Author: matt

AGN November 2006

AGN – November 2006We met at Paul’s house for the November 2006 session of Analog Game Night. Thanks for hosting Paul! We had three members that could not make it so we ended up with a small group of only five. Five isn’t the loneliest number that you’ll ever know but it sure beats six. We usually split into two groups with seven but with six it’s a struggle. We don’t have a lot of six player games and we play them so rarely that it takes us forever to scan the rules, set up, play, rules check, etc. that five is our sweet spot.

I had read up on the rules to Manila (designed by Franz-Benno Delonge) and I was itching to play my first real game so I pushed to play that. After a quick set up and the rules explanation, the punts got underway. I missed out at being Harbor Master on the first voyage and ended up with a pretty good cash payout but my shares were useless. After two more missed opportunities as Harbor Master I was cash rich but my shares of ginseng and nutmeg/mace were in a sorry state.

Ken and Keith had been Harbor Master for the early part of the game and were scoring on some nice stock purchases but were slowly depleting their cash resources. After my midgame control of the Harbor Master I was cash poor but in a much better stock position. I was concerned about my nutmeg shares though since brown wasn’t progressing along the black market chart as quickly as the others. Ken was strong in jade and Keith had diversified across the board. In the end, Keith came out the winner with his nice portfolio. Good job Keith.

I enjoyed Manila quite a bit and would gladly play again. Nobody encumbered any shares and I suspect that is common for new players but uncommon with experienced players. Our bids for Harbor Master hovered in the mid to low teens. I’m unsure how that will compare to subsequent games but my gut feeling is that there are times where it would be worth pay as high as 20 or so for the opportunity to control the punts. Without more experience though, I’m not sure when that would occur.

My initial reaction is that with five players the punts load quickly decreasing the allure of being a pirate if you’re not playing with the variant where you can kick off an accomplice to board at the end of round two. In general, it seems that the cost of being a pirate (5 pesos) is too high for the risk. We don’t have very many games involving dice but I think the group enjoyed the ‘bet the odds and take your lumps with the dice’ feel to the game. I do think that the game separates the potential winners from the definite losers in short order. If you’re out of the running early then I think it would be tough to get back in. But if you’re in the running, it’s tough to tell who is going to come out on top until the last voyage.

As a closer we pulled out China. I’ve played China several times but it’s been a little while so I ran through the rules and we were off to the races. China is a nifty area majority game from Michael Schacht where players play houses and emissaries into regions depicted on a map of China. Filling a region with houses triggers the scoring of that region. Emissaries are an end-game strategy granting points to those players who have the majority of emissaries in adjacent regions. The mechanics force players to make decisions about placing houses and/or emissaries under severe limitations. You must be keenly aware how the placement of additional houses eases restrictions on other players when placing emissaries.

Our gameplay progressed like chaos on a stick. If memory serves me right, emissary points were awarded only three or four times at game end. In most games I’ve played in the past, new territories were entered only when a player felt forced to make the move due to the high cost of entry (you can only place a single house when opening up a new territory). In this game however, players were opening territories left and right leaving the emissary position ripe for the taking. Unfortunately, emissaries were being plopped down in rather odd locations making the task of getting dominance in adjacent territories difficult.

I really like China and find it a surprisingly meaty game that fits in the timespan of a longish filler (30-45 minutes).

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Slogging through the rules

I finally broke down and cracked open my copy of Caylus tonight. To say I’m ashamed to have not played the game yet is really kind of silly. It’s a boardgame and not an event of real import. I can’t expect of myself to have played every ‘great’ game that takes the BGG ratings by storm. I am, however, ashamed to have not opened it and read through the rules until now. I’ve owned the game for months having stored it on my game shelf since last father’s day.

I’ve made it through about two thirds of the rules on an initial pass and it’s setting my rule pet-peeves all atwitter. My biggest complaint is that relatively complex rules tend to stay in character. Because of this phenomenon, we’ve got Prestige Buildings, Residences, Craft Buildings, etc. rather than Blue, Green, and Brown tiles. It may be a personal deficiency but I’m constantly translating themed words into physical game components and I’m very bad at making those translations stick. In the end, I suspect most people describe the tiles as blue, green, etc. and the cubes as pink, brown, gray, etc. rather than their themed counterparts.

I appreciate a rich theme to act as a lubricant for comprehending the mechanics. But at times, “the little white thingy” makes more sense than “the Provost”.

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Aw-shucks…Golly Gee Whillikers

I don’t pretend to be a good photographer but I apparently play a mediocre one on BGG.

It is a little geeky I admit, but I’m flattered that I’ve beenadded as #46 to the geeklist titled The Top BGG Photographers: Nominees for the Hall of Fame for the images in my BGG image portfolio.It comes as somewhat of a sweet time in that I recently uploaded my 100th image to BGG and that image waschosen as the ‘game’ for my geeklist entry.

Boardgaming is quite a niche hobby but boardgamephotography is most likely sharing the bottom of the barrel with tapestry weaving on your own personal loom. In any event, I’m tickled about the nomination sinceI do enjoy photographing games as strange as it sounds.

Thank you EndersGame for recognizingmy image submissions and I hope I can live up to the high standards on my future submissions.

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AGN – Oct 2006

We met at Tim’s house for AGN October 2006. Thanks for hosting Tim! First up was Hey! That’s My Fish!. I sat out while Rich taught Ken, Mat, and Tim. HtmF looked like a pretty neat little logic puzzle that would translate well to a solitaire bot-style game on the PC. I think it came out again later in the evening as a closer with Rich, Ken, and Keith.

Once I finally got off a call, we split into two tables of three with Ken, Rich, and Mat playing Niagara. The playing time is listed at 45 minutes but I hear it really drug out due to everyone fighting to not go over the falls.

While Niagara was being played at one table, I taught Paul and Tim Thurn & Taxis.

When Niagara was finishing up, Keith showed up and that table broke out Rich’s new copy of Ticket to Ride – Märklin Edition . I’ve never played but it sounds like the inclusion of passengers into the mechanics is a great addition. Many popular game series wear thin with new rules/mechanics/themes in hopes of extending the life of the series but I think Days of Wonder hasn’t spoiled it yet. Many more TtR variants though and the game will clearly Jump the Shark.

My table pulled out Carolus Magnus. Carolus Magnus is in my opinion one of the best three person games you can find. I love the tension of deciding where to place your cubes, trying to out-think your opponents, hoping for the good roll. For new gamers, the game looks a little intimidating but it’s very easy to learn and before you know it, new players will be scratching their heads in frustration as to how best to move. Good stuff.However, I don’t recommend playing Carolus Magnus on this tablecloth!

That’s all I’ve got. If anyone wishes to add more info about what transpired (especially at the other table), feel free to add some comments.

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Kreta – Man does it suck…you in.

Few games grab me strongly during the first play. I can usually tell whether I’ll like the game well enough but I reserve judgement until I’ve had a few plays under my belt. Even fewer games suck me in during the rule reading. However, Kreta sits atop the category of complete and utter suck-in-ness…and I mean that in a good way. Classification of Kreta is somewhat difficult but it has a very Samurai-like feel to it with hints of Mexica, Maharaja, El Grande, and even Mesopotamia.

At its heart, Kreta is an area influence game for two-four players played over eleven rounds. The game is composed of a map of 16 terrain types (eight mountains, two low lands, and six fields); wooden scoring markers, villagers, ships, abbots, and towers; cardboard agricultural tiles (cheese, herbs, olives, wheat, and grapes); a deck of scoring cards; and individual player role decks.

The game begins with the board populated with only the agricultural tiles appropriate for the terrain in which they are grown. Each player receives their deck of role cards (admiral, builder, commander, abbot, farmer, king, and the castellan), a set of five villagers, two ships, three towers, four villages, and one abbot.

On each turn, the player selects a role card from their hand, plays it in front of them declaring to the rest of the players what role he’ll play. He takes the actions granted to him by the role card and play passes to the player to his left. As play continues, each player has fewer roles to play since you can only select the role cards that remain in your hand on subsequent turns.

Your goal is to retain dominance in territories by placement of your villagers, villages, towers, ships, and your abbot when scoring occurs. And to pull that off you must choose your role cards wisely and be smart/lucky about taking the actions those roles grant you.

So, what are the roles and how do you use them? The admiral role allows you to either place one of your ships from your supply onto the harbor of your choice (a territory marked with the captain’s wheel seen in the image below) or move one or both your ships already on the board to the harbor of your choice. Each harbor can only hold a maximum of two ships and they can never be the same color. Ships exert one point of influence towards the territory they are next to (think about them like a one point ship in Samurai).

The builder lets you build a village (the little house-shaped component) or a tower (the cylinder) on the board. A village can be built anywhere you want with the following restrictions: you cannot build a village on 1) a territory that contains seven items (village, villagers, abbot), 2) on a territory that contains an abbot of a different color and and your abbot is not present, and 3) if you haven’t harvested an agricultural tile in sufficient numbers (described later). Villages exert two influence points in the territory. Each territory is separated by what looks like an orange fence and towers can be built upon the circular tower-point that separate the junctions of these fence rows. Towers exert one point of influence upon all territories that surround the junction (think Ronin from Samurai).

The commander lets you place one of the villagers from your supply onto the board or move villagers across the board for up to four territories. You’re free to split the four moves across any number of villagers you choose. The only restrictions on where you can stop are 1) a village can only hold seven items of any type, and 2) if the territory contains one or more abbots, only players who own the abbots may add pieces.

The abbot lets you place your abbot on the board (the triangular shaped component) or move your abbot up to three spaces. Abbots are also restricted by the seven component limit within territories but they are not prohibited from stopping in territories that contain other foreign abbots (as are villagers and villages). The abbot exerts one point of influence in the territory.

The farmer lets you harvest agricultural tiles. Agricultural tiles are important for two reasons: 1) they’re worth instant points on the scoring track and as you collect like-tiles they become increasingly worth more. For example the first cheese tile you collect is worth one point and the second is worth two, the third three, etc. 2) the number of villages you are allowed to build is limited by the number of agricultural tiles you’ve harvested. Since villages exert two influence points in a territory, it can be a devastating blow to be hindered by having not collected tiles in sufficient numbers. The mechanism to collect tiles requires a spatial reference and I hope the image below helps depict the requirements.

To collect an agricultural tile, players must first have a ship in a harbor. In the image above, the green player has his ship in the harbor marked by the captain’s wheel. The second requirement is that the player must choose a tile in a territory where one of his villagers is currently residing. In the example above, the green player has a villager in a brown territory and another in a green territory containing the herbs and the grapes tiles respectively. The final rule is that the player can only choose tiles that can be linked back to the ship in a line from one territory to the next (think fireman’s water bucket brigade). In the example above, the green player may choose to take either the herbs or the grapes tile because they are linked in a ‘brigade line’ from one territory to the next back to the ship.

The king role allows the player to take the actions of a role played on a previous turn. In essence, the king is a wild card that can become any card that you’ve already played in a previous round.

The final role is the castellan which triggers a scoring round. Across the bottom of the board are eleven cards representing a subset of the numbered, orange, tower-junction points on the board. There are always two cards turned upright so that players can plan for the next two tower junctions that will score. When the castellan is played, the leftmost card is chosen and all territories that surround that junction point are scored in the following manner: the player with the most influence points in the region gets all of the points for the territory (the value is depicted by the number of hexes in the territory). Second place receives half the number of points rounded down. Ties for first receive full points (no second place is awarded) and ties for second receive full points.

The player who played the castellan card, then turns over the numbered card that was just scored leaving only one exposed card that depicts the next junction point that will score when the next castellan is played. The player then flips over the card to that card’s right. The player gets one optional move of picking up the just exposed card, stashing it at the bottom of the draw pile, and replacing it with the top most card. After all regions are scored and the new card is exposed, players pick up all of their role cards played from previous rounds and play continues with the next player.

Since there are only eleven cards across the bottom of the board and twenty-six numbered junctions, it is very likely that some will not be scored in each game.

Although I have yet to actually play the game, I’m very excited about what I’ve seen so far. The game has many interrelated mechanisms that make for great game tension.

  1. The abbot is oh so powerful at keeping other players out of a territory but you only have one to use.
  2. You have to gather agricultural tiles in sufficient numbers to build villages but where and when should you build them?
  3. Deciding when to fight over the next junction to score and when to abandon your position for a future scoring opportunity is going to be a tough choice to make.
  4. Should you go for a match on an agricultural tile to get more points or should you go for a quick grab of one you don’t already own?
  5. How best can you use your ships to play defensively blocking your opponents from obtaining another point of influence in the port?
  6. Can you afford to ignore your position in one territory while building dominance in an adjacent territory that will score soon?
  7. Should you trash the new scoring card because my position is weak or is it the perfect combination of scoring?
  8. Is it a good time to play the castellan but doing so means my opponents will be able to pick up their cards again?
  9. …

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Two Quick Session Reports

Over lunch on Friday I played Masons with Rich and John S. It was my first play but the game is extremely easy to learn and I’d read through the rules a couple of times and felt comfortable teaching it. Forgive the crap-cam cell phone image.

Masons is not, as you might expect from the way the board looks, an area control game. Instead, the game is an abstract battle of walling off territory spanning three segments of the board. The theme is city building but in my opinion you might as well throw that out the window and just think of it as doo-dad placement.

On each turn, you pick up a wooden wall segment and place it anywhere on the board. You then roll three dice; one depicts the color of tower that must be placed on one end of your wall segment (if it’s still unpopulated). If the other end of your wall is also unpopulated, you choose the tower color of your choice. The other two dice represent the color of houses that must be placed on the board. One house is placed on one side of your wall and the other is placed on the other side. The die does have a wildcard ‘?’ symbol that allows you to choose the color of your choice.

If you don’t complete a city (by enclosing a segment of the board completely within wooden wall, then your turn is over. If you complete a city, pairs of like colored houses within the city are exchanged for a palace and the player who placed the wall has an opportunity to tear down an adjoining wall with one other city forming a single large city from the two. Once complete a scoring round begins and you can play one or two cards to influence your score. Each player scores in turn and the next round begins. Regardless of the number of cards you play (one or two) during scoring, you can only pick up one card. You may also discard a card and draw two cards as a replacement (you score no points).At the end of a scoring round, all players tied for last place may discard N cards and draw N replacement cards.

The cards depict various board layouts that determine how many points you score. Some refer to the just completed city. For example, a card might grant you 2 points for every white tower in the city. Another might grant the player points for the number of pink houses within the city. Other cards depict scoring opportunities for the entire board. For example, you can score points for all towers not connected to a city that are also next to the shore line (the edges of the board). Others, grant points for the number of blue houses not in cities. Still other cards depict scoring opportunities for one of the three Guild areas on the board.

Overall I like the game quite a bit. It is more abstract that I was expecting but keep in mind that to me, abstract isn’t a very long four-letter word. I am looking forward to more games.

Lisa and I got in a game of Thurn & Taxis last night. It was her first play but I’m thinking she liked it quite a bit. She was pretty tired but was willing to (what she felt) slog through the rules. But after a few turns she perked up and her fighting spirit kicked in. By the end, I managed to beat her by only a few points. Her comment was that she liked the game because it didn’t feel like a hard-core cerebral experience. She likes highly strategic games too but she was glad to have access to a game that is fun, is more meaty than Ticket to Ride, and doesn’t cook your brain making you feel like you won’t sleep the rest of the night.

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Manilla and Thurn & Taxis – Learning the Rules

Noah and I broke out Manilla on Friday night. It’s designed for 3-5 players but we decided to just play a few sample rounds to get a feel for it.

The game is composed of long rectangular board depicting the harbor and shipyards of Manilla (supposedly), three wooden punts that hold a spice board and 3 to 4 pawns, commodity cards in four types of goods. Each turn requires players to bid pesos for the position of harbormaster. Once won, the player loads three of the four goods types onto three punts, places the punts at the beginning of the ‘river’. Players then go through a round of positioning their pawns on the board in hopes of being at that position when the punts end their journey. Different positions have a higher return on investment and therefore cost more.

There are positions in the harbor for those punts that make the complete journey (get to position 13 or above after three rolls of the dice). There are positions in the shipyard for those punts that don’t make it to the harbor, positions for pirates to board or plunder ships that stop on position 13, positions for two types of ‘pilots’ who can aid (or hinder) punts heading up the river, and a position as an insurance agent hoping that most punts will make it to the harbor requiring little to no repairs.

After three rounds of rolling dice, advancing punts, and placing pawns, you resolve the pay outs, move commodity values up in the goods chart and begin again auctioning off the position of harbormaster.

Manilla is said to play like the game of ‘Craps’ which I know nothing about but I’ll take their word for it. It appears to be a dice-fest with some light theme thrown in but I can see why some people get into it. Knowing and playing the odds of the dice in conjunction with the thematic addition of pirates and pilots seems like a ball of fun. I’m eager to play a full game with my gaming group to see what their reaction is.

On Saturday night, Sophie and I pulled out Thurn & Taxis, made short work of the rules and played a quick game for two. I’ve read on more than one occasion that Th&T is reminiscent of Ticket to Ride and I can see the resemblance but I must say that it is fleeting.

In Th&T you do build stagecoach postal mail routes across the map but there is very little conflict as there can be in TtR. You cannot directly block another player’s attempt to build a route in Th&T. There are no secret goal cards as in TtR but there is a stack of exposed cards that you can choose to select a card from on your turn. That’s about the extent of the similarities. Yep…that’s about it.

I may seem a little down on the game but in actuality I quite like the game and I’m glad I have it in my collection now. It does fit well as a Gateway game to be introduced to new gamers without fear of chasing them off with complex or confusing rules. It does, however, have enough meat to it to interest heavier gamers. Not much…but just enough.

The board depicts a series of cities, grouped by color-coded counties, connected through a network of roads. Most cities are connected to at least two other adjacent cities. On the side of the board are 6 exposed city cards available to players on their turn. Some counties hold small numbered chips available to each player when they’ve built a mail stop in all of the cities of the county (or pair of counties). Chips are also available to those that build routes of length 5 or greater. In addition, there are chips for other situations allowing players to vie for points as they complete routes. Along the top of the board are stagecoach cards numbered 3 through 7. Player complete routes through the game and attempt to gather each numbered stagecoach (in order, one per player).

A turn is composed of taking one card and playing a card onto the single route you’re building in your play area. Your route cards are laid down in front of you (in a line) and the card you lay must be placed at either end of your route and must represent a city adjacent to the city depicted on the last card of the row (no duplicated allowed). At the end of your turn you can optionally ‘cash in’ your route and position mail stops on the cities from your route.

The positioning of mail stops on the route can take one of two forms: you can either place all of your stops in a single county or you can lay a single stop in each county traversed by your route. It’s this rule that bites you right in the butt when you wish you could do both.

There are also four special powers available to each player and one of them must be used during each turn. One power lets you clear the 6 cards replenishing them from the draw pile (before you take your card). Another lets you take two cards instead of one. A third lets you lay down 2 cards instead of one. The final power lets you add up to two to the length of your ‘cashed in’ route allowing you to take the next higher valued stagecoach card that you wouldn’t normally be able to reach.

The first player who takes the ‘seven’ stagecoach card or builds his last mail stop triggers the end game. The round is played to the end, points are tallied and the player with the highest number wins.

I like the feel of the game but I’m not very fond of the color scheme. It’s difficult to determine which cities are adjacent at a glance and I can imagine the board can get pretty confusing when determining if you have covered all of the cities in the county. Sophie and I played several of the rules incorrectly but we did catch ourselves mid game. We initially missed the rule about decreasing your hand size down to 3 cards every time you cash in a route. No wonder we seemed to be able to stock up a large hand size pretty quickly. We also missed the rule that a route had to be at least 3 cards in size. We did manage to see the rule that requires you to throw your entire route away scoring nothing if you find yourself in the position of not being able to play a valid card on either end of your route. That bit both of us badly during the game.

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The Game Order

I placed my order but I was having problems figuring out how I could use both of my gift certificates in one online order. Thanks to the great online support from Game Surplus, they issued me a new Gift Code that would cover both of my gift certificates and I was able to check out without any problems whatsoever. Good service and good prices are the reasons I keep going back to Game Surplus. Check them out!

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