Analog Game Night for February 2012 came and went several weeks ago. I’m striving to be more prompt in my blogging and rather than simply promising myself to do better in the future, I’m flushing my backlog of posts by sitting down and writing a little bit. It’s cathartic to chase the monkey off my back so to speak, and it’s good practice to attempt to organize my thoughts into semi-coherent sentences.
Seven of us met and after opening up the table, we split into two groups, four playing Alien Frontiers at the far end and three, at the near end, playing Antverpia, a Hamburgum expansion.
It’s usually difficult to focus when two games are being taught in close-quarters but being a Hamburgum fan, and having wanted to to play Antverpia for some time, I was able to focus and we got down to making the rondel sing. I can’t say much about Alien Frontiers other than it seemed to progress relatively slowly. I’m not sure if there was a lot of analysis paralysis or turn discussion going on but that was the only game that group got to play the entire night. It took hours!
On the other hand, with three, Antverpia moved along nicely. That’s one of the nice features about the rondel mechanism that Mac Gerdts is so fond of. There is really so little down time between turns that the experience borders on a sense of speed chess or something. Several times I would quickly move my pawn on the rondel and was almost beside myself waiting for it to get back around to me. The game accelerates throughout especially when you’re driving towards some goal that will take you several turns to accomplish and you have the sense that others are working towards the same goal. When you see somebody purchase one of the bells…the race is on!
I think I may like Antverpia over the base game. The rules are stream-lined, boiled down to just what’s necessary to retain the essence of the game. I own the expansion but have never played my copy but would gladly play it again. Right now for that matter but, as I look around the family room…nobody is within sight. Maybe I’ll crack the shrink on Hawaii and see what the box holds.
Thanks for coming guys; I’m looking forward to next month.