Weekend Boardgaming: 17 June 2012

A bit late to post on this I do apologise (blame my studying, Diablo 3 and the latest craze, Pocket Planes!) so here we go with the games we played last sunday!

Pyramid
I saw this game being played by my Friday group previously and I have been itching to find a copy to see how it will work in office. In my latest german shipment, I finally manage to snag a copy. I have played it in office before and I decided to use it as a warm up game.

The game is a very light game and its unique selling point is the magnetic board and pieces. 1 player will be the mummy, trying to move around the board to catch the other players who are trying to loot treasures from the pyramid. The other players will be on the other side of the board trying to move around the mummy and each other and grab their 5 pieces of treasure from the maze. Movement is determined by dice rolling and treasure hunters can reroll as many times as they want before choosing 1 die. However beware! If you roll the mummy, then that die is locked and cannot be rolled. Sooner or later, the dice that have been locked will have to be released which will give the mummy player a free move, depending on the number of dice that have been unlocked. The mummy player also gets a turn to move after all the players have moved once. Its pretty fun and unique and a good light game. However so far in all my plays it seems that the mummy always wins. In 2 games, 1 player had only 2 pieces left to find but if the other players are not skillful enough, the mummy will win in more often than not. Its hard to get in Singapore but if you chance upon it, do pick it up!

In the office

Steel Driver

Another purchase from my german lot was Steel Driver. The gameplay reminds me very much of Imperial and even a lighter version of the many train games like 18xx and the like. During the game, each company will be auctioned off. After the auction, players who have managed to win the bids will control that company and make a move for that company by lying tracks and connecting between stations. After all companies have passed, then the controlling player during that turn will obtain profits based on the tracks that were laid during his/her turn. So this game is where you try to diversify and invest in companies that holds the most promise. At the end of the game, cubes will be placed at each station and the majority shareholder of each company will take turns "delivering" goods over their own tracks. Collecting sets of different cubes will mark the final profit value of the company and each share holder will receive payout. The player with the most money at the end of the game wins. I found myself without a company to perform the cube delivery at the end game but however since I manage to invest in 2 companies which had the most profit at the end, I won the game. The players found the board rather dry to look at and not particularly entertaining. The gameplay itself was pretty ok but the board could have been more exciting to look at. All in all, it is a light game that will make a great introduction to heavier train games.

Glen More

Before dinner, we played a game of Glen More for 5. This is a light to medium game where each of us is trying to grow our village as efficient as we can. During each player's turn, you will move your piece onto a tile that you want, place the tile into your village, activate that tile and all 8 tiles that are surrounding the tile you just placed. All the time you have to be mindful of the scoring elements of each of the 3 scoring rounds because players score based on the difference (between how many pieces they have compared to the player with the least amount of that piece) so that you do not accidentally provide other players with big scoring opportunities. The turn is based on which player's meeple is the furthest behind so its not a clockwise kind of player turn. Finally, you have to be as efficient as you can so that you will not be penalised as each village tile above the size of the smallest village will subtract 3 points from your total. The player with the most points will win the game. I find it hard to feel out which player is winning during the game but otherwise this is a good game. The players all felt it was very fun so recommended from me.

Twilight Struggle
After dinner we had a game of Twilight Struggle (after 3 of the players left) and this was my 3rd play and my opponents first. We played till about Turn 6 before we felt it was rather late and we had better call it a night. Very good game and epic but I found that if there is no scoring card that is coming out (we only had 2 scoring rounds), then the game play is all about positioning in preparation of the scoring card. Throughout the game I was in the lead with points but I could not captialise on it enough to win the game. My opponent also had quite bad dice rolls thus her coups and realignment rolls were not very effective. That being said, she felt that it was a very epic game and will look forward to playing it again. So yay!

Computer games
So a big part of my time is also taken up by computer games and I decided to talk about them a little given how there have been much fun to be had!

Diablo 3
The biggest thing to hit us the last few weeks. Very soon quite a few of my colleagues including my lunch group were playing. There were certainly a lot of fun AND funny moments as one of my lunch group had never played any major games in his life (his last major game was Warcraft the RTS game on PC). Still I have not reached 60 yet and the latest patch really put a bummer on things I feel. All the gold I spend leveling up my artisans felt very wasted as they are way way way cheaper now. Still its the group that makes the game fun I feel and I will look forward to questing at 60 together :)

Le Harve
I have really taken a liking to this game and when the iOS version came out, I immediately jumped on it. So far I have played a 2 player game online with a random person (he/she beat me) and played a solo game.

I was pretty lucky and manage to score 218 in my solo game. Very nice game and good implementation in the iOS. Some wishlist items will be clearer graphics (making use of the retina display on the new iPad) and maybe some enhancements since well this is a computer version of the boardgame. Still a very good purchase and a must have for any Le Harve player! Comment here if you want a match! :D

Pocket Planes

The latest craze to be released from the makers of Tiny Towers. Now I did not play a lot of Tiny Towers because I found it a tad silly trying to shuttle the people up and down the floors, however I know a lot of players are still playing it till this day, my brother in law included. When this came out, I was instantly hooked. I am not sure why but I reason that perhaps it scratched a particular itch for me. Sort of like Airlines Europe or a train-like boardgame, you get to shuttle people and cargo to various airports you setup around the world using planes that you choose. You can improve upon the planes and personalize them in various color schemes. Best of all, you can participate in world events to win rare airplanes and bucks (in game currency). All in all, I am thoroughly addicted to this game and along with my lunch group, our lunches now devolve into lunching and then managing our flights and the occasional grunts and talks :D Check out my stats right now:

I am about 1 airport away from linking Osaka and Sydney to Casanova (latest global event location) and North america. I think once I hit the first Class 3 airplane the excitement may wane for me. But as a lunch mate will say to me..... LIES :P

What Eric played on 8 April 2012

Now boardgaming has always been a group activity but there are boardgames out there that can be played solo or with only 2. Today I decided to have a 2 player session with a friend. This is the first time I have done so and it does require a good chemistry between the players to be able to play through several games and spending the time together.

So what did we play?

TWILIGHT STRUGGLE

This is currently rated #1 in boardgamegeek.com and so I decided to get a copy after trying it once (without completing yet) at another friend's house. You can purchase the Deluxe version which gives you better components (box, board and tokens are sturdy) and better graphics.

Gameplay reminds me of chess, as most 2 player games will be I guess, with the USSR and USA players playing 1 card each as the "headline" and then taking turns to play cards to either utilize the events depicted on the cards or the operation points on the card. Little by little, players will change control of the countries on the map all the while keeping an eye on the DEFCON status as well as occasionally dabbling in the space race. The game ends in 10 turns (and the player with the most victory points win)

or when a player reaches 20 victory points or if a player triggers DEFCON status 1.The card themselves are the main content of the game as they drive the decisions that you make. However the cards themselves are rather plain and not terribly exciting. Wish they had more exciting artwork.

I, playing USA, won by turn 6 with 20 victory points but I was lucky because if the Europe scoring card was played then I would have instantly lost because I had been almost kicked out of Europe. Overall I find that the game is certainly very interesting in a good way. However, as you can see from my picture above, it seems that Central and South america locations are quite underutilized. I will definitely want to try it again as USSR and see what happens. Look for a review after a few more plays.

Initial Impression: Good

CITY TYCOON

City Tycoon is a 2-5 player game where players will be building different types of buildings and then supplying resources to activate these buildings. It relies heavily on symbols (as you can see from the picture) and reminds me of a combined Alhambra or Carcassonn

e in its tile-laying mechanism.

Gameplay involves an initial drafting mechanism where you get to choose the building tiles followed by a building phase which is the main action phase of this game. This is followed by supplying phase where you get to activate the buildings and finally cleanup. This ends the round and at the end of 4 rounds, the player with the most points win.

Initially most players will be quite overwhelmed with the icons as they are not exactly intuitive like other games nor is the way to score points obvious thus this game will require more plays to better appreciate it. With 5 players, all the buildings will be used. With 2 however, not all tiles are used (only 6 from each "age") and this can severely hamper what we could do and score points. Those tiles that provide additional effects if you connect the right buildings to them are very useful and helped me to win the game. I hope to have a few more plays before a proper review and see if this is a keeper.

Initial Impression: Average

1955: The WAR OF ESPIONAGE

Last game of the session is a new kickstarter game. Its a 2 player game involving using cards to manipulate the cubes on a board to try and secure them into your corner. The player who manages to secure his color cube at the end of the track (denoted by the white star) OR 3 of the white cubes will win the game.

Gameplay wise is very simple. Its all about the cards and how and when you play the cards which will either shift the cubes or to stop your opponent from shifting the cubes. That is pretty much it. Very straight forward and simple.

However there seems to be some issues as we quickly found out in our first game where in the very first turn I lost! After scouring boardgamegeek and finding no real issue with it, we decided to play a few more games. As we got more experienced with the cards and what they can do, the game began to take a little bit longer. Still, the randomness of your card draw and the imbalanced track for the outer countries (Poland and France), there seems to be some issues with the game that I am not sure if it surfaced during play testing. Apparently there is an expansion already out but I have not read much about it to see if the issues are fixed. Overall I feel that this can be given a miss and not a must play or must buy for me.

Initial and final impression: Bad

So that was my Sunday. We are planning to perhaps arrange a few more sessions of Twilight Struggle and I hope to finally get my Star Trek:Fleet Captains broken into! Its been sitting on the shelf for way too long without a play yet :)

Comments? Suggestions? Feedbacks? I welcome them!

Thanks for reading!