Author: matt

Through correspondence on BGG and through some private emails with Ed Carter I was able to get my hands on review copies of three games from Cambridge Games Factory. This review will cover only the game Sneeze. I have played Ice Pirates of Harbor Grace but I need to play a few more times and with sufficiently different numbers of players before I’ll feel qualified to give it my best. I’m also itching to play Glory to Rome but I haven’t had a chance to crack the seal on that one yet. It’s my understanding that they’re still making some rule tweaks to yet another game, Splat! and they’re not quite ready for a review. Ed assured me he’d ship out a copy once the play testers had okayed the changes.

Sneeze is a light family-style game that plays quickly and is really good for all ages. The listed age limit is 6 and up but I wouldn’t be surprised if some younger kids could play along with some supervision from mom & dad. The game plays quickly and is mostly luck-based but it does provide some degree of tactical play that helps the older players stay interested. The game does support up to six players which does make it a nice filler/closer game for Euro-gaming groups, families, and friendly gatherings of various sizes. I don’t use the term filler or closer lightly here and I’m glad to have another game in my collection to use to warm up a group and/or to close out the evening in warm-down sessions.

Sneeze is packaged in a zip-lock style bag which provides sufficient containment but the game could benefit from a box. I like to keep a clean Game Cabinet and stacking the bagged games is somewhat troublesome. Box packaging would also provide yet another outlet for displaying artwork and the Cambridge Games Factory logo which they seem to love to place on about every playing piece. The Sneeze cards are well made and the artwork is simple but well done. My only complaint about the cards is the square corners. It is a somewhat picky point to make but it is surprising how often you notice yourself picking the card up by getting a fingernail under a corner causing some damage to the card. Over time (especially in Ice Pirates) this could become a problem. The rules are produced in a booklet-style (3.5″ x 4.5″) and provide ample examples and a straightforward explanation to the game.

Sneeze begins with one deck of “Sneeze” cards and another deck of “And Now…” cards placed side by side in the center of the table. Near the decks but to one side, a large “Wind” card indicates the direction of the wind. Between the “Wind” card and the decks is an open space dubbed the “upwind pool”. The other side of the decks represents the “downwind pool”. Each player starts with a “Sneeze” card flipped face up in their play area. Play begins with the first player drawing a Sneeze card and without looking at the card, placing it face up in either the upwind or the downwind pools. The face of the Sneeze cards contain colorful images of cats, dogs, pollen, smog, and dust. If the upwind pool contains cards that match all of a player’s face up Sneeze cards, then they Sneeze!

When players sneeze, they draw another Sneeze card and place it face up in front of them making it harder for them to sneeze since it takes more cards in the pool to match their hand. Players who make others sneeze and the sneezing player also draw a card from the “And Now…” deck. These cards hold special tactical abilities that can be played on your turn instead of drawing a new Sneeze card. The “And Now…” cards let you manipulate the pools, swap Sneeze cards in your play area with another player, etc. Throughout the game, many circumstances can cause the wind to change direction to the other side of the decks making the downwind pool the upwind pool and vice versa. When this happens, Sneeze cards that were thrown into the downwind pool might immediately make people sneeze.

As play progresses, players amass additional Sneeze cards in their areas up to a limit of four. Sneeze has a novel approach to evening out the leaders by making it harder and harder to make people sneeze and by the end game, making someone sneeze will actually hurt the leaders by making them take on additional sneeze cards. The winner is the last person to have less than four Sneeze cards in play or the last person to make someone Sneeze if doing so makes everyone have four cards.

I purposefully played Sneeze with my kids to get their reaction to the game and they can’t say enough good things about it. Noah even asked to play tonight without any prompting from me. Although my kids really like it, I wouldn’t relegate Sneeze to the kid’s shelf in the Game Cabinet. I’m happy to have another game on the shelf next to my copies of Coloretto, 6-Nimmt, etc. and look forward to pulling it out again for a quick 15-20 minute game.

To say Lisa can’t stand learning a new game when everyone at the table is also learning the game is an overstatement. She did sit and play Amun-Re for the first time with Sophie, Noah, and me. She would, however, rather have somebody learn the game and then teach it to her. I privately think the issue is rooted in her inner-competitiveness coming out. She doesn’t like to be caught flat-footed during the game because the rules were unclear or we played something wrong.

Sophie and Noah, on the other hand are real troopers at learning a new game. They are my compatriots. They are usually right in there with me, rooting through rules, laying out the board, playing sample rounds, and figuring out the scoring mechanics. In all cases that I can remember, this has always been at my encouragement. “Hey guys! Do you want to help me learn a new game?!”…”Yeah!”. Today, however, I saw Noah had selected the game of Life from the new game shelf, pulled out the rules, and decided to learn how to play with the insurance and loan options.

I’ve secretly hoped that having them help me learn a new game will help them see that the desire to play something new or in a new way outweighs any fear or hesitance at tackling the written rules. There are so many good life lessons that are applicable to this aspect of my gaming hobby and apparently it is sinking in at least a little bit. It warms my heart to see that paying off and it seems only apropos that it was being applied in the ‘game of life’.

The AGN Late Show Jan 2006 Gallery is now available. I’ll take a shot at summarizing the evening but I’m really beat so forgive me if I’m not too coherent.

We started at 7pm and finished up at 7am and had at our peak, 10 gamers across 2 tables. I was really happy with the turn out, we had plenty of good food thanks to my wife Lisa and contributions from everyone that attended, and I think my house comfortably accommodated the crowd.

At some point in the night, some table was playing the following games:

• Balloon Cup
• Jambo
• Polarity
• Elfenland
• Java
• Fist of Dragonstones
• Ticket to Ride Europe
• Amun-Re
• Coloretto
• Terra
• Maharaja

Tim had to leave around midnight but we had nine until about 4am dropping us to six. Then at 5am we lost another and after a final game of Maharaja we closed down the Late Show, awarded two T-shirts from a random draw (Ken and Keith) and headed to Panera for some bagels and coffee.

Overall I think the format of 7pm-7am works well but those last few hours are really hard. I think I’d rather spend an entire Saturday starting at noon and going until early Sun morning (2am or 3am) but I understand that devoting an entire day can be more difficult to schedule than just a Friday night. Given the low cost approach that we took it should be feasible to schedule a couple of these a year…if of course people are up for it. I had a lot of fun and I really look forward to another one. Of course winning at Amun-Re and Java in the same night tends not to hamper one’s spirits much…

One observation several of us had was that it’s amazing how many games you can’t play in 12 hours. What I mean by that is that even though you keep your head down and focussed on game play, it’s difficult to get more than five or six games in. I had big plans of playing at least six if not seven games but I was only able to get in five (Java, Elfenland, Terra, Amun-Re, and Maharaja) during the night. Some of it may have been that three of the games I’d never played before (Java, Elfenland, and Terra) but I’m hoping that it was mostly because we were just tired and playing slowly.

On my 40th birthday, my wife and friends organized a surprise gaming weekend for just me and my board gaming cohorts at a cabin in a state park south of Columbus, Ohio. When I arrived home from work they sprang their surprise and proceeded to throw me in the car and 45 minutes later we were unpacking huge amounts of food for the grill and I was unpacking a huge box of games that my wife had gotten for me.

I had a blast and ever since I’ve wanted to organize another one for the group. There’s really nothing like dedicating a huge block of time focussed on gaming with your friends. Sure, there are cons to go to but this was much more intimate if I’m allowed to use that term with a bunch of guys. We’re all software developers and we all share the same sorts of humor and life experiences. For lack of a better word for it, the weekend was a bonding experience for us.

Fast forward six months and I now realize that it’s much harder to organize something like that than I expected and I’ve come to really appreciate the work that went into the first one. Getting dates organized, determing the amount of money people want to spend, deciding where to go, determining how to get more people involved, etc. all proved difficult. In our case, group think started kicking in where some people had ideas and voiced them, others wanted to wait to get involved after the plans firmed up, and still others just wouldn’t or couldn’t commit to anything that far in advance. The biggest issue was that few members of the group are as geeky about games as I am and requiring them to devote an entire weekend and a few hundred dollars to participate would mean I’d be gaming with at most only one or two other people.

We finally decided to go the cheapest way we could think of by packing as much gaming as possible in the shortest amount of time to keep the maximum number of people involved. So this Friday, I’m hosting a gaming extravaganza at my house for about 10 gamers that will start at 7pm and will run until 7am when we’ll close down the gaming and head out for breakfast. Lisa is taking herself and the kids over to her sister’s house whose husband, by the way, will be heading over to enjoy the gaming extravaganza.

I have to thank Lisa for being so supportive of my hobby. In addition to entrusting me with the safety of our house in the face of the sheer number of unwashed masses, she is also fixing a ton a food us. She’s even got smoked salmon on the docket! She also looked around today for a couple pieces of furniture and found a shelving unit nice enough to have out in our family room and it would be dedicated to storing my games. She said, she doesn’t like buying stuff that looks good but doesn’t say anything about us as a family and having our games out is like decorating. The games represent us so they should be out where people can see them. Wow.

It’s been a long time coming and I’m about ready to pop with anticipation of it going well and, even better, getting enough time to play some new games we’ve never played with a group of really great guys. We’ve opened it up to a few new people that have never gamed with us before and I’m anxious about them having a good time too. I’ve got to relax a bit and let others help choose what to play but I’ve got big plans already forming in my head. This list is in no particular order but I really want to play the following games at some point during the night:

• Java
• Amun-Re
• Hansa
• Maharaja: Palace Building in India
• Elfenland
• Power Grid
• Queen’s Necklace
• Polarity

Wish us luck!

Noah and I had a little bit of time tonight so we cracked open the M’44 Eastern Front Expansion and played out the #40 Breakout at Klin Scenario (Dec 07-08, 1941). Noah (Russia) ended up winning 6 medals to my 5. We played the standard M’44 rules and didn’t play the Blitz or the Russian Command rules since we didn’t have much time to do anything but play with the rules we already knew.

I’ve played enough games now that M’44 is just beginning to wear a little thin. However, not having played against an adult opponent I’m curious if it’s because of the game or because I’m playing it lightly against young opponents.

The game of Clans plays you back at the level that you put into it. In other words, if you play the game lightly, it feels light and fluffy. However, if you approach the game in a heavier and for lack of a better description, a more brainy way, it plays back that way. Maybe I just need to approach M’44 in a different light…

At a minimum, I’ve found my most photogenic game. At my maximum, I’ve found another great “Knizia” game. The kids and I decided to sit down this afternoon and work through a sample playing of Amun-Re but this time we got Lisa involved. Lisa likes to play games but she really doesn’t like to participate in the game learning process. She’d much rather be taught the game quickly by someone who already knows the rules. She learns very quickly if you can answer her rapid-fire questions but gets a little frustrated if the answers are along the lines of, “I don’t know. I’ll bet we’ll find that out later”. However, she was a real sport and we all worked through the 12 pages of rules that accompany the game. Somewhat strangely, my 9 year old son beat all of us and to Lisa’s surprise he beat her by just a couple of points. I can tell she’s still trying to figure out what happened. To be fair though, we only played through the Old Kingdom but scored the gold as if we were at the end of the New Kingdom.

The game of Amun-Re is played across six rounds: the first three represent the Old Kingdom and the second three represent the New Kingdom. Scoring takes place only twice in the game when you reach the end of each Kingdom. Each round is split into five phases but an additional sixth phase of scoring is added in the third and sixth rounds (the end of each Kingdom).

(Province markers on the back of a Province Card)

Amun-Re is played in Ancient Egypt during the reigns of pharaohs. Players represent rivals who control provinces in which to build pyramids. Players vie for control of a new province every round so by the end of the Old Kingdom each player controls three provinces. At the end of the Old Kingdom, all players relinquish control of their provinces but the pyramids they built remain. In the new Kingdom, players vie again for control of the same set of provinces and the player with the most points wins.

(Farmers and Pyramids in the market)

In the five phases (six phases if the round is a scoring round) of the round, players bid gold for control of provinces that are up for auction until each player has won a bid. Power cards can be played to thwart the attacks of rivals in outmaneuvering you for control of a province. Once the provinces have been won, players take their actions in the order of: purchase power cards, purchase and place farmers in your provinces, and purchase and place building blocks (and potentially forming pyramids – three blocks/pyramid). As in other phases, some Power Cards can be played to help the player accomplish something extra (e.g. building a pyramid with only two blocks instead of three). A price chart on the board enumerates the prices for the items. The prices are not graduated like in Power Grid but instead, each individual good costs the same amount but the amount is determined by how many you purchase at one time. The more you buy, the more expensive each item is. To make matters more complex, each province support a maximum number farmers and the provinces you control dictate the maximum number of power cards you are allowed to purchase.

After taking your actions, each player must make a sacrifice to the god of Amun-Re. All players submit cards to an offering pot and everyone turns over their cards simultaneously. The sum of the cards dictates the total value of the sacrifice (the cards are the same cards you use to purchase goods during the action phase and the cards are lost during the sacrifice). The level of the sacrifice dictates the position of the Amun-Re temple on the temple track. The player that sacrificed the most gold gets to choose three goods in any desired combination (power card, farmer, building block). The second highest gets two goods and everyone else gets a single good free of charge. It is possible to sacrifice a negative amount (-3) but Amun-Re doesn’t like that you’ve taken three gold coins from the bank so you don’t get any free goods.

After the goods have been distributed, Amun-Re blesses the river to the degree indicated by the temple on the temple track and players score their position in their provinces by receiving gold for farmer’s harvests and any additional future harvests that their particular province brings. Again, Power Cards can be played to increase or otherwise modify the amount of your harvest. After this phase, the round is over (or you go on to score your position if the Kingdom is complete).

(Red’s province has three pyramids and in the background you can just barely make out some farmers)

As I mentioned, the end of the Old Kingdom requires players to remove all farmers from the fields and relinquish control of the provinces. The remaining building blocks and pyramids stay and the provinces are shuffled and you vie again for control of the same provinces. In this way you may be able to take control of a particularly lucrative province that one of your rivals worked very hard at building during the Old Kingdom.

When scoring, the provinces you control, number of pyramids and their relative placement in your provinces, the location of your provinces on the map, and the playing of Power Cards are work together to earn you points on the scoring track. After the second and final scoring, the amount of cash left in each player’s hand also contributes to the final scoring.

Amun-Re is a complex game and in league with Power Grid. Like most Knizia games, there are many brain burner decisions to be made and at some points it’s just too hard to keep it in your head at once and you have to just give up and play by get feel rather than playing against some mathematical model in your head. Controlling and/or otherwise modifying the level of the Amun-Re sacrifice seems almost crucial to swaying the game but the amount of energy it takes to determine who benefits from a higher or lower level of sacrifice seems almost mind-boggling. I enjoyed playing the game a lot and really look forward to some more plays.

Reflections of our playing of Amun-Re in the Bodum -Thermal Press Pot.

I registered on BGG on Dec 27, 2002…back when avatars were first getting started and you could buy one for 10 Geek Gold and we were given 10 Geek Gold to do it with. Badges didn’t exist. UberBadges didn’t exist. I bought a badge on September 2, 2005 for 50 Geek Gold and I now have enough to get an UberBadge for another 50 Geek Gold. However, I’ve been struggling finding just the right badge image and I figured while I was at it I’d change my avatar from the Yellow Clans Hut that I’ve grow tired of. I really like playing Maharaja, a game Lisa got me for Christmas, and I really like the artwork.

So…I’ve spent hours and hours working on the stupid avatar and Uberbadge that in the end don’t really mean squat. But, here’s where I’m at in the process and I hope to finish up and buy the Uberbadge soon.

The avatar is an animated image that cycles through the 7 Governors from the game. In the game the Governors are depicted not only in the role tiles players vie for but also on the tiles placed on the Governor’s track. On the tiles, the Governors are color coded by setting over a background field of color. In my avatar I’ve taken an image from the box, split it in two pieces so that the image continues up onto the Uberbadge. The Governors have had all of their colored backgrounds removed and then they’ve been layered onto the avatar box image. Sprinkle in some effects like shadows, buttonizing, text overlays and coloring, and some edge effects; splice them all together in an animated gif and Voilà! …time from your life you’ll never get back!

Sophie, Noah, and I played a 3-player game of Hansa this evening. It was my first playing and I must say, it’s an odd one. I’m not really sure what I was hoping for but when the game ended I was less than thrilled about it. I had researched Hansa quite a bit on BGG and its respectable rating of 7.28 and comments from my GeekBuddies steered me to put it on my wishlist. I was excited to play and finally got the kids to join me. Throughout the entire game I felt that I was behind and it was starting to get to me. Both Sophie and Noah were racking up sold goods at an alarming rate and I kept running out of gold just one or two actions short of what I wanted to do. Sophie had the uncanny knack of leaving the ship where it did me very little good. Layer on a good dose of them not wanting to restock the warehouses and I felt like I was getting crushed. But in the end I won by quite a few points due to my lone markets in cities and the fact that I had sold few goods but they were worth a lot of victory points. Now that I’ve had an hour or two for the game to sink in…I’m starting to like it better. The sheer fact that I’m still trying to figure out the best way to balance the actions two hours later is a testament to the quality and depth of the game. Now I’m chomping at the bit to play it against opponents in my gaming group.

The board is a rough depiction of Scandanavia and the waterways the inundate the region. Players are members of the Hansiatic League and they take control of a single ship that plys the waterways (and strangely a land route on the map). The 9 cities of the map contain warehouses that hold one or two goods (tokens depicting one to three barrels in several colors like the blue one in the image above). Play moves clockwise around the table where each player’s turn travels through four distinct phases.

In the first phase, the player receives three gold coins from the bank. In the second phase, the player may optionally restock all empty warehouses on the board. In the third phase, the player takes all of the actions they are willing and able to pay for and in the fourth phase, the player pays any taxes and tolls to the bank bringing his unsold goods and gold coins back down to three each.

Phase three, the meatiest phase, is where the player can move the ship from one city to another but only in the directions indicated by the arrows on the map for one gold coin per hop. When the ship is in a port of call, the player can place markets (wooden discs in the player’s color like the white, orange, and purple chips in the image above) in the city by cashing in a good bought during this or a previous move. The number of market token they place in the market is equal to the number of barrels depicted on the goods they cash in. Player may also buy a single good from the city’s warehouse (if there is one present – see restocking) and the gold coin is paid to the owner of the most markets in the city (or the bank if there is a tie or the city is devoid of markets). Lastly, when the ship is in a port of call where the player has at least one market, the player can sell pairs (or better) of like-colored goods. Selling goods is the only way to convert goods into victory points as the tokens containing the barrels are flipped over and remain in the players cache for end game scoring. After selling though, there is a ‘gotcha’ moment. To sell you must have the ship in a port of call where you have at least one market and when you sell you lose one market in that city. Also, and somewhat more painful, if any other players are holding unsold goods of the same color(s) you sell…then they lose one of the those goods during your sale. OUCH!

There is a stash of five roughly even piles of goods used during restocking and when the fifth pile is needed for a restocking, the game is near the end. When the end game is triggered, you finish the round and end just before the starting player ensuring everyone gets the same number of turns. The player with the most victory points for sold goods plus unsold goods plus victory points for your final market position in the city determines the winner.

Whew! Thank goodness the game is much harder to describe than it is to actually play. Hansa only takes about an hour to play and is listed for ages 10 and up but Noah, at 9, had no problem grasping the mechanics. He even mentioned that had he known more about the victory conditions, he would have done some different things. His final comment was, “Hansa is cool.” What more could you ask for? Come to think of it, I’d like a T-shirt with that on it!

Sophie, Noah, and I played our first game of Maharaja: Palace Building in India. Raja is an excellent Wolfgang Kramer/Michael Kiesling offering from 2004.The game covers an indeterminate number of rounds but ends when a player builds their last palace or when scoring has taken place in the city where the governor is sitting on the 10th position of the governor’s track. The board contains 7 cities connected by a network of roads containing one or two villages. Your colored wooden pawn represents an architect that is attempting to build palaces and houses in the region. Your architect travels around the board by traversing the roads that connect the cities and at times you must pay gold coins for their movement.

Each player has an action selection wheel and all players choose their two actions simultaneously. Each player also possesses a role card (from a pool of 6 cards – for the basic game, 7 for the advanced game). Players take turns in the order determined by the number of their role card. On your turn you may build houses in villages (required to travel on the road) or in cities, build palaces on one of the 7 locations in the city (your architect must be present to build anything in a city), move houses, move houses from the quarry to your pool, take gold, modify the order of the governors on the governor track, and take another player’s role card (giving yours to the bank and forcing the other player to take a replacement role card from the bank).

Role cards not only determine turn order but they also grant the holder a special privilege. For example, if you hold the #4 Travelling Monk role card, you can travel the roads for free but any fees that you would have incurred are still paid but instead by the bank.

After each round of turns, the city where the Maharaja sits (the large black pawn) is scored for gold coins. Palaces, cities, and your architect can earn you points and the gold payouts come on a graduated scale for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on. If you don’t make any points in the city you get no gold for that round.

After each round, the governor chips are adjusted and the Maharaja is moved to the next city where scoring will take place (indicated by the governor at the top of the track). The governor at the bottom of the track indicates where scoring will take place after the current round of scoring but you must be careful not to depend on that too much since one of the actions can adjust which city will be scored after the current round

I liked my first game of Raja but didn’t really get the full effect of the tactics and strategy as expected. I really think the game will change dramatically with more players and in a good way. I now know that you have to be careful to not depend on where houses are in the villages since players can move them during their turn severing your ability to move in some situations. Going earlier in the round can be advantageous at times but so can going later. Stealing a role card and moving the governors on the track can be very advantageous but also costly if you’re a little behind in the current scoring.

The game requires you to make many agonizing decisions and wonderfully captures what I like about Himalaya in that you have to try to predict what other players will do and in what order so that your plans aren’t thwarted. I like being able to play in two different ways by playing in the ‘now’ working towards the current scoring round or playing in the ‘tomorrow’ by leaving behind a legacy of points in the hopes of building a good base for a subsequent scoring round. Add to that the fact that some cities will come around a second time in the game and it’s crucial to leave behind a legacy of points so that you can build on them later in the game.