Time To Play The Game

Game Night Report -- 2/9/09 (Goa)

2009-02-17T22:18:00.001-08:00

Two more games of Goa on this night, with us FINALLY playing by the correct rules (on what must be at least our ninth or tenth time playing).

The new rules really tighten the game up, but in the end, the person who bids best (both in getting money, paying the least, and getting stuff they need) is usually going to win. Brandon seemed to be that person in both games on this night and he won both games. My current theory is that you can win the game with several different strategies as far as moving things down the board, but 60%-65% of the game comes down to doing well in the auctions.

Interestingly, the strategy I always seem to try (expedition cards) is apparently the "unbeatable" way of winning (I just read so on this post on BGG), so if that is the case, it serves to reinforce my theory on the auctions (although I'm not so sure the expedition card route is the unbeatable strategy the poster claims -- I see how it CAN work, but you still need the right outlay of cards and some other things in order to make it work. Perhaps I just haven't played it correctly though).

Anyways, it's still a very fun game and each time I play the enjoyability of it actually increases to where I think I may move it up to a 9/10 (from an 8).

Results:

Game 1:
Brandon -- 42
Kevin -- 39
Troy -- 37

Game 2:
Brandon -- 49
Troy -- 45
Kevin -- 43

Game Night Report -- 2/2/09 (Race for the Galaxy and Goa)

2009-02-06T12:44:00.001-08:00

With only three of us and a short amount of time to play, we started with two games of Race for the Galaxy using the card-drafting variant. We've found that this method is actually a little more enjoyable (although it does add an extra 10 minutes or so to each game). Kevin and Brandon each won one game, although I didn't write down the final scores.

After that it was onto a game of Goa. I just wanted to point out that, as always, I was in last. It feels like I'm always in last when we play Goa (okay, I'm full of crap - there was a time I won, I guess). And yet, I love this game. I guess that's the sign of a truly fun game.

We did find that we have been playing incorrectly -- you can only play one expedition card per action. I think we've always played where you can play as many as you want. This has probably led to some easier times for all of us at certain points, so we'll be sure to play the "correct" way next time and see how the game changes.

Anyways, Brandon DID try to give the game away by way overbidding on something near the end of the game, but even that didn't matter, as he fairly well dominated the dojo.

Results:

Brandon -- 52
Kevin -- 45
Troy -- 37

Game Night Report -- 1/19/09 (Pandemic and Tower of Babel)

2009-02-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

Chris was on board for this night, so we decided to try a couple of games with four that we had only previously played with three.

We started with Pandemic and lost both times we played (it's a cooperative game). We were one turn away from winning the second game, but in both cases we simply didn't draw our cards very well. I think the game is actually a little more difficult with 4-players, but still a good diversion to play every once in a while.

After that we played Tower of Babel. This game is definitely improved with four, as the bidding phase has even more strategy too it with the extra player. Kevin won by virtue of getting the most building tiles of the same type, while Chris and myself got a majority of our points by simply NOT getting our offers accepted and gaining victory points that way. Brandon shockingly came in last and I'm not really sure what the main cause of that was.

Results:

Kevin -- 82
Troy -- 74
Chris -- 66
Brandon -- 57

Game Night Report -- 1/5/09 (Power Grid and Race for the Galaxy)

2009-01-19T16:36:00.001-08:00

Only three of us for this game night (we were expecting five), so we decided to replay Power Grid and Race for the Galaxy (with expansions) with less people to see how they played.

Power Grid

With three players it wasn't quite as exciting as with four, but it was still a fairly close, tense game nonetheless.

Results:

Kevin -- 16 cities powered, won tie-breaker with 17 cities on the board.
Brandon -- 16 cities powered, but only 16 cities on the board.
Troy -- 15 cities powered.

Race for the Galaxy

We played with the "drafting" variant where you build your own deck and only draw/play/discard from it. It's a fun change of pace for when you only have 2 or 3 players.

I did manage to get nine "6" value cards in my hand, which is essentially useless. Thus attributing to my horrid score. Brandon and Kevin played it a little more smartly.

Results:

Brandon -- 37
Kevin -- 30
Troy -- 18

Game Night Report -- 12/29/08 (Power Grid and Race for the Galaxy)

2009-01-19T16:08:00.001-08:00

Power Grid

Our first game of Power Grid with the expansion deck (thanks Mom and Dad!). The expansion deck is supposedly good for making early game garbage and nukes a valid strategy, as well as getting rid of the midgame lull. I'd say that it accomplished that quite well and I see no need to go back to the main deck.

Also, looking at the other two variants that come with the new deck, I don't see a need to try either of them. The basic game with the new deck should keep us busy for a long, long time. I am thinking we might want to try one of the expansion boards, however.

Results:

Chris -- 16 cities powered, won tie-breaker with 17 cities on the board.
Brandon -- 16 cities powered, but only 16 cities on the board.
Troy -- 15 cities powered.
Kevin -- 14 cities powered.

This is the now infamous "Troy screwed over Brandon and let Chris win" game. I may have in fact led to that result, but I want Brandon to know I wasn't out to get him - I just played the game how I felt I had to play it ;)

And that's really the only thing I remember from the game. With four-players, this game gets so incredibly tight at the end that it's critically important to only buy the resources you need and make sure you get sufficient power plants (moreso than with 3-players). There still is a feeling that the game must come to you -- i.e. your game winning move must coincide somewhat with where the game is. Peak too soon and you lose, wait for one more turn and you lose.

Still, a great game. I've raised this one up to a 9/10, from and 8/10.

Race for the Galaxy

Our first time using the new expansion. Cool parts about the expansion - 1) new start worlds (less chance of getting Old Earth), 2) mid- and end-game goals that are worth victory points, 3) some fun new cards (Improved Logistics is interesting, to say the least), 4) overall greater flexibility in how you can win the game. It makes a good game better.

It also has a solitaire variant, which I've yet to try.

As for our two games they went like so,

Results:

Game 1:
Chris -- 44
Kevin -- 43
Troy -- 41
Brandon -- 38

Game 2:
Kevin -- 54
Brandon -- 46
Chris -- 46
Troy -- 36

Game night results -- Agricola (12/17)

2008-12-19T13:25:00.000-08:00

We tried a game of Agricola with four for the first time. Here were the results.

Game Night Results:

Brandon -- 46
Chris -- 35
Kevin -- 32
Troy -- 28

Brandon dominated again, getting both a stone house and a bonus card for 9(!) points. He has a good strategy that is simple and has worked at making sure he wins (get a way to generate easy food, get the most family members first, if possible, upgrade house).

This is as opposed to me, who tries to do a little of everything and due to that, often struggles just to feed his family. I noticed once I did a few of Brandon's strategies, my game started going better (although, too little, too late). I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Chris did a good job his first time out, filling his board up entirely (haven't seen that happen yet). He may have gotten a little tunnel vision on his strategy near the middle part of the game (his family never grew beyond three), but he ended up doing just fine when it came down to scoring.

Kevin seemed to also stay with his typical strategy -- he'll have to comment as to what he did or didn't do, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary, either good or bad, with his game.

Two general comments:
1) The game is much, much better with 4 than with 3. It's a little more tense and certain actions become more valuable.

2) The cards. I like the card draw method we have been using (4 E's, 3 I's, 3 K/Z's, discard 1 of each type). Still, some of these cards seem ultra powerful. We even threw one out of the game that I had picked up in my initial draw, because it seemed like too much of a game breaker. I need to research to see if there is a consensus on certain cards that may be too powerful and perhaps we can take those out of the game. In general, though, the cards are pretty evenly useful, so it shouldn't be TOO much of a problem.

Game night results -- Galaxy Trucker/Tower of Babel (12/8)

2008-12-19T13:23:00.000-08:00

Super quick update, just to post some scores and comments.

We had four players for one game, so we played Galaxy Trucker (which also happens to now be the game we get laughed at the most for playing, by our wives. Must be the name).

Game Night Results:

Troy -- 62
Kevin -- 39
Brandon -- 30
Chris -- 5

Chris had a rough go of it in his first game playing. It didn't help that the rest of us have worked out the kinks in ship construction after having played several times, so Chris was at a severe disadvantage. As for my dominance, it was actually quite easy as compared to other times. Basically, I was in first position for the first two turns, there weren't any really tough attacks to weather, and so I stocked up on goods and got first dibs on all the bonuses.

I should note that if you do not get any meteors in the first round, be prepared for that to be ALL you do in the third round. Chris' ship blew up, while the rest of ours came in at about 1/4 of what they started at.

After Chris left, we played a game of Tower of Babel. As I mentioned oh so long ago, when we first played, the game is significantly better without the random bonus cards that were thrown in after the game was completed. It's a fun, quick game with enough decision making to make it worth the trouble. Basic light Knizia (which is typically good).

Lo and behold, I swept the night for the first time in a LONG time. Maybe I'm not as bad as I thought I was (well, there is the upcoming game of Agricola I'm about to post about that might disprove that theory).

Game Night Results:

Troy -- 100
Brandon -- 86
Kevin -- 71

Game night results -- Agricola (12/2)

2008-12-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

We played Agricola for our third time and it didn't really change my initial opinion of it that I stated last time we played. We did have better luck with the card draw this time, using an idea I read that said to give each player 4/3/3 cards from the E/I/K decks, and then discarding one of each type to create your final hand. It allowed all of us to play a much more significant amount of cards.

I'm starting to wonder if the problem is that we are playing with only 3-players -- we'll have to try with four as soon as we have a chance.

It's still a fun game, it still provides a plethora of possibilities in how it can be played, it still plays slightly different each time, and it's still a game I will gladly play. Yet, I'm still searching for that extra "something" to the game that will push it over the top for me and make it match up to the hype. At this point, no matter how badly I want it to, I'm just not sure it's a game that will ever get to that point for me...I rated it a 7 out of 10 on my initial review and that's where it stays.

Game Night Results:

Brandon -- 37
Kevin -- 33
Troy -- 29

Kevin went an interesting route in forgoing his entire last turn in order to acquire 8 points. He also played most of the game with only 2 family members, severely limiting his opportunities throughout the game. Yet, he almost managed to pull things off in the end.

Brandon was steady throughout, adding some big time points in the last few rounds when Kevin had no turns and I was busy trying to feed my family (a good fireplace is almost a necessity I now see).

Game night results -- Galaxy Trucker (11/25)

2008-12-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

We played quite a bit Galaxy Trucker the over the last month.

The game is played in two phases. First you build your ship. This consists of connecting together tiles with varying abilities. You do this amongst a community pile of tiles in a race against the clock. The key thing here is that the all four sides of a tile MUST match the adjacent tiles, else you have an improperly built ship and will lose points (and the tile you placed) at the end of the building round. In the end, your ship looks something like this:

After this, you pit your ship against the other players, where various events take place, including meteor showers, pirates, races, and the acquisition of cargo. As you are shot at by pirates and your ship gets hit, it can fall into pieces. Anything that ends up not being connected somehow is lost and you must go on with only the remaining parts of your ship. Sometimes it becomes impossible to do so for some reason and you have to sit out the rest of the round.

Anyways, there is your extremely abbreviated overview of the game.

As for my initial feelings on it, I find it to be a very fun game, although extremely chaotic. It feels about the same game "weight" as Ra, yet with the rules and components of a much heavier game. Also, whereas Ra takes about 45 minutes, tops, to finish, Galaxy Trucker can drag on a bit longer -- around 60-70 minutes.

Still, it's nice to have something a little different in the game collection and it's a good choice for a semi-mindless, fun game that can be trotted out at the end of the night.

Final Rating -- 7 out of 10

Game Night Results:

(I only recorded our last game of Galaxy Trucker, which is all well and good since it took us 3 tries to actually play it correctly).

Brandon -- 80
Troy -- 61
Kevin -- 38

Kevin may well hate this game, as his ship has been torn in two pretty much every time we've played. Brandon did an awesome job of collecting cargo and won quite easily. That's all my notes say...

Game Night Report -- 10/20/08 and 10/27/08 (Pandemic)

2008-11-06T07:58:00.001-08:00

(Photos from boardgamegeek.com)

Another couple of weeks and another new game to play. This time out it's something new for our group -- a cooperative game, Pandemic, by Matt Leacock.

A simple overview of the game -- at the beginning of the game, colored cubes representing different diseases are placed on random cities across the game board. Each player then takes a random "role." Each role gives that player a special ability that they can use throughout the game.

You do three things on your turn:

1) Flip over a certain number of cards from the infection deck to determine which cities become infected this turn (you will place one cube in these cities).

2) Perform your player actions. You move from city to city in a number of ways and take actions to either remove the diseases from a certain city or to play 5 cards of the same color out of your hands to completely cure a disease. Only by curing all four diseases can you win the game.

3) Draw two cards from the player deck to replenish your hand.

If at anytime a city has 3 cubes of one color in it and you are forced to add another cube to it (typically by drawing its card in step 1 above), then it outbreaks. When this happens you add one colored cube to every city that is connected to the outbreaking city. This can, of course, cause a chain reaction and things can get out of control quite quickly.

The other issue at hand is the "Epidemic" cards. These are randomly placed in the deck the players draw from in step 3. When these are drawn you pick a random card off the bottom of the infection deck and immediately infect it with three cubes. You then take the infection cards that have already been drawn (thus are the most recently infected cities), shuffle them, and then place them on TOP of the draw pile. This ensures that you will be drawing from the same batch of cities quite frequently.

You lose if you ever hit a total of 8 outbreaks or if you run out of cards to draw in the player pile. You win only by curing all four diseases.

That's basically it. The rest of it is working with your fellow players to make sure you are being as efficient as possible to stem the tide of the diseases before outbreaks occur AND make sure you are able to cure the diseases as fast as possible.

Troy's Rating

I ended up liking this game much, much more than I ever thought I would. It's a good change of pace game and since table talk is allowed and encouraged, it makes for a very engaging gaming experience. For once we aren't playing multi-player solitaire!

There is a tension to the game that ratchets up as you get closer and closer to the end and infection start spreading everywhere. It's at this point when the game can slow down a bit, due to you trying to maximize your every move. I think we still got all of our games finished in around 45 minutes, which makes it a good night-ending game.

The game does play similarly each time -- really there isn't too much nuance to the game -- however, with the different roles available (there are five of them) and the fact that the opening layout is completely random, it should have some good replayability.

The game also makes me very curious to try out some other cooperative games (the Lord of the Rings series comes to mind).

So, as you can see I have a great deal of enthusiasm for the game. Perhaps with repeated plays (and considering that we've now won on the most difficult level) it will lose some of its luster or we will burn-out on it (happened for us as a group with Race For The Galaxy). But there is just too much tension and fun while playing the game for me to not give it a high rating.

Final Rating -- 8 out of 10

Game Night Results:

Troy, Brandon, and Kevin vs. Pandemic
Easy level (4 epidemics) - WIN (1-0)
Heroic level (6 epidemics) - LOSE, LOSE, LOSE, LOSE, LOSE, LOSE, WIN (1-6)

We played one game on the "Easy" level, which we defeated without breaking a sweat. Then we tried "Heroic" level. The levels are determined by the frequency you will draw an "Epidemic" card. At the easiest level, there are 4 interspersed throughout the deck, so you have a good amount of time to take care of breakouts before the next
epidemic hits.

However, at the heroic level, you get an epidemic 6 times in the deck -- with 3 players that one epidemic for every two times around the table, on average. And let me tell you, at that level the game really, really kicked our butts.

After two nights of playing and seven total games, we finally did it.

Heroic level definitely takes a lot of good luck.

First off, you need the opening layout to be in your favor, not having too many major outbreaks far away from your starting position.

Then, for the roles, you need someone to be the Medic. It sure doesn't hurt to have the Dispatcher as well. Brandon felt you needed the Operations Expert, while I felt any of the other three cards were somewhat similar (although Operations Expert DOES help you move around the world faster, which is a necessity on the heroic level). Still, it was with the Medic, Operations Expert, and Dispatcher that we finally won the game (the only time we had that combo).

You also need a generous interval between when the epidemics hit. With the way you place the epidemic cards in the deck, it's possible to get two drawn after going around the table once. That also means that you will then have a few turns around with nothing happening. If this happens early in the game, you can survive it, but things start spreading out of control. If you can wait for this to happen until you have cured a few things, your odds for it hurting you as much go way, way down.

In conjunction with that, you really have to play all of the special cards that are in the deck, which allow you to in some way manipulate the cities that are going to be infected. Although when to use these was sometimes a difficult choice.

I should mention that there was much rejoicing when we finally won on our seventh try. We'll see if it takes us seven more times to beat the game again.

Game Night Report -- 9/1/08 and 9/29/08 (Agricola)

2008-10-21T13:40:00.001-07:00

(Photo from boardgamegeek.com)

Several weeks ago we finally got around to playing the "next big thing" in the board game world -- Agricola. We've now played two 3-player games, but both are several weeks behind me now, so I'd like to get a more recent game played before I put down my final, full review on it.

Initial thoughts -- no way is this the greatest game of all time (as it currently rates on BoardGameGeek). I can see why it is so highly rated -- it is a game that allows you to choose from a multitude of strategies and card options each time you play and in that sense you always feel like you have something to do and are always having some fun. The winner is never too obvious, either, so you don't feel like you are out of the game. Thus, there isn't a definitive strategy or set style of play that will allow you to win each and every time.

And while you would think that would bring replayability, I'm not yet convinced of that fact.

The main issues -- the initial card draw (this is fixable quite easily), the lack of any deep strategy (it feels like a heavy game with all the pieces and cards, but lacks the depth of a supposed heavy game), and the lack of significant interactions with the other players. I have no issue with games that are multi-player solitaire, but at this time I can't quite find a reason why Agricola is better than Goa (to compare it to a game that also runs into the "multi-player solitaire" issue) or other heavy games like El Grande and Tigris & Euphrates.

(Interestingly, Agricola rates as a "heavier" game than any of the aforementioned gamed on BGG. Not sure I can agree with that, especially when compared to a brain-burner like Tigris & Euphrates. I'm guessing that many people have different definitions of game weight and that is causing this for the most part).

So, as it stands, I'd rate this as a 7 out of 10. Not a bad score, but outside of my top 10 games. And it has big time competition seeing as it arrived in the same batch of games as Power Grid (which I just gave an 8 rating to and can easily see moving up) and Pandemic (which I'm extremely surprised about and will talk about in my next post).

Game Night Results:

9/1/08
Kevin wins
Troy second
Brandon third

I lost the score sheet for the first game we played, but Kevin did win and I don't seem to remember us misplaying any rules (or did we?). He had plenty of cards played that led to him getting a huge amount of bonus points. I also remember Brandon and I wasting lots of time trying to upgrade our houses, which did very little to help our overall scores.

9/29/08
Brandon -- 47
Troy -- 38
Kevin -- 34

I guess I said earlier that in Agricola you never felt like you were totally out of the game. Maybe I should change that thought, since Brandon really ran away with this one, mostly from being able to upgrade easily to a five-room stone house, plus having a good number of bonus points in his hand. We did finally do some farming and harvesting in this game, but due to certain cards we all had, there was never any difficult choices in regards to feeding our family. A fun time, but nothing that made me clamor to play again (we've since moved on to Power Grid and Pandemic, as I mentioned earlier).

Game Night Day Report -- 10/18/08 (Power Grid)

2008-10-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

(Photos from boardgamegeek.com)

The last few weeks of gaming has seen our group try two new games -- Power Grid and Agricola.

Power Grid is a game our group has been wanting to try out for sometime. It's designed by Friedemann Friese and was distributed in the States by Rio Grande Games.

Instead of explaining how the game is played (which tends to make me not want to write these posts), I'll point you to this post at BoardGameGeek where you can see a very well written overview of the game play.

Greg Berry's overview (and review) of Power Grid

Basically, there are three stages of the game -- bidding on power plants, buying resources, and building cities. Each of these stages goes hand in hand with one another. You must have big enough power plants to power your cities, must have enough resources to power your cities, and you must have enough cities to take advantage of your power plants and resources.

It took us until our third game to actually get the rules correct (we made the mistake of first, not removing the low numbered power plants for the entire game, and then second, not putting out six power plants in the third step of the game). Finally, on that third try we played by all the rules correctly and it turned out to be a fairly tight game.

Some thoughts from our 3 games...

The last turn of every game we've played so far has seemed fairly obvious in its outcome. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion who the winner was going to be and there wasn't anything that would stop them. This could turn out to be a problem in future games. Part of this may have simply been due to our relative inexperience, as in each game we all saw obvious bone-headed moves we each made. I think a few more games should bring things to a tighter and closer end-game that removes the "runaway leader" issue.
The outlay of power plants tends to lead to a quick paced early game, followed by a sluggish middle game, where everyone is simply waiting for one of the decent upgrades. I have read that the expansion set of power plant cards may fix this issue, so after a few more games I might look into that.
Four players seems to be the sweet spot with this game (although five would probably be fun if we could ever get five players). I don't have high expectations on how this game will play with three, but I see that BGG does say it is reccomended with three, so who knows.
One interesting thing is that if you are the leader in cities in the game, then you actually are penalized in terms of having to pick the first plant to bid on and then be the last person to buy resources and place your cities. I thought that this was a nice way to allow the people behind to catch the leader. It didn't seem to have a huge effect at games end, though, since the person in the lead usually had enough money to do whatever they wanted. Perhaps we needed to be bidding up the prices of the plants a lot higher than we had been.
The luck factor only comes into play during the turn of the cards for the power plants. In a way, it's kind of a "press your luck" style though, since you can easily see the next four cards that are going to be possibly available for auction. Again, this does give a decided benefit for the person who gets to bid last, so getting yourself in that position can definitely be advantageous. I find this quite similar to the draw mechanism in Ra, if you wait things out and let everyone else bid, you do have a good chance to pick up something on the cheap.
Another very important thing to figure out is exactly where on the board you start. Initial placement is a crucial factor in being able to easily and cheaply expand your network of cities across the board.
Some strategies seem entirely superfulous. Garbage and nuclear power were never really needed by the person who ultimately won -- coal and oil were all you seemingly needed. I've read that the expansion deck and expansion boards help to remedy some of these situations, so there's another reason for me to look into those. Also, while the resources for coal are supposed to dwindle in the third step of the game, it's so far not been an issue and not really stopped the winner from having at least one or two coal plants (Maybe this is a failure of the fellow players to buy up all the coal?).
Although this never happened in our games -- I've read of what's called the "Step 2 stall." Basically, this is where no player will initiate step two of the game until they have a capacity of 17 in their power plants. I can't comment on this until it happens in our group (we don't have a patient group, so it may never happen), but it would definitely drop the fun factor of the game. Again, the expansion power plant deck is supposed to remedy this, so it may never be an issue anyways.

So how do I score the game overall?

First off, the game is currently ranked as the #2 all-time game on BGG, so it had lofty expectations coming in (see the Agricola review for another game with similar lofty expectations). However, on the limited plays so far, I can't quite put it up in the realm of my personal greatest games -- it's missing something, however little, that makes me want to play it all the time.

Therefore, for now, I have to slot it just outside of my top-10. It's definitely a good game, with a good amount of strategy, player interaction and replayability, so far. It also strikes a good balance amongst the different game mechanisms it employs (auction, expansion, resource management). I'd definitely play without having to have my arm twisted. With all that in mind, my final rating is an 8 out of 10.

Final Rating -- 8 out of 10
(For anyone interested, here are the links to the expansions -- Brandon and Kevin in particular, take a look at these and see if they would interest you)
Power Plant Deck 2
Italy/France maps
Benelux/Central Europe maps
Korea/China maps

Game Night Results:

Troy -- 17 cities powered
Brandon -- 16 cities powered
Kevin -- 15 cities powered
Chris -- 14 cities powered

We played this game with the Germany map.

Well, I suppose I should mention that there WERE two other games before this, but they both get the "asterisk" next to them, since neither time did we play by the exact rules of the game. When we finally did play by the official rules, well, look who won!

The keys to defeat/victory in this game? First off, I was able to get a decent starting spot on the map for my first two cities. That, coupled with the fact that Chris didn't try to block me off, gave me a great starting position along the western side of the country. That allowed me to quickly make more money the the other three players and expand at a quicker rate than the other players. I'd say by about the time I had 12 cities on the board it was near impossible for anyone to catch me.

One other lesson learned, by Brandon in this case, is don't upgrade your plants too early to the high end ones. In his case he bid on a nuclear plant while he only had two cities on the board. The money he spent there did not allow him to expand his network, thus he never really got to use that power plant. This probably illustrates the delicate balance you have to take throughout the game better than anything else.

Chris, on the other hand, got behind by falling too far behind too early and then getting block in the section of the board he was in, therefore never being able to expand. I'm not sure what Kevin did or didn't do to end up where he did -- perhaps he just didn't get the high-end power plants until too late?

(I'll note here at the end that Chris and Brandon won the two "asterisked" games)

Game Night Report -- 7/29/08 (Goa and Ra)

2008-08-08T14:48:00.001-07:00

(Photo from boardgamegeek.com)

Goa, by Rudiger Dorn, was the first game played on this night. Goa is the rare game that plays well with either 2, 3, or 4-players. For this game, there were three of us.

In a tight battle to the very end, I was able to beat Brandon by 1 point. This was despite my 3 or 4 "extra action" advantage throughout the game. One key I've now learned with this game is that in order to be the most efficient you MUST get a mix of different spices as early as possible and also get as many free ones as you can. Otherwise, you are wasting actions to generate a mix of spices you may not be able to use. Case in point -- Brandon had a little bit of everything on his set of spices, I had cinnamon and garlic and not much else available. It made me have to work harder to move down on my development board.

Also -- this is a game where it is very hard to come back in the late rounds, as by that point there is a sense of things being set into place and not a lot of strategic options,which I think I mentioned in the last post on Goa. Also mentioned, but something which bears repeating, is the fact that you can't do a lot to stop anyone else from doing something, which leads to a feeling of just playing a game all by yourself. You could not even pay attention to what anyone else does and it wouldn't make a difference in what you do. It's the major downfall of the game, in my opinion.

Anyways, I won, so yay for me:

Troy - 43
Brandon - 42
Kevin - 36

Weekly Ra results (seriously, we love this game). Kevin dominated for the second time in the last three plays of Ra, going the monument route to destroy me and Brandon. This game was over in the second round. It appears that Kevin didn't break his own record of 65 from a few months back, though. Although that was in a 4-player game, so this is the 3-player record.

Kevin - 63
Troy - 38
Brandon - 37

Game Night Report -- 7/15/08 (Beowulf and Ra)

2008-07-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

(Photo from boardgamegeek.com)

Tonights gaming started off with two games of Reiner Knizia's Beowulf (board seen above). I'll reiterate as I did when I suggested we play the game -- it has nothing to do with the stupid movie and does not involve any Ray Winstone or Angelina Jolie. However when you win the game you do have to declare "I - AM - BEOWULF!"

There were four of us playing (I've yet to play the game with five, which would seem to be the most optimal way to play) and it went pretty well, definitely more strategic than with three (my brother, my dad, and myself played it a few weeks prior).

Since I'm writing this so long after the fact, I can't really remember the details of the two games, but the scores were like so:

Game 1:
Brandon - 40
Kevin - 30
Troy - 18
Chris - 11

Game 2:
Troy - 31
Chris - 22
Brandon - 18
Kevin - 10

All I really recall from the first game is that Brandon pretty easily dominated and we all knew it as the game progressed. I can't remember any specific strategy flaw by the rest of us that may have led to this or if he did anything specific other than just win all the auctions.

The second game went almost exactly the opposite in order from the first, so we all had a chance to be good/suck. Perhaps this game has staying power due to the strategy in the auctions mixed with all the luck elements that are thrown throughout, thereby never making the game play the same twice. It seems to be a under appreciated game on BoardGameGeek, perhaps due to a feeling that it is a movie tie-in?

We then did the weekly ritual of playing a game of Ra. In a miraculous turn of events, I was able to get the greatest run of consecutive tiles ever, with only myself bidding (or something like that, it's been a month so the details are sketchy) and come back to actually beat Brandon, who had a fairly good lead on everyone at one point.

Final scores:

Troy - 45
Brandon - 40
Kevin - 23
Chris - 14

Family vacation gaming

2008-06-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

It was family vacation weekend -- my parents were nice enough to rent a place in Sun River and let Tricia and myself, along with Kevin and Tieryn, to tag along. So, of course, we got in plenty of games (well, Kevin, my Dad, and myself -- the females in the house went with the reading, relaxing, and spa route).

Also -- it was nice to get my Dad involved in a couple of the games, since there are only so many 2-player games you can play before you get bored with them. So thanks Dad.

Here is what we played and the results.

Race for the Galaxy
We played three 2-player games and two 3-player games. I don't remember much specific about them, except that Kevin and I have a new favorite 6-point development (the one that give you a point per military power).

Game 1
Troy - 38
Kevin - 27

Game 2
Kevin - 34 (wins tiebreaker)
Troy - 34

Game 3
Troy - 47
Kevin - 22
George - 21

Game 4
Troy - 30
George -25
Kevin - 23

Game 5
Troy - 52
Kevin 39

Blue Moon
Kevin and I had stated we would play tons of Blue Moon over the weekend. We played twice. We did try to play a third game of it, but we were watching the Stone Cold Steve Austin DVD, so how could we possibly pay attention to the game!

I did prove that if I play the Aqua I can dominate Kevin. Although he did get close in the first game.

Game 1
Troy (Aqua) - 1
Kevin (Vulca) - 0

Game 2
Troy (Flit) - 3
Kevin (Vulca) - 0

To Court the King
We got my Dad to play this game as well. He seemed to enjoy it. Nothing special to note other than the fact that if someone gets 10 dice, they will win. Period.

Kevin - 10 sixes
Troy - 8 sixes
George - 7 ones

Beowulf
Finally, we played a game that was new for everyone, Reiner Knizia's Beowulf. As with all Knizia games, it incredibly balanced, makes you have to make difficult choices, yet it still has an elegant simplicity to it. I'm always fascinated at how he comes up with these things. I'll save a review on this for next week, since we are going to be playing it tonight at game night, but I enjoyed it a ton.

Game 1
Kevin - 32
Troy - 24
George - 23

Game 2
Troy - 29
Kevin - 28
George - 3 (is that right?)

Game Night Report -- 6/10/08 (El Grande and Ra)

2008-06-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

(Photo from boardgamegeek.com)

Quick game report from last week.

First off, we had five for the first time in a while, so we decided to go with a game of El Grande.

We played with the expansion cards (the way the designer intended) and had a lot of fun with those. We did notice that several of the cards lent to us having 9-12 caballeros EACH in the castille at the end of each scoring round. In future games we might want to limit that by removing the cards that do that, although we did seem to kind of enjoy that aspect of the game.

On another note, I'm getting closer and closer to believing that 5-player El Grande is the only way to get a fully satisfying experience from the game. It tends to keep things much more even (if not a lot more chaotic).

As for the game itself, here were the results:
Troy - 86
Chris - 86
Brandon - 80
Kyle - 75
Kevin - 64

Although Brandon made a nice late run, it wasn't enough to overcome an early game deficit. I think Chris, Kyle, and myself were neck and neck for most of the game. Kevin actually got to the point where ALL of his caballeros were in one region, never a good place to be 2/3 in to the game.

After that, Kyle left (although he claimed to want to play "the airplane game") and the remaining four of us played a quick game of Ra. And we were totally and thoroughly dominated by Kevin, who pretty much had every monument bonus possible.

Final scores:
Kevin - 65
Troy - 50
Chris - 37
Brandon - 35

Yes, you read that correctly. Brandon got last place. The rest of us need to savor that for a bit, because it doesn't happen often. Fortunately there are games like Ra and Race for the Galaxy that even the odds a bit for the non-Brandon people.

Memorial Day Weekend Gaming

2008-06-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to post to state that there were games played over Memorial Day weekend. However, I just noticed that nowhere did I write down the results of those games. Off the top of my head, we played several games of both Ra and Race for the Galaxy, plus a game of Modern Art, and a two-player game of Goa (anything I missed).

It was nice to get JP involved in the gaming -- welcome to the club.

We'll chalk all the games up as good practice and continue with the official scoring with tonight's Game Night.

Here is picture proof that we played games -- an obviously intense game of Race for the Galaxy:

Game Night Report -- 5/13/07 (Race for the Galaxy and Blue Moon)

2008-05-27T14:54:00.001-07:00

It was two-player game night three weeks back, since Brandon and Kyle were unavailable. Therefore it was down to brother versus brother. So, while watching WWE 24/7 and Baywatch (two very exciting episodes) we proceeded to play several games of Race for the Galaxy and Blue Moon. Here are the results...

(Images courtesy of boardgamegeek)

Race For The Galaxy

Game 1:
Troy -- 45
Kevin -- 32

Game 2:
Kevin -- 50
Troy -- 37

Both games were won quite handily by the person who started with New Sparta and went the military route. In the first game, I had 22 VP's from the card values and two 6-cost cards that were worth 13 and 10 VP's each, respectively. In the second game, I was able to use Galactic Trendsetters to get 27 VP chips, but Kevin was able to get 36 VP from just the cards he had laid down
(mostly Alien and a couple Rebel) and had a 14 point 6-cost card (Alien).

Future games of this over Memorial Day weekend are starting to show a good (but by no means unbeatable) strategy to the military route.

Blue Moon

Game 1: Troy (Mimix) TIED Kevin (Flit)

Game 2: Troy (Aqua) 4, Kevin (Pillar) 0

Game 3: Troy (Aqua) 4, Kevin (Khind) 0

Game 4: Troy (Aqua) 4, Kevin (Flit) 0

Game 5: Troy (Aqua) 4, Kevin (Flit) 0

As can be seen, I latched on to the Aqua in our last few games and won going away in all of them (much to Kevin's frustration). This seemed somewhat odd to me, since I don't remember Aqua being all that dominant when I've played against the AI in the computer version of the game.

Still, Kevin claims he has found a way to beat my dominant Aqua and the Giant Kraken, Kelp Leech, and Briny Behemoth. I say it will not happen...but we'll find out for sure in 2 weeks time.

Game Night Report -- 5/6/08 (Ra)

2008-05-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

(Images taken from BoardGameGeek)

In addition to Goa, we also played another game of Ra, seeing as I only have so many 3-player games for us to play.

The final results were:

Brandon -- 47
Kevin -- 38
Troy -- 35

Strangely enough, each of us had a set of 7 different monuments to end the game. So the point differential had nothing to do with monuments like it has in our last few games.

The major causes for the score were:

Brandon had the pharaoh lead each round (a recurring theme as to whom the winner is in 3-player games for us).
Kevin was able to snag a Nile in the last round, which gave him an additional 8 points. Brandon and I were unable to find do the same (not that Brandon needed it).
Another odd occurrence -- we were all separated in endgame sun values by 1-point each. That WAS enough for me to go from 2nd to 3rd place. Lame.

So Brandon wins yet again. I can guarantee that he will NOT win the next time (entirely due to the fact he won't be there).

Game Night Report -- 5/6/08 (Goa)

2008-05-10T18:07:00.001-07:00

(All images courtesy BoardGameGeek)

Well, it's about time to actually review the games that were played. We'll start this time out by reviewing Goa.

Goa is designed by Rüdiger Dorn and was originally published by Hans im Glück, with the English version coming out via Rio Grande Games. It was released in 2004. Dorn is known for another popular auction-based game, Traders of Genoa (see our past game report). Goa is also strikingly similar in style to both Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence, but more on that later. For now, let's begin with an overview of the gameplay.

A game of Goa breaks down like this:
1 game consists of 2 phases (named A and B). Each phase consists of 4 rounds. In each round you will perform one auction and then each player gets three actions.

As you can see on the board shown above, there are 25 tiles placed down at the beginning of each phase. During each auction round the starting player places the "flag" counter on an empty space and puts a token matching his color on it (with a "1" on the token). Then in clockwise order, players place a token of their color on an adjacent tile on the board. When the turn gets back to the starting player, they place the last token on the board and the auctioning begins. There can be a lot of strategy in the placement of the flag and subsequent tokens in making sure you both get what you want to bid on and are able to auction off something that gets you a lot of money.

The tiles (and the flag) that had a colored token placed on them are auctioned off in order, with the owner of the colored token being the auctioneer. The auction is done in a simple, yet tense, once-around method, with the auctioneer getting the chance to bid last. The high bidder pays the auctioneer, unless the auctioneer wins, in which case he would pay the bank.

The tiles represent a multitude of things that help you throughout the game. These include, among other things, plantations (which you populate with spices), boats, colonists, and extra actions. The flag that was auctioned off give the player who got it the ability to start the auctions next round and a free action card.

Next, during the action phase, each player is allowed 3 actions, taken one at a time, in turn-order. They include:

Make progress on your Development Board. Each of the other six actions you can perform correspond to the progress you have made on your Development Board. The further you progress on the board will also get you victory points at games end.

You are able to make progress on the Board by delivering the spices specified on the board. Along with these spices, you must include the equivalent amount of "ship" cards.

For the following actions, the amount of the item you take is based upon the level on your Development Board:
Build ships. In this action you take "ship" cards equal to your status on the Development Board.
Harvest. You take the number of spices equal to your level on the Development Board. These spices are placed on a player's plantations or colonies.
Taxes. Take the amount of ducats (aka money) that is specified on the Development Board.
Expedition Cards. You can draw the specific amount of cards, up to the specified hand limit. These cards come in handy throughout the game at giving you free ships, colonists, and giving you shortcuts to making progress on the Development Board. They also can be put in to groups at the end of the game for victory points.
Colonize. There are four colonies that a player can choose to try for. They have values of 6,8,10,12. Those values correspond to how many colonists you must have in order to collect that colony for your own.

You first choose which colony you are going to attempt to colonize. Then, the total amount of your colonists is taken from the following:

1) two expedition cards are flipped face-up. Each will have 1 to 3 colonists on it and are added to the total.
2) the number of colonists on your Development Board.
3) the number of colonist cards you have in your hand.

If those 3 things are equal or greater than the number of colonists you needed, you take the colony and the corresponding spices. Colonies are also worth victory points at the end of the game.

At the end of 3 actions per player, anyone with an extra action card can use it. Then, another auction round begins with the "flag" player.

After four rounds of this, the board is cleared and a new set of tiles is placed on the board. 4 more rounds are played, exactly as before, and then the game ends.

The player with the most victory points wins. In addition to colonies and progress on the Development Board, victory points are also awarded via different tiles, for most money, and for groups of expedition cards (if they have similar symbols on them).

Thoughts on the game

As I mentioned before, Goa is a game in the vein of Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence. That is, it contains several different mechanisms that mesh together to form the complete game. Each of those mechanism is also pretty equally weighted throughout the game, so that you have to be able to balance your success in several areas in order to win the game. Go too long without ships and you won't be able to advance on your development board. Same goes for when you fail to diversify your spice plantations/colonies -- you are going to get left behind. That's one nice aspect of the game -- it rewards good planning.

That's also the most difficult part of the game -- determining which strategy is best in order to win. Which parts of the development board do you try to move down the fastest and which do you wait on? Will you take a risk and go for a colony even though you might not get it (wasted turns there are hard to take)? Should you overbid to get that one spice you need for the next round? Are you willing to take gamble on an expedition card and hope that it gives you something you need? All of these things need to be taken in to account throughout the game and that keeps it a fun and tense experience.

Any game that has actions involved in it must strike a balance between the player easily being able to do everything in one turn and the player having a feeling that no matter what they do they cannot get anything done in one turn. A good example of this is Tigris and Euphrates. Goa also handles this well, striking that balance between the two extremes with three actions per turn. Theoretically, you could move down one level on the development board almost every round (action 1: take ships, action 2: take spices, action 3: move down one level). The extra action cards also come in as very valuable commodities due to the limited turns that are available. Especially at the end of the game, these are highly sought after.

Since Dorn also made Traders of Genoa, you can kind of see Goa as a meshing of Puerto Rico/Princes of Florence and Traders (although it's a very dialed down version of Traders). Unlike Traders, though, where all the auctions are wide open, in Goa you only go once around the table. This makes it imperative that you bid well -- both to make sure you set the right price so no one will go above you and, assuming you don't want the card, to set a high enough price where the people after you don't get it too cheaply. In addition to bidding well, you must also try to get some of the more valuable tiles on the board. Specifically, the cards that give you ships/money/spices on each turn, as well as anything that gives you an extra action can all be extremely influential in determining the winner.

It also incorporates the one bad aspect of Princes of Florence -- the action phases feel like multi-player solitaire. There really isn't any interaction at that point. The auction phase helps to remedy this, but to some this may be a significant flaw in the game.

(On a side note -- I feel that the multi-player solitaire isn't such a big deal, since often, as in Puerto Rico, the alternative is the "player-order" problem. That is, things are very dependent on what the person before and after you does and if someone is of uneven gaming ability, it can heavily skew the game. So, I'll gladly deal with multi-player solitaire, since it doesn't lessen the fun of the game for me, whereas I get frustrated quite often in PR.)

Another drawback that I've seen expressed is the randomness of the expedition cards, since they can offer up plenty of points at game end. As long as you play by the correct rules on this (there was a time where the English rules were incorrect) I don't really see this as a problem since it's very difficult to accumulate a massive amount of expedition cards anyways. As for the use of the expedition cards in the game -- yes, they are powerful and you will need to get a couple here and there to have a good chance to win (moving down the development board without having to use ships or spices can be very useful at certain times in the game).

Both games I have played had a runaway leader and near the end of the game it becomes difficult to catch up to that person. As the game goes on your power grows and there isn't really anything to stop a player in the lead and bring them back to the pack, since your moves don't directly effect them. This aspect of the game has never affected the fun I've had playing -- but some may find it a detriment.

I've now played the game with 3-players, as well as 4-players. It was great with four, but I was shocked as to how great it was with three. I thought the auction phase would be kind of silly with 3-players, but it was extremely tense. We spent several minutes trying to come up with that perfect price that no one after us would outbid. I'm actually very interested to try this with two now, since games of this type/size are usually not very good with 2-players, yet Goa seems like it might just work.

Final Rating -- 8 out of 10

Game Night Results:
Brandon -- 51
Kevin -- 40
Troy -- 39

The breakdown for each player was like this:
Brandon

Development board (36 points)
Colonies/plantations (11 points)
Expedition cards (4 points)

Kevin

Development board (21 points)
Colonies/plantatinos (11 points)
Bonus point tiles (7 points)
Expedition cards (1 point)

Troy

Development board (22 points)
Expedition cards (11 points)
Colonies/plantations (3 points)
Most money (3 points)

Brandon wins again. *sigh* He did so pretty convincingly by moving down the development board much more than Kevin or I were able to. Why was he able to do this? Two reason I saw -- first, he was able to get 1 ship per turn very early in the game. So very often he didn't have to select the ship building action. He also had two expedition cards that allowed him to move down on the development board without ships, on one turn, and without spices, on another.

Kevin wisely purchased both bonus point tiles that came up, which gave him a good amount of points at game end (we weren't sure how these would play out when we were bidding on them). He, like Brandon, colonized early and often to get the bonus points there. During that time, I was going the expedition card route. While it helped that I had 4-of-a-kind at the end, my inability to build any colonies killed me. To those who say the expedition card route is the way to go (as I've read many places)...well phooey.

As I mentioned in the review, once Brandon got out to a large, obvious lead in round 6 or so, there was really nothing Kevin or I could do to stop him. That may be the one flaw in the game that bothers me most. Still, the game is fun and exciting to me and I look forward to playing this again.

2 weeks, 5 games (4/22 and 4/29 -- To Court the King, Race for the Galaxy, Amun-Re, Die Handler, and Wings of War)

2008-05-06T18:10:00.001-07:00

Lots of games played over the last two weeks. I'm still hoping to get back to full reviews at some point, catch up on sessions from before the blog was in existence, and also to unveil some sort of player ranking system for the four of us (Troy, Brandon, Kyle, and Kevin, if you don't already know).

But for now, the last two weeks with a couple of comments thrown in.

(As always, images courtesy of boardgamegeek)

4/22/08

To Court the King

Brandon -- 10 6's
Troy -- 7 6's (first tie-breaker)
Kevin -- 7 6's (second tie-breaker)
Kyle -- 7 6's (third tie-breaker)

To Court the King is basically Yahtzee with more dice and cards that allow you to alter your dice rolls in different manners. The final round is a roll-off amongst all the players to try to get the most dice of one number. As you can see, Brandon destroyed us by getting 10 6's. The rest of us were all rolling 1-3 less dice than he was and he held all the cards to allow him an easy victory.

Race for the Galaxy

Brandon -- 30
Kyle -- 26 (won 2nd place tie-breaker)
Troy -- 26 (lost tie-breaker)
Kevin -- 21

Race for the Galaxy (RftG) comes out again after much debate over the merits of the game. For me (and Kevin will back me up) it is a top-tier game and about as much fun as any card game out there. Brandon disagrees with that sentiment and Kyle, in his own words, claims to not quite understand how to formulate a strategy for the game. Another part of the issue may be burn-out from playing this 6 or 7 times over the span of two weeks.

A comparison for this game is San Juan, since they are based upon the same game "engine" (for lack of a better term) and RftG is pretty much just a "advanced" version of San Juan. San Juan, while a great card game in its simplicity, had come to the point where the winner was the person who:

1) got to 12 buildings first (regardless of their cost)
and
2) got the guild hall built before the end of the game.

RftG can have some of #1 come in to play (that is how Brandon won this game, for instance), but it also opens up plenty of other ways to win that are not found in San Juan. No single 6-value card is dominant. Different combos can come in to play each game, so if you try for the same combo every game, you may be sorely disappointed. Yes, there is randomness and you can get screwed over by the cards, but, for me, at least, that's going to be an issue with ANY card game. Once I can get that through to Brandon (and it WILL happen), he'll come to see it as a great game and there will once again be peace in the world.

(Side note: I sometimes wonder if Brandon would be happier playing chess or go, since ALL the luck is taken away. When he reads this he can comment on if that is the case or not. I think the two of us just sometimes have different views on what makes a fun or fulfilling game.)

Back to the game on this night. Brandon shot out to an early lead by building fast. He did this by pretty much choosing to "explore" on every turn and leaching off the rest of us trying to build. Kyle had a good outlay of cards and was producing a large amount, but couldn't seem to get good value on his colonies. Kevin seemed to keep waiting and waiting for something (I don't remember) and I was trying the VP route for the win, but it came too late -- Brandon was FAST at getting those cards out there. One more turn and I could have done it...oh, well.

Amun-Re (previous review)

Troy -- 42
Kyle -- 41
Kevin -- 35
Brandon -- 26

And with this game of Amun-Re, history was made. Yes, Brandon came in last place. He'll admit to having made 1 or 2 really stupid plays (of which he kept reminding the rest of us) and although it didn't throw the game to any one person, it did take him completely out. (I had it happen in El Grande several weeks back, but I don't have the excuse of it being the third game in one night, like Brandon does here).

Sadly (for me) that was the overriding story of the night, not my amazing come from behind victory. Kyle was able to get himself out to a huge lead and he had a ton of money in the second round -- until the rest of us tried to screw him over during the last sacrifice to Amun-Re (and succeeded). At that point I was able to muster up enough money (and some very beneficial card draws) in the very last round to overtake him by a single point.

I should point out that my estimation of this game has gone up since the first night we played. I played a couple of games online, learned the correct rules (we screwed up by playing cards during ANY round and allowing you to play as many as you wanted...makes a big difference), and now I think this game easily goes from a 6 to an 8, with a 9 being a possibility in the future. I'll need to adjust that. I KNEW Reiner wouldn't let us down so much!

4/29/08

Die Handler

Brandon -- 800 "prestige"
Troy -- 800 (lost tie-breaker w/ less money)
Kyle -- 600
Kevin -- 100

Our second game of Die Handler and it played much, much better with 4 than it did with 3. The score is somewhat misleading -- Brandon dominated this game. However, he forgot to save up any money near the end of the game and couldn't pay upkeep to stay at his spot on the board. That brought him down to the same level as Kyle and myself. However, he was able to generate plenty in the next turn and bought two more levels (as did I) and was left with enough money to win the tie-breaker.

The game had a lot more of the "screw your neighbor" aspect to it than our first, somewhat boring 3-player game of it did. With 4-players I think I can upgrade this a point on the rating scale. It still doesn't blow me away, but it's not a bad negotiation game.

Also -- Brandon is too good at money games and it makes me angry.

Wings of War - The Dawn of World War II

We decided to give this a try with just the basic rules. I made a mistake and looked at the nationalities wrong -- therefore, Germany (me) and the UK (Brandon) joined forces, as well as France (Kevin) and Italy (Kyle) joining forces. So this was an extremely ahistorical battle...

It started with my plane catching on fire and soon enough being destroyed in midair. That happened within the first 8 or 9 turns, so I was a spectator for most of the game. Brandon then managed to set Kevin's plane on fire, which eventually led to him drawing an "explosion" tile and blowing up. During the battle, Brandon had engine troubles and could not perform any high-speed maneuvers. This eventually led to Kyle shooting him out of the sky and finishing as the winner.

That all looks very funny when it's typed up.

Not sure how this one is "scored," but I'll declare Kyle the winner, with Brandon, Kevin, and myself following, in that order.

Time to Play the Game

2008-04-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I've moved all the gaming stuff from my other blog over to here.

Yes, the name of the blog is related to wrestling. Yes, I understand how lame that is. I don't care. It's funny to me and Kevin, so therefore, it's funny.

I'm behind about two weeks worth of results and have 4 or 5 reviews to get done. That shall all be forthcoming.

Game Night Report -- 4/8/08 (Traders of Genoa) and 4/15/08 (El Grande)

2008-04-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

Things are busy for me (more on that in my next post), but I wanted to be sure to throw the results from the last two weeks of gaming up.

In the last two weeks we had time to play two of our all-time favorites, Traders of Genoa and El Grande. This would be the first time we've played either in at least two years (these were two of my first euro-game purchases ever). With these two games now played, we've gone through all of the old classics that I own in our latest iteration of "game night."

I'll do a full review on both games at some point (because if there is one thing I hear everyone wants, it's more game reviews...), but for now...the results.

Traders of Genoa

Game Night Results:

Brandon -- 750,000 ducats
Troy -- 730,000 ducats
Kyle -- 640,000 ducats
Kevin -- 500,000 ducats

This one came down to the last turn, as Brandon was able to deliver a large order AND a message to have just enough money to defeat me. I probably made a mistake in not getting more money from Kevin and Kyle on my last two turns, as I killed the movement of the tower after I made my own move, in both cases. Definitely one of the more exciting games since we've started (at least for Brandon and myself...not sure how Kevin and Kyle felt).

El Grande

Game Night Results:

Game 1:
Kyle -- 109
Kevin -- 109
Brandon -- 102
Troy -- 74

The only thing I can be certain about for this game was that I sucked. Horribly. Beyond that it was a fun game to participate in, none the less, as each of Kyle, Kevin, and Brandon succeeded at dominating one scoring round each. My notes say it was Kevin early, Kyle in the middle portion, and Brandon in the last round (and Troy, never).

Kevin was able to get out to an early lead due to Brandon and myself giving him a boatload of points in two special scorings. However, the "screw the leader" factor came in to play, allowing both Kyle and Brandon to get back in it and making it difficult for Kevin to rack up points later in the game. In the end, it came down to the placement of the caballeros in the castillo in the final scoring round (or did it...this game has so many fluctuations in points I don't think I can say that for sure) that lead to the final scoring. The final score is a true tie, since there is no tie-breaker criteria.

I should note that we played without the expansion in this game.

Game 2:
Brandon -- 133
Troy -- 93
Kevin -- 80

Kyle had to leave, so the rest of us decided to play again, using the "Intrigue and the King" expansion. This is apparently the way the designer originally intended the game to be played. However, there is no way the designer ever intended the game to be played with three players, because the game was absolutely devoid of any tension or excitement. Maybe Brandon had some excitement with his domination of Kevin and myself, but I doubt it.

I actually think it would have been more fun with 3-players if we DIDN'T use the expansion. Lesson learned. El Grande is great with 4 and the best game ever with 5. Never shall it be played with 3 again.

Game Night Report -- 4/1/08 (Ra)

2008-04-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

Second time we've played Ra while I've been writing up these Game Night Reports (first one was here), and still I don't have it in me to write up a full review. It's my second favorite game of all time (really, it's like 1A -- but I'll save that for the review) so I want to give it the appropriate time. I did manage to put a different picture up this time, though (no that's not my table or wallpaper).

Onward with the results that will soon go in the Ultimate Gamer Algorithm to determine who is the greatest boardgame player in Salem (or something).

Game Night Results:

Kevin -- 42
Troy -- 32
Brandon -- 30
Kyle -- 28

It has finally happened for the guy -- Kevin has won a game on game night! And on his birthday! I can now let him know that we all let him win since it was his birthday...

Since the last few times we have played Ra it was with 3-players, I simply forgot how different of a game it is with four. You only bid three times per round, so you really have to maximize your opportunities.

For this game, though, that wasn't relevant since Kevin scored 15 in his first round and then sat on his lead and played defensive for the rest of the game. A good strategy for him, although his conservativeness almost came back to bite him in the last round -- if ONLY I could have gotten one flood tile :)

So, congratulations to Kevin, hopefully this is the first of many wins for him on game night.

Game Night Report -- 4/1/08 (Modern Art)

2008-04-04T13:23:00.001-07:00

Two games for this last Tuesday's game night, Modern Art and Ra. Let's start with Modern Art.

Modern Art is designed by Reiner Knizia (Traders of Genoa is next week, so it will be the first non-Knizia game in quite some time) and was originally released alllll the way back in 1992. I own the 2nd Edition German edition by Hans im Gluck (the same one pictured above). Mayfair Games has an English language edition that is back in print. Modern Art is the first of three games in the Reiner Knizia "auction trilogy" (with Ra and Medici being the others).

Other links for this -- here is a downloadable version of the game where you can play against the computer. Warning: the computer players are easily able to use expected value theory to maximize their profits, so you have to do the same to beat them (more on this at the end of my review).

On to the gameplay (which, for once, is quite short and simple).

Modern Art is 3-5 player auction game. And that is all it is -- a pure auction game. There are no other phases or mechanics to it. The object of Modern Art is to simply have the most money at the end of the game...just like real life ;)

Each player starts with a number of cards in their hand from 5 different art collections (see the picture below). On your turn you offer up one card to be auctioned off. The type of auction is determined by the symbol that is on the card. The four types of auctions are:

Open Auction -- bidding is open to everyone with the highest bid winning the card.
In the Fist -- Everyone puts an amount of money in their hand and then simultaneously shows the amount in their hands at the same time. The highest bidder takes the card.
Once Around -- Starting to the left of the person auctioning off the card, each player names their price they are willing to bid, with the seller going last and able to buy his own card.
Name a Price -- The seller names a price they are willing to accept for the card. In order, to the left of the seller, each player has a chance to buy the card for that price. If no one chooses to buy it, then the seller must buy it for that price himself.

There are also cards with "=" signs on them that can be played in addition to one of the normal cards. These cards allow you to auction off two cards at once and thus, make more money in the auction.

When the auction is finished, the player who wins pays the person who auctioned off the card the necessary amount. If the person who was auctioning the card wins the auction himself, then he pays the bank the price of the card.

This buying/selling of cards comprises the first way you can make money for yourself in the game. The second way is by selling back your purchased cards at the end of each round.

Once the fifth card of an artist is put up for bid, the round is over. All of the cards that have been bid on are added up. The artist who had 5 cards bid on gets a "30,000" marker place by their name. The second place artist gets "20,000" and the third place artist gets "10,000". You then sell each of the cards you won that round back to the bank for these amounts. The auctioned off cards are then discarded from the game, the players draw more cards (except in the fourth and final round) and you repeat the whole process over again until 5 cards of one artist have been auctioned off again.

The end round amounts are cumulative, so if an artist was worth 20,000 per card in the first round and 10,000 per card in the second round, then each card for that artist in the second round is going to be worth the sum of those -- 30,000 total.

After the fourth round, the total money for each person is totaled up and the person with the most money wins.

Thoughts on the game

First, my thoughts on this as a GAME (aka, the fun factor of it) and then I'll follow with a short bit on boring crap like game theory and maximizing expected value.

You would be led to believe that there is a luck factor in the game simply due to the fact that you have to draw cards. However, a good strategy can easily mitigate that factor (as is the case with any good card game, in my opinion). That changing of strategy is the key the victory throughout the entire game. You have to be able to either manipulate the market yourself or go with the flow of what is being bought and sold and play your cards to take advantage of where you think the market is heading. No card is on its own is more valuable than any other -- the game play entirely determines how each card is valued throughout each round.

Case in point -- a single card can be worth a ton at the end of the game, if you play things right. Since the end of round values are cumulative, you only need to get one or two of a specific artist out at the end of the 4th round to make a lot of money on it. Case in point, part 2 -- if you have already bid a significant amount on one card and need to make sure it stays in first, you need to decide if you are going to end the round and play the fifth card of an artist (which does not get sold) or try to sell something else to make money and risk your position. Case in point, the third -- what type of auction you play at certain points in the game can definitely affect the amount of money you make for that auction. Case in point -- final -- you must also make sure that other people are going to want to make a specific artist win that round. This comes from not hoarding all the cards to yourself (since then no one is going to be auctioning off those cards).

This balance of luck and strategy help to keep the game fun and not just a mathematical chore (although some basic computations can help you from overpaying too much for cards). There is also the added psychological element of trying to read the other players to determine what they might do and which artists they might be looking at putting in to play. This element helps move the game beyond purely math and into the realm of a game and is part of what gives it a fun factor that many pure auction games could easily lack.

The worst part of the game might be that one person's poor bidding can
skew the game in favor of the person who is the recipient of that
abnormally high bid. I've mentioned this in many of my reviews now because we are often playing these games for the first time with at least one player, so this can be an issue in that case. However, isn't that pretty much a general thing that will happen with any game? It's not enough to knock it down much.

The sweet spot for players looks to be four. With three you lose the tension of not knowing if the round will end before you get to play another card and with five there comes a point when you just know it's impossible for you to get to go again, taking away a bit of the excitement.

Bottom line is that this is a fun game -- high praise from me when you consider I can't win to save my life. I think that engineering is the right profession for me and not anything that involves money :)

Now for some boring stuff about game theory and the best way to play Modern Art in order to maximize your profits and win win win...I'm going to link to two threads on boardgamegeek that struck my interest in regards to this and then pull out a couple of quotes from these smarter people.

User review by Fawkes (the Strategy section of the review)
and
The Mathematics of Bidding Price by Kevin Brokish

Fawkes brings up The Prisoner's Dilemma in his review. In general terms, it's the "win-win/win-lose/lose-lose" theory (or "win-win-win" if you are Michael Scott). Applied to the game, this is how Fawkes puts it:

Modern Art is like an evolving multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma. When
a when a buyer purchases a piece from an auctioneer, he wants to make a
profit. The problem is, the auctioneer will make a profit too. How much
profit each makes is dependent on two things – how much each thinks the
painting is going to be worth at the end of the season, and how much of
an advantage the buyer is willing to cede to the auctioneer relative to
himself. It becomes a game of brinkmanship, depending on how the game
group plays. The more of an advantage a player is willing to cede to
the auctioneer, the closer he will bid to his expected value. Whatever
the final bid ends up as, that’s the profit of the auctioneer. The
buyer makes whatever the difference between the expected value and what
he paid is. The “looser” the group plays, the more of an advantage the
auctioneer gets in each auction. If a group plays “tight” then no buyer
should be willing to give the auctioneer much more than he’s getting –
ideally 50%+1 of the expected value. But people being people, and
people being naturally greedy, this never happens, and someone will be
upping the price.

So there are two skills at work here. First is
predicting the expected value of a painting with the information on the
table, in your hand, and in the words and actions of the other players.
Second is evaluating the bidding behavior of the group and maximizing
your take as an auctioneer while ceding as little as possible when
buying (the latter of course being mostly out of your control – the
best you can do is refrain from bidding up but you can’t stop others
from doing that).

Kevin boils it down even more, to a "simple" formula. See the link if you care how he comes about this, but basically, in a four player game, you want to do the following:

If you are NOT the auctioneer:

There are two options here. If the auctioneer is bidding against you, then you want to pay no more than 4/5th of the "expected value" (the value you think it will be worth at the end of the round) of the card. This is the midpoint between them getting the card cheaply and making a huge profit and them selling the card for a high amount.

If the auctioneer isn't in on the bidding and you are bidding against another player, then the auctioneer is going to get the amount they want regardless, so you want to bid as close to the expected value as you can. If you think it will be worth 10,000, then you can bid up to 9900, for instance.

If you are the auctioneer:

The most you should ever bid as the auctioneer on your own card is 4/7th of the expected value. When you go beyond that, you are eating in to your profit too much.

Of course, in all these cases, the final bidding price is entirely dependent on you being able to determine the correct expected value of the card. This simply helps to give you a general idea on when you are overbidding on something or not.

I'm wondering if knowing these theories will improve or diminish game play in the future. It might make me bid a little better, but if everyone doesn't also follow this theory, does the game fall apart at that point (the one weak player issue I mentioned above)? We'll have to see on that. Regardless, one of my favorite games...and it only takes 45 minutes to play! Yay.

Final Rating -- 9 out of 10 (Excellent game. Always want to play it.)
(Final rating scale is taken from BoardGameGeek)

Game Night Results:

Game 1:
Kyle -- $468,000
Brandon -- $438,000
Troy -- $422,000
Kevin -- $270,000

Game 2:
Brandon -- $505,000
Kevin -- $451,000
Kyle -- $440,000
Troy -- $318,000

From my memory, the first game amounted to only 3 artists being played throughout, which made their values very high in the final round. The second game was a little more even throughout, artist-wise. Brandon made a killing in just selling to the rest of us. I made a killing in bidding too much :) That's all I really have on the game...others can add comments if they wish.

Game Night Report -- 3/18/08 (Tigris and Euphrates)

2008-04-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Better late than never...here is my game night review from two-weeks ago for Tigris and Euphrates.

Tigris and Euphrates is designed by Reiner Knizia (I think this week we'll finally play a non-Knizia game). My copy is the Mayfair Games edition, which is now out-of-print.

Here is the breakdown on how the game is played...

Each player has four leader tokens in each of four colors (black, red, green, blue). These four leaders correspond to the colors of the four types of tiles that can be played in the game. Each player will have 6 tiles in their hand at the beginning of each turn (these are drawn from the bag o' tiles).

In the game, a kingdom is any grouping of connected tiles. Throughout the game these kingdoms will join and create conflicts.

On your turn you can perform two actions. Your choice of actions are:

Place a leader

In order to gain victory points throughout the game you will need to have leaders on the board. If you have a leader on the board in a kingdom and you place a tile corresponding to the color of that leader, then you will gain one victory point in that color. The black leader ("king") gets you a point in a color tile that you place (as long as another player doesn't already have that leader in the kingdom).

When you place a leader on the board it must be placed next to a red tile and it cannot be placed such that connects two kingdoms.

If the placement of the leader causes two leaders of the same color to be in a single kingdom, then there is an "internal conflict." These are resolved by doing two things -- first, you look at the red tiles adjacent to the leaders, then each player is allowed to add as many red tiles as they want from their hand. The player with the highest number (ties go to the defender) of red tiles total gets to keep his leader in the kingdom and gets one red victory point. The other player removes their leader from the board.
Place a tile

As mentioned above, if you place a tile from your hand on the board and have a leader of the same color in that kingdom, you receive one victory point of that color.

If you place the tile such that it connects two kingdoms, then there is the chance for an "external conflict". An external conflict arises if there are two leaders of the same color in the joined kingdom. For an external conflict you compare the number of the colored tiles that correspond to the conflicting leaders. As with an internal conflict, you can add more of the specific color tile from your hand to the total. With external conflicts, the winner not only gets to keep his leader in the kingdom, but all of the corresponding tiles in the losing players previous kingdom are removed from the board and the winning player gets one victory point for each removed tile.

If four tiles are placed such that they are the same color and form a square, then the player can choose to build a monument. The monument contains two colors. At the end of a players turn, if he has a leader with a color that corresponds to a monument in the kingdom, then he gets one victory point of that color.

I should also mention treasure cubes at this point. These are essentially wild-card points that can be applied to any color victory points at the end of the game. You get these treasure cubes if you control the green leader ("farmer") when two kingdoms that contain treasure are joined.
Play a catastrophe tile
A catastrophe tile removes any tile that is in the square it's played on. In the process, nothing else can every be built there again.
Swap tiles

You can discard as many tiles as you want from your hand and draw that many tiles from the bag.

Play goes on like this until one of two things happens. Either all the tiles are drawn from the bag or all but two treasures are left on the board.

The winner is then determined by the player who has the most victory points in their weakest color. So, you can't focus on just one specific color victory point and hope to win.

Thoughts on the game

As pointed out in every single recap I've done so far, I like Reiner Knizia. Lately, it seems all we play are his games. Tigris and Euphrates (henceforth, T&E) is definitely at the "heavy" end of the spectrum for Knizia games. It's also a very hard game in which to grasp a definite strategy -- this was the first time it was played by our group in several years, and it took quite some time for us to wrap our heads around what the best moves were.

There are quite a few brilliant mechanisms at play in the game. One, is the economy of actions that you have. Very often you need three actions to pull off a great play, yet you only get two, so you have to maximize your movements. The winning conditions and hidden scoring factor keeps quite a lot of tension going on throughout the game, as well. You tend to always have a feeling you need to get just one more victory point in a specific color (which is usually accurate) in order to win. The final scores are typically very tight and close due to the necessity of balance you need to have amongst your victory points.

The game also has several ways to winning, which makes it infinitely replayable. You can win via monuments or via conflicts, there really isn't a tile layout that is guaranteed to get you victory, and the tile draw factor means you can't go with the exact same strategy everytime. This factor instantly pushes the game up several notches in my rating system.

The things that kept this from being perfect are few, but relevant. The luck factor is one such issue. The game is
mostly skill based in regards to your tile/leader placement. However,
the tile draws themselves are obviously very dependent on luck and can easily make you stuck with tiles that you don't need or can't use. Another issue that seems more detrimental in T&E than in some other similar games is when a player makes a bad move they can easily screw stuff up not only for himself, but for another player (without that being his intention, per se). When a kingdom you have been a part of is demolished because another player started a conflict they had no chance of winning, you will find yourself becoming very angry at them (*coughkevincough*).

One potential problem, and one we came across by playing twice in one night, is the extreme heaviness of the game. It's quite intense and involving and, in the end, it was crying out for a nice light game of Ra or To Court The King to even it out and lighten things up. I think this may be one of the reasons it doesn't come out as often in our group, even though it's worthy of being played more frequently.

Number of players probably makes a difference on the enjoyment of this game. 3-players actually seems like the sweet spot (although many on boardgamegeek suggest that four is best). It's been a while since I've played with four, but I remember it being significantly longer and a little more chaotic. The problem with only three would probably be when two people go after each other while the other one sits back and racks up easy points. That happened a bit in one of our games.

I'll end by pointing out that in our plays of the game, one thing I heard is that the game just isn't "fun". In a way, I can see where that critique comes from. It's more like doing a puzzle than playing a typical board game. There is more work and thinking involved in your movements than is normal in many of the games we play. The fact that there are only four things you can do on your turn also makes the game simple to learn, yet, since there are so many things that can be done on your turn, it can become overwhelming ("easy to learn, hard to master" is the phrase that comes to mind). That was the other opinions, though. In my opinion -- I like doing puzzles, I find them fun. Thus, I very much enjoy Tigris and Euphrates :)

Final Rating -- 8 out of 10 (Very good game. I like to play. Probably I'll suggest it and will never turn down a game)
(Final rating scale is taken from BoardGameGeek)

Game Night Results:

(Scores are for each of the four colors of victory points. The bold number is the relevant number, since the color you have the least of is your final score)

Game 1:
Troy -- 21, 21, 20, 20
Brandon -- 16, 15, 15, 15
Kevin -- 26, 17, 10, 6

Game 2:
Troy -- 17, 17, 16, 16
Brandon -- 27, 11, 11, 11
Kevin -- 17, 13, 9, 8

The first game shows the importance of balance in order to win the game. Kevin was able to be strong in two of the four colors, but ending up with a mere six points for his lowest color. The key to winning for me was to simply sit on a couple of monuments and just soak up a point per turn in two colors. I happened to be a pretty good sized kingdom where it would have been difficult to displace me and so I was able to get about 6 or 7 consecutive turns with what were essentially free points. This then allowed me to just concentrate on adding a point or two in the other two colors from time to time.

The second game didn't go too much differently overall. I believe Brandon wasn't trying to get 27 points in one color, but just happened to due to winning a large external conflict at one point. In fact, much of this game seemed to be determined by conflicts, as we learned from the first game that you can't just let someone sit and soak up free points all by themselves. You need to attack them and try to throw a monkey wrench in to their plans.

Overall, a good night for me as I'm finally winning a game here and again after Brandon's unquestioned dominance for a while. Or maybe I'm stacking the deck by not bringing out the games that I know Brandon is better than me in...I'm not telling ;)

Next up should be this Tuesday's game night, including Modern Art (ANOTHER Knizia game) and our first 4-player game of Ra in a while. I don't know if I'll do a review of both games or not, but I will get the scores up for prosperity.

Game Night Report -- 3/11/08 (Ra)

2008-03-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

I don't have time for a full review of the second game we played on Tuesday -- Ra -- so I'm just going to put down the results of our two games for prosperity. Since this one will surely get on the table again (it's an easy 10 out of 10 rating), I'll just hold off on the review for another week.

(As a side note - you can see that Ra is my second favorite game of all-time in my "Top 10 game" widget on the sidebar. I just wanted to point out the widget to all of you).

Game Night Results:

Game 1:
Troy -- 45
Brandon -- 40
Kevin -- 32

Game 2:
Brandon -- 57
Kevin -- 56
Troy -- 35

I'll start by noting that there is no learning curve for these two games of Ra. Brandon and I have played at least 10-15 times and Kevin has about 6 games under his belt. So we are all well versed in strategy of the game here.

The first game was kind of over after I was able to get 17 points in the first round (not a simple feat) with most pharaohs and 3 different civilizations (among other things). Brandon made the comeback in later rounds with some floods, but it wasn't enough to overcome my early lead. The second round was a rarity due to the fact that Kevin (our designated tile drawer for that round) would simply NOT draw a Ra tile. It was amazing. Unfortunately, that meant that the third round was over in about 5 minutes because only Ra tiles were left in the bag. This worked out fine for me, since it didn't give anyone enough time to catch up to my lead.

The second game looked throughout like Kevin would easily win. This was mostly due to his large collection of monument tiles (31 points worth in the 3rd round alone). In fact, Brandon and I were forced to play somewhat defensively at times so that he couldn't simply collect them at will. With all that in mind, we were fairly certain when we counted up the final score that Kevin would be declared the winner (for his first time!). However, Brandon found a way to eek out the 1-point victory. Even Brandon was amazed that he won (although, he had 3 well-rounded rounds, which is always a good way to win Ra). One of the more impressive things about Brandon's victory -- in the second round, he had the 1, 2, 4, and 5 sun tiles, yet he still managed about 15 points that round.

Game Night Report -- 3/11/08 (Tower of Babel)

2008-03-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

Tuesday we got in two different games, one new (Tower of Babel), and one an all-time favorite (Ra). Let's start with the new one.

Like last week's game (Amun-Re), both games on this night were by renowned designer Reiner Knizia. The new game, Tower of Babel is published by Rio Grande Games.

Here's a picture of the game board:

And here are the discs/cards on the board:

The game works like this -- there are 8 wonders on the board and each wonder has 3 discs associated with it. Each disc has a color and a number value associated with it. The 4 different colored discs match the colors of the building cards. The players have these in their hand.

On a player's turn, they pick the disc they would like to try to build. To do this, ALL of the players must contribute enough cards of that color to match the number on the disc. This is the interesting part of the game -- you must cooperate (to a point) with other players in order to be able to build anything. Each player offers the current player a certain number of cards. The current player then decides whether to accept all or some of the other players offers, add his own cards to their offers, or to try to build all by himself.

If the builder chooses not to accept an offer from a player then the offering player gets a victory point for each card he offered.

If enough cards are placed to meet the number on the disc, the current player takes the disc in to his hand and each card that was offered and accepted in the previous stage is then converted in to a "building marker" for the appropriate player that is placed on the wonder. When the wonder is completed (all three discs on it are taken), these building markers show who contributed the most to the building of the wonder and victory points are handed out accordingly.

I should note that there is also a "trader" card that can be played anytime someone makes an offer. If the current player accepts an offer with the trader card involved, he gives the offering player the disc and instead gets to place all of the building markers the offering player would have been able to play.

The other major source of points comes from winning the discs. If you have 2,3,or 4 of the same disc, you get more victory points at the end of the game. You can also get points from playing Power Cards, which you have the chance to acquire throughout the game (more on these later). These tend to be smaller amounts of points.

That may sound confusing (it's hard to explain actually), but the rule book is 4 whole pages (with pictures), so there really isn't much to it.

Thoughts on the game

This game actually had that similar light feel to it that Amun-Re did, but it was a much better game, with a much more tactical feel to it.

The fun/difficulty of the game comes in how you balance each of the possible scoring methods (area majority vs. set collection). Do you try to collect discs and forgo getting building pieces on the board or vice versa (or, a little of each). Is it worth spending all of your cards on a disc when other offers are on the table (thus giving the other players free victory points since you didn't take their offer). Again, you have to determine when helping another player helps you more, which is always a unique way to play a game.

(I will point out here that someone has done a mathematical analysis on these trade-offs, complete with graphs, here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/200541. That's much more work than I'm willing to go in to).

Like the best of Knizia's games, each of these choices affects another, which affects yet another, so there is constant change in what is the best course of attack. Yet, this is done without feeling chaotic at all.

I also like the feel of the open-scoring, although I'm not sure if that really makes much of a difference in a game like this.

As for number of players, I can see 3 as the sweet spot for this game. With 4, more cards are being offered and it may take away some of the fun. With 5 I KNOW too many cards would be offered and it would turn chaotic. From reading around, 3 and 4 seem to be the preferred amount to play the game, with 5 only working if you make some changes to the rules.

Speaking of rules changes, the action cards that are in the game have an interesting story behind them. Apparently they were not originally in Knizia's game design and the publisher added them in later. This would make sense as they don't really feel like a beneficial addition to the game and are somewhat unbalanced in their values. Amun-Re had the same issue with the bonus cards (although Knizia's meant to have those in the game and they are a strong element to the playing of the game). I've read of some groups just playing without these cards and I think I'd give that a try on the next go-around. I will say that they didn't have a huge impact in either of our games, though.

There are also some "advanced" discs that I won't go in to detail on, but they make the game much better (we used them in our second game).

For now, this game is going to be a 7 -- although it could go up to an 8 on repeated plays. An under-rated Knizia game.

Final Rating -- 7 out of 10 (Good game, usually willing to play)
(Final rating scale is taken from BoardGameGeek)

Game Night Results:

Game 1:
Troy -- 94
Kevin -- 78
Brandon -- 67

Game 2:
Brandon -- 90
Kevin -- 85
Troy -- 85

The first game was a domination by me. Of course, Brandon attributes this to the fact that the Olson brothers colluded to make him lose. Seriously, he think we have something against him. So, how did I get all those points? Most likely I'm just that good (I had a pretty good combo of collecting discs and area control).

The second game (as is typical) was much closer, as we all learned something from the first game. In the end it came down to just 5 points. I was able to get the big 20-point set, while Kevin spread himself too thin amongst his collections. Brandon seemed to have the perfect balance between collecting sets and area control. Brandon would also like it pointed out that he was able to win WITHOUT using any action cards, just like Herr Knizia intended. He also wants my initial victory to have an asterisk next to it since I did NOT win that way.

Tomorrow, the review of the second game of the night, Ra (wherein Kevin is anointed the winner of one game and then fails to follow through on it. So close, brother).

Game Night Report -- 3/4/08 (Amun-Re)

2008-03-05T16:06:00.000-08:00

After years of playing board games amongst the same small group of people, I've decided we should try to write about some of our experiences with different games. This should allow my target audience to grow from 1.5 (Kevin always and Tricia only when I'm not targeting Kevin) to perhaps 3 or so. That's a 100% improvement! I'm sure my Google Analytics reports will show that this is what makes my blog famous.

(Note -- I'll do a catching-up post to show the different games that we have played so far in 2008 and get my comments down about all of them).

Last night's game of choice was Amun-Re, designed by Reiner Knizia (pronounced Rine-er Kin-eetz-ee-ah) and published by Rio Grande Games.

First, a quick overview of the game play. The game itself is split up in to two rounds of 3 turns each (each round is known as the Old Kingdom and New Kingdom, respectively). Then, each of the turns has a total of 5 phases in it. During the last turn of each round, you do a scoring phase. That sounds more complicated than it really is.

Here's a picture of the game board:

The 5 phases of each round break down like so:

Phase 1: Place five cards (each has a different provinces name on it) on five of the fifteen total provinces. In the picture above you can see the game board is split in to 15 different sections. Each of those is a province.

Here is what a province card looks like:

Phase 2: Next, players bid on a province. Each of the spots on the card represents the price you are willing to bid on that province. Then, in player order, you place your bid on one of the five province cards of the price you would be willing to pay. On your turn, you can either increase the bid amount in one of the provinces (which as you can see, gets more and more expensive) or you must move to an empty card and fill a spot there. After that is done, you take control of the province that you last bid on and pay the bid price to the bank.

Phase 3: Now you can purchase items. In player order, you purchase power cards (which have bonuses and free items on them that come in play throughout the game), farmers (these enable you to make money in the 5th phase), and stones (which allow you to build pyramids and thus gain victory points). The cost for buying these has a triangular progression. So, 1 item of a type costs 1 gold, 2 items costs 3 gold, 3 cost 6 gold, and so on, up to where 7 items of one type cost you 28 gold.

Phase 4: You now make a sacrifice to the gods. Everyone places a certain amount of gold in their hands (in secret) and then all of these are revealed simultaneously. The total amount offered is added together and determines how much each farmer will be worth on this turn (somewhere between 1 and 4). All gold that was offered is placed in the bank. There is also a -3 gold card in your hand which enables you to subtract from the value of the offering (some of the spaces on the board benefit from low sacrifice values) and also allows you to get 3 gold from the bank.

If you don't use the -3 gold card on this phase, then you will get free items (farmer, power card, or stone) to use immediately. Also, whoever offered the most gold, gets to be the new starting player.

Phase 5: Gold is paid out according to the number of farmers (multiplied by the amount calculated in phase 4) as well as from certain power cards and gold spaces in the provinces.

These five phases are then repeated every round. At the end of the third round, you perform a scoring phase. Points are awarded for each pyramid you created (3 stones in one province is equivalent to one pyramid), sets of pyramids you have, who has the most pyramids in one province, and then bonus points are awarded for certain power cards.

After that, the board is cleared of everything but the pyramids and stones and you repeat the entire process for 3 more rounds. Note that this time, when you bid on the provinces, you will be bidding on them with pre-existing pyramids, which makes the bidding much more interesting (and a lot more expensive). Again, at the end of these next 3 rounds you will perform another scoring round and then the game is over.

Phew.

Thoughts on the game

I like Knizia's games. Five of my top 10 all-time favorite games were designed by him -- Ra, Modern Art, Blue Moon, Tigris and Euphrates, and Samurai. Those five games represent 3 different types of games and 3 distinct game weights, showing his versatility in game design (there's two bidding games, one card game, and two area control games represented there and, I'd say, 1 heavy, 1 light, and 3 medium weight games in that list). But I digress...

Amun-Re has the typical Knizia "large-game" mechanisms -- you need to build pyramids to score, but you need to have money to build the pyramids, thus you need farmers and land in order to get money, which all ties back to the fact that you need money to get the farmers and land. This circular reasoning is part of what makes the game a challenge.

As for specific mechanics of the game I particularly found enjoyable/clever -- The bidding for the provinces and the blind bidding on the sacrifices were both great. Knizia has a knack for bidding mechanics and this is evidenced in this game. I also like the mid-game part where the board is cleared. You have to balance getting points after the third round with not spending a lot of money on something you won't get to keep for the entire game.

Several things keep this from being a top end game for me, though. The power cards were one particular issue (and others seemed to raise this as well) I tended to dislike. This is due to the chaos/luck they add to an otherwise non-chaotic game. Especially in hunting for the bonuses near the end of each round. Perhaps it would be better to start each player with a certain number of these bonus cards at the beginning of each kingdom and they can then morph their strategy around which bonus cards they have.

Another problem I had (and this may be due to the way my group played) was with how the first three rounds played out in both of our playings. I'll admit that this is probably more due to group-think than anything else, but it seemed like the first-half of the game felt scripted and not as much fun. No one was really willing to overbid by much on any of the provinces, since it is so difficult to determine the true value of a province (or any differential between the other provinces, for that matter) so early in the game game. Every player has a Master Builder card and thus plays it early in the round. The limited amount of gold available in the first two rounds makes it hard to differentiate yourself from anyone else -- You tend to purchase some combo of 1-3 of each item, since beyond that it is difficult to justify monetarily. So your strategy here feels totally arbitrary and void of any decision-making or tension whatsoever.

And that lack of tension is exactly what is keeping the game being a must-play game, for me. With Ra, I always feel that tension. Same goes for Modern Art. Here, I get that tension in about 40-50% of the game, which just isn't enough to make it great. I do appreciate the blending of different mechanisms and that uniqueness is enough to make sure it would come out on the table again (especially as a game that allows five to play and gets done in under 90 minutes).

Final Rating -- 6 out of 10 (OK game, some fun or challenge at least, will play sporadically if in the right mood)
(Final rating scale is taken from BoardGameGeek)

Game Night Results:

Game 1:
Chris -- 38
Troy -- 35
Brandon -- 33
Kyle -- 25
Kevin -- 17

Game 2:
Brandon -- 38
Kevin -- 34 (wins tie-breaker)
Troy -- 34
Kyle -- 30
Chris -- 29

As you can see, the first game was a learning experience for all, with a wide range of scores. Chris swooped in to steal the victory from me with 9 points off of bonus cards at the very end. Perhaps that's part of the reason I was turned off to the whole bonus card setup ;) Also, Kevin tried to go against the group-think here (the rest of us all farmed like there was no tomorrow) and got annihilated. This taught him a good life lesson -- conform.

The second game seemed indicative of what a more typical game would be like. And this game also had some interesting plays, but again, not much tension. In the end though, it could have gone to anyone (we were all searching for any bonus cards we could get our hands on and I think we mostly all failed). Brandon made some nice moves at the end to make sure he got the largest pyramid to give him the definitive win.

(Soon, I hope to incorporate some kind of standings for all of us. Heather has even agreed to make us medals that we can all wear to signify our current placing. That will follow later and will take us from semi-nerds to full-blown nerds. I can't wait!)