Alaska (7th)
Bali (21st)
Basari (7th)
Don (21st)
Drahtseilakt (21st)
Gnadenlos (21st)
Medina (21st)
Odysseus (14th)
Take It Easy (21st)
Unexploded Cow (14th)
Zirkus Flohcati (7th)
Another low turnout. I turned up to find Steve G, Mick and Geoff playing Zirkus Flohcati. I joined in for the end of that game and the whole of the subsequent one. Result 1: GC, SG, MH. Result 2: GC, TC, MH, SG.
We followed this with Basari, which I had played a long time ago, but which the others seemed to have played much more often. I raised a question over the rules on behalf of Chris, who had asked me to do so next time I saw Geoff. The point was that, during the bidding for an action using gems, each counter-bid must be either of a greater value than that preceding OR of more gems (even if a lower value). They had always played with only the former rule and disputed that the latter was valid. Steve had a rummage through the German rules, though, and found that Chris was actually correct. So we played it that way.
I felt at a distinct disadvantage during the play and the bidding, especially against the hard-nosed Mick, who calculated the exact value of every deal while I was working on approximations and feel. So, I was a bit surprised to find that I was leading for most of the game. I peaked a bit early, though, scoring for yellow and red gems after the second round. Mick, on the other hand, scored for every type of gem on the last round, causing him to surge ahead. Steve also passed me at this point and was only just pipped by Mick for the victory. The less said about Geoff's performance, the better. Result: MH, SG, TC, GC.
Next was an old game that was new to Geoff and me, Alaska. This is quite a fun game of transporting canisters (wooden cubes) on lorries (lorries) from a central island to your base on the edge of the board. The twist is that there is a lot of water between the island and the bases. Each turn, you reveal a 'number 1' card which indicates one or more pieces of ice to place on the board - the pieces occupy 1, 2 or 3 hexes. Once an ice bridge is built between the island and the edge, you can send in your lorry. Lorry moves are based on ice pieces, so you can move faster if you place larger ice pieces on your route. You also draw a 'number 2' card which has a special effect, either immediately or later. Once the board is full of ice floes, the 'number 1' cards are used to remove ice pieces until no-one can get to the island any more. Then, whoever had the most canisters is the winner
The game was quite fun, but ended a bit oddly. There was a kind of stalemate where we were all using the same ice bridge and it was impossible to melt it because it always had either a lorry or the polar bear on one of the spaces. Near the end, I was the only player with any canisters left on the island, so we had the strange situation of me trying to get a canister home and the other three hanging about ready to pounce if I should draw a card that forced me to drop it. As it was, once I had got my penultimate one home, I had won because of two canisters I had 'relieved' Steve of earlier in the game. Result: TC, GC, MH, SG.
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Tonight we kicked off with Don, another of Garry's new games. This is a card game of collecting sets. One, two or three cards are turned over each turn and the players bid for them using their supply of large orange counters. The amounts bid are distributed among the other players. The cards come in various colours and their value increases for each one of the same colour you collect (one for the first, two for the second, etc). The cards also have numbers, and once you have a number in front of you, you can no longer make a bid of that amount.
So, you tend to know who will want to bid for a set of cards (because they already have cards of the same colour(s)) and you know what limitations exist on their bidding, so you can tailor your bid for more success. The only thing you don't know is how many bidding chips each player has left. This was my downfall. It seemed that everyone else had run out of chips and I was able to monopolise the last few auctions. The very last auction contained cards that were great for me and for Steve, so I bid my remaining seventeen chips only to find that he had silently accumulated twenty-three! He took the goodies and the win.
It is hard to judge this game after a single play. It would take a few more to learn its depth. Result: SG, TC, GL, MH+GC+SK.
Next was Odysseus. We played this a few weeks ago with three, and it didn't really work very well. It was a lot better with six - although it suffered from a little analysis-paralysis as each player thought carefully about each move. That may speed up with familiarity. One of two recent games with the same theme, the game is fairly abstract for all that. The board represents the world and has eighteen spaces on which large adventure discs are placed, face up - there are six different adventure types.
Each space is connected to three others by a red, a green and a yellow line and each turn, Odysseus' ship will move along three (or less) of these lines to arrive at a new adventure. Each adventure the ship arrives at is removed and laid out next to the board, to be replaced by a new one chosen by the player who is currently Zeus. Each player has a secret agenda, listing three of the six adventures with points values from one to three. As soon as a player's points total for visited adventures gets to ten or more, they have won.
The three lines along which the ship moves each turn, are determined by play of wind cards from the players. These have points values from one to five and you play them in an area of the board to indicate 'second move = yellow', or 'first move = red', etc. For each of the three moves, the highest total value of wind cards played, determines the direction. Each player also has a special ability related to what god they are playing - and if they don't like that, there are Dionysus cards that allow you to swap your divine personality with someone else.
So, being the only one who knew what was coming from the start, you might have expected me to come away with more than the dismal three points that I did - in fact that only came right at the end if I recall correctly. Mick, on the other hand, surged to victory, getting his ten points with a clear four point margin, the rest of us evenly spred from six down to two. A good enough game, but heavy on the analysis and takes a long time to play. Result: MH, SK, GC, GL, TC, SG.
So we ended up with Unexploded Cow, another of the improved production quality Cheapass games to hit us recently. These come in a small box ( kind of a cardboard envelope), with shiny cards - although still no colour. This game is full of the usual James Ernest humour and has some novel mechanisms and opportunities for skillful play. The players are all wily entrepreneurs who have attempted to kill two birds with one stone by buying up cheap cattle ridden with mad cow disease from grateful British farmers and then shipping them to France to wander the fields, looking for unexploded bombs!
The space in front of each player is known as their field and on your turn you can play cows into your field or other players' fields. Whoever's field the cow goes into, must pay the purchase price into the bank - which starts with no money of its own. At the end of your turn, you roll a die and count cows from the right of your field, clockwise around the table. The cow you get to finds a bomb - which explodes! The player who owns the cow (generally the field owner) gets a payout from the bank - although the cash-strapped bank may not have enough to make the full payment. If it was your cow that exploded on your turn, you also get a bonus point card (from 1 to 12) and once all 12 bonus cards are taken, the game ends.
To make this all a little more complicated, some cows have special abilities that allow you to manipulate the result to get the most out of the current state of the bank or to make other players suffer: there is the spy cow that belongs to you even when in someone else's field; there is the mad bomber cow that somehow, when it gets a bomb, gives another bomb to every other cow in the field; and there are the incompetent cows, whose bungling attempts at bomb disposal cause so much damage that they mean you have to pay the bank when they explode instead of vice versa. There are also event cards, which allow you to: get free cows; steal another player's cows; find an extra bomb; get rid of a cow; etc.
Oh, and the bonus cards. Whoever has the most points on bonus cards at the end can take the ramining money from the bank and the pot (ante'd at the beginning). However, most games I've played, this doesn't amount to much, so it's not worth losing any cow-exploding opportunities for.
The game is mostly about management of the bank, which spends most of the game rather short of funds. On your turn you need to be able to get other players to put enough money into the bank (by putting cows in their fields) and to then be able to explode one of your cows and take the money straight back out. This is easier said than done and it can be a little annoying to build up that money and then explode someone else's cow and watch them rake it in. This is a fun game that moves along quickly, ends at about the right time and, surprisingly, carries its theme - you always think in terms of cows, bombs, fields, etc rather than cards, dice, table space, etc. Recommended. Result: SG+GC, TC, MH, GL.
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I arrived a bit late to find the others playing a six- or seven-player hand of Drahtseilakt. This is meant for up to five players and I think it was over too quickly with too little control with more than that number. Anyway, still a good game - I think Garry won, but I didn't get the other players down.
After that, there were enough of us to split into two groups of four. My group played Bali, a new game from Uwe Rosenberg. I was keen to try this as I am quite a fan of Uwe. This is still mainly a card game, although it does have four small boards representing islands, which serve as somewhere around which players can store their cards and as a means of identifying who controls the two leaders on each island.
The most unusual part is that you play with four hands of cards - one for each island. There is one 'current' island and each player holds the relevant hand of cards. When the ship moves, changing the current island, everyone puts their cards by the old island and picks up their hand from the new island. When on an island, there are cards that can be played to gain control of one of the two leaders - as long as no-one plays more of those cards, cards to temporarily evict others from the island and so reduce the competition, and cards used to get more cards or redistribute existing cards among your four hands.
As you start on each island with a maximum of four cards, at first it felt that options were very limited as it's unlikely you have the cards you need to fight off challenges. However, as the game progresses, you learn to use all four hands to act as channels and stores for cards - it's hard to describe, but it kind of dawns on you as you play. In some ways it's a more advanced version of the mechanic used in Schnäppchen Jagd, where you must manage your hand and your 'rubbish' pile in order to maximise your score as the game progresses.
This seems like a game where experienced players are always going to be able to beat beginners, but once all players know how it works, it probably has a great deal of subtlety that would make for repeated playings. Surprisingly enough, I won, probably because of a very weak mid-game performance that saw me left alone in the end-game leader bashing. However, there were only three points separating first position from third - and then Geoff trailed eight points further back. Result: TC, SC, GL, GC.
The game lasted quite some time, though, and in the meantime the others played:
- Medina. Result: SG, SO+MH, SK.
- Gnadenlos. Result: MH, SG, SK, SO.
- Take It Easy. Result 1: MH, SO, SK, SG. Result 2: MH, SO, SK, SG.
Geoff, Steph and Steve left at this point, and the rest of us rounded off with anothe game of Drahtseilakt. Three hands and five players this time. By the end, each player scored one point more than the last - apart from an eight point gap between second and third. Result: TC, GL, SG, SO, MH.
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