Weekend Gaming: 10 June 2012

Yay ! My weekly fix of boardgaming with a small group. I gotten a few 4 player games and I have been hoping to try them out. Today's the day I got to try a few of them out. Still have a few more to go (Antiquity anyone? :P)
Here we go!

Walnut Grove

We played a 3 player first while waiting for our 4th player. Afterwards we played a 4 player one. It is quite an interesting game, not too hard to teach but hard to master. As always, the first game we had some rules wrong and we played correctly this time after clarifying some of the rules the second round. Finding enough food to feed and keep our farmers is quite a pain. Its an exercise in efficiency and tile placement. Basically you will get a certain number of tiles to choose from to add to your farm in Spring. In Summer, you choose where to place your farmers. In Autumn, you go to the town (board in the upper half of the picture) and choose a location to perform the action on. In Winter, you have to feed your farmers and keep them warm. That's it and after 8 rounds, you do a final scoring and the player with the most points is the winner. Points wise its quite a tight game as long as your tile placements are efficient. Otherwise I think you will have a hard time with the game. I will try the solo plays and see how it goes. 35 points seems a whee bit hard to get to :)

Helvetia
Played this once on another friend's copy and I decided to get my own. There's something about marrying off your workers and making babies that make this game and its mechanics interesting for me. Its not too difficult to teach as well and there will be a lot of replayability. However the theme is wrong though. I mean what we really are, are Evil Dictators and we can order our workers to perform actions at our whim. Sort of like Sims as another friend put it. We are even Genetists as we can control what gender our workers produce :p Maybe there should be a retheme of this into a sort of Evil Genius type of theme. Ought to be more thematic and exciting :D

Master Merchant

Another game from the same publisher as Maistar (and same artist), this is a fast filler like game which involves elements of deck building but with a LOT of interaction and screwage. The winner is the player who can first obtain 8 gold OR 8 different cards (which is usually how the game will be won). It comes in a very small package and plays up to 4. Easy to teach but seems hard to master as if all 4 players are experienced players, I believe there will be a lot of interaction to be had. Granted its only our first play and I suspect replayability maybe a problem after 10 plays or so, still I think it is intriguing and I wouldn't mind more plays of this. The art I love as I have never seen this before and it is quite good to look at.

Dungeon Petz

Brought this out as the box art looks very cute and buddy of mine wanted to play it. I had quite a hard time teaching as there are a lot of little details that is easy to miss and its been so long since i played it once. Play wise though all players agreed that its fun but can be a little brain draining. Thematically I think it does have and thus keep us interested even though the thinking part maybe a little brain draining as you are trying your best to choose what you want as well as keep your pets happy. But I think I will not keep it though because of the long time required to explain as well as how often I will bring it out to play. Of course the same can be said for some of my recent purchases (i.e. Antiquity) but at least I want to play it once and see how it goes :)

Weekend Boardgaming: 29th April 2012

I have been waiting for this as I just got a new batch of goodies from various arrangements and was rearing to play them. It proved to be a night starting with heavy euros and ending in much lighter fare games. Very good gaming to be had right at the beginning and winding down at the end.

Vinhos

After 4 hours we are finally DONE!

We decided to go ahead and tackle the behemoth in the room and that is Vinhos. I manage to get my copy the night before got it ready for our gaming night. Explaining the game is quite tough as there are SO MANY parts to take care of and explain. I think I (being this my first time), took about 30-45 mins to explain the game before we finally begun. There are certain parts where we were unclear and a lot of referring to rules had to be done. Luckily the rules are rather well written so the game did not falter and we trudged along. Basically you are own vineyards and produce wine and make it do a variety of actions to earn points in the end. You can also perform actions which will allow you to improve the value of the wine you produce which in turn may translate into big point payouts. As this is our first game, we made many mistakes. But everyone agreed that its quite a good game and would like to try it again another time. Just not so soon in the future ;p

Initial Impression: Good

Helvetia

Quick make babies! Quick marry them off!

After that heavy monster that is Vinhos, we decided to try Helvetia. Our gaming buddy very kindly spent a lot of effort to translate the rules into English himself which made it easier for us to understand. After a refresh of the rules, we jumped in, eager to try something which we think is lighter than Vinhos. In a nutshell, you are trying to develop your village and be the first to reach 20 points (which will signal the end of the game). The center portion is where the score track is. It also contains the goods that had been produced and traded by your village as well as a school and the 5 roles you can select. This portion reminds me of Vanuatu in how the majority will gain the role card which provides a free action as well as 1 VP. The complicated part is the chaining of goods to produce a better good. Furthermore, because your villagers can be in other villages (due to marriage), you will need to take note of their status (either awake, which means you can use or asleep which means they are disabled for now) because perhaps that player may have already awoken him/her and ready for you to utilize. This portion is a bit difficult to track as there are so many pieces and colors to track. I enjoy the game quite a bit (granted that I won with a came from behind win) and would like to see if it will be as fun after a few more plays.

Initial Impression: Good

Hamsterrolle

Be very very careful!

so after 2 thinky games, we decided to play something lighter to refresh ourselves. We played Hamsterrolle which is an agility game involving a big round circle. Objective is to try to clear the pieces in front of you (all players have the same set and no two pieces are the same) by placing the your piece (during your turn) so that your piece is the furthest along the row. If any pieces drop while you are placing your piece, then your turn is over and you have to keep all dropped pieces. The winner is the player who has cleared his/her set of pieces first. Not bad, had a lot of fun but I am not really for agility games like this.

Initial Impression: Average

Batavia

Beware of the pirate!

Next we tried a lighter game that is Batavia. You score points by having majority in each of the goods available as well as trading in the hexagonal tiles that are different from each other in a set. The player with the most points will win. Its quite a straight forward game that is surprisingly quite light and fast to play given the components and how much production value this game has. Knowing when to secure majority and thus being able to then move your player token to that hexagonal tile belonging to the majority country is vital to the game. Ok for me.

Initial Impression: Average

Junta: Viva el Presidente!

My little landed property

Junta is a game which requires a lot of negotiation and banter to make it fun. You play a powerful member of this nation which seems to be changing presidents quite easily and you can force that to happen with your own private militia which are represented by dice. During a turn, the reigning president (which incidentally will have 1 VP) will choose to pass cards to the other players in order to punish them or to bribe them. After that players will reveal the number on the dice they have selected to declare what action they are taking that turn. During this reveal and resolution phase, the president may face a coup and relinquish his/her title. Otherwise, players may also attack each other using their militia and defend themselves using their own militia as well. It requires a lot of bantering and negotiation from the group otherwise it will not really make a lot of sense thematically and may drag on for far too long, especially if the players are very good at guarding each other.

Initial Impression: Average


All in all, a great long gaming session and I am glad I finally manage to get my copy of Vinhos and play it. Helvetia was also a good play for me..
Great night, great games!