December 2003 Archives

I've been working on my yearly overview. It's pretty much ready, but I won't post it before January just in case I play something before the new year. Meanwhile, here's the overview from last year.

I've been playing some games with Johanna during the holidays.

I wanted to introduce Attika to Johanna. I thought she might like it, the whole constructive attitude of the game. In the other hand, I thought it might be a bit too complicated. It turned out well. We both played a good game (I suspect the tiles weren't mixed well enough, as we both completed all our groups and got every amphora possible!), but Johanna won. She thought the game was a bit complicated (and I very much agree - for the first few games everyone should be a bit confused), but I think she enjoyed it enough.

We also played Finstere Flure, which I like a lot and Johanna too. This time we played real two-player game with just one team for each player. We also introduced crystal boulders, which are the simplest of the special objects. It was fun and as the general theme of these games go, Johanna won. Speaking of Finstere Flure, check out this Geek article about alternate seven-player scoring. Interesting!

Our Christmas eve game this year was Pirate's Cove. Johanna wanted to try the game, mostly because it looks so cool. Can't blame her, as I most certainly agree. The game looks great. It turned out to be a pretty ok two-player game, too. Well, I probably wouldn't play it with anyone else than Johanna, as all games get an enjoyment boost when played with Johanna - I don't think Pirate's Cove is a good two-player game unless played with someone special. We did have fun, though. Johanna won the game. We had only one fight against each other (I fought against a Legendary Pirate twice), during which Johanna sunk my ship. What a bummer.

Our last game this Christmas was a game of Queen's Necklace we played yesterday. It was Johanna's request and I'm always quick to fulfill those. And boy did she crush me! After first sale, the scores were 100-80 for Johanna. After the second, she led 230-100. The final sale didn't exactly improve my position and the game ended 360-170. Ouch. I usually avoid dirtiest tactics and sneakiest moves when playing against Johanna (for example nasty blocking moves in Attika) because that simply isn't very much fun, but for this game I can assure you I played 100% for real. My feeble attempts just weren't enough against her might.

That's for Christmas games. I'll start preparing the year stats overview, which I should post during the very first days of January. Try to cope until that!

There's a new board game blog in the blogosphere. Inconsequential ruminations is written by Iain Cheyne, who should be a familiar name for you if you've read the comments here. There's nothing much there yet, though.

I got Tom Tube and Bonobo Beach today. I know Tom Tube to be an excellent game (I've played it before) and Bonobo Beach at least looks interesting, despite what people have said about it.

I also did a Finnish translation of Tom Tube (and will do Bonobo Beach/Cronberg). Those should be available at the Kronberger web site sooner or later.

There's a very neat PC version of Cronberg/Bonobo, check it out if you want to try the game. There's also a DIY-kit, but the PC gets you nicer bits with less effort. It's fun, especially as you can play it alone against computers. Hint: If the basic three-player setting (human, baby bot, deep green bot) seems too difficult, change the seating of the bots so you that you play after the idiot bot - it makes a world of difference!

So, after few rounds of computer play, I'd say Bonobo is almost as fun as Tom Tube.

Determined to get Attika on my fives and tens list this year, I played two rounds at the Brettspielwelt. Attika is certainly an interesting two-player game! The first game I played was an embarrassing five-minute disaster - my opponent blitzed to connect the two shrines. The second game went better, but it's still very obvious I don't know how to play the game well. The result of the game remains a mystery, as my opponent quit before the game was finished. I think she might have won, even though I had less buildings left than she. I think she knows the game better than I: she has played over 300 games with a victory percentage of 70.

One day, one day I will learn how the play the game well.

I wrote a review of Canal Grande. It's in Finnish, as usual. For English review, see my older review at the Geek.

Last Friday I got my copies of Finstere Flure and Attika. I already played Finstere Flure with Johanna. It supports two players officially, but I thought it'd be more interesting if we both played two teams. It was good, light fun and Johanna seemed to enjoy it (though she lost; had she won the game, she would've loved it, I'm sure!).

I also got a copy of Cranium. I got a press release from them four weeks ago and thought "what the heck, let's try them". The press release promised review copies for those who request them and that's what I did. Yesterday the game was delivered to me. Neat. Pity it's in English, though - it's definitely a game which I'd like to have as Finnish edition. The game has pretty bad reputation, but to me it seems like a fairly typical party game. And while it's far from unique, I like the way it mixes different party game mechanics together.

Jolly Roger is publishing a new edition of Dia de los Muertos. Boardgames.about.com has some pictures, which looks absolutely gorgeous. That should be interesting, as the game is one of the most interesting trick-taking games there is.

I wrote a review of Gang of Four. It's in Finnish, as usual.

Gang of Four was published around ten years ago for the first time. Now Days of Wonder has published a new edition of the game. The game is designed by a designer Lee Yih from Hong Kong, but it has it's roots strongly in the traditional Chinese game (well, at least the game's from 80's) Choh Dai Di or Big Two. However, I don't think Gang of Four is another commercial rip-off of a classic traditional game. The changes have been big enough.

First of all, the deck is different. Instead of standard deck, the game is played with a deck of 1-10, doubled, in three suits. This increases the number of Gang of Fours (ie. sets of four cards with the same number), which makes the game more fun. Also, the rules are made simpler.

Gang of Four is a climbing game and thus reminds of Tichu and The Great Dalmuti. The goal of the game is to empty your hands - played cards are worthless. Winner of each hand is the player who empties their hand first, the rest get penalty points. There's one penalty point for each card, with a factor that depends on the amount of cards. Seven or less and it's one, all 16 and it's five. So there's quite a big incentive to reduce the number of cards in your hand!

Players play single cards, pairs, triplets or poker hands. Each player may pass, but if they want to play, they must improve the combination of cards (the value of the cards climbs up, hence the name climbing game). Players can play only as many cards as the leading player played, which means that poker hands can be beaten with either a better version of the same combination or better combination (straight -> flush -> full house -> straight flush). Gangs of Four are a special combination, which can always be played and they beat everything, adding a touch of surprise to the game.

As you can combine your cards in many ways, choosing the right combinations isn't exactly easy. You want to have as strong combinations as possible, but also have to worry about leaving yourself with good cards so you can actually go out. One killer combination is pretty worthless, if it leaves you with crud you can't play. It's tricky and whenever you think you have your plans worked out, somebody surprises you with a Gang of Four.

The easiest comparison for Gang of Four is Tichu. The games share a common heritage (even though I don't think they are derived from the same game, the games are similar). Both have advantages over the other. Tichu is a partners game, which is both good and bad. Gang of Four is clearly better when three players are playing. I'd say Tichu is a bit more complicated and thus better if you play the game a lot. For random games with random people, Gang of Four is better. Both are excellent games, so you won't go wrong with either of them.

Days of Wonder is well-known for their good production quality. Gang of Four comes in a sturdy box, which is larger than necessary - making the game look more expensive. The cards are of good quality. The illustrations are a bit dull but at least they are functional. There are decent player aid cards included. There's also a Web Card, which gives you a year of online play time for free. There's a nice online version of the game, it works well and it's easy to use so if you like the game, you'll be able to play it more often. It's also a good way to try before you buy.

To put it all together, I find the game to be great fun. It's relatively easy to teach and play (especially if you're familiar with the poker hands) and offers some mind-boggling decisions. It also works well with both three and four players. If you use the Chinese methods of play described in the rule book (mainly knocking and not picking up the cards) the game goes with a snappy pace, too. Despite slightly higher price point, I find the game offers enough entertainment to warrant the price.

Today I played a game of Go against Ilari. 13x13, no handicap, I played white. Ilari is much slower player than Juho, which is both good and bad. It's nice to play several 19x19 games in quick succession, but I think I play better against Ilari when I'm forced to think a bit more. Still, I lost today.<--

Go

Viva il Re!

We were three and thus we played two games of Viva il Re!. The game's really growing on me - enough so that I raised my rating to nine at the Geek. It's just so simple and so fun. In the other hand, I've won three games out of four, so that might have some effect on it, but we'll see after I lose some games.

I'll write a review at some point, but meanwhile you might want to take a look at Tom Vasel's review. He's a very good reviewer, by the way. His other reviews are well worth reading.

I didn't stay long at the board game club meeting yesterday, but I had enough time to try Pirate's Cove with five players. It was much better experience than with three and I even upgraded my Geek rating for the game. It's now nine; three-player game is eight. It's not really my style of a game, even, but I can't help it: the theme is good and strongly integrated in the game, the components are very good and the gameplay is fairly straightforward after you go through the effort of learning it.

I was also pleased to find out there's enough simultaneous action to keep the game pleasantly short even with five players. It took us about an hour to finish the game. That's a good length for such a fun-focused dicefest as Pirate's Cove is.

This time I got a terrific ship, but didn't manage to get quite enough points - mostly because I was the target of Blackbeard in the epic three players against the Blackbeard fight. If I had survived that fight, I would've won the game. But that's life in the high seas! Can't say it matters too much. The game was great fun, nevertheless. Pirate's Cove is highly recommended to anyone looking for a beautiful game with a strong theme.

Even though next board game club meeting is tomorrow, I invited Robert and Olli to my place for some games. It was a very good way to spend the Independence Day in my opinion, especially as Johanna was out of town.

First we played some new games I hadn't yet tried. I'll write more detailed previews later, here's just session detail.

First game to hit the board was Pirate's Cove. It's a very beautiful game with an attractive theme. Pirates are just too cool. The year of pirateering took us 60 minutes. Olli won the game hands down: his ship was the best and he managed to gather lots of treasure. I didn't get any points from treasure, none at all. I think that's pretty bad... Well, I still came second. I got few fame cards, at least. I also got beaten many times and never got around developing my ship.

We had some rules problems. The rule book is quite messy, it's pretty hard to find anything there. The worst mistake was probably Royal Navy - we treated it like any other Legendary Pirate. That was wrong, but fortunately it didn't come up before the very end of the game. All the special cases make the game's theme strong, but the rules are rather complicated. Still, it's a fun game - or at least will be, with more players. Now it was ok. Fortunately it took only an hour.

Then we moved to the second largest box: Viva il Re! aka King Me!. That one had much better rules, only three small pages! It's a very simple game of bluffing and deduction. We had a great time playing it. I got a nice lead on the first round and managed to keep it. Viva il Re! is far from serious, but is easy to learn, fun to play and looks neat. It's a definite keeper.

Next largest box was Fist of Dragonstones. That was ok, except Robert won on the second turn. Which was fine, because it was clearly obvious that the game needs more than three players to work well. I'm looking forward to trying it with five or six players. It'll live or die depending on it's length. If it's relatively quick, it'll be a nice game, if it drags I know I won't be playing it much.

Last of the new games was Scream Machine. This one worked much better with three. Actually, I wouldn't play it with five or six - four might be doable, but I think more would be too much. Now the game took about 40 minutes, which was nice. The game is pretty simple and there are interesting mechanics - mainly the local/national customer thing. It's a fun little game. The card art is neat, but perhaps a bit too busy. More subtle pictures would make the cards a bit more functional. It was fairly close until the very end when Robert took the victory with a safe lead.

As I had had my choice (four of them, actually), I let the guys choose what to play. Robert wanted to play Tigris & Euphrates, which was fine for me and Olli. Last time I played (at HelCon), the game ended 6-5-5-5. This time the scores were 19-13-9 - but we had three monuments, huge kingdoms and bloody wars, and that is always fun. Robert had perfect monument combination for few turns and otherwise did the best job, so it was a victory well deserved.

Olli chose Alhambra for the last game of the evening. It was the first three-player game for me. I totally lost the game on the last round, with scores 156-143-122. Robert won and Olli was second. It was pretty fun, even though the end game dragged a bit. Alhambra is probably best with four, then three, then five, then two, then six. It's playable with the whole range, but six players is not recommended. It works, but the downtime is terrible and you can forget all ideas of control.

It was a fun afternoon of games. It's great to stay at home and have other people come to me. We had the whole collection of hundred games (well, almost hundred games) available and also my record collection for background music (Tom Waits for Pirate's Cove - "Ship is sinking, ship is sinking...", In Extremo for Fist of Dragonstones and Aavikko for Scream Machine).

I haven't been checking out Almost Sente in a while. Of the new strips, number 50 was hilariously funny!

I think I have a dry sense of humour sometimes.

Maul of America is a prime example of bad boxing. The game comes in a huge box (all the games I got from Jolly Roger were packed in the Maul of America box), which has almost nothing in it. The cardboard pieces that make the board use the surface of the box pretty well, but take whopping few millimeters of vertical space. Rest of the game would probably fit an envelope. When I look at the box, I think of Space Marine, which has a similar box. Space Marine box contained about 550 miniatures (in 6 mm scale, though) and 10 cardboard buildings. Maul of America has, what, 20 plastic stands to represent players and zombies.

Seriously - with a box that glamorous, I'd expect plastic figures and much better looks. Maul of America makes Cults Across America look good. I'm not saying the game is bad (though it well might be), I'm just saying the box promises a lot it's contents don't deliver. It also takes up a lot of space and for many enthusiastic gamers, shelf space is very valuable. Games with bad quality/size-ratio aren't simply welcome.

I got the Jolly Roger games yesterday and the first one I tried was Nodwick: The Card Game. The title is necessary, because Nodwick is originally a web comic by Aaron Williams. That means, of course, that the game has rather decent graphics.

The game, designed by Frank Branham (the author of the brilliant Dia de los Muertos), can trace it's roots back to early 20th century. It's descended from Pit, the manic trading game from 1919. Only this time players aren't trading for commodities...

Players take part in the Henchgames. Unfortunately, the competitors didn't do well in the 100 meter Dash of Death and are all in pieces. Players must re-assemble the competitors, using mighty healing powers such as duct-tape. Players get bonus points, if most of the parts in the assembled henchman belong to a one person.

The game moves on in real-time. Players can freely trade with each other, with whatever conditions they find reasonable. There's two main ways, either "give me spleen! I need also feet! I can give you duct tape!" or "two body parts for two body parts, anybody?". If you have a body part and healing cards mentioned in it, you can discard the healing cards to play the body part. There are six different body parts (head, torso, arms, legs, spleen and spirit) and eight different henchmen (colours). You must play one each body part - no two-headed spleenless henchmen allowed!

You can get more cards when you add a body part and also with the help of a hourglass. There's an one-minute hourglass included in the game. You can pass it to next player to draw a card. When you get the hourglass, you have five seconds to turn it over, if you wish. Of course, if it's low, just pass it to the next player! If you have the timer when it runs out and somebody notices, you'll have to pass it on without drawing a card. That's an interesting mechanic!

Round ends, when two or three players finish their henchmen. Winner of the round is probably one of them - everybody scores the number of healing cards they have played (ie. number of icons on the body part cards) and those who have completed their henchmen get bonus points for the colour they have most in their henchman. If you manage to use all the right pieces, that's six bonus points! And then it's time for another round! One round takes perhaps 10 minutes of time.

Nodwick doesn't have very good ratings at the Geek, but that's probably because of the real time mechanic. However, real time is an attraction for me. I love good high-pressure real time games and Nodwick certainly fits the bill. It's as hectic as Pit, only more hilarious.

Yet another session with Go and Gang of Four. This time I moved on 19x19 board with Juho. Where I used to play one game of 19x19 with Ilari in, say, 90 minutes, we played six games with Juho. And it still didn't feel too fast; I had plenty of time to make up my mind. But perhaps the speed can be seen in the level of my play. I won Juho once giving him 3 stones and both games with 1-stone handicap. He's almost my equal now, it seems.

Gang of Four was still fun, even though I didn't manage to win a single hand. Juho, instead, won five hands out of six and thus took the game.

A mysterious FedEx packet (who on earth would send me a courier packet?) turned out to be a bunch of games from Jolly Roger. I had paid the shipping, but I didn't expect mere $21 to pay for a delivery to my door. In a week! I expected to get the games in few weeks, as usual for cross-Atlantic mail. Bizarre.

Well, now I have Chicago Way, Maul of America, Nodwick: The Card Game and Scream Machine. The first two don't have encouraging reviews at the Geek (mean ratings around three), and incidentally it is the last two I'm most interested in. Come on, if a game has both loose body parts and duct tape, how can it be bad?

I got a copy from JKLM Games earlier last week and spent quite a while trying to figure out the rules. I don't think we made any bigger mistakes, the rules weren't quite that hard, only a bit complicated. While the components are shoddy (the route marker tiles are especially unpleasant), the game is wonderful and worth trying. Unfortunately the game is being published in very small editions (300 copies are out now, with another 300 coming sooner or later), so getting it might be difficult. It's worth it, however, and I do hope the game would get picked up by a major publisher.

So, what's so great about Kogge? Well, for me, it's just about everything I expected from Die Händler. That was a disappointment. Kogge is more dynamic. I think it would take repeated games with same people to really enjoy Die Händler, and that's just not going to happen.

But, about Kogge. The board depicts seven cities involved in Hanse trade. Each city produces one of the goods (from common to rare: ore, fur, amber, salt). Each player has a ship (Hanse ships are called cogs, hence the name of the game) and a trading office. Ships will sail across the Baltic Sea, trading goods and founding offices. First player to get 5 development points wins. Each office is worth one development point.

Sailing just isn't so simple. From each city, you can get to two different cities. Those cities are determined by route markers. Route markers are tiles with city numbers. They aren't equally distributed. It's easier to get to the ore-producing cities than to the cities producing salt. Route markers are the second currency in the game. They are used in auction to determine the player order. Players can also replace route markers on board with route markers in their hand. So, if you have a 2 route marker, you know you can get to Turku whenever you want - just replace a route marker in the city you're in with that route marker and on your next turn you can sail to Turku.

Goods, in the other hand, are used to build offices (three different goods and a route marker of the city are needed) and to buy bonus tiles (worth 1 DP) from the Guild Master. Goods are also used to buy route markers. Players can get more goods from the cities. Trading is easy, as players get two cubes for each cube they give away. However, if you're greedy, there's also a "none of my goods for all your goods"-option, ie. raiding. You can raid cities or other players for instant profit. That's fine, except you get a lifetime ban to that city. That didn't stop us!

The Guild Master, then. He roams around the board, moving either one or two spaces each turn (determined by the first player that round). When he finishes two laps around the board, the game ends and players' holdings are scored. He also skips raided cities, so each raid makes the game shorter. That's an interesting touch. Our first game ended when Guild Master made his laps, but if I had won the turn order auction, I would've held him back and won the game on my turn. That's life.

The game is very dynamic. The routes shift and you have to keep on thinking forward. Plan the next turn in advance, and you'll be better off. There's room for opportunistic plans, surprise raids and other dirty tactics. There's trading between players (for goods, route markers or services) - we didn't do that in our first game, but if your group is into trading games, the possibility is there. The rules are a bit tricky to start with and the game could use some player aids, but especially after you get your head around the various ways route markers can be used, it's all fairly easy.

Our three-player game took a little over one and half hours, and that's certainly going to decrease with more experience. We spent lots of time wondering about what we could do. With fast and experienced players, I expect three-player game could take an hour.

I was in Jyväskylä meeting my parents last weekend and games were played, as usual. The boys weren't home this time, so I chose more adult games that would work with three. Well, youngest of the boys was around enough so a game of 6 Nimmt! got played.

Another fairly typical game choice was Puerto Rico. I can't meet Ismo without playing some PR, it seems. We played three games during the weekend. I won two and Ismo got one. Most of the time I focused on money, taking the roles with most money involved. That seems to work just fine. Before our games have been dominated by Factory-strategies, but nobody took Factory even once during the three games. Also some popular buildings like Hospice and Hacienda are not used anymore - I bought Hacienda once, and that was already pretty late in the game. Guild Hall is the building number one, there's always some kind of race for that.

In the second game I got corn in the early game and decided to try to score big by shipping it. That was a bad decision. I think the strategy forced me to make some suboptimal role decisions and the money simply didn't flow my way. I did manage to get 35 shipping points and came second, but Ismo beat me with a five-point margin. Too bad.

The biggest hit of the weekend was Gang of Four. I had brought several card games, but we played Gang of Four first and then focused on that. It is definitely a good three-player game, no matter what others might say. We played three games. Two of them were pretty short five-round matches, but one dragged to eleven rounds. What's best, after the fourth round of that, the score was 0-53-90 (I had one Gang of Four and one Gang of Five and caught my mother holding 16 cards in her hand, thus her 90 points!), but after that my mother's luck changed and she won the next four rounds. I managed to keep my score low, so in the end I won, even though I won only the first four rounds and then the last. It's such a great game!

I'm heavily leaning towards playing for set number of rounds using zero-sum scoring. Playing for a score can take a long time, if nobody makes heavy mistakes (and even then, as witnessed in our 11-round game) and I like predictable game lengths. Also, the gambling-style zero-sum scoring works great with this game. It's not about how many points you lose, it's about how many points you can make your opponents lose!

We also tried Queen's Necklace, where once again initial confusion changed into pleasant understanding during the game. I won, but probably wouldn't have done it so easily, had my opponents understood the game perfectly in the beginning.

In my opinion, the best game of the weekend was Kogge. I'll write a separate article on that, but I just want to say it's a wonderful game. Ismo won our game, thanks to the large piles of salt he possessed when the Guild Master made the game end.

December issue of The Games Journal is out. The best part of it was probably the Joe Huber interview. Rules to Joust and Budget Crokinole might also be of interest to some of you.

I have tons of things to say, so I'll just start with something: I got a load of games from daVinci Games Friday. I'm now proud owner of Bang! (with High Noon expansion), Lupus in Tabula (their take on Werewolf) and King Me! (aka Viva il Re!). The games seem quite interesting, especially King Me! with it's three-page rules. Three small pages of rules is good.

Reviews and comments can be expected at some point in time.