Everything I Played: March 21st – March 27th
Games Played: 14
Unique Games Played: 13
New (to me) Games Played: 1
18Card
The biggest difference between 18Card and most other 18xx games is that there is no railroad building. That may seem like a fairly major piece to take out, but in point of fact, 18xx games often have as much or more to do with stock market manipulation as they do with rail building. Players buy shares in various public companies and attempt to personally profit as much as possible from them through share inflation, hostile takeovers, dumping of overvalued stock, and many other tricks that reflect what might happen in an actual stock market. 18Card focuses on this aspect of the genre, and pays homage to it’s roots by naming many the available companies after companies from the better known 18xx games. History lesson over, what did I think of this game. Well, my experience with 18xx games is comprised of exactly one game of 1863, so it’s not like I have a vast well of experience to draw upon, but my opinion was generally favorable. It’s certainly not a game for everyone – to a lot of people this whole series of games is going to seem a lot like work, or at best like “playing a spreadsheet”, but there are points where you see an opportunity to really stick it to someone where the light bulb really goes on (or at least briefly flickers – I still have a lot to learn about 18xx), and those are some of my favorite moments in any game. 18Card was extremely well tested and balanced – far more so than many published games – I certainly think the designer has created a game that will strongly appeal to fans of this genre. I don’t have any regular gaming buddies who play 18xx, so I don’t know that I’ll have an opportunity to play these kinds of games too often, but I’m usually ready to give them another shot. |
The only new game I played this week, 18Card is an unpublished game designed by a guy I met at a local meetup (Bjorn I believe his name was). Understanding the name requires a bit of historical background – there are a lot of games that go generically under the monicker “18xx”, so named because the first of their ilk was Francis Tresham’s 1830 – a game where players took the role of rail barons in early 19th century America. Most of the games are simply named for a year (1856, 1863, etc.), but several are named after a place or other descriptive information (18FL, 18AL, 18C2C (coast to coast)).
Brass
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Mr. Jack in New York
Played a game of this with Hilary with myself as Jack. She figured out who Jack was by turn 6, but I was able to avoid capture for the rest of the game – something that definitely separates this game from the original Mr. Jack – avoiding capture for even one turn is difficult in that game, and 2-3 is basically impossible.
Slide 5
A very simple game that I would describe as “hidden reverse auction”, which really makes it sound more complicated than it is. Most people I introduce this to can’t decide if there is any actual strategy or if it is pure luck. I’m not completely certain myself – there’s definitely a good dose of luck, but I strongly suspect that better players will win out over an extended series of games like in poker, gin, dominos, backgammon, etc.
Race for the Galaxy
Played a 2 player game of this against the designer of 18Card before we played that.
7 Wonders
Taught a few people in this game at Just Awesome. Once people get to the end of their first game, they almost always basically understand the game, but getting through the first couple of ages can really be a chore, especially if you are playing with people who insist that they need to know exactly what is going on to play.
Jambo
Tried this again – actually played my first full game. I’m just not sure about this one. There are definitely a lot of good ideas in there, but I feel like some of them weren’t really developed correctly – some cards are just way too powerful, and the trading cards, which are nominally the point of the game, pretty much end up being the least powerful cards in the deck, which just kind of seems wrong.
Dominion
Played a couple games of “vanilla” dominion at Just Awesome with a couple folks who were pretty new to the game. It was interesting to see the game through fresh eyes again, but the play with most of the basic cards is quite automatic at this point. Not unpleasant, but didn’t really feel challenging either.
Mansions of Madness
Was the keeper for one more game of this and this time I managed to beat a team that wasn’t entirely run by Hilary (though she was in the game, and in fact I won by having a Mi-go eat her delicious, delicious brains).
Twilight Struggle
Managed to talk Hilary into another game of this, though we split it over a couple of days. Unfortunately, I won quite handily again, which tends to make Hilary frustrated and not want to play that game anymore. This should teach me an important lesson: never try.
Glen More
Tried the 2 player version of this, which features a die that takes the place of a 3rd player acting randomly. Nick and I both agreed that we didn’t really care for this addition – I think this is a game I’ll prefer to play with 4 or 5 only).
Cyclades
After what was a pretty decent, if long, introduction game of this at Meebo, our second game was undercut a bit by one of the players (Steve) not really trying to win so much as throw the game to the one guy who never attacked him. This is a game where you definitely can effectively “help” someone, so unsurprisingly that person won (though I had a shot that I kind of blew). This proved to be frustrating for a couple other players, made all the more so because Steve never really understood why it bothered them.
Modern Art
This game is looking like it will become a regular attendee at Meebo. Only one person there doesn’t really like it, and that’s more because he dislikes Modern Art as a concept rather than this game specifically.
Everything I Played: March 14th – March 20th
Games Played: 9
Unique Games Played: 8
New (to me) Games Played: 0
Game of the Week
Cyclades
Happy to say I finally did get it out this week, playing it on Sunday at Just Awesome. It uses the multi-track auction mechanism that works so well in Vegas Showdown, Amun-Re, and Homesteaders. It combines this with a direct conflict game where players are fighting for control of a bunch of small islands. What makes this interesting is that only the player who wins the auction for Ares can actually build or move troops (and only Poseidon can build or move ships), meaning that you tend to be able to see attacks coming and actually be able to do something about them. It also leads to a lot of ways to hold back the leader, and in fact you get to the end game fairly quickly, but you’ll stay there for a while – it seems like the last 4-5 turns of the game 1 or 2 players are consistently “about to win” and the other players have to conspire to stop them. This can lead to it feeling like it “drags” a little towards the end, but it isn’t a long game by any means (though the 60-90 minute time on the box is probably a tad optimistic). |
I played this game once before at Pacificon back in September. I liked it a lot, and my Dice Tower secret santa ended up getting it for me for Christmas, but I didn’t end up getting it out for a while.Other things I played this week
Twilght Struggle
I talked Hilary into another game of this fantastic simulation of the cold war. I took the US this time, who are supposed to have a hard time in the early game, but whether by luck or design, I managed to jump out to an early lead and end the game by about the halfway point (one think I do like about this game is that it has an “auto-win” condition to avoid having to play half a game where someone has effectively already won).
Mansions of Madness
Played 2 games of Mansions of Madness, one with just Hilary, and one with a group of 4 others at Just Awesome. I defeated Hilary, but kind of fumbled it as the keeper at Just Awesome due to misreading my objective – I thought I just had to kill one of the characters, but it turned out I had to drive him insane, *then* kill him.
Man that game is awesome.
Battlestar Galactica
Erik (owner of Just Awesome) loves this game, so we got another play of it in. Once again the Cylons won, helped by the fact that they both knew who they were right from the start. Hilary ended up cracking under interrogation (ok, giggling and saying “how did you know?”), and revealed early, but one nice thing about the Exodus expansion is that revealed Cylons have a lot more to do now. The other thing about that expansion however is that the humans have it pretty rough, and this was no exception as the Cylons won in record time (I think we made it to a distance of 6).
Aquaretto
Pulled this out at Meebo since Coloretto has been such a big hit there. The addition of adorable animals seemed to confuse people slightly. Steve in particular was obsessed with getting Killer Whales, even when it did not make sense for him to do so.
Glen More
Played Glen More at Just Awesome on Sunday. A pretty interesting blend of drafting, tile placement, and the inevitable euro “collect resources and then turn them in to points” thing. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. Each player is creating their own little network of tiles in front of them, and there is a penalty for having too many tiles – however the benefits of the extra tiles seem to generally outweigh the penalty, so really this should only discourage players from taking tiles that are nearly useless. This may be a game that I’ll play another 5 or 6 times and be done with, or it may be one I’ll always like to pull out from time to time, like Ra.
Ra
Speaking of Ra, got a game of it in at Just Awesome on Sunday, and boy did I do poorly. You start with 10 points, and I think I actually had less than that after the first 2 epochs (out of 3). I came back a little, but still finished pretty far back. Still fun though, and I love teaching this one.
Chicago Express
Brought this back to Meebo game night, mostly because Samarkand has gone over so well. Played with 6 players, which is probably not the best number (though it does claim to support 6). Actually liked it fairly well. I lost, but for the first time I think I know exactly *why* I lost. The fact that the players decide when the auctions take place and what is auctioned is the most powerful lever to pull in this game. I pulled it at the wrong time (actually choosing to skip an auction), but I was able to see how that worked against me. Want to play it again and see if I can actually leverage that knowledge into doing better.
Everything I Played: March 7th – March 13th
Games Played: 8
Unique Games Played: 4
New (to me) Games Played: 1
Game of the Week
Mansions of Madness
The game uses an RPG model, with one player acting as the GM (the “keeper”) – running the monsters, traps, and other creepiness as the characters try to figure out what is going on and what they need to do about it. The keeper chooses which of the 5 scenarios the players will explore, chooses which of the 3 stories/objectives they will pursue, and and makes a number of decisions within those scenarios to allow for some amount of replayability. The stories and objectives I’ve seen so far are great – this game does narrative better than any other non-RPG that I can think of. However, the fact that each story is so detailed meant that they couldn’t include that many stories. The fact that the keeper makes a bunch of secret decisions at the beginning of the game helps, but it’s hard to see playing a given scenario more than 3-5 times. However, that’s still 15-25 games, which frankly is a lot, and it is a lock that FFG already has expansions with new scenarios, rooms, monsters, and investigators in the pipe, and, well, they’ve got my money. |
Game of the Week this week is also my only new game, Fantasy Flight’s new game set in the Lovecraft/Arkham Horror world. This was one of the most anticipated games of 2010 which then became the most anticipated game of 2011. By and large, it lives up to the hype, delivering a better game experience than either Arkham Horror or Betrayal at House on the Hill, the 2 games it most resembles. Other games I played this week
Coloretto
Played a couple games of Coloretto at Just Awesome after playing my first game of Mansions of Madness.
Glen More
Brought this to Meebo game night, where it was fairly well received. I am still figuring out the tradeoffs in this game – I think I may be a little prone to skip tiles early in the game and it costs me later on.
Race for the Galaxy
Brought this to Meebo game night and got a few folks through the dreaded first game. An icon-heavy game where everyone has their own, hidden hand of cards (of a wide possible variety) is probably the hardest thing to teach – you just can’t answer questions effectively without looking at someone’s hand.
Everything I Played: February 28th-March 6th
Games Played: 8
Unique Games Played: 8
New (to me) Games Played: 1
Game of the Week
Hive
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My Mom came over to work with Hilary on some sewing stuff, but we did get in one game of “the bee game” aka Hive. My mom is a retired elementary school teacher and has a huge fascination with bugs in general and bees specifically, so no surprise that she likes this one (despite a basically tacked on theme). She’s also managed to convince herself that I’m a big expert at this game (which I’ve played like 6 or 7 times, most of those with her), so she sees beating me as a big accomplishment. While she did beat me, she didn’t take full credit because I pointed out a couple strategy points as we played. I failed to react when she covered my queen with her beetle and that pretty much sunk me.New to me
Battles of Westeros
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Yeh brought this to Just Awesome on Sunday. He had glued the figures to their bases, but he had not yet punched out all the cardboard, so we got to work on that and he taught the rules. I had played Memoir ’44, which nominally uses the same system, but that system is so different that my previous experience was fairly meaningless. Battles of Westeros is far more complex, and to add to that Fantasy Flight released a number of ‘optional rules’ that by consensus make the game play a bit better. I’m not sure how necessary all the rules were, but if you’re going to try to make a game more “realistic” (whatever that means in a game that simulates undocumented battles in a fictional world), I suppose you may as well go big. As such, I guess I’d say this is the first real squad-level “wargame” I’ve ever played. It was a bit of a slog for a number of reasons, but now having stepped away from it I’d like to try it again.Other games I played this week
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Introduced this to Hilary. We played 1-v-1 with her being the bad guy (Adam in this case) and me being the good guys. She only had to kill/sire Buffy (as opposed to everyone), and she did have a 1/36 chance to sire her on her very first turn, but then she let Adam get pinned down and I managed to hit him with the Spell of Oblivion for 10 of his 18 points of damage and then there wasn’t really too much she could do.
Cosmic Encounter
Played this at Just Awesome and it actually worked the way it was supposed to – fast, silly, and almost-but-not-quite-broken. I don’t know why this turns into a slog when I play it at work, but it was nice to have my faith in the game itself restored a bit.
Dominion
Played a 6-player (sigh) game of this at Meebo at game night. Made to seem all the more long and slow because I’ve been playing quite a lot of 2-player games on line at dominion.isotropic.org (free!).
Samarkand
Now here is one that does work at Meebo. I continue to outthink myself at it though (“well, that’s the obvious thing to do, so I can’t do that”).
Chicago Express
Given how well Samarkand has been working, I brought Chicago Express, a similar game by the same designer. This adds auctions to the mix, which have also worked well for Meebo people. I got killed again of course, but then I went and read some strategy articles, so now I’m ready to go an lose by slightly less.
Metropolys
Played at Just Awesome. I think if I played this more I might call it one of my favorite games. Combines area control and auctions in a way that is so cool I’m surprised it hasn’t been done before or imitated. There are just so many opportunities to do clever things towards the end of this game.
Everything I Played: February 21st-February 27th
Games Played: 13
Unique Games Played: 11
New (to me) Games Played: 1
Game of the Week
Samarkand
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New to me
London
London sees the players rebuilding London after the great fire of 1666. There are those who will eyeroll about yet another game set in the European Renaissance, but I actually find this theme to be quite engaging – though that may have a lot to do with having read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Trilogy. The game play actually reflects the theme pretty well in an abstracted way. You are balancing the need for the government to generate money and run the city with preventing people from starving to death in the streets. Yes these things are represented by piles of cards and little black cubes – but I don’t think the mechanics, particularly the poverty cubes, would make sense in another theme (well, another theme that wasn’t “build or rebuild a town/country while preventing the populace from starving”). It’s a longish game – probably around 2 hours on average – but each individual turn is quite short, which means that you get a lot of turns, and I really like having a lot of turns in these kinds of “build an engine” games. Also, you get to do a lot of strategizing around what size of engine you want, how often you will crank it, and how you want to rebuild it. Definitely one I’m excited to try again. |
Other games I played this week
Rock the Beat
I’m sure this was adapted from someone’s drinking game – I played a similar one in college called Fuck-Shit-Bunny (hey, it was college, and we were drinking). Each player has a different hand gesture and they pass the “lead” around quickly while pounding out the boom-boom-clap of We Will Rock You. You mess up, you drink take a penalty card. Loud. Fun.
Cosmic Encounter
Played another game of this at Meebo and opinions are fairly split – some folks like the interaction and theme, some folks feel they don’t have control over what happens since they can’t decide who to attack and every time you do something, someone might just play a card or power to screw it up. I’ll admit it isn’t a paragon of finely tuned balance, but I’m a little disappointed this hasn’t gone over better.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Played this at Chad and Stefanie’s place along with Hilary and Stefanie’s sister Allison. They all seemed to like it despite Stefanie and Allison both being somewhat wary of the horror theme (they are both evidently somewhat prone to nightmares). I haven’t heard back about whether the game gave them any (if only about the warped tiles; replacements allegedly on the way). Hilary was the traitor again, and seemed to have a favorable set up, but we got some lucky rolls and room draws and actually won fairly easily.
Carcassonne
A quick 2-player game of this with Nick at Meebo. Nick really has my number lately in everything we play. Thanks to the iPhone app I play quite a bit of 2 player Carcassonne, but Nick caught on fairly quickly and more to the point just seemed to pull the exact tile he needed several times toward the end of the game. In my defense, I did steer him towards a couple of very good moves when he was being indecisive.
No Thanks!
Snuck in a game of this at the end of the night at Just Awesome. It amazes me how infrequently people are willing to send around numbers that don’t hurt them, but hurt everyone else (of course, I guess this is balanced by the equally odd behavior of taking a card that hurts you pretty badly just to stop someone else from getting it.
5 Second Rule
A really really really fast “trivia” game in which you must name 3 things from a category in less than 5 seconds. I quote “trivia” because ideally the categories are something you could easily name many examples of given more time. Of course, for some reason the overlap between gamers and sports fans is mysteriously limited (aren’t sports games?) so when categories like “Big 12 Schools” come up, it breaks the game a bit.
7 Wonders
Taught this to Stefanie and Chad – Hilary played too and hadn’t played in so long that it was almost like she was new too. If you are used to looking at cards and tiles with icons – if you commonly play games like Magic, Caylus, Homsteaders, Race for the Galaxy, etc. – this game seems pretty simple; insofar as things are a little unclear on your first play they come in to focus pretty quickly once you’ve gotten a chance to see all of the Age III cards. Because of that, I forget how overwhelming this game can seem to first time players. While everyone seemed reasonably aware of what was going on by the end of the game (and Chad even won), there was definitely a lot of head scratching going on in the middle.
Dixit
Played this over at Chad and Stefanie’s place. Almost as much an activity as a game, but usually very interesting and occasionally very funny.
Summoner Wars
I drag this and Hilary to the table as often as I can. She’s currently riding a pretty long losing streak, which can make that a bit trickier.
Everything I Played: February 14th – February 20th
Games Played: 10
Unique Games Played: 7
New (to me) Games Played: 1
Game of the Week
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Played it with Deborah (also a Buffy fan) at Just Awesome and it has held up fairly well. It does a great job with the theme, allowing the bad guy to choose 1 of 4 villains to play (we used the Mayor) and providing different goals, starting positions, and special rules for each scenario. Mechanically, yeah, it’s a lot of dice rolling – you roll to move, you roll to fight, you roll to cast spells – but the game does a great job of giving you ways to modify/improve your dice rolls with cards and giving you something to do even when you roll “badly”. No one is going to confuse this with a complex or deep game, but you definitely have decisions to make, and they definitely effect the outcome of the game. |
New to me
Glen More
Glen More revolves around a clever tile drafting mechanic. Each player has a pawn on a track containing tiles they can select and add to their board. They can move as far forward along the track as they like to take a tile, but they can never move back, and the furthest back player always gets to go next; so players can either jump forward to get a particularly desirable tile or they can have the opportunity to grab multiple tiles in a row. Every time a player takes a tile, they can place it and activate it and all the tiles around it. The tiles do what one would expect in a euro – they generate resources and allow you to trade those resources for victory points, though it does get bonus points for including whiskey as a resource (this is Scotland after all). In addition, players get a penalty for having too many tiles at the end of the game (everyone has a penalty per tile they have more than the person with the fewest tiles), so it’s really all about making the tiles you take as efficient as possible. It’s clever, quick, and full of interesting decisions and trade-offs. I liked it quite a bit. It doesn’t really have a theme to speak of, but that doesn’t tend to bother me. |
Other games I played this week
Battlestar Galactica x2
Played 2 games of this thanks to Erik’s current obsession with this game. Hilary played her second game, which she enjoyed a lot more (helped that it was only a 4 person game). The other one started at about 1 AM and ended around 4, so that was pretty awesome. Erik won them all because that’s what he does.
Summoner Wars
Got in another game of this with more deck construction. I like the deck construction, but it can make getting the game started take a little while longer, especially if you try to put your deck together to match up with the specific race you are playing. Excitingly, a new Summoner Wars master set has been announced, with 6 entirely new races. w00t.
Telestrations x2
Best. Nixon. Ever.
Cosmic Encounter
Played a game of this at Meebo game night to mixed reviews. Steve has dubbed this “the troll game” since many of the powers and cards let you screw up other people’s plans. Kind of the point if you ask me.
Dominion
Played at Meebo game night. This is a game that *does* go over well at Meebo. Themeless games tend to go over well there; must be an engineer thing.
Everything I Played: February 7th – February 13th
In a shocking development, I’m tweaking with the format again. I’ll be making weekly posts on Sunday night about what I’ve played the previous week. I’ll also be supplementing that with larger reviews. On to this week’s games.
Games Played: 19
Unique Games Played: 15
New (to me) Games Played: 3
Game of the Week
Chaos in the Old World
Each of the four sides has different powers, units, goals, and cards to draw from; despite this the game seems pretty well balanced, which is an impressive feat in and of itself. It also has a really nice looking (if a bit gruesome) board. In addition, with the epic scope and all the bits, you might expect this game to take 4+ hours to play, but it plays in about 2. They accomplished this by making it less about direct combat and more about area majority; this gives the game a very European feel which I like a lot, though it still keeps dice-centered combat which should make the Risk/Axis and Allies fans happy. It does take a little getting used to that very often the right tactic is to run away (or rather attack elsewhere) rather than try to build up and fight, but overall it leads to a much tighter, more interesting game. |
New to me
Yomi
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Crokinole x2
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Mord im Arosa
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Other games I played this week
Battlestar Galactica
This was also Hilary’s first game of Battlestar (she’s recently gotten in to the show). Getting thrown into a 6-player game with all expansions is a pretty brutal way to start, but she muddled through OK. My one gripe (and Exodus probably makes this worse) is that this game is just a bit too long. It tends to clock in around 3 hours – if we could play it in 2 without rushing it would be just about perfect. |
Race for the Galaxy x2
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Summoner Wars
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Spot It! x2
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Modern Art
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Samarkand: Routes to Riches
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Citadels
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Wits and Wagers x2
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Ca$h ‘n’ Gun$The most fun you’ve ever had pointing an orange foam rubber gun in someone’s face. |
TelestrationsThe commercialization of Telephone Pictionary has proved fairly popular at Meebo. A great game for generating inside jokes (“plane arm thing” get it? No you don’t because it’s an INSIDE JOKE). |
Bang!Another one that’s gone over fairly well at Meebo, I think there’s just enough secrecy and backstabbing here for people to like it without going the “full Resistance”, so to speak. |
Superbowl Party – February 6th, 2011
No Thanks!
Went to Gabe and Carolyn’s Superbowl party. In previous years there had often been a running poker game throughout this party, but this year we were more invested in the game because of the opposing QBs (dreamy Cal stud Aaron Rodgers and cartoon villain/therapist Ben Roethlisberger), so we actually watched the game and the interminable Black Eyed Peas halftime show. I did manage to pull Linda and Carolyn away from the interminable Glee episode that followed for a game of No Thanks, but everyone was pretty tired (which will happen when everyone has kids under 5).
At Sara and Andy’s – February 5th, 2011
Spot It!Hilary and I went to Sara and Andy’s place to help make cookies for the superbowl party the next day. Afterward we played a couple quick games of Spot It! |
Dawn Under
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