June 2008 Archives

Continuing from the previous round...

Glory to Rome takes the spot as the hottest game of the quarter, by far: it has double the hotness points the second game on the list has. And why not? It's new and it's very, very good. I've played four games, once each with two, three, four and five players. All work, but five is a tad too long. Others are good; two-player game is slightly different, but I enjoyed that as well. This one's a keeper.

1825 Unit 3 has made its way on the table twice during the quarter, and is definitely worth a good spot on the list. It's a lovely game, just the right challenge for two rail gamers. The first time I played we used pen and paper (and calculators) for money, but I found the computerized system (a spreadsheet with automatically calculated totals) we used on the second time very helpful. With just two players, seeing the screen isn't a problem. For railroad fans looking for a two-player game, this is a good choice.

Die Dolmengötter came out of nowhere - a friend had it for sale, I had read pretty nice things about it from Geek, why not? - and turned out to be one of my new favourites. I've played two three-player games - enough to figure out four is the way to go. There just isn't enough with three, the co-operation aspect doesn't work well enough. So, that's a bit of a problem, but with a game this good, I'm not going to whine about it more: Die Dolmengötter with four is a really excellent little game.

Bondtolva is an easy two-player card game, with enough good stuff to make it interesting. It's a lovely option when Schnapsen is too much, yet you want something that requires a bit of thinking. It's one of my favourite two-player games.

Piatnik makes some very beautiful 54-card Austrian-style Tarock packs with French suits . The first of my playing-card reviews covered one of them; here are the rest. Start with that review, because the packs are actually all exactly the same on the front. What differs is the back and the presentation.

Two of the packs have two-part boxes while the rest are in tuckboxes. The two-part boxes are very nice. The material is thick and the boxes are very sturdy. They are easy to open; too easy, actually, so when traveling, the box needs a rubber band or something to keep shut. The tuckboxes look less impressive, but are more functional.

Piatnik No. 1903 Luxus Tarock has a shiny golden box with blue decorations and text; whether it says "Luxus" or "Kitsch" is a question of taste, I suppose. The back of the cards repeats the same blue-and-gold theme. Piatnik No. 1905 Jagd Tarock is a pack for hunters, as the name says ("Jagd" means "Hunt"). The box is simple green with some ornaments and the back of the pack has a painting of a deer.

Piatnik No. 1906 Persisches Allerfeinstes has a Persian theme, all swishy ornaments typical to Arabic art. The name claims high quality (if I understand the "Allerfeinstes" correctly), but the cards are of the same quality as other Piatnik cards.

Piatnik No. 1909 Kaffeehaus stands out. The cards are very large. It doesn't appear so in the thumbnails below, but you can compare the actual images. While the regular Tarock cards are large, 63 x 113 mm, Kaffeehaus cards are huge: 74 x 129 mm. Why is that so, I don't know, but apparently some coffee house card players in Austria have preferred these larger cards. Piatnik also has Kaffeehaus Doppel-Deutsche cards. Other than the size, there's just one difference: the frame around the face cards is slightly more decorative than the simple thin line in other Piatnik Tarock cards.

Piatnik No. 1934 Blitz, No. 1935 Ornament and No. 1936 Karo are all very basic packs in standard tuckboxes, with different backs. These are common back patterns, too, for Piatnik, particularly Karo and Blitz (Kaffeehaus is Karo with slightly different colours). The different Ornament packs (Schnapskarten, Preference) have different ornament patterns, but are otherwise similar to this Tarock pack.

So, all are very good choices if you're looking for a Tarock pack. If you need really, really large cards, Kaffeehaus is the way to go, but all of these are large enough for people with weaker eyes. Luxus and Jagd have the boxes, which are nice unless you plan to carry your cards around with you. The rest is just a question of taste; I myself prefer Blitz and Karo.

Top row: 1903 Luxus, 1905 Jagd, 1906 Persisches Allerfeinstes, 1909 Kaffeehaus. Bottom row: 1934 Blitz, 1935 Ornament, 1936 Karo.

Our latest game session (actually on Tuesday) got a good start with Die Dolmengötter. It's a favourite of me and Hannu, and the others were happy to play the game as well. Mika was the only newbie around. Petri had devised a rather clever strategy: avoid Mikko. I certainly did fairly well, pretty much thanks to Mika. Others did, too: Petri had lots of dolmens on top of (mostly rather short) stacks. Hannu goofed around on the sides, but seemed to progress as well.

Indeed. Hannu was first one to complete his score in the final count: 72. Petri was getting close, but his progress stopped at 70. Close call, but it got even closer, when I finished my count and ended up at 71. Nice! Mika had just 49, but still I'd say the total score for all of us was fairly high, and the result was unusually close (Dolmengötter is often won with a small margin, but this small I've never seen before). Excellent game, too - if the game worked as well with other player counts, it'd be awfully close to a 10. With four, this is close to perfection.

I got our Pampas Railroads order on Tuesday, so it was an obvious choice - anyhow I had to take a copy with me, because I was delivering Hannu's game to him. Despite Mika's resistance (he doesn't like train games), it was the best option we had so we plunged in.

Pampas Railroads is a longer and more complicated relative of Wabash Cannonball. The game has a longer fixed length (which is the same as the max length of Wabash, I think), our game took about two hours. The time taken depends a lot on the auction speed of the players, but I'd say 90 minutes to three hours is a fairly realistic range.

The basic idea is simple: buy shares in railroads, build track and develop cities to increase the value of those railroads and try to make most money by buying the right shares at the right price. Simple in theory, very complicated in practise...

There are some differences to Wabash. Mostly, stock doesn't dilute (dividends are always based on total amount of shares; only end game value depends on amount of shares sold), development is more powerful (income is based on links, not cities, and link value is value of both ends summed together, so increasing city value with one will increase railroad income with two or more) and the fixed game length removes the game end speculation.

Our game was very experimental, a real training game, as we didn't have any clue of proper share values (hint: much higher than in Wabash, $30 isn't too much). Mika - who doesn't like these train games, you know - dominated the scene by running the Pacifico very profitably and very much alone. In the end, the scores were 472-290-269-225. Yours truly was dead last. My shares were actually worth more than Petri's or Hannu's, but I had less cash. Mika, of course, had both most cash and the most valuable shares (four shares of Pacifico, each worth $45, thank you very much!).

Well, we'll show him the next time. I enjoyed the game a lot, and indeed might join the group that prefers this one over Wabash: the extra length and scope for building and developing pleases me. There's more building in this, that's the thing, a better feel of creating something. Dunno, but this is a top-notch game worth more exploration, that's for sure.

The components are typical Winsome quality: decent, not pretty, some usability issues. The action cards I don't like, and replacing them with a Wabash-style action track is a very good idea. JC Lawrence (tons of gratitude to him for organizing the P100 project!) included a player aid with the tracks and a better income/value chart, but I don't like that part... I do have an idea what the perfect Pampas Railroads income/value track should look like, expect one to appear in Geek as soon as I get it done. Which might take months, considering my current workload, or might happen in few days. We'll see.

ASS Tarock Schafkopf Club and Piatnik Schafkopf Tarock (no. 182211). These packs (ASS on left, Piatnik on right) have the same Bayerisches Bild pattern with 36 cards. The Bavarian pattern has suits of acorns (Eichel), leaves (Graß), hearts (Herz) and bells (Schellen). The face cards have a king and two officers, Ober and Unter. While the pictures in both packs are clearly renditions of the same pattern, the quality of the drawings is substantially different.

The pip cards look pretty much the same, there are some differences there but which one is better is very much a question of taste and almost arbitrary. However, the face cards and the decorative aces (or twos, actually) are done in different styles. Piatnik has a lot more detail, fine lines and softer colours, while ASS has stronger pictures that look almost crude when compared to those in the Piatnik pack. My personal opinion is clear: Piatnik is much better. Even in the pip cards, I prefer Piatnik's colours, which are slightly deeper and less bright.

Both packs are excellent in production quality, though. The material is strong and durable. The cards are quite a bit taller than standard playing cards (10 cm or 4" tall, compared to a more typical 8.5 cm) but only slightly wider than usual. Thus, the cards appear tall, which is actually quite nice. All cards have indices - both suit and number - and the tens also have a large "X" in the top middle. Despite indices, Obers and Unters also have the suit symbols in the right place (up in Obers, down in Unters). All cards are double-headed.

The highlights and identifying features of the pattern are the seated kings and the decorative twos or aces (despite having indices "A", the aces clearly have two suit symbols, betraying their origin as twos). The ace of acorns features a naked cherub sitting on a barrel hoisting a tankard, with plants that look like hops. The ace of bells has a dog fighting a boar. The ace of leaves has a decorative cup with roses and the ace of hearts has Amor with his arrow.

Like the name says, these cards are used for Tarock and Schafkopf. For Schafkopf, though, the players need to toss away the sixes, and according to Card Games, these days many use 24 cards, which would make 24-card Schnapsen pack more attractive for Schafkopf. Bavarian Tarock, however, uses all 36 cards, and is a rather fine game.

Top row is ASS, bottom row is Piatnik.

Dal Negro Salzburger 24/D. This is a related pack from Italy, the only Italian regional pack with German suits. It is also known as Salisburghesi or Einfachdeutsch. The pack is used in Northern Italy, in the German-speaking regions. The pack often has 36 cards: Ace, King, Ober, Unter, 10, 9, 8, 7 and 6 in every suit, but this pack from Dal Negro has also fives to make 40 cards (according to Andy Pollett, this is a standard practise these days). Italian-speaking people in Alto Adige use this pack to play Tressette.

This pack also has a WELI card, that is, the six of bells has a large "WELI" text in the top, an acorn and a heart and a fountain in the bottom. This card is used in some Tyrolean games played with a 33-card pack (number cards 7-10 in every suit and WELI).

The pattern is not the same as in the Schafkopf / Tarock packs described above, but very close. The kings are also seated, and the twos (or the aces) have mostly the same pictures. However, these cards are single-ended (thus the name Einfachdeutsch; the Bavarian pattern is known as Doppeldeutsch in Austria, where this Salzburger pattern is also used). The court cards are rather beautiful, and the number cards have all sorts of little drawings (animals, hunting scenes, farm life) in the bottoms under the pips.

However, the double-ended cards are much better for playing games, which is the very reason why the Doppeldeutsche pack is double-ended these days. Add to that the lack of indices, and this pack becomes less attractive for games. The only way to tell Obers from Unters is to look at the location of the suit symbol in the card.

Thus, the pack is mostly interesting for art or authenticity - if you're looking for a pack to play with, I would suggest one of the above Tarock packs.

Our Thursday session was on Monday this week. That's summer for you... I would prefer a fixed date, but sure, it's pretty hard to fix when people have fluctuating schedules.

I started games with a two-player game of Glory to Rome. I've now played with two, three, four and five players - that's fairly rare! The game works well with all different player counts, in my opinion. The poll in Geek recommends the game with all player counts, too. I would say the game is probably the best with four, but the two-player game was fun, too.

I totally dominated the game. I built a lot, collecting plenty of influence. However, when the game was scored, the results were surprising. I won, but it was just 30-24, since Mika was able to collect some bonus points from the vault.

The more I play Glory to Rome, the more I like it.

We had planned to play Dutch InterCity, but Mika was allergic to train games. We split in two, with Mika and Sami playing Glory to Rome while the rest of played cards. We started with Russian Preference. Now I've played the game twice, I can easily say it's one of my favourite card games with three players. It has just the right amount of solid thinking required in the auction and good scope for tactical play.

Unfortunately my luck (and skills) weren't any better this time. I ended up paying a lot - fortunately we weren't playing for money. Hannu played an excellent game, as both me and Markus ended up in the red. The final scores were 199, -53 and -146. Once again I collected the largest amount of negative points. Hannu collected most of the contract points. Both me and Hannu played a successful misere contract for 10 points, but unfortunately mine was too late in the game, and I only gained four points for it.

I'm fairly sure we'll play this one again, as Hannu seemed to like the game a lot.

After Preference, we also tried Bavarian Tarock. It's not a Tarot game, but a variant designed for regular playing cards. This one had a simple bidding: play with widow or play without widow. No major complications. The play is fairly basic ace-ten-stuff: collect more than half the points in the pack to win. The trick play rules are similar to Pinochle: players must follow suit, then trump, then play any card, and if possible, players must play a higher card to the trick. This extra restriction makes for some nice variation from the norm.

This is a money game at heart and scoring is money-based. Winner of a simple game gets points from the pot, while a winner of widowless game gets points from both opponents. Loser pays to one opponent, while the other takes points from the pot. The amount of points depends on how well you play. It's simple, yet we managed to play it wrong (we also played the bidding wrong; Tarock has Skat-style bidding, where forehand and middlehand first settle who bids highest and then the dealer competes with the high bidder)...

Anyway, Bavarian Tarock is a fairly simple, yet entertaining game. Not my favourite - with three, my first preference right now is Preference - but I certainly wouldn't mind playing again. I want revenge, anyway, because once again I was dead last, while Make and Hannu were pretty close competing for the victory when we had to quit.

As my order from Northumbria Games arrived in just two days, we started our games with Dutch InterCity. We had four players, but fifth arrived just when we were about to start. Five, then.

Dutch InterCity is an older title from Winsome Games and a progenitor for the Riding series. It is somewhat similar to Wabash Cannonball, but even smaller and more minimalist.

The game features five railroad companies building track in the Netherlands. Each turn starts with a share selling phase. Each player chooses a share to sell. There's an auction, and the high bidder gets the share. First share is the director's share, after that the player with the most shares in a company will be the director. The share auction continues at least until every player has chosen a share to sell. Once that happens, the auction will continue until somebody runs out of money.

Then the companies get to build track. Each director chooses which connection the company wants to build that turn. The track costs 2-6, paid from the company treasury (supplied by the share auction). However, if two companies want to build the same track, there's a blind bid and the company that pays more gets to build and the other doesn't build.

Next up is dividends. The dividends are determined by the longest continuous run of track: each share pays that amount, so the dividends are not diluted like in Wabash. The turn ends with the turn order rearrangement: the richest player goes first, the poorest is last.

This continues until the map is completely built or a turn goes without any building at all. That doesn't take long, because the map is fairly small. Four to six rounds, says J C Lawrence, and that sounds pretty accurate. In the end, companies are liquidated. The value of the track (sum of the values of the company track) is added to the treasury and the pot is divided to the shareholders. The director takes the remainder.

It's very simple and clever, but takes surprisingly long. I suppose playing the game in 45 minutes or so is possible, but out first game took 75 minutes. It depends on how long you take in the auctions, because that's the main part of the game.

The auction is clever. The ending condition is interesting. The strategies aren't obvious. Ending with just few dollars is clearly a bad idea, though, as you'll lose all control over the auction. Overpaying can be a good idea, especially as you can get part of the money back from the company treasury in the end. In the first round, one of the players was able to get a bid of a lead: everybody bought one share, then the first player simply went all-in and outbid everyone else to score a second share and ending the auction immediately. The auction strategies take some thinking.

Dutch InterCity is a fairly minimalist game; mostly an interesting auction, really. The track-building is less interesting, the options are fairly constricted. There's some guess-work and choosing between risky but valuable and safer but less profitable options involved. In most of our game each company was controlled by a different player, but controlling more than one company is certainly useful in the track-building phase.

As this is a Winsome game, the production values are very minimalist, but work pretty well. The map is fairly ugly, and I would prefer that the track lines would show the value of the tracks. The game has small cardboard chits to mark the tracks, but using those is a pain. I highly recommend using wet-erase pens, as the board is laminated. Also, using railway value chart from Geek is a good idea.

I like it, and my fellow gamers were interested in trying again, so this one'll see some table time. It'll take some more experience to say how Dutch InterCity compares with Wabash Cannonball; so far I'd say Wabash is slightly more interesting, but Dutch InterCity is definitely worth trying (but is it worth paying a lot or hunting with great effort, is another thing).

We continued with a five-player game of Modern Art. This was Hannu's game, his total score was over 500, while the others were in 300 or so and I plunged to 234 thanks to a last turn double auction offer that ruined me. Ok, I might've called that ruin upon me by offering a fixed-price double for 105 and having to buy that, because the artist had run dry...

Lesson learnt: an artist doesn't have power to sell well for three or four rounds. Don't hang on to your doubles too long! I lost because of my own greed; I could've sold those paintings to Hannu, had I priced them lower. Then again, there was some pretty strange sales, too, because we had some newbies involved. I think Hannu might've received some lucky money, too, but he was a good salesman, too.

Still, it was an entertaining game, even though the final round spoilt my performance. I think I prefer Modern Art with less than five, though - I like having slightly more control over what is sold.

My opinion of Canal Mania seems to shift after every game. Now I like the game again! We played the game yesterday with the four of us (my mother, Ismo and Severi). With three newbies, we were still able to finish the game in 90 minutes after I broke the 50 points.

It was a fairly easy victory for me: I kept building my canals together so they formed a single network, allowing me a flexible choice of four- or five-point shipments. Meanwhile Severi had built lots of small contracts, securing the 10 points for the most active builder and a strong second place. Ismo was able to do some longer shippings in the end, while I think my mother would do much better the next time we played; too bad we rarely have a chance to repeat a game right away, so the next time might be few months away. The final scores were 67-63-51-45.

So now I think the game is actually fine for what it is, a light game of network-building and shipping. It works: it's easy to play, yet offers something to chew on. I probably wouldn't try Age of Steam with this group, so Canal Mania fills a niche there. With my gamer friends, it's a different world, but I think I'll keep Canal Mania in my collection for situations like this.

Of course, this is a mixed blessing, because I'm looking for some extraneous games in my collection I could sell to make some room and some money - I just ordered three new games as I found Northumbria Games, who have an admirable selection of Winsome games. I've got West Riding, Dutch Intercity and New England Railways coming my way.

Yesterday's session was a disaster: Mari arrived at 16.20 or so, I arrived at 17.00 and Make arrived at 17.30 - none of us stayed long enough to meet each other. Way to go!

However, today was much better. You see, I've been spending quite a bit of time outside in the Kaukajärvi parks with Nooa and I've been rather lucky to have some good company in the form of two childminders and the children they're looking after. It's a win-win situation: Nooa has friends and I get to interact with actual adults.

One of them, Johanna, is interested in card games. I gave her a copy of my book as a gift earlier and we've been talking about playing games in the park - the kids don't need constant attention, after all. So, today I finally remembered to bring my cards.

We needed something fairly simple, because the kids provide lots of distraction. There's no way we could play Schnapsen, for example. Instead, we played two-handed Bondtolva, a Swedish variant of the Marriage game. It's a bit like relaxed Schnapsen, really.

Of 24 cards, six is dealt to both players. While the pack lasts, the trick play is free, but when the pack runs out, the final hands are played with strict F,t,r rules: follow suit and win if possible, play trumps if you can and renege only if nothing else is possible. Marriages can be shown for points, and the first marriage in hand determines the trumps.

There's one point for winning the last trick, another for winning most matadors (aces and tens; if these are tied, the court cards have point values for breaking ties). First marriage is two points, the rest are one each. The game is played to 12 points.

It's simple, yet fun. There's quite a bit of luck, particularly in the marriages, but also room for skillful play. The game doesn't require too much attention, which is very good. Winning lots of tricks doesn't count, if you don't win aces or tens and even if your cards suck, you can still shoot for the last trick for a 1-1 result. We played four games and I was able to win three, many through pretty good luck, but I suppose my experience shows in the results as well.

But Johanna liked it, and we'll continue later. We'll definitely play more Bondtolva; I'll have to think about other games. It should be something that's fairly simple, fairly quick, doesn't require much space or too much attention. Strohmann could be a possibility, though I'm not sure I want to expose my tarot cards to all that sand...

I was scouring the web for interesting Poker news (that's what I do for living these days) and I bumped into a familiar name. There's a Man vs Machine Poker Championship coming, where two human Poker pros will play against Polaris, a Poker computer program. In the end of the article I read, they interview the director of the research team and who it is - Jonathan Schaeffer!

I've written about him before, check my entry about his book One Jump Ahead. He is the man behind Chinook, the Checkers-playing computer. Last time I blogged about him, there was an estimate that Checkers would be solved by 2010. Well, they did in 2007.

Apparently since Schaeffer solved Checkers, he has moved on to other challenges. Poker should prove him some challenge, though beating humans in two-player Fixed-Limit Texas Hold'em is only the start of it.

Another interesting aspect of the Man vs Machine contest is the way it's played: they're playing Duplicate Poker, which combines Poker with Duplicate Bridge to create a game where luck has less effect in the game.

Settlers of Catan meets M.U.L.E. in Seize Life! describes a M.U.L.E.-inspired variant of Catan where players must co-operate and win together:

In M.U.L.E. the player are all in coopertition, cooperative competition. They are colonists trying to make good for themselves but also must help their fellow players. At a certain time "those in charge" return to see how the colonists are doing. If the players have been playing a cutthroat game they usually won't have done well enough to be accepted as a successful new colony. They lose the game.

I applied this to Settlers. I kept track of several games and found that when playing competitively (4 players) the game usually ends around turn 15 with a combined point total of roughly 28.

We changed the rules. Now the game will end at the end of turn 15, and players must have reached a combined total of 35 points in order to win. If we don't make it, we lose as a group.

Sounds pretty cool! Thanks to Yehuda for finding this.

I organized another train game session at the local library. Once again, only Olli was able and willing to join me, so it was again time for 1825 Unit 3 (I know we could've played Unit 2 as well, but I thought having another go at Unit 3 was better). Our previous game is documented in Two-player 1825.

With previous experience, we did the setup very quickly, but the playing time wasn't much reduced: we played for three hours and fifteen minutes or so. Instead of pen and paper calculations, book-keeping was done in a spreadsheet. I had a simple sheet with columns for each player and company. The money totals were clear and visible, calculating dividends was very swift and the money in bank was calculated automatically. It was a very pleasant solution, and definitely my favourite way to play 18xx.

Last time we played, I took CR and Olli took NBR. Now we switched companies. Olli started developing CR to south, while I took NBR to north. CR is better in the beginning, Olli got good action fast while I spent quite a while saving money. If NBR wants to run two routes, they basically need four trains (or a 3 train), at least until phase two. That's expensive.

In the end, NBR was the heaviest hitter, though. CR ended up with 5, 4, and U3 running for 450 pounds, while NBR had 7, 5, and 3 making 540 - that was pretty cool, especially as I had more CR than Olli had NBR. However, even though NBR's stock value kept jumping four steps at the time, it ended up one step below CR at 230.

Olli was the first one to invest in GSWR, but I soon took it from him. The shares were 5-4 for a while, though, so developing GSWR wasn't the most interesting thing... Eventually I dumped it, but not before it sold a 3 train to NBR and bought a 2 train in return, giving NBR a better train and 260 pounds to use to buy a 5 train.

GSWR then spent some time in receivership, but that didn't last long: running a leased 7 train it soon got enough money to buy a 3T. At that point we both bought some stocks, with Olli taking the directorship. Later on - on the last stock round - I sold the shares, which was stupid, stupid, stupid - Olli bought them all, since they were at 49 pounds and thus didn't count for the certificate limit. He then bought a train for GSWR, ran it for 120 pounds and finished the game with all ten GSWR shares.

Our last game ended with scores around 5000 pounds. This time we both did much better: the final scores were 7088-6511 for Olli. It was an interesting match, and I thought I was doing pretty well. If NBR had just ended up with few steps higher in the share value chart... If and if, but I'll have to say figuring out what to do in this game is still a bit hazy for me.

This time the tile mix limits hurt me a lot. My glorious Great North of Scotland would've been a lot more profitable, had I been able to do some upgrading. But no - all the suitable green tiles were in use and all the possible russet upgrades that would free them were already in play. Also, the lack of a wide curve with a small station can be rather annoying...

All in all this was an excellent game. I'm kind of disappointed I still haven't been able to get Steam over Holland on the table, but playing 1825 is never a bad thing. I would like to give the Unit 1 a go at some point, and perhaps try some combined unit action...

As usual, I've been thinking about the game since yesterday and have all sorts of ideas. One thing that I should try is starting the minors at much higher levels - so far we've always started them near the minimum level possible. Starting them higher would cost more, but it would be more profitable.

We finished off with two hands of Strohmann-Tarock. Both of us took home one deal with great ease, which was kind of fun, but resulted in a 5-5 draw. It's a fun little two-player game, that's for sure.