March 2007 Archives

As the tradition goes (last year, the year before that, the weekend before that, the year before that...), I met Tommy for a day of games. So, this year it was just me and him, and just a single day. It was great fun nonetheless.

We kicked off with 1860: Railways on the Isle of Wight. It's a small 18xx game, for two or three players basically. It worked well with just two of us. The map is small and the game quite constricted.

I enjoyed it. The game features interesting stock market moves: a company that pays out big dividends gets a huge boost in share value. So, dropping the value to keep money in company to buy a better train is not a big deal, as the new train and the increased revenue will make the share value soar.

I lost, in the end, 13000-11000 or so. That's still the largest number of points I've collected in any game, I suppose... My fate was sealed quite early, when we bought our second companies. I invested in FYN, which in retrospect was a really, really daft move. I might've got my investment back, maybe, while Tommy's second company was a major money maker. Well, you live and learn, and starting new companies is one part of the 18xx game I feel a bit uncertain about.

So, it's good, and if I played four-hour games more than few times each year, I'd probably hunt down a copy. It's that good.

After four hours of trackbuilding and stock markets, we moved to World War II. I revisited the Belgian chateau in Combat Commander: Europe, as I thought that would be an interesting introduction scenario - enough stuff, clear objective and so on. Well, that wasn't quite as successful as 1860.

Tommy, playing the Allied liberators, assaulted the chateau in a very straightforward manner. Protected by smoke he did a pretty good job, too. In the end I did squeeze the victory: he was doing well, but wasn't quite finished in the chateau when he ran out of time.

Tommy's initial rating is six, so he clearly didn't love it. I can see why - this playing made me to drop my rating to eight as well. I like it still, but the game just feels a tad too long for the meat of it. Antiquity, for example, seems to offer more decision-making goodness in the same timeframe.

Next up was some three-player games as Tommy's wife Laura joined us. I didn't mind: Space Dealer was high on my list of games I'd like to try. I'm glad to have that past me now, as I wasn't quite enamoured with the game. The concept is great, but it just wasn't that interesting.

The rules are a bit muddy, and I think adding some of the advanced rules could help, but somehow it was quite stale. I had time to SMS my wife while playing - so much for time pressure... We ran out of objectives to fulfill in the end, too, which added some extra frustration. I can try the game again, but I have definitely no need to buy it.

Factory Fun, in the other hand, was good fun and something I wouldn't mind owning. As puzzle games come, this is pretty solid offering, and while newbies will find it hard to beat an experienced players, building your factory is a fun exercise.

Well, maybe not, if you lack the visualization skills necessary, but still - I think it's pretty fun to arrange the pipes and the machines, and once you get them connected and something's kind of working in your factory, it gets pretty entertaining.

Through the Ages has been another title I've been curious to try. The concept is great: a civilization game that moves swiftly and does away with the boring military stuff. There's no map and no units to move on it - isn't that just great!

The game is quite abstract and it took me a while to wrap my head around the system and figure out how it works (and I'm still a bit fuzzy about the happy faces stuff). So there's a learning curve there, and it's of the steeper variety. However, once you figure it all out, it makes sense. The system is just brilliant. One of the definitely highlights in the world of new games, I'd say.

Despite the length of the full game (we played an advanced game, and I very much want to play a full one as soon as possible), this one's definitely on my buy this list once the new edition comes out (unless they ruin it somehow).

While waiting for sauna, we played a quick game of Celtica. My victories were scarce during the day, but this one I won, thanks to Tommy's reckless card drawing - he played more cards on just about every turn, giving me the first shot on just about every round (not a small advantage, come to think of it). I still think Celtica is a great filler and one of the better games of 2006.

Then, as the last game of the evening, Goa. Last time I played it, it left me with a sour taste. I should like it, and now, given another chance, I did enjoy it better. It's not a bad two-player game, either. Not my favourite optimization game, no, but clearly better than I initially thought.

So, it was a fine day of games (add in some Guitar Hero II on PS2, that was fun as well). The two-player concept worked great. Playing some Splotter games would've been nice, but since both me and Tommy do prefer the new games, this was good.

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Review of Himalaya in Finnish.

Himalaya appeared on many radars when it was nominated for Spiel des Jahres in 2005. The game was formerly known as Marchands d'Empire and available as print-and-play. The new edition, published by Tilsit and by Marektoy in Finland, is rethemed: medieval traders became yak caravans in Himalaya.

The new theme is quite unique and charming: the plastic yaks are pretty. Otherwise the game components are a curious mix of clunky and neat. Everything works, basically.

Year of trading

The game is divided to 12 turns. On each turn, players program the movements of their caravan in secret from other players. The programs are then executed a step at the time. Caravans can move from village to village or trade in the villages. Trading means either taking the cheapest goods cube from the village or fulfilling a contract.

When a contract is fulfilled by bringing the right goods to the village, player gets to choose two rewards of three options: building a stupa (religious influence), placing delegates (political influence) and taking yaks (economic influence). The game is won with a mixture of all three. Yaks and stupas are basically points, while political game is an area-majority contest: you get point for having most delegates in an area.

In the four-player game, the player with the least religious influence is eliminated first. Then goes the player with least political influence and finally the remaining player with the most yaks wins. With three players, winning requires success in two areas.

Light, chaotic fun

Himalaya is a light game. There's plenty of luck involved. When a village is emptied of goods or a contract is fulfilled, new stuff appears to replace it. The location of the new stuff is decided with a roll of a die, and that can make or break plans. There's also lots of player interaction: you'll have to keep an eye on what your opponents might want to do. Being late to fulfill a contract is one of the worst things to happen.

Figuring out who's in lead isn't trivial, as the scoring is slightly complicated. I believe the game plays best when players don't care about it. It's fairly easy to play the game in 60 minutes, if you keep a brisk pace and use your intuition to guide your caravan. It's also easy to spread the game over 120 minutes by agonizing and analyzing - but that, I'm afraid, will suck all fun out of it.

If you're looking for a quick, fun game with lots of chaos and player interaction, Himalaya is a good choice. It's a bit heavy for a family game, but should still work pretty well for non-gamers. For serious gamers, it's a nice break from more analytical games.

Review of Quackle! in Finnish.

Snorta! - or Quackle!, as it's known in Finland - is a light party game. The rules are very simple, the components attractive, the game works for up to eight players and it's easy enough for kids yet interesting enough for adults to enjoy it as well.

The components are definitely great: each player gets a plastic barn and a cute little animal figurine. The figurines are colourful and funny, and improve the game a lot. There's another Finnish edition with just the cards, and I think this is just so much better.

Flipping animals

The deck of animal cards is distributed to the players. The goal is to get rid of your cards. Players reveal one card at the time, going round the table. When two players show matching animals on top of their discard piles, there's a challenge between them.

To win the challenge, you need to make the sound of your opponent's animal. Not the one in the cards, that is, but the one they have been given in the beginning of the game. Of course, during the play the animal figurines are hidden in the barns, so you'll just have to remember - or make every sound, hoping you'll hit the right one soon enough.

First one to make the correct sound wins the challenge. Loser must take his discard pile and the discard pile of the winner and add them to his draw pile. Then the game moves on.

Simple and fun - but not always

It's all very simple. The rules don't cover certain situations, so players will have to improvise a bit. Also, taking it all too seriously might be a problem, as some comments at the Geek indicate. However, with light attitude, Snorta! should be great fun amongs kids and adults in the right mood.

In the end I did sell my copy. I don't have much need for party games, and I prefer Halli Galli if I want to play a hilarious speed game. Halli Galli is also less dependant on the mood of the players: Snorta! requires players to be in an enthusiastic and funloving mood to start with.

Review of Combat Commander: Europe in Finnish.

I'm definitely an eurogamer - fond of fairly simple games that manage to create complex gameplay from a small ruleset. Yet sometimes I want more. This has been particularly true for war games: Memoir '44 is fun, but ultimately not enough. In the other hand, Advanced Squad Leader and the likes of it are perhaps a bit too much (I'm too scared to try).

However, when I bumped into Combat Commander, I realized I had found what I was looking for. The system is complex enough to be interesting, yet simple enough to play without extensive study. After five games, I've got it and can play without problems. I can take a newbie, teach him or her and play a good game.

Combat Commander is a small-scale tactical war game. Players re-enact small infantry battles of the World War 2. The maps are small, just 10 x 15 hexes or 300 x 450 meters. Players command squads and teams, about 50-150 men all together. The fighting is chaotic and intense, as the game tries to recreate the chaos of small-scale fighting.

Card-driven war

The key is in the cards. Players command their troops through cards, which can be used either as an orders or actions that modify the orders. Leaders play a crucial role: each order activates only one unit, but if that unit is a leader, he can then activate other units within his command radius. Without leaders, any reasonable action is difficult.

Fighting is simple. Firing is actually quite ineffective: a single squad isn't going to do much, especially if the enemy has cover or support from a leader. To break the opposition you need large firegroups (formed by leaders) or heavy ordnance.

No matter what you do, you can't kill someone by shooting: first hit breaks the unit. If a broken unit breaks, it is eliminated. So, you have to shoot twice - and better make it fast, before the enemy can rally their units. Melee is more deadly, as the loser will lose all the units involved. Getting to melee without getting shot at is the hard part...

Every now and then a die roll - no dice are used, the die roll results come from the cards - triggers an event. A card is drawn: each card has an event that will affect the game somehow. These vary from almost insignificant to quite major - with good luck you can produce useful reinforcements or break critical enemy units. The events add a lot of chaos and luck to the game; you need to be able to tolerate that.

Tons of variability

The game contains three nations: Americans, Germans and Russians. Each nation has their own deck; the composition of the decks varies a bit. Americans get few extra Fire actions, for example. The counter mix for the different nations varies a lot, too, so most scenarios will feature different situations and strategies for different sides.

There are 12 scenarios, one for each map in the set, and a random scenario generator. The scenario generator works well and allows lots of flexibility. The replay value of the game is immense, especially as the scenarios themselves have lots of replay value; you can do things in many ways and the objectives are sometimes more or less random. If that's not enough, there's an expansion in the pipeline.

Overview

I like Combat Commander a lot. Some will find the chaos excessive, the cards overly restrictive or the rules too complex or simplified in wrong places - I don't. I accept the design principles and enjoy the game. My only problem with the game is its length: right now I'll have to reserve three hours for a game and that's a bit much in my current life situation.

If you're looking for a war game that's easy to learn and teach, but with lots of tasty detail, Combat Commander is an excellent choice. The rules are a lot tougher to learn than in euro games, but with some effort and perhaps few solo scenarios they are fairly easy to learn if you can play the more complex euro games.

Yesterdays' board game club session started with Himalaya. I've played it before (during our mega Saturday in December 2005), but this time we had the correct rules and all.

It was fun. We had a swift group, so the game was over in about 60 minutes. Nobody got paralysed programming their yaks and we executed the turns swiftly. It was an exciting game; I lost, unfortunately, as I became complacent and didn't invest enough in religion. Oops - I was first out, banished because of my lack of dedication to all matters religious.

The game is very chaotic. While that is fun, I'm not sure it's fun that lasts. Thus, Himalaya hits the trade pile. I'll play it again, sure, with someone else's copy, should an opportunity come - as long as people play fast. Burdened with lots of analysis, the game will probably crash down. At least I wouldn't care for 90-120 minutes of Himalaya. Trust your intuition and keep it short and sweet and it's ok.

Beowulf: The Legend was a new one for me. I explained the rules pretty badly - I had no idea of how they should be explained. Maybe next time is better. We got the hang of it pretty well, anyway, and finished after just 50 minutes of epic adventuring.

I liked it. Knizia knows how to do these sorts of games. The mechanics work and the game is interesting - there are some tough choices to make there. While not one of my greatest favourites, Beowulf is a strong eight for now and will stay in my collection at least for a while. I'm not yet finished exploring this one!

The theme is interesting and well supported by John Howe's excellent art. The standard gripe is that the board, while funky, is not very functional, and I agree: the icons are a bit on the small side. How well the concept of cooperation-in-theory-competition-in-practise works is another thing, but I found the story entertaining.

(Check out Beowulf: A New Translation in Amazon.co.uk.)

I met Olli over Combat Commander: Europe yesterday. If I count solo games, this was my fifth game so far. I've played the first four scenarios and one randomly-generated (had to try it; the generator is easy to use and works well).

Scenario four has a group of Germans holding a Belgian chateau against Americans. Both sides have Elite troops. Americans have strength in numbers, Germans have some machine guns and an infantry gun. The terrain surrounding the chateau is tough: there's lots of small patches of trees in the yard, which offers Americans some cover while they approach the chateau.

I played the Germans. After two and half hours and the first sudden death check, the game ended when Olli made an advance into melee and beat my Germans over the surrender level. Had the game ended on the sudden death check, I would've won. So, it was very close. I made some mistakes; worst of them by far was the setup. I had the left side of the chateau pretty much unguarded. As a result, my heavy MG didn't fire a shot against the Americans.

Olli did take quite a while to get close to the chateau, but when he managed to do that, it was pretty bad for me for the rest of the game. I went a long time without a single Recovery order - and they were badly needed - and when I got one, an air support event broke the crucial defenders soon again.

So, tough luck on the cards. Lack of Recovery cards was definitely one reason for my loss, but I can't blame everything on that. I was already going down, it just made the downhill just a little more slippery. With better play (and I made mistakes a plenty), the lack of rallying wouldn't have been such a big problem.

After my five games, I do like the system. It works for me, it's just the right amount of complexity and detail. I would prefer if the games were slightly faster, scheduling three hours per game is a bit much in my current situation. Still, CC is a game I very much want to explore further.