April 2006 Archives
Australia is a potential victim for too high expectations. After all, Kramer and Kiesling are responsible for the mask trilogy (Tikal, Java, Mexica) and Australia seems to fit with that group.
However, that's not the case. Australia is clearly a lighter game (even lighter than Mexica), aimed at the family market. The game even has action points, kind of, there's just merely two of them each turn. While the danger of analysis paralysis still lingers, Australia is light and very tactical.
Rangers and planes
Players control a bunch a rangers who travel around Australia to do projects. The theme is almost silly. Australia is divided into a bunch of areas and there are camp sites for the rangers on the borders. Each area has two projects: one just is, the other has a random number.
The projects are completed by placing rangers around the area. The nature conservation project is ready, when all camps around an area have at least one ranger. Industrial project is ready, when the camps have exactly as many rangers as the number tile in that area says. The numbers are hidden, until someone visits the area, so there's a bit of randomness.
Players place rangers by flying in an area and then playing a card with correct colour. Each card allows the placement of one to four rangers. Cards with less rangers award dollars, which give points and allow special moves. Players have two actions each turn, typically used for flying and playing a card. Players can also take back rangers, there's a fairly limited supply.
Chaos and bad art
Australia is a very tactical game. Each turn you try to come up with the move that will bring you most points (and perhaps hinder your opponents). No long-term strategies needed! This will cause boredom and waiting with slow players, but usually finding the best (or at least a good) move is fairly simple.
Of course the amount of players has a lot to do with it. I will never again play this with five players. Too much waiting, too little control. With three, the game is much better. Four is in between. Those who don't mind chaos and highly tactical games will enjoy the five player game, but that's not for everybody.
The game looks pretty bad, I don't like the art. The ranger figures are decent and the little airplanes are probably in my personal top ten for charming game components, but the art doesn't please me at all, it's a bit shoddy I think. However, everything works quite well, so the game is definitely playable.
Overview
Australia is fun, particularly with three players. I like the small tactical puzzles the game offers, but then again, I like many other games as well. There's little in Australia to make it better than the other games. I wouldn't call Australia a dud, just a game that doesn't tickle my interests. I prefer my games a bit more strategic. For those who enjoy highly tactical games, I say Australia should make you happy.
The English rules have some issues. While the other language versions instruct you to place ranger card decks face down, the English rules have it face up. I recommend playing it the right way, though I'm not sure if it'll make such a big difference in the end.
Review of Thurn und Taxis in Finnish.
Thurn und Taxis is the latest game from Andreas Seyfarth (and his wife Karen) of Puerto Rico fame. It's not a heavy gamer game, but more directed to the Spiel des Jahres audiences.
As the game is named after the post empire family Thurn und Taxis, players are building post office chains in 17th century Bavaria and the surrounding countries. They do this by playing cards to form postal routes, which are then filled with post offices.
Drafting for cities
The cards are drafted: there's a pool of six open cards and a closed deck to draw cards from. Each turn players must draw one and play one card. The card must continue the current route from one end. Routes must follow the roads printed on the board, which limits the options. If player can't continue a route, it's discarded.
Whenever player has at least three cards played on a route, it can be scored. There's a clever limitation of playing the offices: player can choose to either build one house in each country on the route, or a house in every city in one country. As most of the countries are small (except Bavaria), this makes for some route-planning or tough decisions when placing offices.
It is this single detail that makes the game, I think, that really elevates it above the masses of nice, but not special games. Thurn und Taxis is fairly simple and probably not a solid classic for the years, but right now I'd say it's somewhere near Web of Power in complexity and swiftness.
Bonus points
Points are accumulated by playing offices in certain combinations (fill a country or a pair of countries, have one office in every country outside Bavaria), building longer routes, placing as many offices as possible and having a good wagon (you get better wagons if you build consecutively longer routes).
Game ends when someone plays their final office or gets a wagon seven. The round is finished and the game end scoring happens. There's a penalty for unplayed offices, so swiftness is good. As usual in games where players can control the end condition, being the one to end the game is a good thing.
Overview
The game scales well from two to four (well, I haven't tried with four but I see no reason why it wouldn't work) and while the game is a bit solitare-like (there's no direct interaction on the board, just some competition for points and cards), it's quite an entertaining ride for such a light game. There's enough strategy and tactics to keep one's mind involved, but the game is light enough to enjoy from the first match.
Played some Thurn und Taxis at BSW. This time I was focused on the wagon-growing strategy, where you build five routes: three, four, five, six and seven cities. That way you'll end the game (hopefully) faster than your opponents and will score plenty.
Based on my experiments, I'd say it works. It's not a guaranteed winner, not by far, but a good strategy to base your game on. It feels pretty efficient, but that of course depends on the routes as well. Still, building slightly weaker routes can be justified if you're working on a wagon goal.
In my two three-player games I won one and came second in the other. There I was one turn behind the winner, and had I had that one turn, it would've been a lot tighter and a possible win for me. In the game I won, there was no doubt about the winner.
I cheated a bit, though: my five-city route was a six-city route because I had to take a longer turn through Bavaria, and of course the six and seven wagons were bought with a wagon master, since it looked like time was short. But that's part of plan, really - take the long route bonuses if you can, but if you can't, don't worry about it.
Thurn und Taxis is fun, there's no question about it. It's currently number one on my hot game list, and will probably stay there for this quarter, and maybe more, depending on how popular it remains in BSW.
Thanks to Markku's great efforts, a Finnish version of Attribut is now available at BrettSpielWelt. We had the first official games yesterday, and it was a blast. The game's so much better in Finnish!
After beating Markku from Board Game Society (JoeLamer at BSW, he's very active in EnglishTown so you might've met him) four times in Thurn und Taxis today, I'm starting to think it's really a pretty good game...
Really, to be honest, it's a good game. It kind of fits in the same group with Web of Power: fairly simple, fairly fast, still quite meaty and not that obvious. The office placement mechanism is definitely the key to the game, what really makes the system click. It's a good design, I think.
We had a nice board game club yesterday. It was strange to have the club on Monday, not Sunday, thanks to the Easter, but many people arrived nonetheless.
Tichu was definitely the high point for me yesterday. After reading Steve's Tichu strategy article I wanted to give it a go (last time I played was almost two years ago). It was a blast! Combine four pretty clueless players and you'll get lots of action!
It took us 13 hands to actually finish the game... not many successful Tichu calls. However, I did use the positive scoring variant where failed Tichu call gives 100 points to the other team, which shortened the game with a hand or two. It was pretty exciting, anyway, because the scores were fairly close. I called Tichu on what might've been the last hand and failed - and it didn't end there, we started the final round with my team behind 910-990. Well, we smoked them: successful Tichu and clean double finish for 300 points, thank you!
I really should play more Tichu.
Gulo Gulo with five was nice, lucky and fit the Easter theme with all the little eggs. It's a nice game, but not very high on my list of games to play with gamers, really. Maybe as a filler, but it's a pretty big box for a filler.
Neuland wasn't quite as fun as it could be, for some reason. It ended a bit abruptly, and not as my victory... I'm not sure it was the right game for one of the players, or in general the right game for that situation.
Attika was fun to play after a long break, even though I made one clueless move. If I had just took some cards at certain point of the game, I might've won and I'd definitely be able to block the eventual winner. Ouch. But, you know, bunch of newbies playing, I'm quite sure they'll understand the significance of temple blocking the next time they play.
Flix Mix was good with some proper opposition. I won the first two rounds, then it got sticky. In the final round I was left with five cards. I'm not good with switching the colours, it seems. Fortunately Joona didn't get his move on in the first round, when he scored nine points. Those were enough to secure the victory for me.
Don was strange: two guys kept bouncing a stack of money between each other for a while, leaving me and Aaro bit helpless. Doesn't surprise me they won. However, the winner was the guy who reneged on the deal, there's a lesson to keep in mind...
I tried Thurn und Taxis at BSW recently. It's a nice implementation, though the graphics were a bit low in quality - but that seems to be the rule in BSW. The interface works generally pretty well, once you figure out one or two things. It certainly isn't among the more difficult or wieldy user interfaces in BSW, if not the best either.
I initially rated T&T as a solid 8 game, but I'm having second thoughts. It's starting to feel like a 7 to me, really - a better version of Ticket to Ride, but not much more (you know, drafting cards and building connections with those cards). The key element in the game is definitely the way the offices are played; that works really well and is a good detail. However, I'm not sure the rest of it is really that impressive.
Well, I'll keep it as an 8 for now and I'll definitely want to play few more games at BSW to figure it out, but I know for sure I'm not getting it myself.
I've been happy with my ziploc bag arrangement for Antiquity, but seeing Tommy's solution made me instantly jealous. So, since I was armed with a car yesterday, we drove to the Hong Kong junk paradise on the outskirts of the city and got me some Shakespeare equipment.
I've got two different utility boxes. Antiquity uses a standard utility box with up to 24 compartments. That holds all the common chits: resource tokens, pollution, fields, houses and graves. Players still get their goodie bags with buildings, cubes and the rest of it.
For Indonesia I got a mini utility box, with six compartments. It has less height, so it fits in the box pretty snugly. The six compartments hold the different goods and the small coins (though I'll probably ditch the single rupias to a separate bag, it's the five-rupia coins you need an easy access to).
The boxes make using the games easier. Cleaning up everything afterwards is easier and getting the right chits during the game is simple. I like these boxes. Both are wormproof, which I think equates to "chit-spill proof" in this case. Price wasn't a problem either: the bigger box costs around four-five euros, the smaller one was two euros. Considering the games cost 60+ euros, few euros for a storage box isn't going to hurt a lot.
Verflixxt is the new household favourite around here. I played it yesterday with Johanna and it was already our fourth game in a relatively short time. She won - I think she's won three out of four or so, she's pretty good.
It's an ideal game to play every now and then, really: it plays fast, offers some tactical challenges but doesn't require too much thinking. It seems to suit Johanna's appetite for games quite well, really.
I got the guys together for a game of Indonesia. My original idea was to play two games, but that was a bit too much to ask. Our game took hefty three hours and 40 minutes, so we didn't have either time or energy to play a double match.
It was still quite an interesting game. Here's what I learned: four-player Indonesia is both different and better than the five-player game. With five, the eras tend to be pretty fast, in my experience at least. With four, we still had fast era A and fast era C (particularly as Ilari wanted to end the game early, a good move for him in that situation), but the era B was definitely longer. We also saw some real city development and ended the game with one size three city and two size two cities. That made the game more interesting.
I lost, and it was an embarrassing defeat. The cause for the defeat was the same as in my first game at Helcon: lack of companies to operate. I did well in mergers, selling my companies for good money, mostly, but I failed to own a real moneymaker. At the same time Ilari and Olli operated competing rubber companies which both made some good money and Manu had both a firm grip on shipping and a very lucrative siap faji operation.
Shipping was key, as usual. Manu had strong shipping power with two large shipping companies, but we did build up an alternative shipping network which went to Olli in a bloody bidding contest. He owned a bigger share of the companies than I and was thus able to bid a lot more than I could. The shipping company was sold with a price of over 40 rupias per ship, which is a lot considering their base value is 10 rupias. Olli was pretty close with Ilari for second place (I don't remember which one won, but the difference was ten or twenty rupias), so those ships didn't mean an instant ticket to fortune for him.
Manu made a fortune with his ships, but I wouldn't call the siap faji company weak, either. My goal in the next game is to come up with either siap faji or a rubber company that's going to make me a lot of money! Oh, and also fight for the shipping even more. I'm probably going to fix up a three-player game in FinDipCon in May; I want to see how this beast behaves with three. From now on, I know I'm going to prefer four to five, even though the game might actually be longer with four than five (more turns, thus more shipping, which is the most time-consuming part of the game).
We also played Mykerinos. You've read my review; I won't go into the mechanics. It was an interesting experience - not quite as fast as I'd wish, but I can see it go faster with a bit of experience. Ilari dominated the game by collecting a huge bunch of patrons. I was a bit surprised by Olli's weak showing: he had five yellow patrons worth five points each, but that kind of set was good for a weak last place. Interesting.
I enjoyed the game, but wasn't thrilled and unless my opinion changes soon (I'll probably try the game again in board game club next week), I'll probably sell it in FinDipCon while it's still hot.
We finished the evening off with Samurai, which was good, except my play was phenomenal in its weakness. For the record, my plans regarding the buddhas were foiled at least twice, so no wonder I didn't do well.
Played a game yesterday; here's the review of Mykerinos in Finnish. Session report coming up!
Mykerinos is the latest game from Ystari and the most recent Finnish release from Lautapelit.fi. It's nice to see Finnish companies teaming up with foreign publishers to get games released in Finland the same time they're published abroad.
Designed by otherwise unknown Nicolas Oury, Mykerinos is an area control game set in the world of archeology. Players claim archeological digs in the name of their patron and try to reserve the best halls in the museum's Egyptological collection. If you're wondering where the name comes from, Mykerinos is Greek for Men-Kau-Re, a fourth dynasty pharao whose pyramid lies in Giza.
Influencing Egypt
The theme is rather non-existential. The board, representing Egypt, is built of four two-card lots. Players place influence cubes on the lots, trying to gain majorities to score cards and positions in the museum.
Of course there are limitations on playing the cubes. There are two alternatives: start a new dig anywhere with one cube, or extend a previous dig with two cubes. Each card has six squares and each square can hold a single cube, unless it has a pyramid (in which case it holds no cubes). Pyramids and cubes from other players can prevent players from extending their digs, so time can be of essence.
Once everybody is happy with their cubes (there's a limited supply of about ten each turn; unused cubes can be stored for next round), the lots are scored. The two players with most cubes get a choice of either taking one of the cards or placing a cube in the museum. Possible other participants get to take a card, if there are any left.
Patrons and museum wings
Cards represent the patrons. There are five different patrons, with different special abilities (basically boosts for the basic moves). Each patron card is worth one point (museum boosts that; more on that later) and a full set of five patrons is five points. Some patron cards also give immediate points.
Museum has five wings, one for each patron. Each wing has two rooms, five and three point rooms, and there's also rooms between the wings worth two points. These boost the patron cards, so if I have a cube in yellow patron's five-point room, my yellow cards are worth five points.
Museum can have just one cube per room and to get to a five-point room you must go through the weaker rooms, so time is very critical here as well. The resources players are competing for are scarce, which is a source for many tough decisions in the game.
The game lasts for four rounds, after which there's the final scoring. To score well, you need a wide array of patrons and cubes in the good rooms of the museum so your most numerous patron cards score well. That's quite tough to do when other players are trying to achieve the same, particularly when you must pass taking a patron card to play a cube in the museum.
Overview
The game has several good ideas (like having passing order break ties when scoring the lots: first player to pass wins ties) applied to the basic area influence formula. The restrictions on playing the influence work well and create interesting challenges.
My first instinct is to compare this game to Louis XIV. Both are clever and fresh area influence games. I'm not crazy about either, as I'm a bit bored with the whole area influence genre, but Mykerinos beats Louis for me, because it's much shorter (30-60 minutes).
All in all I'd say Mykerinos is a pretty nice, tight package. Even though the game isn't ground-breakingly novel, it packs several fresh and interesting ideas in a small, fast game. The theme isn't totally convincing and the game could look better, but still - it's a decent game, and the fans of the area control genre should enjoy it a lot.
Another Finnish review up: Manila.
Manila is an exciting game of gambling in the black market ports of Manila. Players bet on punts that arrive bringing goods in. Unfortunately not all of them make it to the harbour and it's up to players to bet on which punts make it and which don't.
One of the players is chosen as a harbour master - there's an auction, and it tends to be an expensive post. Harbour master gets to buy a share in one of the four goods that are brought in. The master chooses three of the goods to load on the three punts and starts the action.
Jobs available
In turn, players place one accomplice on one of the jobs on the harbour. Jobs have a payment and a return value. You get better returns for lower payment in the more extreme jobs - for example, a job in harbour that's basically a bet for at least one punt making it provides a return of 6 for a payment of 4, while betting for all three punts making it costs 2 and pays off 15. There are different jobs, some more secure than others. The pirate is the ultimate lucky job: with good luck, pirates can get huge returns for their investments, but usually they fail.
After each round of placing accomplices, the harbour master rolls the three dice, one for each punt, and moves the punts according the dice. This is repeated so that there's three rounds of rolling. If the punts make it to the harbour, the value of the good they were carrying rises. Players collect their winnings and a new harbour master auction begins.
Playing with probabilities
The game ends when one good rises to the maximum value of 30. At that point all shares are sold and the player with the most money wins. If someone has more than one share of the most expensive kind, there's a likely winner.
Manila is a luck-heavy game, but it's also about probabilities and taking risks. What's most important, it's fun. Since the dice are totally out of players' control (harbour master can make life easier for chosen punts, but still, everything is possible), it's all very exciting and you can hear people rooting for their favourite punt when the dice are rolled.
Potential problems
There are some problems, though. If you don't get to be the harbour master, the game can be boring, as that's really the key role in the game. Early harbour masters get cheaper shares and better return for their investment, too. However, usually everybody gets their turn as the master, and that's not the biggest problem in the game.
Length is the number one issue. It is possible that no punts make it to the harbour, in which case the game doesn't move forward at all. Manila is a bit like Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck, actually: both are dice games, with luck and probabilities involved, and both are great fun if they stay short. If Manila drags on, it gets boring. A typical solution is to shorten the game by starting the goods one step further on the track (there's two steps valued 0, so it doesn't make that big a difference). That works well enough, but the game might still fall a bit flat sometimes.
Overview
Despite the potential problems, I think Manila is good. While the strategies aren't that deep, the game certainly is fun. If it takes too long, the experience will suffer, but at its best, it's a really good, fun game. The top-notch production from Zoch adds to that; the game is quite gorgeous (the coins are particularly impressive).
Memoir '44: Pacific Theatre is coming! The rules (pdf) are already available. Here's a short list of what new the game will contain:
Japanese troops are superb. They don't retreat - they always ignore one retreat flag extra. In caves they ignore all retreat flags. When doing a Close Assault with a full-strength unit, they roll an extra die. They can initiate a Close Assault from two hexes away.
Marines are well-organized: they can activate more units. Each card activates an extra unit. Even when doing a counter-attack, they get one more activation than their opponent. Flame thrower tanks maintain their battle dice better when fighting in tough terrain.
Night time limited visibility affects line of sight and prevents barrages and air attacks. It starts with just one hex visibility, but it gets gradually lighter when time passes (and marine player rolls dice well).
Warships patrol the shores in some scenarios. They have batteries with a range of eight hexes (firing pattern 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1). They also have the big gun crosshair system that improves their aim if they fire at the same target twice.
Japanese troops can use cave networks to move swiftly between different locations. Caves are also very good defensive positions.
Hospitals heal infantry like Medics & Mechanics cards. HQ & Supply tent hexes are important to control: if your opponent takes one over, you'll lose a command card and must play with a smaller hand until you reclaim the HQ.
There's something called Memoir '44 Official Carrying Case on the way, and that will contain air forces to do Air Sorties. Pacific Theatre expansion will contain aircraft carriers and airstrip terrain to support that. Sounds interesting.
I'd say Pacific Theatre is a must-buy, but then again, I'm a big fan of Memoir '44. It's the only game where I'm really looking forward to getting all the expansions.
Here's a review of Diabolo in Finnish.
Diabolo is a light-weight card game from Michael Schacht, the designer of Coloretto, one of the more popular filler card games.
Diabolo is a struggle between heaven and hell. Players play cards on the table trying to influence the five colours in game. Cards can be played on either heaven or hell side. A colour is locked when five cards are played (either 3-2 or 2-3), the round ends when three colours are locked.
Counting scores
At that point, the totals on each side are summed. If colour has more points on heaven side, it scores positive; hell means negative. The player with the most points in hand in that colours scores the values of those cards in his or her hand; they are either negative or positive. Each player can double one colour they have to score extra points.
The catch is simple: to better influence a colour, you must play a big card from your hand. If the colour ends up in heaven, that big card would've been very valuable. If you keep the big cards in your hand, the colour might end up in hell, at which point the big card is a huge liability.
There's a healthy dose of luck, as you can't control the luck of draw: you might end up drawing a big card in the colour you just locked in hell - at that point it's impossible to get rid of the card. The luck might be too much for many gamers, but those who don't mind it probably find it to be quite exciting.
Heaven or hell?
So, heaven or hell? Neither; I'd place Diabolo strictly in purgatory. It's neither good or bad, simply bland. Those looking for a fresh little card game to play for a while will find it in Diabolo, if they don't mind the luck. I'll rather play Geschenkt or Fettnapf.
I got a review copy of Mykerinos today. Designed by Nicholas Oury, it's the latest release from Ystari. My copy is the Scandinavian edition from Lautapelit.fi, which is a nice touch.
Mykerinos is about archeological digs in Egypt, but basically it's a fairly simple area majority game. Players play influence tokens on lots in Egypt, building up digs. When nobody wants to play anymore, the lots are scored. The two players with the most influence have the option to place a token in the museum or to take a card (each lot is made of two cards). Third and fourth player may take a card, if there's any left.
Cards might be worth points, but they also belong to one of the patrons. In the end of the game, players score points for the cards, depending on their position in the museum. Each card has a base value of one point, but a token placed in that patron's wing in the museum will raise that to two, three or five. To get five points, one must first play a token in a smaller room in museum, so that takes extra effort.
So, throughout the game players are balancing collecting cards and placing tokens in the museum to make sure the cards are worth something. Since playing influence to the museum means you don't get a card, the choices will be fairly difficult. Concentrating on just one side is a disaster, that's for sure.
I haven't played the game yet, but I'm expecting a fast little game. The box says 30 to 60 minutes, I think it should fall in the 30-45 minute range with any experience. All things considered, I'm expecting a rating of 7/10 - nice, but nothing spectacular. We'll see - I've got an Indonesia match scheduled for Saturday and I'll think I'll sneak in some Mykerinos as well.
Here's a list of hottest games for first quarter of 2006 for me. This is based on number of plays, my enjoyment of the game and the novelty value, so new games tend to show up higher on the list.
Einfach Genial - I played quite a lot of this in BSW, where it's a bit of a staple game for the Finnish folks. And why not? It's a good game, easy to teach, plays fast, works well with any number of players (though I don't think I'll be playing four-player games unless they're team games) and the BSW implementation is slick. I recently got a copy for myself, though I'm not sure how much I'll play the game outside BSW (why waste valuable face-to-face gaming time for a game you can play whenever you want at BSW?).
San Juan - Maybe two games face-to-face, rest of it in BSW. I also played quite a lot with Jim's San Juan on my Mac, but that doesn't count. Another game which isn't on top my list for face-to-face games, though I'll definitely play if someone suggests it. Did I rate this as a 10 already? If I didn't, I should, it's that good.
Blue Moon - Two intense sessions and a strong desire to play more, to explore the different decks and the strategies and tactics of the game. Here Knizia has really, really hit gold, I think, the game is brilliant. The basic mechanics are simple enough, yet the expansion decks bring lots of flavour and colour to the game.
Caylus - These were 50/50 on BSW and face-to-face. I found out Caylus is a brilliant two-player game and played good games with three and five, too. The game scales well, that is. The length and slickness of BSW version make me somewhat hesitant to take this to the table, but I'll definitely play if someone suggests it and might suggest it myself in right circumstances.
Antiquity - Earned it's 10 rating after two very interesting games. I'm starting to figure out how to survive famine, it doesn't feel like that big a deal. The original supersaint San Christoforo looks weaker after every game. The length of the game has been pushed to two hours. It really doesn't get much better than this.
Antike - More games in on this one and I still like it. The correct market and currency are much better than the superpower versions I played earlier. Our very tight game makes me wonder, though, if reducing the victory condition by one would improve the experience... But I'll wait and see, no changes yet. If the games become more balanced as a general rule, I'll change it, but not otherwise.
Attribute - This was played few times at the BSW and once face to face. A friend of mine is working to get my Finnish word set online; if that happens, I can see more Attribute games happening. I'm not too keen to play in English, and the Finnish edition I have gets little play for various reasons. This is such a great BSW game anyway.
Mauerbauer - Just two games, but it's new and I like it. It's very tactical and the dice certainly bring in some luck, but I like the system, it's fairly intuitive and great fun. I'm not sure if I'll get it for me, but I wouldn't mind playing every now and then.
Scotland Yard - Nothing new about this one, but I wasn't keeping records when I last played this childhood classic. It's still pretty good, though as a two-player game. I could consider buying it, actually, but I'm not that sure I'd actually play it a lot. If it's still around in ten years or so (and why not?), I'll introduce it to my kid, I think.
Dvonn - I did play bunch of Dvonn with different people (in addition to constant Little Golem games). It's definitely one of the better games in its genre, and it's probably the first game of the series I'd introduce to someone.
Here's a review of Sellaista sattuu, the Finnish edition of Verflixxt! / That's Life!.
That's Life! is a roll and move game from Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, better known from their more serious line of action point games (Tikal, Java and Mexica). However, That's Life! is a pure family game; no more, no less.
Roll and move
Roll and move is probably the simplest mechanic there is and for good reason serious board gamers tend to loathe it. In That's Life! Kramer and Kiesling take what's probably the simplest way to improve any game with roll and move -mechanic: add more pawns for each player. When you have several pawns to choose from, the luck of the die tends to even out and there are more choices on what to do.
In That's Life! the strategy succeeds. While the game is still far from strategical, there are usually plenty of options to keep it interesting. Choosing which of your pawns to move is usually fairly straightforward, though sometimes the choosing the better of two moves is a question of taste and not that obvious. There are also neutral pawns (more about those later), which increase options and give opportunities to affect other players.
Collecting points
Players march their pawns on a track made of tiles. Each tile has a number value from -10 to +8. There are more negative tiles than positive, but also six wild card tiles, which can turn positive tiles to negatives and vice versa. The board layout can be randomized, which provides some variability.
Whenever player leaves a tile and no pawns remain, the player must pick up the tile. When all pawns have finished the course, scores are calculated and the player with the most points (or least negatives) wins.
The best tiles (that is the wild cards, +7 and +8) start with guardians. Guardians are neutral pawns, which can be moved by any player, but only if they are with a player pawn. Of course you want the guardians to leave the good tiles you're standing on, but you could also make them leave the big nasty negative tile your opponent is on...
Simple idea, fun game
While That's Life! is certainly nothing but a fairly simple roll and move game, I still enjoy it. My wife likes it - that's always a positive. I wouldn't bring this out to a meeting of gamers, as it's too big box for a filler fare like this, but would probably suggest this in a more casual crowd.
I also see That's Life! as the next level from the simple board games for kids. You know, use the simple roll and move games to teach basics like rolling dice, taking your turn and counting steps, then get them playing something like this to teach the basic strategy and evaluating possible moves.
Review of Antiquity in Finnish is available.
Antiquity is a game of competing city-states. In the beginning, cities are empty and the landscape is open for all to take. As the game progresses, cities grow and new towns are founded, while the landscape is exploited and becomes a polluted mess of useless land. The question is will the players be able to fulfill their goals before all farmland is spoiled.
It's an impressive game. The box is huge and contains lots of small cardboard pieces. All components have this kind of faded old-fashioned look; the result looks consistent, pretty and historical. Even the box is modeled after an archive box - a clever idea that some people love and others loathe.
Men at work
So, Antiquity is about exploiting the land. Each turn players put their men at work. The men work the city buildings, which provide all sorts of benefits and abilities. Some are must-haves for every player as they facilitate almost critical functions, some are better suited for certain strategies. Choices of what to build and use aren't always simple, as the amount of men available is limited.
Men on cart shops can be sent outside the city to work the fields. Those workers bring in resources: building materials, food and luxuries. These are then used to build more buildings and to achieve the victory conditions.
Victory conditions
Players can choose their own victory conditions. The most important building is the cathedral. When built, it must be dedicated to one of the saints. Each saint has a victory condition and some kind of benefit. Thus players can choose the victory condition that best suits their playing style or the conditions of the game.
With the cathedrals, there's also the choice of when to consider. Is it better to build the cathedral right away and use the special ability more, or is it better to hide one's goals and build the cathedral later? It's also possible to tear down the cathedral and choose a new one. There's also Santa Maria, who gives all the benefits, but requires the fulfillment of two different victory conditions.
Pollution and famine
The two aspects that make the game stand out are pollution and famine. In Roads and Boats, the other popular game from Splotter, raw material is produced every turn until the end. Not so in Antiquity! Each hex produces exactly once, then it's polluted. Forests are an exception: when harvested, they become fields which can be farmed once before they are polluted.
There are plenty of hexes, but since player's actions are limited to a two-hex zone of control around his cities and inns, the farmland is going to run out fairly soon. There are fortunately solutions to this problem. The easiest thing to do is to expand, which will soon lead to a fierce competition between the players. There are also means to get rid of pollution.
Production isn't the only polluter. Cities pollute, too: each turn players must dump three pollution markers in their zone of control for each city they have. If you can't, you'll have to build graveyards to your city. They eat up limited city space and might make buildings defunct, once the room runs out.
The other source of graves is famine. Every turn you need to have a certain amount of food available, otherwise your people famish. The amount needed grows with one each turn. Five is not bad; fifteen is. Fortunately there are means to control famine (besides having a huge stockpile of food, which is of course also possible), but it still is a ticking clock that brings a lot of tension in the game.
Heavy thinking required
I find Antiquity one of the most amazing experiences ever. Every time I play it, I spend the next few days thinking about it, coming up with all these new ideas and strategies I want to try the next time. I find it very charming, how there are so many ways to approach the game. The problems are always the same, but there are many solutions to those problems. I've seen different strategies win, too, so I do think they are balanced well.
The game is pretty complex, though. Well, it's not that hard, but there are lots of moving parts. The time spent on stacking small cardboard chits might be too much for some people. The game is long - newbies should expect it to take at least three hours and more if they're slow players.
However, even one experienced player driving the game forward will reduce the time. Last time I played it took us a bit over two hours; we had two newbies and two experienced players. With rules explanation, I'd schedule three hours for the game and that should be plenty.
Antiquity isn't for everybody, but for those interested in building cities, managing problems and enjoying the thrill of simple survival, it's an amazing experience.
