play two tech cards on a single turn because they are cheaper that way.

So a typical turn is to roll the die, pick up goods, fly to a destination if you can, and drop off goods. Sometimes you can't get to your destination in one flight. The tech cards are pretty simple and that's a good thing. They do things like give you an additional movement point, more ability to draw cards, more containers, and some more drastic things like the ability to hyper jump long distances.

The intervention cards do some really neat things. Some give you points for dropping off passengers, some let you do one time jumps, some allow you to swap cargoes with your opponent or swap ship positions from your opponent or even load goods from planets you are not on. Your opponent can prevent the effect of a card by discarding an identical one. This is a great tactical addition. Very neat.

This game was completely excellent. I can't believe Rio Grande did not automatically produce an English version as they do with most of the Kosmos 2 player line. Luckily ZMan has picked up the rights and will produce it in 2010 sometime. This is a game everyone should have. It is fast and simple and highly tactical while managing to integrate theme very well.

Conclusion

This was a night of 3 new games where all of them were pretty excellent. Of the three games Campaign Manager which was quite good was actually the worst. The other two could seriously occupy my hot 10 for a while. Perry Rhodan is like the anti-Lost Cities in that it really wears its theme well but is still a game with a lot of control. Havana is helped quite a bit by its excellent production, although I'm not sure the bits deserve the price tag I'm seeing. My copy was $18 because it is in German and I bought it after the English edition came out but I'm seeing online prices of around $30 for the English which means a list price of $40+ which is pretty absurd for this game. I think Eggert might be smart to replace the building tiles with cards at some point and sell this game as a $25 retail card game. In any case I would recommend picking Havana up. The game has that certain something. It doesn't seem like it should be so enjoyable but it is surprisingly awesome.

I'll be playing all of these games again as soon as possible. I think even Mrs. Metroburb would enjoy these.

Thoughts on Game Groups

2010-02-28T20:57:00.002-05:00

As we approach the 2nd Anniversary of the 2.0 version of the Metroburb Gamers I have been reflecting on the gaming personalities in the group. This stems from a couple of things. The first is that despite my desire to get as many games as possible to the table to justify my expenditure I am far more interested in having a happy group who looks forward to playing every week. Yeah I know, everyone has an off week from time to time but for the most part gaming is recreation in its most literal form for me and I hope it is for everyone else in the group too.

I expect that some of the members will comment on this thread since I'm writing it without telling anyone.

Metroburb 1.0
The first version of the Metroburb Gamers was created when I first started getting into euro games and needed some regular players to get together with. I had no idea how to seek these people out but a close friend of mine at work, Stan, liked RPGs and played Settlers occaisionally so we would play games during lunch or right at the end of the work day before going home. Gradually we involed two other people at work. Geoff 1.0 and the notorious Alex (Axel Boddington). Stan later told me that Richard, an honest to goodness German guy, who Stan, Geoff and I had all worked with at a previous job, was looking for some people to play board games with. Richard was also an RPG and occasional CCG player.

Thus the first incarnation of the Metroburb Gamers was formed. We had a rough time getting together regularly that first year. People would often cancel at the last minute and the meeting would collapse like a house of cards once one or two people cancelled. So I would call us a pretty bursty group. We would meet consistently for a few weeks and then cancel repeatedly for several weeks in a row.

As a group we had a pretty good mix of personalities and tastes. Richard's tastes tend to run toward the pure German games. He appreciates a well integrated theme but I notice that he gravitates toward games that are pretty Knizia-esque. Stan is a very smart guy who was a frequent winner in our games and was pretty open to playing anything but he actually tended to actually like some really chaotic games. Stan works a lot and was a frequent no-show. He is still on the mailing list but hasn't played in the 2 years since the new incarnation of the group was formed. Geoff 1.0 was also a great guy. He had a very open mind about games and enjoyed pretty much everything. He was an extremely deliberate player though, so much so that we started calling taking a long time to play "Geoffing", a term which we still use today despite Geoff having left us for the left coast years ago. Alex tends to like light games with a ton of theme. He is the odd man out in our group I think but he happily plays most games. The one exception is Ra which he hates with a passion. This was the group we had, on again, off again for a couple of years then it really fizzled.

Metroburb 2.0
There was a long hiatus when I was playing mostly by forcing games on my family and my wife but I bumped into my friend Jake who I have known since High School and I decided to take a shot at inviting him to games. Jake is up for pretty much any form of entertainment and readily accepted. I can't remember whether his first session was with only me and Alex or only me and Richard but it went really well. Not only that but Jake was reliable in a way that no one in the group had ever been before. Now it was very easy to have at least 3 players every week and most weeks 4.

This group was what I would call the kernel of Metroburb Gamers 2.0. Somewhere along the line, giddy with the great Jake success, we invited Jay, another long time friend, to play. Jay is super busy and doesn't make it a lot of the time but he always makes the big events and is good for a session every now and then. The last piece of the current group fell in place when I changed jobs in late 2008 and met Geoff 2.0. Geoff has the broad taste in games and right competitive attitude for the group and is also a super nice guy. Geoff is also pretty reliable which solidifies the group even more. Geoff has moved away for the time being but we hope to have him back in a few months.

Your Game Group
So there are a few things to discuss after this long introduction. What makes for a good game group? What is the right size for a group? What is the right mix of player types? What are some fun things you can do to keep the group coming back and keep things fresh?

Taste
For me a good game group is one that is open to trying new things and only competitive enough to try to win. Any group competitive enough to care alot about losing is probably too competitive for me. Since I buy a ton of games I also need a group that is pretty open to being taught new games week after week with only a few exceptions. My group is really good about this and we're pretty honest with each other about how we feel on any given night. Since we meet mostly on week nights we will just fire off an email saying "Rough day in work today. Let's just play stuff we know tonight." and that is readily accepted. I like the group we have right now because we're all friends. In some ways I use games as a way to get together with people where you can actually talk (as opposed to a movie or something) and where you can not spend tons of money and get fat by going out for food and drinks all the time. I think this is one of the main benefits of games to me. It is a reason to get together. That said I do think we should probably do more non-game activities in the group since our friendship is starting to revolve more around games than anything else.

Size
The right group size is a painful thing for me. I like having 4 and sometimes 5 people the best but I also like the occasional 3 or 2 player night and once in a while I really wish we had enough people to play 7 player games. I have thought alot about expanding the group for this reason and I'm conflicted about it. The problem is that I usually host at my house and I don't think I can fit a group that is frequently 7 or more players. Part of me wishes for 7 or 8 players at every session so we can have two tables going at a time but I don't know if that works in my house. The other problem is that I'm afraid if the group grows to 8 regulars we will frequently be stuck with 6 which I think is a pretty bad number for most games. If anyone is reading this I'd love for you to comment on the size of your group and how it works.

For those who are members of the cult of the new what is the right ratio of new to older games during your sessions. We only play once a week and for only 3 hours or so. We are lucky to get 3 games played. If we play a longer game and also have to learn the rules we are often exhausted at the end and have to call it quits which results in a single game session.

How frequently should a group meet and should you try to mix in weekends and weeknight meetings?

Events
Another thing I like is that lately we have been having more gaming events. We throw a small party with dinner and games when Geoff visits lately. At least one of those is probably going to become a regular event. We played the three big box Ticket to Ride games last year and that was great fun. I think that event will recur. I'm hoping over time to build up a portfolio of these things and keep the best ones.

I've also had game nights where significant others were invited. That isn't the way I want to game all the time but I've had great fun with it.

This year I'm thinking about a whole day gaming event on Cape Cod. I'm going to call it Cape Con 2010... I'm sorry but that one was just too easy. I'm hoping people can either come down on a Friday night and game all day Saturday or come down on a Saturday morning, game all day, crash, and then invite significant others and kids or whathaveyou down for the following day.

I think I need to stop rambling for now but if anyone is reading this please leave a comment and let me know what your group is like and what you like and don't like about it. I'd love some suggestions.

What does your group do to make things more memorable?

Board Game Session Report: Candamir and Metropolys

2010-02-25T11:32:00.002-05:00

Metroburb headquarters has been quiet lately. Last week's session was canceled when I ran into trouble at work just minutes before heading home to host. This week Richard couldn't make it but we did manage to cobble together a rag tag band of 3 heroes and get two unplayed games off my list.

Candamir
The games on tap were Candamir: the First Settlers and Metropolys. Candamir is a Kosmos/Mayfair affair from the esteemed Klaus Teuber. The game is in the Catan Adventures series and I have had it since the day it came out in 2005 (US version). Right after I got it the game was getting such a bad reception they issued new tiles with more stuff on them to make the game go faster and be more fun. I have these tiles but used the originals with the game last night.

The game is a pleasant enough affair. The components are typical nice Kosmos quality with a decent board divided into a map section and a village section, several wooden bits, cards for goods and ingredients as well as adventure cards and movement cards, player boards and personality cards, and cardboard tokens for goods found in various landscapes and to trick out your character with experience and items.

The game plays to 10 victory points like any Catan game and you track this by playing out your pool of 10 cubes throughout the course of the game. The cubes are placed when you either make an item for someone in the village or find an animal in the landscape for someone in the village. The game has only a two real turn options. You either adventure on the map trying to get to a tile or you stay in the village and trade in cards for items for your character or for the villagers.

At the start of your turn you can trade but there was very little need or impetus for trade in the game. You can then look at two tiles in the field and either choose not to travel at all or to go to a board location including either the tiles you looked at or any other location.

When you travel you use a deck of cards. You can turn as many cards as you have stamina points. The cards all show four directions corresponding to the orthogonal directions for your player piece on the map. Some directions have nothing and other directions show a picture of an ingredient or an encounter. The three ingredients can be used to make healing potions, mead, and potions that help your abilities in encounters. The encounters are skill tests which can either be depicted directly on a card (snake, bear, wolf, etc) or can be a "?" which means you can choose from the 3 face up adventure cards from the adventure deck. Each person has a character board with 4 skill numbers on it. An encounter is a simple matter of rolling a die and adding your base ability score to it. You win on ties or higher. You get the ingredient or have the encounter by moving in the direction of that picture. Even if you lose an encounter you still get to go to the space. Your turn doesn't even end as long as you still have stamina enough (after losing one for the lost encounter) to keep moving. When you win an encounter you usually get something like a hide for killing a wolf. If you get to your destination you get the tile and go back to the village. If you don't you keep going to the destination on your next turn. The tiles have experience points and items on them. Experience points are for improving your skills and items can improve your skills, or be goods like wood, stone, and hide, or items which also improve your skills. Your character card also has two special abilities that can do things like let you find hidden items or go one move farther in certain terrain.

When you choose to stay in the village you do a Settlers-style build by trading in cards. When you trade in ingredients you are brewing potions and drinks that help your character. When you trade in resources you can buy items which means that you put a VP cube on a spot matching that good. You can build swords, chests, and window coverings... wierd. There are villagers in the village that want lists of these things and also animals. You may only give them the top thing on their list so if no one currently wants a sword you cannot make one. Animals are simply found in the field on tiles. There is also a longest road type mechanic where once someone gets 3 or more cubes in certain villager's lists they can place an additional VP cube in a bonus area. It stays there unless someone outdoes them. There is also a bonus for encountering the most adventure cards.

So what's to like about this game? Well it is nice to look at and has some fairly neat ideas. I like the character boards and attributes and the movement deck. The settlers build and especially the trade mechanic really doesn't add anything to this game. In fact the entire experience is lackluster. For the first 20 minutes or so I was saying "this isn't great but it's relaxing and pleasant" but that opinion slowly devolved as the game went on and it was clear that it was mainly a luck driven game without a lot of theme or fun to keep it moving along. The mechanics used would have been far better with a fantasy or space exploration theme. As it is this game basically models the drudgery of pioneer life as a board game. You go out, collect random plants and resources, bring them back and make boring things. You encounter drunks and snakes. Not very interesting. When you add this boring theme to the lack of strategic or even tactical decisions in the game and compound it with the longish play time of almost 2 hours (lets say 80-90 minutes for experience players) I think you end up with a pretty disappointing game.

And that is what this is: a game with some good ideas that is ultimately completely forgettable. I didn't love Talisman when we played it but that game created a story of sorts that made up for its lack of control and decision making. In Candamir you have a few decisions and you are never simply stuck and frustrated but the game doesn't manage to satisfy and does not create a memorable experience through either its game play or its theme. With a huge game collection this game is immediately on the sell/trade pile.

Metropolys
It was getting late and Alex was showing signs of flagging but Jake and I urged him on to play Metropolys. This is a Ystari game from Sebastien Pauchon. The group really likes Yspahan and from the same publisher and designer we had high hopes.

The game is a simple positional auction game where you have different value buildings and you bid for a location by placing a building. The auction works by the players following the start player adding a higher number building to a location adjacent to the previously placed building. This goes on until people all pass or can no longer bid. At that point the only building that stays on the board is the winning building. This building stays on its location turned number side down and the winning player starts the next bid from anywhere. That player also gets to pick up any token on the final building plot. Most tokens are good (subway stations and trendy neighborhoods) but some represent encountering an archeological site which is bad.

You repeate this process until someone runs out of buildings and the game ends. You gain points from the tokens you collected and from building buildings in an area that matches a goal card you received at the beginning of the game. I need to say that we played the family game which has simpler goal cards and no tallest building bonus for each district.

The game was easy and fast and decently tense. The board is really nice to look at but not so great for helping you see the spaces. The building pieces come in only three heights so once they are turned over it is hard to remember if someone has used their 1 or their 5 for something. That adds something to the game. The game is a pretty abstract experience where you can really think out your turns both in terms of board position and trying to discern what your fellow player's needs and intents are. It may in fact have been too abstract for me. We each had at least one situation where we made a placement that seriously setup another player to be able to play several of their low pieces in a row. That makes me think you cannot play this game as fast as I would like to nor treat it as lightly as I think it deserves. As a result it's a bit of an enigma to me. I seemed to have enjoyed it for aspects that will disappear when played properly by experienced players. I want to move to the Experienced player variant for a few plays and judge it after that. For right now I think it's at least a keeper if not a top notch game. My experience may change that opinion.

Small World Gets BIGGER!

2010-02-17T21:38:00.001-05:00

During the pre-Christmas game deluge one of my unnecessary purchases was $60 worth of games from Days of Wonder all spent with the aim of getting a free copy of Ticket to Ride: Marklin which I’m staring at right now wrapped in shrink. Don’t worry though. I already owned and have played the game multiple times. Crazy right?

Anyway there were several small but interesting bits in that package. There were two overlord maps for Memoir ‘44: Tigers in the Snow and Sword of Stalingrad, a replacement deck of Command Cards for Memoir ‘44 (incidentally I missed buying a $5 set of replacement Ticket to Ride: USA cards which I actually needed), and last but certainly not least, the first two expansions for Small World: Cursed! and Grand Dames of Small World. A few weeks later I purchased the Leaders of Small World expansion from Board Game Geek. This was an exclusive.

Small World was a game I was really excited about and pre-ordered before it came out last spring. The game is a simplified version of Vinci which I have owned for years and have never played because I was afraid of having to explain it to the group. Small World on the other hand is ridiculously simple and very fast and fun to play. When I received the game I played it almost immediately and at every session for several weeks in a row. Both of these things are very uncommon in our group. We seldom get new games out right away but rather tend to work in the order I bought the games. We also don’t tend to play a game more than a couple of weeks in a row before we move on to the new hotness.

I would actually love to go back and try Vinci now to see if I can understand and explain it better having played Small World.

In any case we certainly did not play out Small World and although it has been shelved for the better part of a year at this point I love the game and there was no doubt in my mind that I would buy any expansion Days of Wonder made for the game. The fact that the expansions are bite-sized is so much the better.

I just want to use this space to talk about what the expansions bring to the game and whet the group’s (and maybe some others’) appetites for getting back to Small World. I also wanted to mention that these expansions come from the community as a result of a race and power contest run by Days of Wonder.

Cursed!

Cursed adds two races: Goblins and Kobolds. Goblins conquer in decline regions at one less token. Kobolds have a number 11 on them which means you get a lot of tokens but their power is really an disability. You need at least two tokens in every region you occupy or conquer.

Cursed also adds 5 new powers: Cursed, Ransacking, Hordes of, Were-, and Marauding. Cursed stinks! It gives you no powers and makes you pay more VPs to skip over a race you don’t want when choosing a new race. With Ransacking your defeated foe must pay you a VP coin after you have unceremoniously kicked him out of a region. Hordes of gives you two tokens to use as additional race tokens. Were- is really cool. Every even numbered turn is considered Night. When it is night you can conquer with two less race tokens than required (minimum of 1 as usual). Marauding is pretty nuts. It essentially lets you take two turns in a row. You go through your conquest phase then before you roll the die for your final conquest you pick up all of your tokens except one and go though an entire additional conquest phase! Wow!

Grand Dames

Grand Dames adds 3 female races to the game: Gypsies, Priestesses, and White Ladies. Using the Gypsies you can abandon regions during conquering and place a VP into each abandoned region. These regions are now off limits to you for the turn but at the end you collect the points. The Priestesses are interesting. When you go into decline with them you abandon all of your regions choosing only one. You take one token for each region (each that you abandoned plus the one you are choosing) and build a stack in that region. This stack is called the ivory tower and each turn it is there you get 1 VP per token in the tower instead of normal scoring for declining races. Very neat. The White Ladies are immune to conquest, racial, and special powers once in decline. Wierd. The White Ladies are a 2 so you won’t have many tokens but once in decline they are going to score for you for the rest of the game. Maybe you take one turn with them early in the game then decline them on your next turn and move on.

Grand Dames adds only 2 new special powers: Historian and Peace-Loving. Historian gives you a VP for each race in decline when you select the power, one VP every time a race goes into decline while you are active, and 1 final VP when you decline your race. Pretty cool. Peace-Loving gives you 3VP for every turn where you attack only in decline races. Simple and useful.

Leaders

Leaders is a very small expansion consisting of only a sheet of small counters, one for each race in the game: a total of 24. These are the leader tokens. When you select a race you can pay 1VP to also take its leader. The leader is an extra token for conquering. The leader cannot stay in a region that is immune for any reason and must stay off the board if there are no non-immune regions. When someone conquers a space with the leader they capture it instead of the normal 1 token loss. I’m not clear on whether there is a time limit to this but your leader can be ransomed for 1VP. If you choose not to pay the ransom any leaders in someone’s possession at the end of the game count for two points.

Summary

I’m really looking forward to trying all of these expansions. I don’t see any real standouts but I do see some fun combinations and I’m interested to see how the races and powers mix with those in the base game. Many of the special powers seem very situational and I hope they don’t prove to be useless in the majority of cases. As usual the components are great. Leaders is probably a bit less great but still pretty nice.