Attila (2nd)
Bamboleo (23rd)
Banque Fatale (30th)
Bose Büben (30th)
Canyon (23rd)
Carcassonne (2nd)
Cartagena (2nd)
Castle (23rd)
Der Dreizehnte Holzwurm (30th)
Doge (30th)
Hamster Rolle (2nd)
Hat Trick (30th)
Java (23rd)
Lord of the Rings (9th)
Ricochet Robot (16th)
Samurai (23rd)
Schrille Stille (16th)
Space Beans (9th)
I didn't make it this week as I was preparing for MidCon at the weekend, so I'll hand the complete set of reins over to Garry:
Hamster Rolle. This is another of Zoch’s manual dexterity games like Bausack and Bamboleo. Imagine a hamster’s exercise wheel, divided into numerous segments, separated by low fences (obviously a National Hunt racing hamster). The players each receive seven wooden pieces, which they aim to place (one per person per turn) within the wheel without any pieces falling out. Unfortunately, you have to place your piece progressively higher up the wheel, which causes it to roll and any pieces dislodged are taken back as a penalty. The first to get rid of their pieces wins.
All pretty simple but experienced gamers approach this challenge very tactically and attempt to place their pieces such that the next player has a near on impossible task of introducing a piece safely. It’s all good stuff but is slightly let down by the fact that when most of the pieces are already on the wheel, one person’s downfall means that the next player in turn often has a simple task of adding their last piece and winning.
That said, we all enjoyed it and this is one that non-gamers will love. From memory, it was Steve O that triumphed to prove he was a true rodent. Result: SO, CD+MH+GL.
By the time Hamster Rolle had finished, a few others had turned up, including John Webley who was visiting us prior to attending Midcon at the weekend. While the others got stuck into Cartagena, three of us tried out Attila.
I’d not managed to play this at Essen but John had, and so was able to explain the rules to us. Basically, players direct tribes of barbarians to overrun Europe and seek to gain the most influence over the most powerful tribes over 4 scoring rounds. On their turn, a player plays a card and introduces a token representing a group of one particular tribe to a European region. They then increase their influence on that tribe by one point. All remains peaceful in a region until a fifth token is placed on the region, at which point conflict takes place. Players may play additional cards to strengthen a particular tribe’s presence in a region, following which the weakest tribe is removed from the region. Scoring takes place after the 1st, 3rd, 6th and 10th conflict, with victory points given to the player with the highest and second highest levels of influence in each tribe at that point.
This is a clever game, which needs careful observation of how your fortunes compared with others are progressing. In the 3 player game, the end came upon us very quickly, to mine and Geoff’s surprise. John used his previous experience of the game well, but I’m not sure he would have got away with it in a second game. In any event, I think it would play better with 4 or 5. Result: JW, GL, GC.
Next up was what many have said was the hit of Essen this year, and it’s easy to see why. Carcassonne is a game about landscape development and controlling the various features found in the unfolding countryside. There are four types of features: towns, roads, monasteries and meadows and you can play your followers onto these features to try and gain victory points. I found it reminiscent of Entdecker as the playing area is slowly revealed as the game progresses and you are trying to place your pieces in spots where they will score best for you. There is a luck element in the drawing of landscape tiles, and if you don’t draw the right type, your plans can come undone very easily, but there is still plenty to reward skilful play.
Everyone rated this highly and I am looking forward to repeated plays of this. Result: MH, JW, GL, CD.
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Four of us were there at the start, so Garry set up Doge (Duke) and explained the rules to us. As we were ready to start, however, one more turned up and we had to change games. Leaving Doge set up, we switched over to another table to play the new Lord of the Rings. This was about the fourth or fifth time I had played and I would have opted for something else, but most of the others had not played yet. I am not a fan of this game - I kind of expected something more given the theme and the author - although I will probably end up with a copy anyway. The end result is not really a game, more of an adventure book. Steve played Frodo, but announced that he would have to leave soon. This gave the rest of us the opportunity to sacrifice him for the good of the party and led on, eventually, to a Frodo-less win - the ring was destroyed, along with a few unnecessary hobbits. Naturally, victory was assured once I, as Merry, became ring-bearer...
We didn't have enough time left to go back to Doge afterwards, so we packed it up and played Space Beans instead. We didn't get time to finish, but by the time we packed up Garry had a good lead and Geoff hadn't managed to score a single point... Result: GL, CD, TC, GC.
Garry says:
Steve arrived a bit later than the rest of us tonight and timed his entrance to perfection. I had just finished explaining the rules to Doge, which takes a maximum of 4 players, when Steve turned up to make 5. After cursing him profusely, Doge was packed away for another week and we decided to plunge into Lord of the Rings.
I’d been really looking forward to trying this, having read quite a bit about it over recent weeks. I was interested to see whether the co-operative aspects of the game worked with a gamers group. Chris and Trev had played before and were able to whisk through the rules pretty quickly. The mechanics seemed quite simple and I think this has been done so that it can easily be picked up by non-gamers. However, there was enough to keep us thinking throughout. This is one of the game’s strengths, because everyone is involved constantly and individual decisions are taken as a group. There is certainly a need to try and share the pain around the players so that everyone remains in play rather than succumbing to Sauron.
I liked it, although it’s not one I would want to play too regularly. Steve, on the other hand, was not impressed and was keen to sacrifice himself to help the cause. I can see that it is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Result: The Fellowship 1 Sauron 0
At this point, Steve had to leave and there was not enough time to try anything else new. So, we dug out Space Beans, which I really like. This may come as a surprise to some of the others in the group, because I remember the first time I played it, I failed to score a single point. The cards really were against me that night.
Tonight, however, I was faring much better but it was Geoff who was struggling, much to the amusement of everyone (including Geoff). Bean field after bean field was ploughed up without scoring, while the rest of us were merrily harvesting scoring fields. I managed to score three high numbered fields and a couple of others by game end to claim victory.
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With the absence of Garry and Chris, I thought it would be a good opportunity to play Ricochet Robot. It was certainly popular among the others, although Steve and Don were being introduced to it for the first time. The balancing mechanism, where an equal bid is resolved in favour of whoever is doing the worst so far, makes this a game that all can play, despite it's potential for brain-burn. We even managed to persuade a late-arriving Garry to join in and, much to his surprise, he soon caught up by matching bids and stealing tokens out from under the noses of the rest of us. In the same way, Soggy managed to catch up with me on the last go by matching my bid. Result: TC+SO, JO, SK+DC+GL.
Next, Garry got out his game of Schrille Stille. This is a game of record labels and the pop charts. The novelty of the game is the set of 'CDs' into which players put voting tokens to influence the records in the charts, making those of your own label rise and those of your opponents fall. You can also place stakes on 'fastest riser' and 'tip for the top' although you can't influence the position and bet on it at the same time. The game is a lot of fun and it is particularly nice seeing the results of the previous round's voting on the current chart positions. There isn't a large amount of control and planning possible, though, so you mustn't get too worried about winning. Result: GL+SK, SO, TC, DC, JO.
Garry says:
I was late arriving this week, having been to look around Catherine’s secondary school (she moves up in September) earlier in the evening. The others were well into a game of Ricochet Robot, which is more of a competitive puzzle than a true game.
Each turn, players have to work out the shortest number of moves to shift a robot around the game board to a particular point. When a person thinks they have solved it, they shout out that number of moves, following which the remaining players have a minute to try and find a shorter route (or if they are lagging behind in the scoring, the same number of moves). Once the time is up, the active player displays his superior knowledge by proving how it is done and gains a Victory Point. The game continues in this way for several rounds or until everyone dies of brain-ache.
Trev and Steve O were the ones who were best able to visualise the moves and shared the win at the end of the game. Although, I joined in with only 4 or 5 rounds to go, I did manage to collect a couple of points, which surprised me as I’m not terribly good at this type of thing.
With six players, I thought it was a great chance to try Schrille Stille, a game about the pop music charts. Each player represents a music company, which has interests in various pop acts. Some of the artists act for you alone and some are shared between two players. The essence of the game is about playing influence counters to move your artists up the charts and others’ down.
The game has a great gizmo for totting up all the influence points on each act and there is great fun in watching the gizmo dispense the influence counters, particularly if you can see that one of your opponents will fare badly as a result.
Everyone had great fun with this one. It certainly plays differently to most other games. I’m not sure how much skill is involved, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much as we were all enjoying ourselves so much. It also turned out to be very close scoring-wise, with only Jonathan lagging very far behind.
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With six of us present, we split into two threes and my group spent all evening with our first try of Java. This is the latest game from Kramer and Kiesling in the Tikal/Torres chain and is very similar to those games. Using action points, players place thick tiles onto the board - the tiles are in the shape of one, two or three joined hexes - and also place and move their 'people' tokens. The tiles show villages, fields, lakes and temples. The tiles can be laid on top of each other to change the terrain and add some height to it. A town becomes a collection of adjacent village hexes and a player with the highest up person in a town can build or expand a temple there depending on the size of the town. This earns points. Another way to earn points if you have a person in the same town as a temple where this has not yet happened, is to hold a festival. This earns points based on who can play the most cards matching a face up one. The third, and probably critical way to score points is to have the highest up person next to a water hole as it become surrounded. Garry took an early lead that he held for most of the game until right at the end, where he had a weak six point turn and I managed to boost my score in the same round by surrounding a lake for a total of 13, giving me just enough to get past him. It's a very slow moving, thinky game with a lot of down-time, perhaps not as bad as Tikal, but worse than Torres - it took us all evening and we had to cut it slightly short. If you've already got those other games, you ought to consider whether you want to fork out for another variation. I might buy this or Tikal one day, but probably not both. Result: TC, GL, CD.
Meantime the others played:
- Samurai (twice). Result 1: SO, MH, GC. Result 2: MH, SO, GC.
- Canyon. Result: SO, GC, MH.
- Castle. Result: ?
Garry says:
While we were waiting to see how many turned up, five of us played Bamboleo – a game I haven’t brought to the club for a while. This is one of Zoch’s dexterity games, where players take turns removing pieces from a wooden plate that is balanced precariously on a pillar with a small cork ball at the top. It is very easy to send everything crashing down as some of us proved time and again – names have been withheld to protect the culprits. Result: Who cares – it’s just a great fun game.
Once Trev arrived, we split into two groups. Three of us spent the rest of the evening in our first game of Java, the new game from Kramer and Kiesling. As has been said before, it is very reminiscent of Tikal and Torres, both of which I like – although neither were my picks for Game of the Year. Java is a substantial game and requires a fair bit of thought to make the most of your turn. Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to plan moves in advance, because the player before you inevitably makes a move that changes what you were hoping to do. This means that players can and do take quite a while executing their 6 actions. Impatient players should avoid Java.
Despite the down-time between turns, I like Java, probably more than either of its predecessors. Unfortunately we ran out of time and so never got to the stage of the final scoring round, which can have a signicant effect on the end result. When we packed up, Trev had a 1 point advantage over me [actually it was three points... - TC], with Chris about 5 or so points behind.
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There were seven of us there at the start, but Chris was waiting for what he told us was an important call on his mobile phone, so we decided to have a quick game while we were waiting. This turned out to be Hat Trick, a fairly simple trick taking game where you are only trying to win cards of one of the three colours - your score being the number of cards you win in that colour minus any other cards you win. I got off to a good start, which is usually a prelude to me coming last, but I managed to hold onto the lead for the three rounds we played - although I was a point from losing it to Mick. Result: TC, MH, SO, GL, SG, MO.
Don also arrived while we were playing, so we split into two fours. Our group had our first try of an older game - Banque Fatale. Players have betting chips in five colours and use these in closed bids to get cards featuring one or two of the same colours. The colours bid by everyone cause the values of those colours to rise or fall, possibly giving a bonus to holders of those cards if the value rises enough. Cards can be sold at the current value of their colours when it's your turn. You need to keep betting chips of the colours you want to rise and to restrict those you want to fall. Don was caught out by narrowly being beaten on a number of crucial bids which resulted in him having a shortage of chips but no cards to earn against. I fell somewhat victim to Soggy keeping all the chips of my colour and I failed to sell before the value of those cards plummeted. Oh well, live and learn. Result: SO, MO, TC, DC.
We followed this up with two games of Der Dreizehnte Holzwurm. Result 1: SO, TC, MO, DC. Result 2: DC, TC, MO, SO.
Meantime, the others played Doge (Duke), the game we nearly played a few weeks ago but had too many players. They seemed to reckon it was pretty good. Result: GL, SG, MH, CD.
They followed this up with Böse Buben, a game of Goblin pig-back racing... Actually it is very good. Result: MH, CD, GL, SG.
Garry says:
Hat Trick is one of my favourite little card games – very easy rules but plenty of difficult choices to make. It is another trick-taking game, with three suits each having cards numbered 1 to 20. One player leads to a trick and the other players either follow suit or play to a second trick in one of the other suits. A third trick cannot be introduced, but if a player cannot or chooses not to follow the two suits in play, he can put to one side a card in the third suit for –2 points. The winners of the two tricks take the cards won and the player of the highest card leads to the next trick. Scoring is simply the number of cards in your longest suit less all other cards won in the other suits (less any –2 point cards laid aside).
Doge is one of Leo Colivini’s releases at Essen this year, and is about building palaces in Venice. There are seven districts into which players play influence tokens. Each player gets to choose 3 districts each turn and the players with the most influence in a district, when it is scored that turn, are allowed to build houses there (2 for the player with the most influence; 1 for the player with the second-most). Once you have enough houses in a district you can trade these in for a palace in that district. However, the cost of palaces rises as more palaces are built. The winner is the person to build a palace in each of the six main districts on the board, or seven palaces in five districts or eight in four.
This is a fine game, with plenty going on and lots of ways to achieve your goals. The ability to uproot your houses and move them to a different district is critical, if a little removed from reality, and you don’t want to miss out on building houses in regions where you’ve tried to exert sizeable influence. Coming third in a region is not good. Steve and I were neck-and-neck most of the way through, but I just managed to win my sixth palace slightly ahead of him.
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