Eleven gamers and a reporter! It's clear that I'm going to need a new house if this many people keep showing up.
A freelance reporter from the Oregonian showed up to speak with Carey and KC about their Essen experience and Carey's newly published 24/7 game, as did KC's father who accompanied them on their trip. We played a lot of games and fun was had.
I'm not quite sure what happened in the Temple of Conspicuous Consumerism, but in our dining room we played Vegas Showdown, a couple of games of the unfortunately titled Gemblo, and Balance Duels.
First up was Vegas Showdown, with Liz, Alex, Chuck, Tim, and myself as the would be casino owners. I have to admit that even though this game got decent buzz, I nearly refused to buy a copy after the insult to gamers that was Rocketville (both from the Hasborg'ed AH), but since it was on sale for $20 recently, I decided to invest. As it turns out, there's a pretty good game here.
The components are a mixed bag. You get what is now the standard AH "build your own partitions" box, nice heavy attraction tiles in three sizes, clever transparent minimum bid markers for the premium attractions, wooden scoring markers, a mounted board for the fame track and attraction bidding, pretty cheap poker chips, and ... the flimsiest paper player mats I may have ever seen. I can only imagine that someone somewhere saw what the components were going to cost and made a last minute decision to cut back on the player mats. To be fair, I didn't really notice that the mats were that bad once we started playing, but considering how meaty almost everything else was, the contrast is a bit jarring.
The idea is to get more fame points than anyone else. At the same time, you are trying to generate revenue and population (the people that come to your operation and how much they spend), which determine how much money you have to work with every turn. To generate these three metrics of success, you have to build various elements of your casino and hotel. Many of the attractions require that you have other attractions built before you can put them on your play mat, such as having a Slots room before you can put in a Fancy Slots room.
There are three basic types of attractions in three different sizes. First is the hotel operation, which is mostly food service. These are blue, and you can almost always try to get a standard restaurant, the others being premium that show up as the game progresses. Second are the yellow games, which include slots (again, always available), and thirdly the green bar service, starting with lounges. Attractions can take one, two or four squares of your operation, with blue rooms having to connect to the hotel entrance (each attraction has a varying number of doors to other rooms), yellow having to connect to the casino entrance, and green working either side. There are bonuses at game end for covering the 10 spaces near both the hotel and casino entrances, and for managing to connect both entrances. Each attraction improves your revenue, fame, population, or some combination of the three. For example, slots increase revenue by one, restaurants improve population by 2, and lounges increase fame by 2.
The gameplay is very quick, and easy to learn. First, any premium attractions unpurchased from the previous turn have their minimum bids dropped. Second, a wacky event card is turned over for each of the four premium attraction slots that is empty. The events range from prohibiting bidding on certain types of attractions to bonus income to opportunities to spend money. Each card also has a symbol that describes what size of premium attraction goes in the open slot. Each premium attraction has it's starting minimum bid printed on it, and the marker is set accordingly. Everyone then collects income based on your revenue or population, whichever is smaller, and then it's off to the meat of the game.
The bidding phase is the interesting part of the game. The mechanism is a bit like Evo in that if you are outbid, you must move your marker to a higher bid on the same item or to a different item. Slots, Lounges, and Restaurants are always available (until they run out), and there are two Slots bidding tracks if you are playing with five. Minimum bids for each of these is set throughout the game, and go up by some set value. For example, the minimum bid for Slots is 5, with spaces for 7, 9, 12, and 15. Lounges start at 9, Restaurants at 15. The three "basics" are one, two, and four squares in size, so the price corresponds to how much space each will take up.
The premiums change as the game goes on, and it is deciding when to get these and how much to pay that makes things interesting. Since the price of an unpurchased premium (which start their life with minimum bids from 18 to 52) drops every turn, choosing to wait is sometimes a good strategy. You can always buy a premium, but you must have the correct prerequisite attractions in your operation to place it. Some of the premiums also have partial diamonds in their corners, if you can build such that you form three-quarter or full diamonds, you will get extra points at game end.
Beginning with the starting player, you place your bid marker on the attraction and price you want to start at, as does each player in turn. Money is public, so placing a bid to prevent a competitor from even getting a shot is allowed. After everyone has placed their marker, you continue around the table. If no one has outbid you, you must then pass for now. If you have been outbid, you must either outbid on that attraction in turn, or change your bid to another item. Unlike Evo, you do not respond to being outbid immediately, although in practice that is exactly what happens unless you have two contests going (as often happened with the two Slots tracks, but only in a five player game). Once everyone is on their own track, the bidding ends and everyone pays for their attraction and places it on their mat (or to the side if they need a prerequisite attraction that isn't on their mat yet).
If you are shut out of doing anything, or simply wish to save up your money, you have two options. The first allows you to remove up to two attractions from your mat, then place up to two attractions on your mat. This is mostly helpful when you want to fill up the hotel or casino areas, connect the two areas, take advantage of attractions with diamond parts, or play an attraction that required a prerequisite. The second option, Publicity, simply gives you a fame point. Neither costs any money, just time.
After the bidding and any reorganization, players check their revenue, population, and fame totals and reset their scoring markers. Population and revenue are easy to keep track of, but because of events and publicity, it is more difficult to keep track of your fame. We used extra markers, not included in the game, to track non-attraction fame on the player mats along with population and revenue, and I recommend doing this as it is easy to forget where you are in the scoring and fame is what wins you the game.
The game ends when one of the three stacks of premiums runs out and you need to draw from that stack. This is a great mechanism that adds a lot of tension to the game. The game can also end if someone fills up their entire play mat, but this is unlikely in a five player game. In any event, play stops immediately and final scoring is carried out. You get five points for filling up your hotel area, five for filling the casino, three for connecting the two, one for 3/4ths diamonds, three for full diamonds, one for every $10 you have at game end (ignoring fractions), and 5/3/1 points for most population (ties split points for positions, so a three way tie for first means 3 points each), and the same for highest revenue.
I was able to finish the hotel and casino areas, but couldn't get the two connected. I did manage to get a couple of partial diamonds finished, and had $20 left at the end of the game, but I simply couldn't compete with Liz's Sports Book attractions or Chuck's huge wad o' cash early in the game. They ended up a point apart, with the edge going to Liz, and far ahead of Tim, Alex, and myself. Including 'splaining, our game took about 105 minutes, a little longer than the 75 minutes on the box. I actually think 5 players moves along quicker than with fewer as more people will buy premiums.
The game moves along very quickly, with little downtime. Because of the bidding mechanism, it feels quite a bit like Evo, but without all of the fiddliness and heavy play sequence that slightly mars that game. Also, no pink dinosaurs. If you think of it as a somewhat less competition-heavy and stripped down version of Evo, you wouldn't be far off. I also like the "Civ-building" aspect of needing certain attractions to build others. Since each premium deck requires half to be sold first (an A and a B deck), sequencing isn't a problem but will change from game to game, making a "perfect" strategy nearly impossible. Component issues aside, this one is a winner, and a steal at $20 if you can find it at that price.
Next up was Gemblo, a hexagonal relation of Blokus, and in my opinion a superior game. Instead of connecting via diagonals, you connect via hex "spines" (a term familiar to wargamers), and it is somewhat easier to find plays for your pieces. The board scales depending upon the number of players, although it is a bit difficult to see exactly which parts of the board are playable at first. However, with a little study, it became very clear where you could play and couldn't. Our first game was with four (Tim, Chuck, Martin, and myself), and there was a bit of rules confusion in that one hex on the side of the spine must be free in order to connect to another piece of your color (Chuck and I were both under the assumption that you could play "through" another piece, which was incorrect). I won the game, but had at least one play that was illegal, so we called it a bogey. The second game, with just Chuck and Martin and I, felt a lot more interesting as there was less chance that your next play space would be taken by someone, and I suspect this is a very good three-player game (good news for Blokus fans). I won handily in this game as well, placing all but two pieces consisting of a total of seven gems. This one is a winner and will go on my to buy list for sure.
Finally, Martin wanted to try out Balance Duels, a new game he'd gotten in Essen, while the rest of the folks were finishing up a game in the other room. Duels is very similar to backgammon, but adds in a physical balancing element that is really fun. The "board" is a teeter-totter with seven "points" on each end, each of which has two slots for pieces with the exception of the fourth point at the very end, each of which has only one. There are extra pieces that look to reduce some points to only one slot, but the rules didn't really cover these. I will note that the game does handle up to four players, but I was quite satisfied with this as a two player game.
Like backgammon, you bring on your pieces by rolling a die and placing them on the corresponding point. Also like backgammon, you want to get your pieces from your side to your opponent's side. However, there are only seven points per side, and you only roll a single die, with which you can move a piece already on or bring on a new one. Unlike backgammon, while you can "capture" a single piece of your opponent's, you can only do so while they are in their home area, and since most points only have two slots, having multiple pieces in a home slot makes them safe. The four spot on both sides is also safe because there is only one slot. Also unlike backgammon, you start with no pieces on the board, they are all brought in as though they were captured.
The best part of the game, though, is the balancing act. If, after your move, the teeter-totter has hit the ground firmly on one side or the other (if there is any give at all, you are ok), the game is over and the moving player loses. In our game, Martin did make a move that resulted in this happening, but we called it a mulligan and moved on. The game was quite close, with both of us having only one piece that needed to get home, although mine was on my four point and thus safe. I needed to roll a four or six to win, and in fact did roll a six. I moved my piece to that slot, which was my only move (while I had a piece on the one point, the seven was full), and sure enough that proved to be the straw that put the board out of balance, giving the game to Martin.
I'm sure someone out there will say that this is a broken game if your last dieroll can kill you, but I found it delightful. I played quite a bit of backgammon going through high school and college (in one particularly drunken game with the woman who later became student body president of my university, we kept forgetting which direction and even what color we were!), and so this is a very fresh and welcome take on an old favorite. I could even see serious players bringing in a doubling cube (which can, obviously, be used in a wide variety of games, although it helps to be playing for money). The game plays fast, every move is a bit of a thrill to see if the balance is thrown off by too much, and it's relatively small when the game is broken down. Definitely going on my buy list. If I could get one that was build from wood, I'd pay Crokinole board prices for one. I'd also be interested to see how it worked with three or four...
Another great night of gaming, and gratifying to have so many people show up after three weeks of relatively small turnouts, even if I do have to consider buying a house with a bonus room just to fit everyone in! Thanks for coming, everyone, and I'm looking forward to the article on Carey's game and his trip to Essen.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Look! Look! A Prompt Recap!
SouTues was at Mike's this week, and Wes, Ben The Taller, Mike, and myself got some good gaming in.
First up was a pyramid building game that Ben has been designing for some time. I won't go into detail other than to note that it uses Lego(tm) blocks and is very close to being a real winner. There are some great design elements here, I hope Ben continues to refine the system. The game was fairly close, a surprise as I stalled badly in the mid-game and was having trouble getting going again until the end. I really like the "pipeline" effect the game has, similar to Antiquity, etc. I can't really recall who won, but I think it was Mike.
Second up was Shear Panic, a fun game of manipulating the formation of a flock of sheep. In the early part of the game, you begin by trying to get your two sheep next to each other during your move, then you try to get them as close to the "front" of the flock as possible at two key points, then you try to play tag with the black sheep, and finally attempt to avoid getting sheared near the game end. The sheep themselves are these great cartoony ceramic models that have considerable heft and add to the fun. Mike's copy is a pre-production copy from Essen 2005, I picked up the production copy a few weeks ago and they have improved some of the elements (nicer scoring boards, move trackers, "mutton buttons") but kept the great sheep.
In our game, I was forced to make a decision early on to hurt Ben's chances (as the leader) but in the process help out Wes. I took the chance and from them I knew I was playing for second. In the end, Wes won by a few points, with me edging Ben for third. Mike never really got going, and he was in last place the entire game, although I think he had fun as well.
Maybe I'll get a chance to play Vegas Showdown next week...
In solitaire news, I've continued my Silent War game, although I stopped keeping extensive records of how I was doing as it just took too much time. I managed to get to WS3 in April of '43, which gave me a Dramatic Victory (one level up from a Historical result, modified by sinking over a million tons). I'm continuing the game to at least WS4 - the game changes dramatically when you change war status, suddenly you have a shot at more sub tenders and lots of Gatos which you need because the ASW level goes up to 2. Thank goodness for Vassal.
I've also tried playing Hornet Leader 2, an update of the old GMT title that Dan Verssen sells as a Java-based or PDF game. It has some differences with the original, and unfortunately the Java interface doesn't completely mesh up wih the rules manual that comes with the game (what is the Mess Deck for?), although these are subtle differences. If you always wanted to try the system but couldn't because the game wasn't availalble, I recommend this one. Strangely, I'm unable to save games, perhaps there is a problem with the registration (I'm playing on a newer laptop than what I had when I bought it a year or so ago).
Finally, I've been trying to learn Republic of Rome as a solitaire game. I am out of my mind. I did download the "living rules" some kind soul has put on the web (the "official" rules are all over the place because of poor errata AH sent out after publication, occasionally contradictory in nature). However, the living rules don't include any info on the solitaire game, so it's slow going. Also, I've managed to pull the first and second Punic Wars and the Syrian War in the first turn, which I hear pretty much kills the game as the Romans have no fleets to start and the solo rules don't do any lookahead to determine if maybe that money you spent on an extra Forum phase might not have been better spent on a few ships. I'm going to struggle through the rest of the first turn (I'm currently reading the Senate phase rules), but it's pretty clear that this game is a tough nut to crack, even with the solitaire rules and not many decision points for me to make so far. Still, it's got a pretty good reputation and it's something I'd like to at least play once, if only a single pass through the Early Republic.
That's all for now. The next CenTues is at my place, maybe we'll finally get Vegas Showdown in then.
First up was a pyramid building game that Ben has been designing for some time. I won't go into detail other than to note that it uses Lego(tm) blocks and is very close to being a real winner. There are some great design elements here, I hope Ben continues to refine the system. The game was fairly close, a surprise as I stalled badly in the mid-game and was having trouble getting going again until the end. I really like the "pipeline" effect the game has, similar to Antiquity, etc. I can't really recall who won, but I think it was Mike.
Second up was Shear Panic, a fun game of manipulating the formation of a flock of sheep. In the early part of the game, you begin by trying to get your two sheep next to each other during your move, then you try to get them as close to the "front" of the flock as possible at two key points, then you try to play tag with the black sheep, and finally attempt to avoid getting sheared near the game end. The sheep themselves are these great cartoony ceramic models that have considerable heft and add to the fun. Mike's copy is a pre-production copy from Essen 2005, I picked up the production copy a few weeks ago and they have improved some of the elements (nicer scoring boards, move trackers, "mutton buttons") but kept the great sheep.
In our game, I was forced to make a decision early on to hurt Ben's chances (as the leader) but in the process help out Wes. I took the chance and from them I knew I was playing for second. In the end, Wes won by a few points, with me edging Ben for third. Mike never really got going, and he was in last place the entire game, although I think he had fun as well.
Maybe I'll get a chance to play Vegas Showdown next week...
In solitaire news, I've continued my Silent War game, although I stopped keeping extensive records of how I was doing as it just took too much time. I managed to get to WS3 in April of '43, which gave me a Dramatic Victory (one level up from a Historical result, modified by sinking over a million tons). I'm continuing the game to at least WS4 - the game changes dramatically when you change war status, suddenly you have a shot at more sub tenders and lots of Gatos which you need because the ASW level goes up to 2. Thank goodness for Vassal.
I've also tried playing Hornet Leader 2, an update of the old GMT title that Dan Verssen sells as a Java-based or PDF game. It has some differences with the original, and unfortunately the Java interface doesn't completely mesh up wih the rules manual that comes with the game (what is the Mess Deck for?), although these are subtle differences. If you always wanted to try the system but couldn't because the game wasn't availalble, I recommend this one. Strangely, I'm unable to save games, perhaps there is a problem with the registration (I'm playing on a newer laptop than what I had when I bought it a year or so ago).
Finally, I've been trying to learn Republic of Rome as a solitaire game. I am out of my mind. I did download the "living rules" some kind soul has put on the web (the "official" rules are all over the place because of poor errata AH sent out after publication, occasionally contradictory in nature). However, the living rules don't include any info on the solitaire game, so it's slow going. Also, I've managed to pull the first and second Punic Wars and the Syrian War in the first turn, which I hear pretty much kills the game as the Romans have no fleets to start and the solo rules don't do any lookahead to determine if maybe that money you spent on an extra Forum phase might not have been better spent on a few ships. I'm going to struggle through the rest of the first turn (I'm currently reading the Senate phase rules), but it's pretty clear that this game is a tough nut to crack, even with the solitaire rules and not many decision points for me to make so far. Still, it's got a pretty good reputation and it's something I'd like to at least play once, if only a single pass through the Early Republic.
That's all for now. The next CenTues is at my place, maybe we'll finally get Vegas Showdown in then.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
More Catching Up
Boy, I've been a very bad blogger. September got very busy for me with a new choir I'm singing with, and I just never seemed to get around to making entries. Lots of games played, but I'm not sure how many of them I can remember. Here's a sampling of what's happened in the last couple of weeks...
Dungeoneer - Played this card-based dungeon crawl twice, once with my friend Connor and again with Chuck when he was here this past Saturday. This might be more fun with three, as there's a bit of a tendency for whoever goes up a level to run away with the game and two opponents might help put the smacky-smacky on the leader. I've got Tomb of the LIch Lord and Whatever Den We're Calling It This Week Of The Wererats, although we only played with Tomb in both cases. I was using the 2.1 rules, the 2.2 rules online look to be better organized (which would help). I may buy one more module and give it a try with three or four players at the Sunriver retreat in a month.
Twilight Struggle - The continuing struggle to like this game continues. Like Shifting Sands, it seems to have a lot of positive support, yet my game with Chuck was another blowout, this time in less than three turns. Every roll I needed for VP I got as the Sovs, while Chuck had to play scoring card after scoring card, and I was two spaces up on the Space Race and able to blow two of Chuck's events every turn on it. When Chuck played the Europe scoring card after I played one that allowed me to remove his control markers in Western Europe, giving me something like 28 points, he conceded. I've now played something like eight games of this, and half have had bizarre statistics (great rolls, awful rolls, a preponderance of scoring cards to one hand, etc), and I can't imagine that these are all flukes. When the best game we had was using the wrong Dominance scoring rules (the ones on the reference card), I have to think that the game has serious problems.
Roma - My first outing with this two-player game. Again, luck played a huge roll in me wiping Chuck out in about 20 minutes. There's a good game here, but again the luck factor is a problem. At least it's short.
Command and Colors Ancients - Our Central Tuesday session had very low attendance (me and Matt), at least partly due to the fact that we have some members going to Essen in the coming days. Matt had expressed interest in this game, and I had loaned him my copy to try out (he's never played any of the Borg variations on this theme, of which Ancients is head and shoulders above the rest), so we gave it a try. We played Crimmosis River (or however it's spelled), which is between Carthage and the Syracusans. Carthage has a problem in that there is a river to be forded for about half of their troops, including two elements of medium infantry, two warrior bands, medium cavalry, and three or four elements of light troops, while the balance of the troops (two heavy inf, chariots, and three light troop elements (are positioned for immediate combat. The Syracusans have four heavy inf elements lined up with two leaders, with light troops to either side and one element of medium cavalry, and have a bit of an advantage so I had Matt take them.
And what an advantage. Matt was rather quickly up to four of the five VP he needed for a win within a few turns. Both Medium Infantry I brought across the river got wiped out quickly, as did the medium cavalry and an element of auxilia (light infantry with strong close combat strength, but with fewer special abilities such as Evade). He even managed to wipe one of my heavy inf elements, the one with the leader, down to a single unit. However, nothing is ever over until it's over in C&C games, and when I got my heavy infantry and chariots going, his units started taking a real pounding and I ended up wiping out his slingers, three units of heavy infantry, a unit of auxilia, and a leader before he could finish me off and I was able to grab victory from the jaws of defeat. A very exciting game, I'm a big fan of this particular title which is a bit surprising considering I sold Memoir '44 at auction and am in the process of dumping Battle Cry as well. The two things that make this game, as I've said before, are the battle back, evasion, and line cohesion rules. While there is still no element of facing, making flank attacks perhaps less effective than they were in the period, and the game is still a dice-fest, I definitely feel like I have more control over my fate than in the other titles.
Matt and I ended with my first two-player game of Attika, which I'd only played three-player before and disliked when one player built up a ton of amphorae and won easily. Two player is much more fun, although I have to admit that I ran roughshod over Matt from the mid-game on, and there was little danger of me losing for the last handful of turns. Still, it's a very interesting puzzle on how to manage your structures and when to draw cards and when to put buildings on the map. Like St. Petersburg, this one is better suited to two than three or more.
I will make more of an attempt to keep up to date with the recaps in the future. Thanks to Matt for hosting CenTu, and here's hoping a few more make it to Mike's next week.
Dungeoneer - Played this card-based dungeon crawl twice, once with my friend Connor and again with Chuck when he was here this past Saturday. This might be more fun with three, as there's a bit of a tendency for whoever goes up a level to run away with the game and two opponents might help put the smacky-smacky on the leader. I've got Tomb of the LIch Lord and Whatever Den We're Calling It This Week Of The Wererats, although we only played with Tomb in both cases. I was using the 2.1 rules, the 2.2 rules online look to be better organized (which would help). I may buy one more module and give it a try with three or four players at the Sunriver retreat in a month.
Twilight Struggle - The continuing struggle to like this game continues. Like Shifting Sands, it seems to have a lot of positive support, yet my game with Chuck was another blowout, this time in less than three turns. Every roll I needed for VP I got as the Sovs, while Chuck had to play scoring card after scoring card, and I was two spaces up on the Space Race and able to blow two of Chuck's events every turn on it. When Chuck played the Europe scoring card after I played one that allowed me to remove his control markers in Western Europe, giving me something like 28 points, he conceded. I've now played something like eight games of this, and half have had bizarre statistics (great rolls, awful rolls, a preponderance of scoring cards to one hand, etc), and I can't imagine that these are all flukes. When the best game we had was using the wrong Dominance scoring rules (the ones on the reference card), I have to think that the game has serious problems.
Roma - My first outing with this two-player game. Again, luck played a huge roll in me wiping Chuck out in about 20 minutes. There's a good game here, but again the luck factor is a problem. At least it's short.
Command and Colors Ancients - Our Central Tuesday session had very low attendance (me and Matt), at least partly due to the fact that we have some members going to Essen in the coming days. Matt had expressed interest in this game, and I had loaned him my copy to try out (he's never played any of the Borg variations on this theme, of which Ancients is head and shoulders above the rest), so we gave it a try. We played Crimmosis River (or however it's spelled), which is between Carthage and the Syracusans. Carthage has a problem in that there is a river to be forded for about half of their troops, including two elements of medium infantry, two warrior bands, medium cavalry, and three or four elements of light troops, while the balance of the troops (two heavy inf, chariots, and three light troop elements (are positioned for immediate combat. The Syracusans have four heavy inf elements lined up with two leaders, with light troops to either side and one element of medium cavalry, and have a bit of an advantage so I had Matt take them.
And what an advantage. Matt was rather quickly up to four of the five VP he needed for a win within a few turns. Both Medium Infantry I brought across the river got wiped out quickly, as did the medium cavalry and an element of auxilia (light infantry with strong close combat strength, but with fewer special abilities such as Evade). He even managed to wipe one of my heavy inf elements, the one with the leader, down to a single unit. However, nothing is ever over until it's over in C&C games, and when I got my heavy infantry and chariots going, his units started taking a real pounding and I ended up wiping out his slingers, three units of heavy infantry, a unit of auxilia, and a leader before he could finish me off and I was able to grab victory from the jaws of defeat. A very exciting game, I'm a big fan of this particular title which is a bit surprising considering I sold Memoir '44 at auction and am in the process of dumping Battle Cry as well. The two things that make this game, as I've said before, are the battle back, evasion, and line cohesion rules. While there is still no element of facing, making flank attacks perhaps less effective than they were in the period, and the game is still a dice-fest, I definitely feel like I have more control over my fate than in the other titles.
Matt and I ended with my first two-player game of Attika, which I'd only played three-player before and disliked when one player built up a ton of amphorae and won easily. Two player is much more fun, although I have to admit that I ran roughshod over Matt from the mid-game on, and there was little danger of me losing for the last handful of turns. Still, it's a very interesting puzzle on how to manage your structures and when to draw cards and when to put buildings on the map. Like St. Petersburg, this one is better suited to two than three or more.
I will make more of an attempt to keep up to date with the recaps in the future. Thanks to Matt for hosting CenTu, and here's hoping a few more make it to Mike's next week.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Catching Up
While Blogger is online, I'll get in a few comments on games I've played the last couple of sessions -
King of the Beasts - Dave put it best as part of Peter's effort to play every pubished game once.
Tempus - The new Wallace game that is suffering (or not, depending upon how hard you bit) from hype backlash. It's not a civ-building game, not really, but it is one of Wallace's cleanest titles and a lot of fun. You will play at least one or two rules wrong in your first playing, no matter how hard you try or how well you prepare. Two hours for a first game is optimistic, but realistic for experienced players. Finally, a Wallace game we can play at weeknight sessions! Looks to scale well with 3-5, too.
Wyatt Earp - This game has worn out it's welcome with me. I was badly burned by late game luck of the draw, and I really hate Wild West themes. Saboteur will be my first choice for "Summoning" games after this.
Blue Moon City - Light, but fun right up to the point you realize someone else will win and there's not a thing you can do about it. To be honest, a little too much theme for a game this fluffy.
You know, there was another game we played with five people, that someone thought Jay wanted to play (but didn't, at least all that badly), but I am completely unable to remember what it was. I really hate getting old.
And, finally -
Chuck and I played what might have been our last game of Shifting Sands, the North African Theater CDG from MMP. I've given good reviews of this game in three previous reports, but I'm beginning to think that this game hinges almost completely on how the card draws flesh out. In this case, I couldn't get the Iraqi Revolt to help bleed off forces to the Near East, didn't get the card I desperately need to take Malta until the final hand (by which time I'd lost), and in general felt that the game was playing me more than I was playing it. Just the fact that the Air Support card I needed gave Chuck the win a turn early is enough to more or less damn this game for me. It's fun, but not for six hours to see what card comes up next.
What a shame, I was really excited to see this game come out, but the utter lack of any reason to press forward on the offensive in Libya/Egypt until the end game and the lack of tension wrt whether to play cards for events or not (you almost always do if at all possible) make this a poor cousin to Barbarossa to Berlin. At least with Twilight Struggle there may be a way to fix the "I just drew six scoring cards that will kill me this turn" syndrome. Sigh.
Somebody help me out with the mystery game, huh?
King of the Beasts - Dave put it best as part of Peter's effort to play every pubished game once.
Tempus - The new Wallace game that is suffering (or not, depending upon how hard you bit) from hype backlash. It's not a civ-building game, not really, but it is one of Wallace's cleanest titles and a lot of fun. You will play at least one or two rules wrong in your first playing, no matter how hard you try or how well you prepare. Two hours for a first game is optimistic, but realistic for experienced players. Finally, a Wallace game we can play at weeknight sessions! Looks to scale well with 3-5, too.
Wyatt Earp - This game has worn out it's welcome with me. I was badly burned by late game luck of the draw, and I really hate Wild West themes. Saboteur will be my first choice for "Summoning" games after this.
Blue Moon City - Light, but fun right up to the point you realize someone else will win and there's not a thing you can do about it. To be honest, a little too much theme for a game this fluffy.
You know, there was another game we played with five people, that someone thought Jay wanted to play (but didn't, at least all that badly), but I am completely unable to remember what it was. I really hate getting old.
And, finally -
Chuck and I played what might have been our last game of Shifting Sands, the North African Theater CDG from MMP. I've given good reviews of this game in three previous reports, but I'm beginning to think that this game hinges almost completely on how the card draws flesh out. In this case, I couldn't get the Iraqi Revolt to help bleed off forces to the Near East, didn't get the card I desperately need to take Malta until the final hand (by which time I'd lost), and in general felt that the game was playing me more than I was playing it. Just the fact that the Air Support card I needed gave Chuck the win a turn early is enough to more or less damn this game for me. It's fun, but not for six hours to see what card comes up next.
What a shame, I was really excited to see this game come out, but the utter lack of any reason to press forward on the offensive in Libya/Egypt until the end game and the lack of tension wrt whether to play cards for events or not (you almost always do if at all possible) make this a poor cousin to Barbarossa to Berlin. At least with Twilight Struggle there may be a way to fix the "I just drew six scoring cards that will kill me this turn" syndrome. Sigh.
Somebody help me out with the mystery game, huh?
Antique Hunting
It's been a while since I submitted a report, largely because every time I try to get onto Blogger to do one, I'm unable to for a variety of reasons. Guess I better get my own site on .mac set up soon.
Several of the people in RCG went in on the reprinted Splotter games that came out a few weeks ago - Roads & Boats and Antiquity. These games are ridiculously expensive, and I have to admit that I had to swallow hard before buying a copy of both. I'd played R&B, and figured that I could always try out the solitaire scenarios even if I couldn't find time to play with others. Antiquity, on the other hand, while having a shorter playing time (2 hours, theoretically, although I'll believe that when I see it - maybe with two players who've played a lot), had no solitaire element, so spending that much on a game that might see play two or three times was a tougher sell, even to me.
So it was that he first time my wife was working on a Saturday I decided to see if anyone else in the group was interested in giving it a shot. Alex, Liz, and Chris all showed up to see if this game was worth the bucks.
First, a brief description of the game. Think Puerto Rico with an utterly unforgiving system and a map that gets smaller as you go, or at least less of it is usable. You build various structures in your cities to give you certain capabilities. For example, if you want to build an inn, which increases your reach on the board, you need to have a Brewery, plus also a Cart Shop, a spare "man", and a spare food resource. Your city displays are grids that you place the buildings in, quite a bit like Princes of Florence. As you build more cities, you get more grids.
A key element of the game is your "zone of control," a term wargamers will be familiar with, except in this game it's like the Maginot Line has a ZOC - you might expand it, but it ain't going anywhere. Everything you do has to happen within two spaces of your city on the "countryside" map. And you can do quite a bit - you can go fishing for pearls, fish, or shells (for dye); grow wine, sheep, grain, or olives; mine for gold or stone; or cut down trees. In addition, you can increase your ZOC by building Inns, and build cities.
At no time do you want to forget to leave any of the green resources (mostly food, but also wine and wood) available for use. If you don't have wood, you can't set up a woodcutter. If you don't have a "seed" (spare) food/wine counter, you can't start a farm. This is really where the complexity of the game happens - you will find yourself planning a few turns out to build a second city, only to realize that you needed the wood to start another woodcutter. When the rules say the game is unforgiving, this is a big part of why, as there are very limited ways to get a specific type of resource.
Perhaps the most unusual part of the game is that things get tight in your cities because of "famine" (really how well you can feed your people) and on the countryside map due to "pollution" (which includes running out of the resources in the area). Famine more or less increases every turn, and for each point of famine not countered by a Granary or stored food you have to put a Grave on your city display. While a Hospital will help some by removing graves every turn, you can get to a point in the late game where there are more graves coming in than you can handle. If you run out of open spaces in your city to put the graves, you have to start putting them on buildings, thereby losing the use of the building until you can remove the grave. This is a relatively small problem early, but it does accelerate the need for a second city within six or so turns.
Aside from harvesting wood, which only changes the woods hexes to grassland, harvesting any other resource results in a pollution marker in the space. This is perhaps a bit more of a problem early, as you have to also put down three pollution markers per city per turn until you build a Dump and/or Fountains. Fortunately, once you get a few of these built, pollution becomes less of a problem until the late mid-game when you need to start cleaning up your mountain and sea areas so you can start getting more of the luxury items and stone.
Another interesting element is that you get to pick your victory condition - When you build a cathedral, you pick a victory condition and it's associated Special Mutant Power. For example, if you pick the saint that lets you buy houses (the way you get more men to man buildings and harvest resources) for cheap, your victory condition is that you build all of your houses. There is also a saint that gives you all four Mutant Powers, but you have to achieve two victory conditions. If you change your mind into the game, you can always build a Faculty of Theology, raze the cathedral, then build a new one with a new condition (although you can't raze the one that gives you all four powers, that would be too obvious of a strategy).
I had played a short solitaire game (two countryside hexes, just me building stuff) to get a handle on the rules and how best to sequence the early game. In our game, to minimize any game-destroying situations, we played with no famine or pollution phases, although we did advance the famine track as if we were playing that phase. With all of the exploration markers we found advancing the track, we were up to 10 famine by the time we decided to start incorporating those two phases. of course, right before we reached that point, we figured out that we had all made some sort of big mistake. In my case, I realized that I no longer had woodcutters, so I couldn't buy a granary to mitigate the coming famine because I had to use the one wood I had to start a new woodcutter.
The whole game is like this. You are ready to build a hospital to free up some grave space, but you realize you have to build a new city first, which means you can't do that until the Field phase, so you can't build the hospital, so you have to cover existing buildings that you were hoping to use for something else that turn. In some ways, the game is even more unforgiving than, say, 18xx games or Age of Steam. Chris, in our game ran out of wood and couldn't build a Marketplace which would allow him to trade for wood, or a woodcutter, both of which require, you guessed it, wood. So, unlike Puerto Rico, you can put yourself in a pretty good hole if you aren't paying very close attention.
By running into these sorts of problems, we ended up extending the game by quite a bit. Also, this game is quite simply not playable within two hours with four players. Since much of the game is played essentially solitaire anyway, it almost makes more sense to play two two-player games instead of one four-player game. We began at 12:30pm, ended at 4:30pm and were probably three or four turns from someone winning (clearly Alex, although Chris wasn't far behind).
So, what's the verdict? I'll start with the issues. First, there is a missing cube from each color. Splotter claims you only get 21 cubes with each game, but if you do a little simple math it is clear you really need 22 (although not every player in every game will get to the point where they need the final cube). Second, the countryside pieces are slightly warped, so that if you use some pieces on their back side, the tiles can slide over each other. Third, about half of the tiles have some poor color registration, although the worst problem is with the water hexes that are very hard to differentiate. Finally, the game requires a considerable amount of play before you start to "get" it. For someone who has learned dozens of wargames over the years, this is not such a big deal, but if you consider this game for a group used to 90 minute euros, don't expect to feel comfortable with the system for at least two or three plays. The rules aren't difficult, but the choices you make are almost all critical.
Oh, and the resource/pollution counters really need to be clipped as you are constantly stacking them. And there are a lot of counters, well over 1000 of the little angels.
Despite all of that, this game has the potential to be my favorite luck-free game (OK, almost luck-free; the Exploration counters and the map layout are random). I'm very interested in trying this out with two players, as the game definitely scales time-wise with more players. Unlike 18xx, there is very little interaction in early turns, so I could see the first four or five turns taking only about 10 minutes with experienced players. Being able to choose your own victory conditions is great, and other than building the field structures, there is little downtime (unless you are the guy taking a long time to figure out what to build in their city and how to man it.
I found the game to combine a lot of the elements I liked in R&B but without the complicated resource tree (in Ant, while there are eight resources, they are really only of three or four types). Building your city up requires you to be very conscious of what is important right now along with what you'll need in a turn or three. As such, the strategic element of the game is huge, and the early game solitaire-like separation ensures that you can start on your path more or less unimpeded, only to start running into competition for arable and buildable space later on. While we did spend four hours playing, it sped by and I could have played another hour easily. With R&B, I was getting a bit tired of the system a good 30 minutes before we finished.
While this game is back in print, at least until the copies run out, it is very expensive compared to almost every other game you can buy other than monster wargames. If you don't mind playing eBay prices on desireable out-of-print games, $90 won't bug you. As such, I would still have a hard time justifying this purchase if I didn't feel like I couldn't get my money back in a couple of years. Too bad, because this is a pretty good game, especially if you really like development games with low-luck.
Thanks to Alex, Liz, and Chris for coming by and giving this game a play.
Several of the people in RCG went in on the reprinted Splotter games that came out a few weeks ago - Roads & Boats and Antiquity. These games are ridiculously expensive, and I have to admit that I had to swallow hard before buying a copy of both. I'd played R&B, and figured that I could always try out the solitaire scenarios even if I couldn't find time to play with others. Antiquity, on the other hand, while having a shorter playing time (2 hours, theoretically, although I'll believe that when I see it - maybe with two players who've played a lot), had no solitaire element, so spending that much on a game that might see play two or three times was a tougher sell, even to me.
So it was that he first time my wife was working on a Saturday I decided to see if anyone else in the group was interested in giving it a shot. Alex, Liz, and Chris all showed up to see if this game was worth the bucks.
First, a brief description of the game. Think Puerto Rico with an utterly unforgiving system and a map that gets smaller as you go, or at least less of it is usable. You build various structures in your cities to give you certain capabilities. For example, if you want to build an inn, which increases your reach on the board, you need to have a Brewery, plus also a Cart Shop, a spare "man", and a spare food resource. Your city displays are grids that you place the buildings in, quite a bit like Princes of Florence. As you build more cities, you get more grids.
A key element of the game is your "zone of control," a term wargamers will be familiar with, except in this game it's like the Maginot Line has a ZOC - you might expand it, but it ain't going anywhere. Everything you do has to happen within two spaces of your city on the "countryside" map. And you can do quite a bit - you can go fishing for pearls, fish, or shells (for dye); grow wine, sheep, grain, or olives; mine for gold or stone; or cut down trees. In addition, you can increase your ZOC by building Inns, and build cities.
At no time do you want to forget to leave any of the green resources (mostly food, but also wine and wood) available for use. If you don't have wood, you can't set up a woodcutter. If you don't have a "seed" (spare) food/wine counter, you can't start a farm. This is really where the complexity of the game happens - you will find yourself planning a few turns out to build a second city, only to realize that you needed the wood to start another woodcutter. When the rules say the game is unforgiving, this is a big part of why, as there are very limited ways to get a specific type of resource.
Perhaps the most unusual part of the game is that things get tight in your cities because of "famine" (really how well you can feed your people) and on the countryside map due to "pollution" (which includes running out of the resources in the area). Famine more or less increases every turn, and for each point of famine not countered by a Granary or stored food you have to put a Grave on your city display. While a Hospital will help some by removing graves every turn, you can get to a point in the late game where there are more graves coming in than you can handle. If you run out of open spaces in your city to put the graves, you have to start putting them on buildings, thereby losing the use of the building until you can remove the grave. This is a relatively small problem early, but it does accelerate the need for a second city within six or so turns.
Aside from harvesting wood, which only changes the woods hexes to grassland, harvesting any other resource results in a pollution marker in the space. This is perhaps a bit more of a problem early, as you have to also put down three pollution markers per city per turn until you build a Dump and/or Fountains. Fortunately, once you get a few of these built, pollution becomes less of a problem until the late mid-game when you need to start cleaning up your mountain and sea areas so you can start getting more of the luxury items and stone.
Another interesting element is that you get to pick your victory condition - When you build a cathedral, you pick a victory condition and it's associated Special Mutant Power. For example, if you pick the saint that lets you buy houses (the way you get more men to man buildings and harvest resources) for cheap, your victory condition is that you build all of your houses. There is also a saint that gives you all four Mutant Powers, but you have to achieve two victory conditions. If you change your mind into the game, you can always build a Faculty of Theology, raze the cathedral, then build a new one with a new condition (although you can't raze the one that gives you all four powers, that would be too obvious of a strategy).
I had played a short solitaire game (two countryside hexes, just me building stuff) to get a handle on the rules and how best to sequence the early game. In our game, to minimize any game-destroying situations, we played with no famine or pollution phases, although we did advance the famine track as if we were playing that phase. With all of the exploration markers we found advancing the track, we were up to 10 famine by the time we decided to start incorporating those two phases. of course, right before we reached that point, we figured out that we had all made some sort of big mistake. In my case, I realized that I no longer had woodcutters, so I couldn't buy a granary to mitigate the coming famine because I had to use the one wood I had to start a new woodcutter.
The whole game is like this. You are ready to build a hospital to free up some grave space, but you realize you have to build a new city first, which means you can't do that until the Field phase, so you can't build the hospital, so you have to cover existing buildings that you were hoping to use for something else that turn. In some ways, the game is even more unforgiving than, say, 18xx games or Age of Steam. Chris, in our game ran out of wood and couldn't build a Marketplace which would allow him to trade for wood, or a woodcutter, both of which require, you guessed it, wood. So, unlike Puerto Rico, you can put yourself in a pretty good hole if you aren't paying very close attention.
By running into these sorts of problems, we ended up extending the game by quite a bit. Also, this game is quite simply not playable within two hours with four players. Since much of the game is played essentially solitaire anyway, it almost makes more sense to play two two-player games instead of one four-player game. We began at 12:30pm, ended at 4:30pm and were probably three or four turns from someone winning (clearly Alex, although Chris wasn't far behind).
So, what's the verdict? I'll start with the issues. First, there is a missing cube from each color. Splotter claims you only get 21 cubes with each game, but if you do a little simple math it is clear you really need 22 (although not every player in every game will get to the point where they need the final cube). Second, the countryside pieces are slightly warped, so that if you use some pieces on their back side, the tiles can slide over each other. Third, about half of the tiles have some poor color registration, although the worst problem is with the water hexes that are very hard to differentiate. Finally, the game requires a considerable amount of play before you start to "get" it. For someone who has learned dozens of wargames over the years, this is not such a big deal, but if you consider this game for a group used to 90 minute euros, don't expect to feel comfortable with the system for at least two or three plays. The rules aren't difficult, but the choices you make are almost all critical.
Oh, and the resource/pollution counters really need to be clipped as you are constantly stacking them. And there are a lot of counters, well over 1000 of the little angels.
Despite all of that, this game has the potential to be my favorite luck-free game (OK, almost luck-free; the Exploration counters and the map layout are random). I'm very interested in trying this out with two players, as the game definitely scales time-wise with more players. Unlike 18xx, there is very little interaction in early turns, so I could see the first four or five turns taking only about 10 minutes with experienced players. Being able to choose your own victory conditions is great, and other than building the field structures, there is little downtime (unless you are the guy taking a long time to figure out what to build in their city and how to man it.
I found the game to combine a lot of the elements I liked in R&B but without the complicated resource tree (in Ant, while there are eight resources, they are really only of three or four types). Building your city up requires you to be very conscious of what is important right now along with what you'll need in a turn or three. As such, the strategic element of the game is huge, and the early game solitaire-like separation ensures that you can start on your path more or less unimpeded, only to start running into competition for arable and buildable space later on. While we did spend four hours playing, it sped by and I could have played another hour easily. With R&B, I was getting a bit tired of the system a good 30 minutes before we finished.
While this game is back in print, at least until the copies run out, it is very expensive compared to almost every other game you can buy other than monster wargames. If you don't mind playing eBay prices on desireable out-of-print games, $90 won't bug you. As such, I would still have a hard time justifying this purchase if I didn't feel like I couldn't get my money back in a couple of years. Too bad, because this is a pretty good game, especially if you really like development games with low-luck.
Thanks to Alex, Liz, and Chris for coming by and giving this game a play.
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