April 2009 Archives

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio was requested, and I was happy to provide the game, especially as I had finally got the new board made by Sampo Sikiö printed. So, now we had new board and new shares, the same gorgeous style as the other Winsome Games Sampo has remade.

I played with Petri, Hannu and Robert. Petri and Hannu were also playing in the first session in November (which, it seems, I've forgotten to blog about), Robert was a newbie. The final results tell something about this game: Robert was dead last with 12 points, while Petri had 21, Hannu 23 and I won with 25.

Funny thing, about the result... At one point during the game, I scored two points for ridiculously low price of four dollars, as everybody else missed an obvious scoring opportunity. Those points would've belonged to Petri, I think, which would've meant a three-way tie at 23 points. Cool.

Hannu was swimming with money, but as he had mostly purchased cheap common shares, he didn't have plenty of points. I got an early lead, which I was able to maintain. In the end, Hannu made a mistake. GEO started in Atlanta, I bought it for a large pile of money and scored a lot. Hannu could've bought it, but decided to save money for the next company. Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as good and Hannu wasn't able to catch me, not with all his money. Unlike Wabash and other similar games, GMO is only about points in the end, so you need to convert your money to points, while controlling cash flow to ensure future competitiveness. I had excellent efficiency in converting dollars to points, while Hannu had great cash flow but not enough points.

This time we had a clue and the game was a lot more meaningful than the last time. Robert lost badly, which kind of proves the point that you need that one game under your belt to grok this game. I like this one, another good railroad game from Winsome.

After GMO, we only had time for a short game. So, we played Frantic Frankfurt. Robert didn't want to play Flix Mix, because he wanted to spare his brains, but agreed to join Frantic Frankfurt - which is of course at least four time as taxing. Classy move.

Frantic Frankfurt is a speed game, where players try to play their cards on common piles. There are only two rules. Cards have colours and numbers. You can either put a larger card over a smaller card of different colour, or you can put a smaller odd card over a larger even card of same colour.

Simple, isn't it? Well, actually it's everything but, especially as you have to play as fast as possible. I completely screwed up the first round. Which leads us to the main problem with the game: noticing mistakes -- not to mention correcting them -- is really, really hard.

If you don't mind that and play with people who aren't likely to cheat, Frantic Frankfurt is a fun challenge. I did really bad in the beginning, but then caught on and eventually won the game. Not a bad experience at all, quite an adrenaline rush actually.

During yesterday's game session, I was able to play the two games I most wanted. First we played Greentown, a rather excellent route-building game. Players develop the board to make the most beneficial tourist routes. Route cards specify the length of the route and the mandatory and optional locations to visit. Visiting places makes you money, but if you visit opponent's location, they get the money.

So, you want to both keep your own routes private while placing your buildings so that your opponents must use them on their routes. Rather delightful. The route-building is taken from 18xx games. You can either build new tiles or replace old ones to change the routes.

This is a very analytical game, where you can really get stuck on planning those routes. We played 21 turns in almost 60 minutes, so on average we took almost three minutes per turn. Kind of slow, and the players weren't that slow. I would avoid the game like plague with very AP prone players. With swift enough players, Greentown is excellent.

The other game we played was also an 18xx derivative, JC Lawrence's prototype Corner Lot, which is based on the private company auction phase of 18xx, made into a full game.

It's all about auctions and set collecting, and a rather clever game, too. I liked it, but I played it with the wrong people, as just about everybody else hated it... Too much calculating, wrong kind of calculating and too much information, too. I liked it, however, it's an interesting challenge and requires some thinking, as money soon becomes scarce and you have to both collect good cards for yourself and prevent opponents from making too good sets.

If you're interested, check out the short rules (a PDF file) and playtest kits are also available. The game is just 45 cards and poker chips, so it's easy to assemble and a fairly complete game.