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