Age of Big Box Games

Myself, Luke, Tash, nice Rich and Hal played Age of empires 3 the other week. A really good game which needs a small house fix. The game is well balanced but if you loose an expedition or are out gunned for a ‘boat’ it can leave you off the pace. An example of this was where Luke, Hal and Rich all founded colonies with exactly one man more than was revealed on the card (this is the bare minimum margin of success) and Tash tried with a greater numbers on her side but then failed. Bad luck, ok, but all her investment 6 or 7 actions where then lost. When a single player looks like he could win a boat other players are scared off competing as they will loose resources, consequently often the boat was won (by me) VERY cheaply, this of course had an impact on the final scores as despite vp tiles being taken that would have befitted me enormously, I still won by a clear margin. Obviously there are many factors to bare in mind and Hals tactics in the new world saw him running a very close second, had he been slightly more concerned with finances in the mid game he may well have won.

Stone Age Success

Many apologies last week left me wondering how many would attend. Rory came in and told me he’d be back in ten minutes and I sat alone and waited.......luckily Dylan decided to pay a visit, this rare and pleasant occurrence aloud a gaming session to take place. In my haste to bring all the games knowing Matt and Jimmy would be absent I neglected to bring San Marco. In the end we opted for Stone age and played the correct 3 person rules + a house adaption based on vagueness in the official rules. This all worked out splendid as once all players got used to the system there was good tension and competition for resources.

The three player rules only allow 2 players in any one resource area (except food hunting) usually the limit is 7 but only allowing 2 players mean you can easily miss your chance. Equally the centre resources of corn, axes and babies can only be occupied by two players (or one player twice) which means every third go you cant get one (unless a rival chooses to place elsewhere as Rory frequently did). There are normally 4 stacks of huts which acquire victory points. The rules say take away ½ for 2 and 3 players but this doesn’t work so the house fix is to take away ½ for two players and ¼ for 3. This allows the game to remain balanced. I’ve played this where fewer huts are available but 4 stacks are retained and this makes the game end faster. This Tuesday we removed a stack which felt significantly more in the spirit of the game (4 players 4 stacks and 3 players 3 stacks etc). This provided continued competition for resources and board position maintain the tension and choices from the 4 player version. I wasn’t that impressed with the scaled version of this game on my one previous play but this weeks outing was superb and I would recommend it as a three player game, the rule tweaks are similar to removing a region in power grid they don’t change the feeling the game just reduce the space so it keeps working.

Rory bravely played on despite realising in the last third that he was significantly off the pace, a lack of hammers and early expansion, a critical food miscalculation and it became a two horse race. Dylan benefitted from some extraordinary card luck and racked up a very good score but in the end I was triumphant.

We drunk....... a lot less than all the splitters who went to the beer festival.

Who Is This Rory? And How did he Manage to Win Puerto Rico???

We where 9 this week and cracked out Puerto Rico and Amun Re, I did the rules session for Puerto and we got together a group of players either new to the slave trade or at best inexperienced. Rory won but I don’t know how (Jimmy did ask and we believe it was corn strategy but Rory seamed unsure himself). A lot of euro games are about taking advantage of what’s available rather than strategy, what’s more, good strategy can be difficult on first and second plays. Some games just aren’t fair when experienced players know the strategy and puerto rico is often seen as that type of game. One of my personal favourite nights at games club was when we ran the puerto rico contest and this number one ranked game got 4 plays and an ultimate champion.

I played Amun Re with Dave and Hal who were new to this Kinizia classic, making up the five where Luke who I believe had played it before and Jimmy. Id forgotten a couple of things and was shouted down early doors and having creamed this game last time I played I wanted to avoid the temple strategy. Hal managed to acquire 4 temples in the first era and 2 other players went heavy for farmers so Hal had a commanding lead. Jimmy went the other way wanting camels, as a result he was left behind in what turned out to be a money rich game. At the start of the second era it was pretty close with me in second and all others close behind. With bidding becoming extreme and 21 being a typical price to pay for regions all players fed the system and those that stepped back ran a risk of either falling behind or with luck winning. In the final count Hals lead was virtually unassailable......virtually Jimmy got very close and even closer having finished with the most money and I finished in second two points short.....then Jimmy realised we hadn’t counted my one temple and I narrowly piped Hal at the last. All things considered Hal played a blinder for his first game and all patronising aside he had the moral victory.

I had for some reason thought Rory was called Hugo??? I dont know why??? but the original picture didnt make sense so I had to find a rory???? so Stoke fans know whats going on but everyone else is asking why does a boardgame blog have a picture of a mediocre footballer??

I'm NOT playing with YOU again

Adam and Rachel played Stoneage (played last week with Ben) with Cpt John and partner. It was enjoyed immensly and Rachel trimuphed. Wierdly they played it and finished it in around an hour, last week it took much longer......

Meanwhile Jimmy Led Pete, Luke and Ben in a game of Princes of Florence, with the new expansion. I loved princes of florence and until relatively recently when we had a puerto rico contest POF had been the only game with the honour of having been played on two tables simultaneously way back in week 2 or 3 of the official NBG (possibly amun re too). Since then more modern games have taken many of the concepts and tweeked them and POF can be critisised as being a fairly solo game with only minimal interactions. There are seven rounds, each round consisting of two phases, the first phase being an auction (the only real interaction) the second phase being two personally selected actions (limited resources could be seen as a slight interaction), this gives players only 14 actions in the entire game to play with so quiet a few people out there have crunched the game and experienced players know how to spend most of these limited actions.

The new expansions adds a third phase in the middle (after the auction and before the actions). There are 8 (?) different role cards which each have a bidding track around the outside and in turn order players choose to bid on a role, possibly outbidding other players who subsiquently re-bid on their turn, until all players have a different role. This of course adds further interaction but also adds significant depth to the game as many new tactics are worthwhile. I wont go into all the roles but they include, a bank awarding a set amount of money which increases if nobody took it last turn. One role allows you to not pay for your next first round auction (or take some vp should you prefer). There is a bonus to works being produced equal to the round so in round 5 you get a qualifying score of +5. One role gives alternative role scoring counting improvements as scoring +3 buildings and arcitects as +2 and workers as +1, allowing alternative building strategies. A take a free bonus or presige card role and finaly a role which gives you 3 rather than 2 actions. the bidding process is similar to Amun-Re and well understood by us so most of the time the stronger roles went for more money. on two occassions everybody wanted different roles and cards where cheap.

All in all I prefered the game with this expansion as it added significant levels of replayability to a game that had previously been played to death. Its not that it had been played alot more that it had been explored and been found out. This new expansion gives princes of florence a new life at NBG and Im sure it will be played again relatively soon.

Descent in the cellar of the ribs

After a somewhat successfull bank holiday weekend where I ran a descent game as the overlord I was itching to run my second game so took Descent to the ribs and challenged Tarn, Pete and James. Jimmy and Matt played Preußische Ostbahn (with Dan) while Jack played shogun with capt wesker. I dont remember who else played what (sorry Ben, where you there Tom?) but my guesses are in brackets.....

I loved Descent though. The first few times we played the overlord didn't have a chance and after the first round where Tarn crippled my spiders (if you'd pardon the phrase) I thought this might be a repeat but a few minor mistakes by the heroes and soon I'd turn the tables. You cant rush into rooms and you cant drag your feet, timing is everything and sensible combo players from the overlord can take those vital points away from you. I understand and can see how descent is RPG lite, but I love it at the moment, especially when i'm the overlord. Everyone gets to pick on you and you dont take it personaly, soak it up and mess with them all ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaa...... Well anyway im now planning the next time I can enjoy this dugeon crawl game and hopefully getting together a group willing to play it more often.

Cuba, San Marco, Wallenstein

It was a Bank holiday so we didn't expect to see Jimmy. Tom, Pete, Luke and Hal (I think) played Cuba as we watched all English champions league. Matt, Tarn, Dan and Ben played wallentsein. Ben won Wallenstein, Luke won Cuba and Chelsea won the football. Tom Pete and Luke had enough time to play San Marco which went down well. The balance of the game doesnt quite work but the mechanic of choosing cards is so much fun that we dont care.

SUKOTHAI, Brass and spilt drinks

Just a quick entry to say last week I played Brass with Jimmy Hal and Ruth. One of my favourite games with different strategys emerging, Hal went for the ‘do as many bad moves as I can think of strategy’ which surprisingly didn’t pay off for him, he always seemed to know exactly what he should have done and had we had the will or inclination to re-play the game I’m sure Hal would have done better. Both Ruth and myself where getting a large amount of money each round thanks to our build strategy and only because of my experience and diversification I ended up in front of her. Jimmy went for ship yards and for want of either of a few crucial cards could have won….but victory was mine.

Bondy, Rich, Lewis and James played Reef encounter. Some speedy coral eating and responsive play saw Rich win. This was followed by ‘King of Siam’ with the now infamous SUKOTHAI no idea who won that as I was too pre occupied with the spilling of liquid over a then abandoned game of For Sale. This had followed two games of ‘shadows over Camelot’ where Luke*, Jack and an unknown uni friend (sorry) kicked the games arse convincingly not once but twice. Well not suprising as they had failed to follow a crucial rule of playing 1 card at an event and had instead been putting down pairs and 3 of a kinds in the tournament areas. Ho hum, they will know for next time.

I mostly drank grapefruit and lemonade! Roll on next week (which is today!!)

First Essen taste 2008

Twelve arrived and over time departed. The early players got to experience the dexterity game ‘Hamster wheel’ this was a hit and drew interest from players as they arrived. As a result Jack requested to play it later after he had beaten Luke and Lewis at Mykerinos but had lost miserably at Pueblo.

Matthew very kindly led a five player game of Agricola which took all night and the rules session for that and Jimmys rule session for Comuni for Richard, James and me took as long as the other groups game of Pueblo.

Comuni has a few neat mechanisms and gives players 3 choices of actions. Placing workers, retrieving workers and gaining the benefits or raising revenues. In addition you can build buildings that you have won and build walls to stave off one of the four attacks scheduled in the game. Each player has a strength in income of one of the types of cubes and each type of cube that can be won has its own benefit. Gold helps workers win regions, white helps build more and increases the quality of cards to help build, 2 brown cubes are wild and a brown also aids in worker displacement leaving black cubes which represent soldiers and a way to defend your city when under attack.

As you build you acquire victory points which relate not just to final game score but also to exposure to the savage attacks from the hordes. But when you fall victim you don’t lose VPs (which would limit your exposure later) you are given negative VP markers which lose points at the end of the game. Be warned then that steaming off on a build strategy has serious long term repercussions. James very nearly won this game which came right down to the wire.

After the brand new Comuni we played the equally brand new steel driver, a Martin Wallace train game that nods a head towards Wabash cannonball. The game is played over six rounds and despite a few maintenance mistakes (both Jimmy and I must be slipping) the game flowed well. Richard had dropped out so it was just the three of us and the game felt really tight with some master tactician moves from James and some experienced train game tactics from Jimmy the end result was as Comuni with Luke wining.

I loved both games as was to be expected and I am so pleased Jimmy continues to bring back winning Essen releases. This is the first of what promises to be a bumper batch from 2008 role on next Tuesday.

16! now we're legal

I had had such a bad day, playing a new game was always going to be a risk and after last week’s fiasco I decided I needed to play a game I knew well, a game I loved, a game I stood a chance of winning so I played Caylus.

Caylus is my favourite game, I absolutely love it. I cant put my finger on exactly what it is about it, but I think one of the highlights is that every turn you can do something, every go there is low hanging fruit and you can manipulate your own position playing solo whilst also competing and playing with others. I love games that have alternative paths to victory and we saw several strategies unfolding this time.

In last night’s game Student Luke* played a money strategy very well up until the last quarter where he missed a few opportunities and was surpassed by Richard (Mr. Big) who was hording goods to deliver to the castle. Rich could have acquired a slightly better position had he delivered more efficiently but it would have only made a dent in Crocker’s eventual victory. Punk Rich came forth with a building strategy and Lewis was fifth but was playing Caylus for the first time. Student Luke* and punk Rich had played before (was it 8 months back???) a classic game where Luke nearly won and punk Rich was dissed by a certain Jack ‘out of spite’ Shannon. Rich was not about to allow that to happen again so he vetoed Jacks participation this time.

Everyone announced this weeks gaming to be a success and joyfully compared the wonderful Caylus with the disaster that was ‘vampire: prince of the city’ (the new Kogge) We agreed that the game would play better if it got more regular outings.

We finished the evening with a game of Ra – a popular auction gateway game by Mr Knizia. This is one of big Rich’s favourite games, he led the rules and self confessed to not ever winning. He didn’t win tonight either narrowly losing to Crocker.

Both games attracted interest from pub dwellers (including feminine ones) eyes where turned both ways and our position upstairs raised our gaming profile and was necessary as 16 or so people had turned up and table space was at a premium.

Downstairs Dan won Confucius and other games were played that I know very little about. Me and Rich were mostly drinking blackcurrant and soda.