Andromeda (25th)
Blindes Huhn (11th)
Drahtseilakt (11th)
Formel Fun (4th)
King of the Elves (25th)
Mit List und Tücke (18th)
Stephenson's Rocket (11th)
Vino (18th)
Zoff im Zoo (4th)
Another low turnout - just three playing games. Geoff did drop in for a bit later on but we were into our last game by then.
Garry had brought back some of his new Essen games and we kicked off with Zoff im Zoo (Frank's Zoo), the latest from Doris & Frank (& Rio Grande). Although very pretty, as you would expect with artwork by Doris, the game itself is basically another variant of Karriere Poker (aka The Great Dalmuti/Corporate Shuffle/etc). Players are dealt a handful of cards depicting various animals and one player starts the first trick with one or more cards showing the same animal. Passing to the left, other players may play to the trick if they can play more cards showing the same animal or the same number of cards showing an animal that can eat the previous animal (although mice beat elephants). If play comes back to the player who last played cards to the trick, that player takes the trick and leads to the next. The idea is to be the first player to get rid of your cards - the number of tricks taken is unimportant. Points are gained for each hand and the first player to a predetermined number wins the game. There is more complexity in the hierarchy of which animals eat which others than there is in the simple numerical scheme of The Great Dalmuti - whether that leads to a better game or not depends on your tastes. There probably isn't enough difference, though, to be worth buying if you have any other incarnation of the game. When we played, Garry led for most of the game, but with a bit of concerted clawing back towards the end, he finished with only one point more than me. Results: SO, GL, TC.
Next was Formel Fun. This is a new version of an old Lambourne or Fiendish game called Devil Take The Hindmost where the theme has been switched from cycle racing to motor racing. Each player starts with three cars and a number of cards. Spaces around the track are numbered from 1 to 10 (three times) and the cards are similarly numbered. If you play a card on a car on the same numbered space, that is how many spaces the car will move (e.g. a car on a '7' space will move 7 spaces forward if a '7' card is played on it). Cards played when the number doesn't match only allow the car to move three spaces, except for the '1' card, which allows you to move 10. There are also '+5' (turbo) cards. After you have played a card to move your car forward, you draw back up to five cards. All cars complete a lap, with the last car over the line dropping out and the remaining cars lining up in finishing order for the next lap. This continues until there is only one car left, when points are awarded for each car, with the holder of the most points being declared the winner. I got caught out a couple of crucial times by the others who had played DevilTTH before and were more up on the tactics involved, so allowing me to lose my first (and perhaps my second car). And my finishing position in the last few races kept meaning that I started on an '8' square. This is so much worse than many other squares (unless you have an '8' card), because playing a card as a three puts you on a '1' space, slowing you up further and preventing you playing your '1' card to any benefit. Yet again, experience of the game may help in this situation, but I think getting the right cards is the most important. Anyway, the important thing about the game is that it plays quickly and is generally good, light fun. Result: SO, GL, TC.
Off to MidCon at the weekend. Don't forget to read the report when I get it done. By the way, at long, long last I have finally completed my report on Furrycon South - in case you haven't had enough of my drivellings yet.
Just the four regulars this week and we started off with Drahtseilakt, the card game we played a couple of weeks ago. The game is played over a number of rounds, with each player trying to get as low a score in each round as possible. One of the rules allows you to cancel the score from a previous round if you score zero in any round. Guess who managed to score zero in the first round, so being unable to cancel any other score,... yes, me. Looking at the results, though, Mick still would have beat me even if I had managed to cancel my largest subsequent score. I think this is a game we'll be seeing more of. Result: MH, TC, GL, SO.
We followed this with my first play of Stephenson's Rocket, also known as Knizia Rails, it being the first train game from that author. I had seen three groups of people playing this game at MidCon and, to judge by those groups, I figured the idea of the game was to lay a few pieces of track on the board and then have someone look at the rules with a puzzled expression while the others look expectantly at that player. As it turns out, there is a bit more to it than that. As is typical with Knizia, the train theme fits quite loosely onto some interesting mechanisms which feel like they have little to do with running a railway, but which present you with painful choices on your turn. I won't go into the full details of play, but the game has the same kind of feel as Acquire. This is not to say this game is a copy or even a variation of that one, but I think that if you like and/or are good at Acquire, you will probably like and/or be good at Stephenson's Rocket. Of the three ways to score points (money) in the game, I almost totally got cut out of one of them. I also made a number of mistakes over share ownership that only beginners at Acquire would, losing me large sums of money in the middle of the game. At the end, however, I was only beaten by 1 point (80 against 79), showing, perhaps, that everyone has a good chance of winning even if they make the kind of mess of it that I did. Result: SO, TC, MH, GL.
To finish the evening, we played Blindes Huhn (Blind Hen). Garry had also picked up this peculiar card game at Essen, but I think it is a bit older. Players are dealt a hand of cards from a pack numbered between 1 and 59 and then sort those hands into any order they like. There are then a number of tricks played, where the highest card takes the trick. However, when required to play a card, players can only choose the cards at the extreme left or right of their pre-sorted hand. Victory is not based on the number of tricks taken but on the smallest number of points scored over a number of hands. Each of the cards that is divisible by 5 (5, 10, 15, ...) has a picture of a hen and up to four eggs and each time you take a trick containing one of these cards you score a point for each egg. Worse still, if you take a trick containing more than one hen card, the egg values on the cards are multiplied together rather than added! - Ouch! There is many a groan in play as you realise that, typically, both cards you are allowed to play will result in you winning that nasty trick, but every card between those two would have been safe. On finishing this game, I wasn't too impressed because of the importance of the initial sorting of the cards, with very little in the way of tactics able to creep in once that was done. Thinking about it subsequently, however, I changed my opinion completely and think it's a neat little game - it just takes a game to correct your expectations of it. Now I know what to expect, I look forward to playing it again - or even buying it.
We started off with another of the Essen releases this week - Vino. This business game of wine growing has been fairly extensively praised by those who played it at Essen, but for all of us except Mick and Garry, this was our first try. Players compete to buy vineyards in several wine-growing regions of Italy, the idea being to own the most vineyards at the game end. However, to get vineyards you need money, and to get money you must sell wine, and selling wine, paradoxically, loses you vineyards. This is the heart of the game and it sticks out through the theme like a thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. :-) I found that early part of the game involved establishing a presence in a number of regions, specialising in two or three types of wine. Once most of the vineyards in a region have been bought, there is a free handout of the rest to the two or three largest owners in that region - generally favouring the second and third largest. Once the game has progressed to the stage where the regions are about half full, the emphasis switches to trying to make sure that, ideally, you are the second largest owner in a region, and this tends to only be possible in those regions you already have a presence in. Most of the strategic planning, then, or lack of it, is done in the early stages, and later on decisions become more tactical and short term, trying to force other players to close off regions leaving you with free vineyards.
The two who had played it before liked it the best and also beat everyone else - perhaps because they knew what to expect. Geoff was very anti- and didn't look forward to playing again. I know what he meant, in many ways it doesn't feel "rounded". Perhaps it's because the description makes it sound like a standard business game - accumulate resources, buy a means of processing and try to make the most profit. The two things that weigh against this are: firstly that the winner is determined by the number of vineyards owned - not how profitable they are; and secondly that to sell wine, you lose vineyards. Now that I have a better idea of what to expect, I don't mind giving it another try, but I'm not going to be calling out for it. Result: MH, GL, GC, SO, TC.
To round off what was left of the evening, we tried out Mit List und Tücke. This card game is apparently the predecessor of author Klaus Palesch's other games, Sticheln and Hat Trick, but was not published before because it requires a minimum of four players. It is a trick taking game with four suits, although a single trick cannot contain all four. For each trick, with five players, whoever played the highest card of the led suit takes any three cards. The other two cards are taken by the player of the lowest card of any suit other than that led. All the cards taken by any player are placed in front of him/her in stacks of each suit. At the end of the hand, each player chooses any two suits and multiplies the number of cards they have in those suits and divides the result by the total number of cards they took in the other two suits. This ought to win a prize for the most difficult scoring method ever for a simple card game. If you're arithmetic isn't good, make sure you have a calculator handy! I think I'm right in saying, though, that the game was generally approved of and is the kind of game that may become a club regular - if the continual pressure of new games gives us time. Result: TC, SO, GL, MH, GC.
Chris was back this week after a long time off, visiting America and working. Attendance was down to three. Are these two facts related? Just speculation. Another week of playing new games from Essen.
We started with King of the Elves, the card game version of Elfenland and, if you've played that game, this one will be very familiar. Cards show either: a town in a terrain type (desert, forest, mountain, etc); a method of travel (giant pig, dragon, raft, change direction, etc); or a hazard or bonus. During play of the cards, each player can play up to two towns before them or before other players, all of the towns forming a large circle. You can also play bonus or hazard cards to towns already laid (the bonuses only apply to you and the hazards only apply to others). Afterwards, each player uses their travel cards to move as far round the circle as they can, picking up gold for each town they visit. There are other things you can do in the card play phase to try and increase the distance you can travel, for example you can remove a town in front of you by paying a certain amount of gold, allowing you to play a different type of town there next go - unless someone else gets there first - or just to get rid of a town on which others have played hazards, making it harder or more expensive to travel to. You can also buy up to three extra cards or perform a 'Dorrell' (named in honour of Chris, who first took extensive advantage of this action) - you draw three new cards and must then discard four. This is a difficult part of the game, often you are no better off and must repeat the same action next go with a dwindling hand. Mostly, however, it is a problem because the pace of the game is slowed up considerably by the time it takes for a player to agonise over the four cards they must discard. The game is much less of a family game than Elfenland is and I definitely think I prefer the original, but I have been persuaded that there is enough different about this version to enjoy it as a more tactical version. Result: TC, SO, CD.
The rest of the evening was taken up with Andromeda, also by Alan Moon. This is a combined card/board game and is a little difficult to describe, perhaps because the theme is even thinner than usual or because there are so many small parts that don't naturally fit together. The board shows seven planets, each with three satellites with points values from four to fourteen. Players try to get small wooden cubes in their own colour onto these satellites to show ownership and claim points. The wooden cubes are moved by the play of sets of three to seven cards showing the planet in question and cubes can be moved from Earth to a planet or from a planet to one of its satellites. When moving from a planet to a satellite, the game's chance element comes into play - the planet ring. This is basically an inverted cup with a small hole in the side: you place the cup over the cubes on the planet, cover the hole, move it about to shuffle the cubes and let a number cubes out through the hole - moving your opponents' cubes back to Earth and yours onto a satellite. The number of cubes you can move or let out through the hole are determined by the number of cards in the set you played and there is a round of card trading before each round of actions. The start player lays out two to four cards one at a time and the others have to offer a similar number in exchange, whether or not they want to. There are a number of other minor elements to the game, giving many difficult choices, but the cube movement and the trading are the two main elements. The players felt this was a game that would appeal to families and non-gamers and Soggy felt that was a negative point. I bought a copy after playing it at MidCon despite having ambivalent feelings. We shall see, but at the moment I think I like it. Result: SO, CD, TC.