Memoirs of a Board Gamer

I hosted August 2007's Game Night at my house tonight. Jason was new to the group but I'd convinced him to give us a try. He's played Settler's of Catan many, many times as well as Railroad Tycoon so I didn't suspect he'd have any problem at all picking up the rules to some other games.

We started off with Ra by Reiner Knizia. This game has had an on-again/off-again lifetime in my group but tonight I think everyone would agree that it was pretty fun. I like how the game is very easy to teach and it moves very quickly. It's a little tough for new players to understand what's worth bidding for and for how much but at least there isn't a steep learning curve for the game.

We almost played another game of Ra as our second title but we ended up playing Himalaya for 5. I like this game but it tends to be quite cerebral but I'm not sure if all the effort is worth what at times feels like agony. The decisions can sometimes be tough but in many cases, it might as well be a coin toss which one turns up being the more correct one.

The end-game scoring is a quite strange and can be quite eye-opening if you don't plan (or misread someone's position) for delegates being removed from the board when a player doesn't make it through the scoring of religious influence.

In my next attempt at this game, I'd like to play with the religious influence points inverted from the written rules so that small villages score 3 rather than 1 and large temples score 1 rather than 3. The number of delegates you're allowed to place would remain, however, the same as the written rules. With this variant, the entire board becomes valuable (for differing reasons) rather than forcing contention into just the larger sites.

BGG user gollum's great geeklist holding "coffee-table-book-images" got me thinking about creating a real tangible book. So, I gathered 55 of my favorite images from BGG, added borders to provide a common theme to them all, and uploaded them to MyPublisher.com. The end result arrived today and I have to say I'm very happy with the results. Okay, I'm not just very happy...I'm ecstatic. I know I'm strange but man this thing is so cool!

The leather cover is very nice and the binding appears strong. The print quality is better than I expected with the image resolutions I had to work exhibiting little to no pixelation that I can detect. I chose the middle size at MyPublisher (mainly due to cost and the resolution of the images I was working with) resulting in an overall cover dimension of 8 3/4" x 11 1/4" x 1/2".

The first page includes the following text:

I am a great fan of board games and of the online community that has developed around them at BoardGameGeek.com (BGG). In this book, I've selected approximately fifty images, submitted by myself and the community, that I wanted to preserve in a tangible form.

There are thousands of games, thousands of images, and thousands of community members supplying content to BoardGameGeek and selecting these images was a difficult task. Many of the images have had a border added to provide continuity to the book as a whole. However, the base image remains consistent with that uploaded to BGG. With each image I have supplied the name of the game, the name of the designer, and the BGG user name of the image submitter.

I hope you enjoy this collection of board game art and most of all, I hope it encourages you to find out more about these games.

Matthew D. Marquand
BGG: matthew.marquand
http://www.marquand.net

I'm extremely happy that I took the time and effort to organize the book and now I have something that I can set out on the coffee table and take with me to show off this great hobby.

Please visit My Coffee Table Book Geeklist on BGG to see some of the individual images.

The Lexio Cloud #2 on copper. I'm shamelessly looking for thumbs so if you think it deserves one, then knock yourself out.

• Hasbro Dumping Avalon Hill Titles and Inventory

  Although there doesn't seem to be an official word about the move, it's the general consensus that Hasbro is dumping the Euro-ish line of games produced under the Avalon Hill umbrella. This includes Betrayal at House on the Hill, Monsters Menace America, Nexus Ops, Rocketville, Sword and Skull, Vegas Showdown. Because of this, several vendors have scooped up inventory and are offering the titles at extreme discounts (75% off). There is a lot of speculation about the reasons for the move but in general, it appears that Hasbro is getting out of the higher-profit/lower-volume Eurogame business since they can make more money on lower-cost/higher-volume runs that sell well in the large chains like Target, Walmart, etc.

  Several of the titles are supposedly complete garbage but others have had high to mixed reviews from those on BGG (e.g. Nexus Ops). It's unfortunate for gamers that Hasbro has made the move but more unfortunate is that they don't sell off the Avalon Hill line to smaller production companies who might be able to reprint and/or produce quality games for those in the hobby. Instead, Hasbro appears to want to gobble up and horde the goods.

• Hive gets a new bug

  Hive has a new bug on the street with the addition of the Mosquito. This two-piece expansion grants each player an additional piece that is played like all other tiles. Like other creatures it has specific movement characteristics but unlike others, it takes on the movement options of any of the pieces it is currently touching. What an interesting addition!

  I posed a question to the designer concerning the movement options when a mosquito is used to trap your opponent's mosquito. The response was that the mosquito cannot move until another tile comes in contact with the trapping mosquito. Although I haven't played with the new tiles I can already feel my mind churning a little bit (in a good way) about how one would use and/or abuse a piece like that. It sounds like a great addition to an already great game.

• Himalaya Variants

  I ran across some variants of Himalaya that sound like they'd be worth trying. In the standard rules, stupa/religious-influence points are awarded in the same manner as delegate/political-influence points. The large cities award three points, the mid-sized cities two points, and the small villages one point. In one variant you award stupa points using the inverse. With this approach, there is not an all out rush for the big cities when delivering goods. Instead, players must drive towards small villages for religious influence and the large temples for political influence.

  The second variant applies to the midgame evaluations for the most of each good that occurs on the 4th, 8th, and 12th rounds. The standard rules grants the player with the most of each good (salt, barley, tea, jade, gold) a 3-yak token. The variant grants the player with a choice from three options 1) a 3-yak token, 2) two delegates placed in any region of their choice, 3) one stupa placed in any region of their choice.

  I have more concern about playing the game with this variant because it might encourage cube hording during the first half of the game. With the standard game, players are encouraged not to horde if the opportunities for playing stupas are dwindling. With this variant, players can horde cubes and use them to place stupas in locations completely independent of their yak placement. In my opinion, the ability to place stupas and delegates in any location you wish may break the spirit of the game.

Our July meeting brought out one of my favorites, Himalaya. We had five players so we christened my copy of the 5/6 Expansion. I'm a fan of pick up and deliver games and for me, it doesn't get much better than Himalaya. I very much enjoy the 'programming' aspects of the game and trying to outwit your opponents.

In Himalaya, you have 6 programming chips and each of the 12 rounds calls for you to establish the next 6 moves your yak will take in its quest for goods and order fulfillment. Once you've established your secret moves, all players simultaneously expose them to each other. The round is played by circling the table 6 times until all of the moves have been taken in order (no changes allowed!). By the time it's your chance to take an action in a village, other players may have already taken the action you were hoping to take. To be a good player, you have to be able to 2nd (3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th!) guess what your opponents will do on their programming moves so that the right goods are available to you and the orders you hope to fulfill are still available when you arrive.

The 5/6 Expansion removes the D20 from the game and in its place, you use 20 chips that determine where goods and orders are restocked at the end of each round. Without the D20, you can predict where goods and orders will arrive which factors into where you should position your yak at the end of the turn. The end-game scoring rules are a little difficult to explain given that you must make several 'cuts' before being in the running for the winner. If you're the least influential in religious or political influence, your massive yak herd may prove useless.

Next up was Manila. Despite its rather cartoony box art, there is a rather nice game enclosed. Players manipulate the value of shares of four black market goods by driving three punts up a river into the port. Punts that make it, increase the value of the goods that were shipped on that punt. Players 'bet' on boats making it (or not making it) to the port by paying to place their accomplices at various locations around the board and on the floating punts. Each location comes with it a built-in payout depending on the likelihood of an event occurring.

In the end, it's all up to the odds of a good or bad dice roll. Monitoring the amount you pay to be harbor master, keeping close tabs on the shares in your hand and the value they have in the black market, and shrewd accomplice placement is key.

My order for 'Rubium' nuggets for my copy of Nexus Ops came today. The two sizes of nuggets replace the cardboard 5 and 1 chips granting a more geek-filled gaming experience.

My Nexus Ops order arrived today and Noah and I tore it open and started reading through the rules, punching out the bits, and setting up for our first game. I've read that if you placed Risk at one end of a continuum and Twilight Imperium III at the other end, you could place Nexus Ops somewhere in the middle. I'm unclear on the relationship to Risk but I certainly see the parallels with TI-III. So far, Nexus Ops feels like super-lite TI-III. Here are a smattering of comparisons:

• You gather special abilities by battling or having battled successfully against an opponent
• You buy forces using Rubium received from holding sole possession of mines and having Humans, Fungoids, or Crystalline's working them.
• There are no Role cards to choose from like in TI-III
• The order of battle is stricter in Nexus Ops but similar in feel when assigning hits based on dice rolls.
• Tile movement during the movement phase is similar with certain force types having certain abilities based on terrain type.
• Action points are won by fulfilling mission cards
• Special cards grant special abilities
• Some cards can be played at the beginning of your turn and some during a battle.
• First player to 12 action points is the winner
• etc.

Nexus Ops really is all about battling to gain control of your opponents mines (to get more Rubium so you can buy more forces) and so that you can get more Secret Mission cards (and Energize cards if you posses control of the monolith). The more missions you fulfill the more action points you get. And the first player to 12 action points is the winner.

We ended up having to stop for the night just when the battling started so we haven't really gotten in the fun part yet. We left the game set up so we'll get back to it tomorrow night. Most of the Rock Strider exploration tiles ended up on my side of the board and most of the higher valued mines ended up on his side. As a result, I'm compelled to move swiftly to overpower his mine's protective forces and grant myself more Rubium on each turn.

I've managed to secure a couple Lava Leapers, I have a Rubium Dragon advancing from my home base, and I've taken initial control of the monolith but my position is tenuous. Noah has a bunch of cash and he's posed to buy a couple dragons and come out fighting.

My puny human count is fairly low so I'll need to beef that up to get some cannon fodder during the upcoming battles. My Fungoid and Crystalline counts are of average strength but I fear that I'll need some more of those to fill out the mid-section of each battle.

So far, both of us are having a great time with this game. I'm not sure I've ever heard more sound effects come out of Noah's mouth during a game before. Great stuff.