Six of us (although George was pretty late and didn't end up gaming) showed up at Mike's for our weekly session. Since we were waiting for George, we played 6 Nimmt, which is a fun little light card game. It hasn't seen much table action at my place since I got Hornochsen, although to be honest that doesn't get out much either. This is a very simply game where everyone plays a card face down, then when they are revealed they go onto one of four piles if they are above the topmost number on that pile but below the next pile's topmost number. Cards are played in numeric order, and once a pile hits six cards, the person who played the card is stuck with all of the points on all of the previous cards. It's wacky fun, and a good "waiting for George" game.
In our game, Mike was doing great, with only six points garnered over several hands. While no one really was trying to screw him (and in this game it's really not something you can actively do), he ended up taking pile after pile in the final hand. I was all set to win the game, but on the very last card I ended up with around 8 points to come in third. Mike tied for the win with Carey even after garnering something like 30 points. A good filler, I'll have to bring Hornochsen so that we can compare the different versions.
George was still not there (he'd left a message with Mike's teenage sons, never a reliable method with almost any family), so the five of us pulled out El Grande. This doesn't see enough table time in our group, but that can be said about so many games. Tim has been playing this game for, I kid you not, 12 years, so he got off to an amazing lead. Partly because no one had tried the old 2-1-13 power card sequence in the first round, so he just played his 13 on turn 3 when his turn came up. When I tried to play my 2-1-13 combo, he screwed me by playing his 1 under my 2, and it went downhill from there. Well, not entirely...
By the last turn, Tim was a good 20 points in the lead, but a fortuitous group of action cards gave me quite a few points for scoring various regions, and I made a good run of it, but in the end Tim still won by 11 points.
Astonishingly, this was the first time Mike's copy had seen play, and this was one of the first Euros he had bought way back when. So old, that the scoring track was one that didn't have any reference numbers on it. Wow.
Thanks for hosting, Mike!
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Here I Stand Test Drive
I tried one turn of this new GMT title a few days ago, but wanted to give it one more shot at solo play before we all get together and try it out for real this time next week. I'm quite glad I did.
I mentioned that the negotiations were a bit hard to do, and that's still true. However, what I did was skip most of the fiddly parts of negotiation, and went straight to declarations of war, sueing for peace, and ransoming leaders. Good call. To determine if I thought going to war was a good idea, I simply thought about whether each country, in turn order, would want to do that very thing. It's worked out well, although aside from a little squeeze play on the French by the Brits and the Turks and Hapsburgs duking it out at the gates of Vienna, there hasn't been much going on wrt war.
The good news is that, at the start of turn 8, everyone is in position to win. The English got a lot of unrest tokens late in the turn that they have to get rid of, and the Papacy had a ton of cards thanks to Miss Jane Grey and managed to convert a lot of Germany back to Catholicism, but otherwise most players are at 22 points, very close to a standard victory. If the Turks can take Vienna and perhaps eke out a VP with the pirates, they have the best shot, as the Papacy's score will drop as the Protestants start taking back spaces (although those Jesuits really put a cramp in their style - the whole German language area was Protestant, at least religion-wise, at the beginning of turn 7).
Not sure if I'll finish, it's been a *long* game.
Some things I've screwed up -
o Too many reformation/counter attempts on the same space twice in the same impulse - only one is allowed per burn/treatise attempt.
o Not enough attention paid to the debater's super mutant powers.
o No naval action other than piracy. I kept that to a minimum simply to allow me to better understand the other parts of the game.
o Charles V took troops with him after using the HRE card.
o Mandatory events get two CPs. Doh!
o Didn't realize how useful Unrest could be for the Papacy, and what a pain for the Brits/Protestants.
o It's really hard to keep track of the Religion track when it's just you. I have to double check VP/spaces on a regular basis, like every couple of times around the action track.
Some cool things -
o How close the game is.
o Henry finally getting a healthy Edward with the last of the wives. Whew.
o The French Reformation never really took off because of the Jesuits in Lyon, a choke point for Geneva.
o The Hapburgs getting circumnavigation early, but nothing else until the Incas last turn. Whoops, forgot that I can roll for those as colonies...
o The English exploring all of NA, but the French conquered the Maya and explored the Amazon (plus, the Silver Mines and Galleons). The New World part is very peripheral in a lot of ways, but for the Brits and French, those extra cards can really come in handy if they are lucky with their rolls.
I'm really looking forward to giving this a shot in a few days! There are a lot of little fiddly chrome rules, but in this game they give each power a real sense of individualism, with each having strengths and weaknesses that do a good job of mirroring history. Of all of the powers, I think I'd enjoy the Papacy, the Ottomans, or the British the most.
I mentioned that the negotiations were a bit hard to do, and that's still true. However, what I did was skip most of the fiddly parts of negotiation, and went straight to declarations of war, sueing for peace, and ransoming leaders. Good call. To determine if I thought going to war was a good idea, I simply thought about whether each country, in turn order, would want to do that very thing. It's worked out well, although aside from a little squeeze play on the French by the Brits and the Turks and Hapsburgs duking it out at the gates of Vienna, there hasn't been much going on wrt war.
The good news is that, at the start of turn 8, everyone is in position to win. The English got a lot of unrest tokens late in the turn that they have to get rid of, and the Papacy had a ton of cards thanks to Miss Jane Grey and managed to convert a lot of Germany back to Catholicism, but otherwise most players are at 22 points, very close to a standard victory. If the Turks can take Vienna and perhaps eke out a VP with the pirates, they have the best shot, as the Papacy's score will drop as the Protestants start taking back spaces (although those Jesuits really put a cramp in their style - the whole German language area was Protestant, at least religion-wise, at the beginning of turn 7).
Not sure if I'll finish, it's been a *long* game.
Some things I've screwed up -
o Too many reformation/counter attempts on the same space twice in the same impulse - only one is allowed per burn/treatise attempt.
o Not enough attention paid to the debater's super mutant powers.
o No naval action other than piracy. I kept that to a minimum simply to allow me to better understand the other parts of the game.
o Charles V took troops with him after using the HRE card.
o Mandatory events get two CPs. Doh!
o Didn't realize how useful Unrest could be for the Papacy, and what a pain for the Brits/Protestants.
o It's really hard to keep track of the Religion track when it's just you. I have to double check VP/spaces on a regular basis, like every couple of times around the action track.
Some cool things -
o How close the game is.
o Henry finally getting a healthy Edward with the last of the wives. Whew.
o The French Reformation never really took off because of the Jesuits in Lyon, a choke point for Geneva.
o The Hapburgs getting circumnavigation early, but nothing else until the Incas last turn. Whoops, forgot that I can roll for those as colonies...
o The English exploring all of NA, but the French conquered the Maya and explored the Amazon (plus, the Silver Mines and Galleons). The New World part is very peripheral in a lot of ways, but for the Brits and French, those extra cards can really come in handy if they are lucky with their rolls.
I'm really looking forward to giving this a shot in a few days! There are a lot of little fiddly chrome rules, but in this game they give each power a real sense of individualism, with each having strengths and weaknesses that do a good job of mirroring history. Of all of the powers, I think I'd enjoy the Papacy, the Ottomans, or the British the most.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Rest In Peace
My friend Pat died this morning after suffering a fall. Combined with a bout of pneumonia and the effects of the morphine they put him on while in the hospital, his breathing reflex eventually failed and he passed quietly and at peace.
Thanks to everyone who sent him good thoughts. Now it is his family that will need them.
Thanks to everyone who sent him good thoughts. Now it is his family that will need them.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Test Drives
This was a good week for games, as not only did I get a huge windfall in the RDG auction, but it was also the week for Here I Stand, GMT's CDG on the Reformation, to get sent out to those who had preordered. At least a couple of my group has been anticipating this title for some time, despite it being a derivation of The Napoleonic Wars, which left most of us cold.
Also, one of the titles I picked up with my auction loot was the reprint of Britannia, the old Gibson/AH classic. I have the AH version, marred as so many games of that period by indecipherable and confusing rules, so I was hoping that FFG would cut the clutter and produce a beautiful game with clean rules.
First, HiS. This game is unlike any wargame I've played in that each of the six powers has it's own set of actions that it can take in the course of a turn, not to mention different ways for each power to earn VP. For example, England can explore the New World (though not as effectively as the Hapsburg/Spanish power), but can't really do much to affect the religious standing of even his own spaces. The Protestant player, however, can, and in fact much of his effort will be spent doing just that. The Ottoman player does neither, but (like most players) is interested in gaining VP spaces and committing piracy in the Med.
For solitaire play, this game is a real challenge in many ways. On the one hand, there are relatively few Combat/Response cards, so this mechanism actually works fairly well for a CDG. However, the real problem is the Negotiation phase, where players decide to declare war, sue for peace, get out of being excommunicated, and ally with each other. The rules actually encourage Diplomacy-like secret negotiations, where a player can announce a set of agreements with another power, only to find that when that power announces it's plans that the original player's agreements will not be honored. As you can imagine, this is pretty much impossible to do solitaire, and I'm hoping that some bright bulb out there will come up with a way to at least simulate the effects of negotiation to make this game more accessible for those who want to play solitaire.
That said, I did get through a turn of the 1517 scenario, where Luther kicks things off with a piece of paper, a hammer, and a nail and changes the Christian world. There are no negotiations the first turn, so it was easy to at least get through that much of the game. It is clear that the Protestant is all about converting spaces through card play, debates, and (perhaps most importantly) translating the Bible into the local language. When was the last time you played a game that featured not only those things, but burning failed Protestant debaters at the stake? Meanwhile, France, England, and the Hapsburgs (who are in this game primarily, but not exclusively, the Spanish) are lighting out for the VP to be found in the Western hemisphere. In my game, Magellan not only found the Pacific, he managed to circumnavigate the globe on the first turn for 4VP.
Meanwhile, the Papal player was trying to Counter-Reform Germany, and doing a pretty good job. Luther got excommunicated, a debater did the crispy-critter thing, and by the end of the turn there were only four or so Protestant spaces on the board. Further to the south, the Ottoman was marching on Buda (one half of the current twin cities of Buda-Pest) but getting bogged down in a foreign war in Persia. Those wacky Iranians, always making trouble, although in 1517 they had yet to enrich weapons-grade uranium.
Finally, the only real war going at the time aside from the Ottomans playing Whack-A-Mole with the Hungarians was the Hapsburgs seeing if they couldn't acquire a little beachfront property in Southern France. A clever card play by the French put Charles V's siege of Bordeaux in mortal danger, but an equally clever card play reinforced the army with some mercs and negated the retreat that would have ended up with Charles enjoying the French penitentiary system.
If it sounds like there is a lot going on here, you are correct. There are at least three subsystems at work here, with each one a critical element of a handful of powers. I can hardly wait to play this ftf, which we intend to do 3/12.
One note: the rules are a bit long for a CDG, weighing in at 44 pages. Yikes. However, I will note that the rules are in fairly good sized type, include numerous examples, and feature perhaps the cleanest outline of how to execute a given action that I have ever seen. Rules lawyers will search in vain for more than a few cracks to exploit. The scenario book includes rules for pbem (!), The Game As History, extensive notes on each leader/explorer/conquistador/personality/event in the game, two shortened scenarios, and ways to play the game to a time limit. In short, this is a ruleset written by a gamer, and one who loves background material. All that I see missing is a sheet outlining the sequence of play, which is a bit more involved than I can easily commit to memory - perhaps the only oversight in what looks to be a very tight game.
I had considerably more success soloing Britannia, partly because I had played before, partly because it lends itself quite well to solitaire play. The thing I did miss was all of the chrome surrounding each of the various Nations - It's much more difficult to keep track of whether or not the Danes can invade north of Lothian when you have 10 Nations to keep track of. In fact, if this game has an Achilles' Heel, it is the depth of chrome necessary to accurately reflect history. That, and the fact that most players have one big Nation that is supposed to generate the most points for them. For Yellow, that means the Romans and then not much to do until the last couple of turns. Sitting around for 15 minutes so that you can have that single Scot raider get smacked is not what I think most of us think of as "quality gaming," but then again this game is in it's third edition so there you go.
In my game, the big surprise was that the Saxons were so weak. The initial forays ran up against a brick wall in the form of the nearly-departed Romans, and as a result they were never the power that they typically are. Leader after leader showed up only to discover two units in two spaces, not much to work with. The Angles, however, did quite well, despite being allowed to invade a little further north than was legal (but then, the Romans and Danes had "bonus advantages" as well). The Danes wiped out the Angles pretty quickly as well. Up north, the Caledonians did OK until the Norsemen kicked them out of the islands and their core point base. The Brigantes held onto Strathclyde, the Belgae played punching bag, the Jutes did a great job of holding onto the Kent area, and the big "four kings" ending was a big anticlimax as the Danes (and successful Welsh) had scored so many points near the endgame that no one had much chance of catching Green.
I do have a few quibbles about the game. FFG usually does a great job with components, and this game is definitely an improvement visually over the AH and even Gibson versions. However, there are no ways to mark an area as having been "occupied" (in sole possession of, even briefly, a specific nation), although the rules do address this. There is also a dearth of 25 point VP chits - I could have used half the 5's and twice the 25's. Perhaps worst of all is that in trying to clean up the rules, FFG put a lot of the chrome in sidebars where it can be a bit difficult to locate. Trying to figure out where Arthur can come in with his cavalry took longer than it should have, for instance.
There are still a few rules holes, which is pretty inexcusable at this point. For example, the rules on the Belgae submitting don't say whether or not they have the same set of rules as the Brigantes, Picts, and Welsh, only that they "unsubmit" at the start of turn 2. This could have been much clearer, and I hope it will be addressed online. Also, some of the rules for the Kingship at the end of the game are a bit confusing in places - it took me three tries to figure out that Cnut could be King at the end of the Danes' turn rather than at the end of the game turn.
Aside from what is really an inexcusable (but historically necessary) amount of chrome, and a system that leaves players twiddling their thumbs for a bit too long in various points in the game, I really like the overall system. I know that there were attempts to adapt it for India, Iberia, and (IIRC) Russia at various times, with varying success. If nothing else, the fact that it makes for a pretty great solitaire game (thus countering the thumb-twiddling) makes it a worthwhile addition to my collection, even if I do own the AH version.
Next up, a little Sunday afternoon gaming...
Also, one of the titles I picked up with my auction loot was the reprint of Britannia, the old Gibson/AH classic. I have the AH version, marred as so many games of that period by indecipherable and confusing rules, so I was hoping that FFG would cut the clutter and produce a beautiful game with clean rules.
First, HiS. This game is unlike any wargame I've played in that each of the six powers has it's own set of actions that it can take in the course of a turn, not to mention different ways for each power to earn VP. For example, England can explore the New World (though not as effectively as the Hapsburg/Spanish power), but can't really do much to affect the religious standing of even his own spaces. The Protestant player, however, can, and in fact much of his effort will be spent doing just that. The Ottoman player does neither, but (like most players) is interested in gaining VP spaces and committing piracy in the Med.
For solitaire play, this game is a real challenge in many ways. On the one hand, there are relatively few Combat/Response cards, so this mechanism actually works fairly well for a CDG. However, the real problem is the Negotiation phase, where players decide to declare war, sue for peace, get out of being excommunicated, and ally with each other. The rules actually encourage Diplomacy-like secret negotiations, where a player can announce a set of agreements with another power, only to find that when that power announces it's plans that the original player's agreements will not be honored. As you can imagine, this is pretty much impossible to do solitaire, and I'm hoping that some bright bulb out there will come up with a way to at least simulate the effects of negotiation to make this game more accessible for those who want to play solitaire.
That said, I did get through a turn of the 1517 scenario, where Luther kicks things off with a piece of paper, a hammer, and a nail and changes the Christian world. There are no negotiations the first turn, so it was easy to at least get through that much of the game. It is clear that the Protestant is all about converting spaces through card play, debates, and (perhaps most importantly) translating the Bible into the local language. When was the last time you played a game that featured not only those things, but burning failed Protestant debaters at the stake? Meanwhile, France, England, and the Hapsburgs (who are in this game primarily, but not exclusively, the Spanish) are lighting out for the VP to be found in the Western hemisphere. In my game, Magellan not only found the Pacific, he managed to circumnavigate the globe on the first turn for 4VP.
Meanwhile, the Papal player was trying to Counter-Reform Germany, and doing a pretty good job. Luther got excommunicated, a debater did the crispy-critter thing, and by the end of the turn there were only four or so Protestant spaces on the board. Further to the south, the Ottoman was marching on Buda (one half of the current twin cities of Buda-Pest) but getting bogged down in a foreign war in Persia. Those wacky Iranians, always making trouble, although in 1517 they had yet to enrich weapons-grade uranium.
Finally, the only real war going at the time aside from the Ottomans playing Whack-A-Mole with the Hungarians was the Hapsburgs seeing if they couldn't acquire a little beachfront property in Southern France. A clever card play by the French put Charles V's siege of Bordeaux in mortal danger, but an equally clever card play reinforced the army with some mercs and negated the retreat that would have ended up with Charles enjoying the French penitentiary system.
If it sounds like there is a lot going on here, you are correct. There are at least three subsystems at work here, with each one a critical element of a handful of powers. I can hardly wait to play this ftf, which we intend to do 3/12.
One note: the rules are a bit long for a CDG, weighing in at 44 pages. Yikes. However, I will note that the rules are in fairly good sized type, include numerous examples, and feature perhaps the cleanest outline of how to execute a given action that I have ever seen. Rules lawyers will search in vain for more than a few cracks to exploit. The scenario book includes rules for pbem (!), The Game As History, extensive notes on each leader/explorer/conquistador/personality/event in the game, two shortened scenarios, and ways to play the game to a time limit. In short, this is a ruleset written by a gamer, and one who loves background material. All that I see missing is a sheet outlining the sequence of play, which is a bit more involved than I can easily commit to memory - perhaps the only oversight in what looks to be a very tight game.
I had considerably more success soloing Britannia, partly because I had played before, partly because it lends itself quite well to solitaire play. The thing I did miss was all of the chrome surrounding each of the various Nations - It's much more difficult to keep track of whether or not the Danes can invade north of Lothian when you have 10 Nations to keep track of. In fact, if this game has an Achilles' Heel, it is the depth of chrome necessary to accurately reflect history. That, and the fact that most players have one big Nation that is supposed to generate the most points for them. For Yellow, that means the Romans and then not much to do until the last couple of turns. Sitting around for 15 minutes so that you can have that single Scot raider get smacked is not what I think most of us think of as "quality gaming," but then again this game is in it's third edition so there you go.
In my game, the big surprise was that the Saxons were so weak. The initial forays ran up against a brick wall in the form of the nearly-departed Romans, and as a result they were never the power that they typically are. Leader after leader showed up only to discover two units in two spaces, not much to work with. The Angles, however, did quite well, despite being allowed to invade a little further north than was legal (but then, the Romans and Danes had "bonus advantages" as well). The Danes wiped out the Angles pretty quickly as well. Up north, the Caledonians did OK until the Norsemen kicked them out of the islands and their core point base. The Brigantes held onto Strathclyde, the Belgae played punching bag, the Jutes did a great job of holding onto the Kent area, and the big "four kings" ending was a big anticlimax as the Danes (and successful Welsh) had scored so many points near the endgame that no one had much chance of catching Green.
I do have a few quibbles about the game. FFG usually does a great job with components, and this game is definitely an improvement visually over the AH and even Gibson versions. However, there are no ways to mark an area as having been "occupied" (in sole possession of, even briefly, a specific nation), although the rules do address this. There is also a dearth of 25 point VP chits - I could have used half the 5's and twice the 25's. Perhaps worst of all is that in trying to clean up the rules, FFG put a lot of the chrome in sidebars where it can be a bit difficult to locate. Trying to figure out where Arthur can come in with his cavalry took longer than it should have, for instance.
There are still a few rules holes, which is pretty inexcusable at this point. For example, the rules on the Belgae submitting don't say whether or not they have the same set of rules as the Brigantes, Picts, and Welsh, only that they "unsubmit" at the start of turn 2. This could have been much clearer, and I hope it will be addressed online. Also, some of the rules for the Kingship at the end of the game are a bit confusing in places - it took me three tries to figure out that Cnut could be King at the end of the Danes' turn rather than at the end of the game turn.
Aside from what is really an inexcusable (but historically necessary) amount of chrome, and a system that leaves players twiddling their thumbs for a bit too long in various points in the game, I really like the overall system. I know that there were attempts to adapt it for India, Iberia, and (IIRC) Russia at various times, with varying success. If nothing else, the fact that it makes for a pretty great solitaire game (thus countering the thumb-twiddling) makes it a worthwhile addition to my collection, even if I do own the AH version.
Next up, a little Sunday afternoon gaming...
Central Tuesday Session, 2/28/06
It's been a while since I've made a Tuesday session. Valentine's Day and travel play hell with my schedule. And so it was with great anticipation that I welcomed Dave, KC, Tim, and Mike (with special appearance by Peter and his son) to my house for an evening of gaming.
I should mention that I came out of the recent Rainy Day Games auction with quite a bit of capital, of which I promptly spent about 60% on new games. Of course, when one pays retail, one's money tends not to go as far, but seeing as I managed to both clean out the closet and then subsequently put a few things back in, one can't really complain. Of these new games, two were played on Tuesday.
First up was Niagara, a cute little light game where you try to collect jewels from various spots on a river without letting your boat go over the falls. The board is sheer genius, consisting of a long section that sits on the game box lid and bottom, but that features twin falls that hang over one end. The river itself sits between raised cardboard sections, so that you push round clear plastic circles along it's length to simulate the flow of water. The rate of flow will change based on how much movement each player's canoes make every turn, so predicting how many disks will go over the falls is important to strategy. Each player has seven tiles they can play, with movement from 1 to 6 spaces, plus a "weather" tile that allows you to impede or speed up the current. Each tile is played once, then all are recycled, so planning is important.
Also important, and to my mind what makes the game wacky fun, is that canoes moving upriver can steal gems from boats in the space they land on. This is critical to preventing people from getting a win at times, and in fact that happened at least once in our game. Good thing, as everyone was so worried about a couple of other players that I snuck right in for the win with KC coming in right behind to share the victory.
I liked this game a lot, although I know at least two others in the group were not impressed. That's interesting, as there is almost no luck in this game other than which way the river will flow around the little island right before the falls that makes two separate rivers (and thus slows down the current right at the crucial point), and even that can generally be assumed to result in alternating disks going in alternating directions. Mostly, though, I got the game to play with family members, as it is pretty light and a bit much in terms of components for our group. I really can't think of any game that is quite like it.
Next up was Die Sieben Siegal, or Seventh Sign, also sold as Zing! under the Amway, erm, Simply Fun label. Perhaps my favorite trick taking game, the idea is to successfully predict what tricks you will take, with it being better to over predict than under predict. I did quite well up to the third hand, when I waited too long to get my high trump out and ended up collecting three green tricks that I didn't really want, adding 9 points to my score. In the final round, Dave took "Rupert" (hoping to force others into taking tricks they didn't want), but Mike foiled his evil plan and won the game with six points in five hands, a fairly impressive achievement with five players.
Mike had to leave at that point, so we pulled out the card game version of E&T, subtitled "Conquest of Kings". I was surprised at how much of the board game was left in the card version, with the only real changes being boats instead of temples and the use of cards to take points (if you are going to play a blue card to get points in a kingdom, you have to play an additional one from your hand to do so). This results in increased luck of the draw from the card deck, which did not go over well. Me, I didn't hate it as much as others, largely because I always suck at E&T anyway and have never come in any higher than third (and usually dead last). If the game has anything to recommend it, it can be taken on a trip because of the relatively small space requirements (removing the deck and markers from the box means it will take up essentially no space in a suitcase). Otherwise, it didn't really come across as any sort of improvement at all, demonstrating that, like "The Pink Panther," some things really shouldn't be messed with.
Even though it was only 2145, a bit early for our group, that was it for the evening. Thanks to all for coming!
I should mention that I came out of the recent Rainy Day Games auction with quite a bit of capital, of which I promptly spent about 60% on new games. Of course, when one pays retail, one's money tends not to go as far, but seeing as I managed to both clean out the closet and then subsequently put a few things back in, one can't really complain. Of these new games, two were played on Tuesday.
First up was Niagara, a cute little light game where you try to collect jewels from various spots on a river without letting your boat go over the falls. The board is sheer genius, consisting of a long section that sits on the game box lid and bottom, but that features twin falls that hang over one end. The river itself sits between raised cardboard sections, so that you push round clear plastic circles along it's length to simulate the flow of water. The rate of flow will change based on how much movement each player's canoes make every turn, so predicting how many disks will go over the falls is important to strategy. Each player has seven tiles they can play, with movement from 1 to 6 spaces, plus a "weather" tile that allows you to impede or speed up the current. Each tile is played once, then all are recycled, so planning is important.
Also important, and to my mind what makes the game wacky fun, is that canoes moving upriver can steal gems from boats in the space they land on. This is critical to preventing people from getting a win at times, and in fact that happened at least once in our game. Good thing, as everyone was so worried about a couple of other players that I snuck right in for the win with KC coming in right behind to share the victory.
I liked this game a lot, although I know at least two others in the group were not impressed. That's interesting, as there is almost no luck in this game other than which way the river will flow around the little island right before the falls that makes two separate rivers (and thus slows down the current right at the crucial point), and even that can generally be assumed to result in alternating disks going in alternating directions. Mostly, though, I got the game to play with family members, as it is pretty light and a bit much in terms of components for our group. I really can't think of any game that is quite like it.
Next up was Die Sieben Siegal, or Seventh Sign, also sold as Zing! under the Amway, erm, Simply Fun label. Perhaps my favorite trick taking game, the idea is to successfully predict what tricks you will take, with it being better to over predict than under predict. I did quite well up to the third hand, when I waited too long to get my high trump out and ended up collecting three green tricks that I didn't really want, adding 9 points to my score. In the final round, Dave took "Rupert" (hoping to force others into taking tricks they didn't want), but Mike foiled his evil plan and won the game with six points in five hands, a fairly impressive achievement with five players.
Mike had to leave at that point, so we pulled out the card game version of E&T, subtitled "Conquest of Kings". I was surprised at how much of the board game was left in the card version, with the only real changes being boats instead of temples and the use of cards to take points (if you are going to play a blue card to get points in a kingdom, you have to play an additional one from your hand to do so). This results in increased luck of the draw from the card deck, which did not go over well. Me, I didn't hate it as much as others, largely because I always suck at E&T anyway and have never come in any higher than third (and usually dead last). If the game has anything to recommend it, it can be taken on a trip because of the relatively small space requirements (removing the deck and markers from the box means it will take up essentially no space in a suitcase). Otherwise, it didn't really come across as any sort of improvement at all, demonstrating that, like "The Pink Panther," some things really shouldn't be messed with.
Even though it was only 2145, a bit early for our group, that was it for the evening. Thanks to all for coming!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)