May 2005 Archives

Yesterday I met Olli on the fields of battle. Setting was the independence war of the America, fought with Liberty. The game's been a bit in the shadow of Hammer of the Scots, I've only played it once. Back then I felt the game was a bit messy, I didn't get the rules well.

Now, armed with the new 1.02 rulebook and perhaps more thorough understanding of the rules, it went better. We had problems with the fleets and most of the updates in the 1.02 rulebook are about fleets, so perhaps it's not a miracle.

Last time I did very poorly as the Brits, holding at best 20 supply points (30 are needed for British victory, while the Americans win if Brits hold less than 12 points). Olli played the Brits this time and did much better. At best he had 26 points - not enough, but better than me.

I got lucky with the French entry: they decided to intervene in 1776, the first moment possible - and this was with the optional rule, which makes the French entry harder in the early years! I got lucky there, but it took me few years to get the French do something useful. In the end they did conquer Québec and the West Indies, which was very important.

It was a tough fight, but got easier for me all the time. At some point the Brits started to lose units, while I lost mere militia. There's no chance I'll trade militia for British warships, so no prisoner exchange happened in the end half of the game. That was brutal and we decided that in the next game we'll use the optional rule that allows forcing a prisoner exchange with a supply card - just to make the game more fun to play. Of course, the prisoner situation was part of my tactical genius of defeating good units while losing the very sucky militia.

One thing I learned was indeed that militia is no good. I wonder if they caused a total of four hits during the whole game, even using the honourable shot rule (militia gets C2 instead of C1, but must run away). Olli used his generals with riflemen really well, as they would roll four times C3 and four times C2 before my militia gets a chance to do anything. However, C class units are only fast when they attack C units, so adding some ships or dragoons to defense forces really helps dealing with those kinds of attacks.

The fighting was mostly centered on the northern big cities. I deserted most 1-point towns are tried to focus my defenses on the big cities. As it happened, my crucial defense forces were one turn late three times and I managed to lose Charleston, Philadelphia and New York... Winning the already-lost cities back is quite difficult, but I did it, in the end.

So, I'm still waiting for the first British victory. This time it wasn't far and perhaps if the French hadn't intervened so quickly, it would've been different. That remains to be seen - the next battle is scheduled next week.

Yesterday's board game club session was quite splendid. I got to play several interesting games. It was also great to see Robert, now back from a few month trip to Singapore.

Don kicked off the session. Even though Don has pretty neat chips in itself, I instantly replaced them with my spanking new poker chips (which got a lot of admiration in general). Maybe it was that effect that blasted me to a clear victory. Don't know, but I'm rather growing on Don, it's a very clever little game.

Olli had brought Amazonas, which was nice, since it's pretty high on my must-try list and I've even been considering getting it. That just might be worth it, because it turned out to be a very good game. It's a fairly light affair, with simple rules and objectives. The turns move swiftly and the game's over in less than hour. That's always good.

In Amazonas, players put up tents in villages to collect animal symbols. Animal symbols are points in the end and income during the game. Everybody has an secret objective, which is to connect four villages around the board. The decisions are fairly simple, so Amazonas works as an family game, while at the same time it should satisfy gamers looking for quick entertainment.

I'm a bit divided now, as I do enjoy the game, but since Olli has it and I'll be able to play it in the board game club, I might not need to get it. I'm not sure if it's that good.

Last week I bought six water pistols. Guess why? To play Killdog, of course. The pistols cost me 50 cents each and they are rather garish green and blue, but hey - it's better than pointing other players with your finger.

I wrote an description earlier, in case you don't know a bit about the game. It turned out to be fun! The game was close, nobody got a big break. Robert and Tuomas tied the game with 50 dollars each (the game has total of 300 dollars). There were six of us, so if we had divided the loot equally, everybody would've got 50 dollars, now others were left short (some money was left in the end). Interesting, and goes to show how doing things cooperatively beats fighting in the end...

I'd like to try the game with less people. It was fun with six, but might get a bit more interesting with less, as the risk of getting shot gets higher and dividing money gets easier. Anyway, if you're looking for a fun party game, KillDog is a good choice.

We had another go of Australia, this time with three players. The game was much better than with five. I continued dominating the continent. I had a huge lead in the start, then Ville caught me. However, I retaliated and scored about 30 points or so on my next turn. The guys also let me score 20-30 free points from the windmill track, so it was certainly a case of experienced player beating the snot out of two newbies.

Anyway, it was fun. I'm still not quite sure if Australia has staying power or not, but right now it's a fun game for three (and probably four). Even though I'm generally not a huge fan of highly tactical games, I find Australia quite fun.

It must be about two years since I've last played Sunda to Sahul, so I jumped at the chance to play it. We played the no turns game, obviously, but used the new scoring rule Ilari devised. The system is essentially the same as in Web of Power: the player with the most tokens on an island scores the total amount of tokens on the island, the player with the second most tokens scores the amount of tokens the player with the majority has and so on.

The two-year break hadn't ruined my skills, it seems, as I won tied the first game with Enni. We were quite superior. In the second game I just got locked in the start and even though I caught up, I came third.

I'm not completely sure I like the scoring. I think I prefer the original scoring, as I'm not sure if I want to care about the scoring while I play. I prefer to keep my mind on the actual task of putting together the pieces. With the scoring, one must keep an eye on the map for good scoring opportunities and that just doesn't work for me.

After stone age Australia it was time to jump to medieval Germany and In the Shadow of the Emperor. It was better the second time, now I knew what to do. For example, I jumped at the Duchy of Saxony to secure some income. That was a good move.

I also played aggressively to be the emperor. It failed on the first turn, but second time I got the Church voting power card and secured the emperor seat by having as many votes as the other players together - and for some reason, the guys didn't vote for the current emperor.

I also tried to be fluid, shifting my positions to score as many points as possible. That worked fairly well. I had lots of money throughout the game so I could do basically what I wanted. However, despite my better moves, I came second, with a measly one-point margin. Too bad.

Robert learned a newbie lesson: he didn't build a city in the first round and ended up regretting it, as he didn't get the last city on board at all. I don't think there's really a reason not to play the cities as fast as possible, as even though they are expensive, they are the key to higher income. Especially the first turn city, which will pay for itself no matter what.

Samurai was another good game I hadn't played in a while. It was fun to go back and it was a rather feisty fight. The brilliant Knizia scoring rules proved their worth in the end: I was thinking I might get possibly two majorities, but it turned out I didn't have any, as I was tied in rice paddies with Robert and Olli, the dirty rat, had stolen a buddha from me on the last turn. Nodoby had any majorities, then, and Olli had one piece more than me and Robert, so in the end he won, thanks to his last turn maneuver. Neat move, and the game was certainly interesting to the last moment.

Last up was a quick round of High Society. Well, quick and quick, as once again the red-bordered cards were stacked in the end. The gmae suffers when the cards stack like that, I think. Tuomas wasted money like crazy, but in the end surprised at least me by showing the most money - he hadn't used his $25 bill. Robert, however, took the victory with quite decent 28 points.

Since I get very controversial comments on Mhing's two-player suitability, I wanted to try it myself. Johanna was up for the task, and we played few rounds last night. As Johanna was new to the game, I didn't teach her scoring, we just counted winning the rounds.

Johanna enjoyed the game and I too think the two-player game is allright. It's probably not as exciting as four-player game, but playing with two is pleasant and relaxing. I'm hopeful we'll play again and hey, I'm never against playing good games.

Ward Batty's Essen traveler's guide has been widely blogged already, but it's pretty nice.

There's one thing I'd like to know, though: since we now have a laptop with a WiFi capabilities (a rather splendid PowerBook, even) and as my hotel room doesn't feature WiFi, just ISDN/modem (WiFi is for business class rooms, it seems), I'd appreciate if anybody knew of a WiFi hotspot (free or cheap) somewhere within walking distance of the fair.

What's in it for you: if I can find a connection, I'll update my blog every day during the fair =) Otherwise I'll just write the entries there and post them when I get back. If the connection is swift enough (and doesn't charge by amount of data sent), I'll even put up some pictures.

I visited Jyväskylä last weekend and played quite a few games. I had just few games with me, so the games were repeated more than usually. That's different and to be honest, I quite enjoyed it.

Lost Cities: I brought a brand-new Finnish copy of the game as a mother's day gift and ended up playing 10 rounds during the weekend. I have now played over 100 rounds of the game. I still enjoy it, so it can't be completely useless, even if it's not my favourite two-player game.

Dawn Under: I've only played this one at Jyväskylä, but it's quite popular there. I should try this one with my regular crowd to see how the game works with all adults. The kids love this one, that's for sure, and I like it too. It's just so different from anything else (except the basic memory game, but then again Dawn Under is just so much better game). Definitely a keeper.

Frank's Zoo: The latest addition to my collection of delightful little card games. Frank's Zoo is a climbing game with a twist. The ranking of the cards goes in two parallel and intertwining hiearchies and has a loop (elephant, the biggest land animal, is beaten by the mouse). It was great fun and the shifting partnerships worked great. I think we had the right amount of players, which is five. The game's fairly easy to play, but like other climbing games, has some depth in the hand management.

St. Petersburg: The mandatory games of St. Petersburg were primarily a test of my new poker chips in action. Even if the test wasn't quite succesful (one of the boys insisted on being the banker), I still think using the chips is easier than handling the paper money. Picking up the right amount of money is faster.

The most interesting thing about our games was the second game, which I won. Instead of collecting aristocrats, I ended up collecting good buildings and in the end, I had about six exchange card buildings or so. With five aristocrats or so I was able to win the game with a healthy margin. It was quite pleasant to see other strategy than aristocrat hoarding win the game.

Mhing: The game of the weekend. During the three days, we played over 40 rounds of Mhing. I'm not sure if I've ever played that much Mahjong. The reason is simple: a round of Mhing takes typically around or under 10 minutes. Setting up the wall of tiles and doing the rituals in Mahjong takes about as much, and you're not even playing the round yet. Since I prefer to use my game time playing the games, the cards beat the tiles hands down. They're not as pretty or nice to touch, but if you want to play the game, you can't beat the cards.

The cards are a full Mahjong set, but the rules of Mhing as packaged is a simplified subset of Mahjong. Even when I'm coming to Mhing from Mahjong, I don't feel the need for more complicated rules. First of all, I like the credit-based counting (certain combinations score credits, which are transformed to points using a sort of exponential scale). Second, the combinations are well-chosen. They offer enough variety. And of course, if the game seems too simple, it's always possible to add new scoring hands (or stuff like kongs). I even like the flowers (which are a pure luck element) and the wild cards.

This all combined, I find it very unlikely I'll be playing much Mahjong in the future. Mhing rocks. During the weekend we mostly played with four, but also few rounds with three. Both are fine. I'd like to try the two-player game (Tero says it sucks, many in Geek - for example Chris Farrell - say it's the only way to play the game), I wouldn't play with more than four.

What else? Yeah, I played a bit of Poker; I guess that's what the chips do to people. It sure did remind me of how silly game the plain old draw poker is, especially with two players and no real money at the stake.

I wanted to comment on something
Shannon Appelcline wrote in his blog. He has banned comments from non-LiveJournal users so I'll just have to say it here:

So at EndGame I usually try and be really considerate of what people might enjoy and do all the consensus twaddle about what we should play. Today, because I'd had such a terrible, terrible week (top 5 materia, here) I decided to just be selfish and suggest up what I wanted to play. oO I got to play some things that made me fairly happy and saved everyone the 10-15 usual minutes of "What-should-we-play?".

I couldn't agree more! My typical course of action in our board game club is to take with me the games I like to play (and few favourites many people know how to play, like Finstere Flure). When it comes to starting games, I'll choose something I'd like to play and say "now let's play this one, is anyone interested?". Usually I get enough interest and we'll get a game going, leaving the rest of the people choosing their game.

In some cases, I can't muster enough interest - ok, I'll switch the game. In some cases someone else suggests something - if it's something I don't hate, that's fine, let's play it. As much fun as voting can be, I think enlightened tyranny is the best way to choose which games to play. If you want to play a game, say it and we'll play. Impatient as I am, I just can't stand slow consensus decision-making in such trivial issues like this.

I was browsing Bruno Faidutti's Ideal Game Library, when I came across KillDog (Geek entry).

KillDog, named after Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs is a bluffing game. Players are gangsters fighting over a pile of loot. Each turn, four bills worth 5, 10 or 20 are turned over. Each player chooses whether they are ready to shoot or not and then, after count to three, point their gun at another player.

Then the intimidation starts. Players try to convince the person looking at the barrel of their gun that they're serious and will shoot them. The other guy can push their luck and doubt you or give up and lay down their gun. Once everybody who wants to back off has done so, the cards are revealed.

If you're shot, you lose a life point (one out of three; lose all and you're eliminated). After that, the players remaining (those who didn't back off and those who didn't get shot) divide the loot between themselves. However, the loot must be divided equally and there's no changing money, so there's a good chance nobody gets anything. Any leftovers remain on the board for the next round.

Game lasts eight rounds. Players use a card per round; there's five "just kidding" cards, two shots and one fast shot, which hits the victim before he or she can shoot.

I haven't tried the game, but will do so as soon as possible. So far the game has been published by French game magazine Jeux sur un Plateau and Belgian Repos Productions is apparently working to publish the game this year as Casa Coronés. Maybe we'll see it in Essen, maybe not. If it's there and contains nice toy pistols, I'll be sure to pick it up. Until that, I'll play with a home-made edition - it's an easy game for do-it-yourself gamers.