Game Session: Get Bit, Bora Bora, Ground Floor, Railways of the World Card Game, Tanto Cuore, CO2, Village, Kaigan, Aladdin's Dragons

I have decided that for games which I have talked about before in previous posts, I will not elaborate too much on them unless there is something new to talk about them. With that, I played several "new" games, both in terms of to me and to the gaming industry. Lets get on with this!


Get Bit

Ah its been a long time since i brought out my copy of Get Bit and I decided to bring my lighter fare to office to play with my colleagues given the relaxed mood we want plus the short time we can play during lunch. Get Bit involves players playing cards so that they can get to move forward in the "queue". Whoever is the player closest to the shark will get bitten and loses a component / limb of their body. At the end when there are only 2 people left, the player who is furthest in front will win the game. The only and most important strategy is trying to out guess your opponents so as to ensure you won't be caught at the back with the shark. Its a light and quick game with cool bits (lego-like figures where you can pull limbs off and mix and mash and the shark) and an interesting theme. Good for a party!


Bora Bora

Stephen Feld's first of FOUR releases in 2013! I am glad our group managed to grab a hold of this copy and play it before I decide to pull the trigger on this. Final verdict? Yes I pulled the trigger and I cannot wait to try this with my other groups and see how it goes. First impressions upon opening the box is the amount of setup required. That and also the super busy player board. I mean its really jam packed with symbols galore and it was overwhelming at the beginning. Luckily though, after the first round or so, we got into the grove and the player board is actually helpful and good. But there are really quite a lot of bits and cards to setup for the game. Interestingly though, as you play through the game and pieces are put back into the box, you can start to keep these pieces and thus tear down is relatively less time consuming.
Lets talk about the gameplay itself. During the start of each round (6 rounds in total), players will roll their 3 dice concurrently. Then beginning with the start player, they will choose 1 die and place it on one of 7 areas available to perform an action. The only condition is the die placed must be smaller than any previously placed die on the same area. There are god cards that you can play to overcome this criteria. Then you will perform that action. Actions include building a new hut in an adjacent land, buying a Male or Female tile which gives you certain benefits when activated or tattooed/sea shelled, choose to tattoo a Male tile or sea shell a female tile (basically these tiles provide a 1 time benefit when tattooed/sea shelled) and many others. Once all players have placed all 3 die, then you move to phase 2 where you can activate one Male and one Female tile to gain the benefits they provide. Then you go to phase 3 where you will resolve the other areas of the board one by one. This will score you more points, award the first player, award a god tile, allow you to purchase jewellery (which gives points at the end of the game) as well as complete 1 objective and pick a new objective. All tiles not purchased are removed and a new round begins. The game will end after 6 rounds and there is 1 more final scoring and whoever has the most points will win the game.
It is certainly a very deep game with many paths to victory. In a way, you can think of this as Kingsburg advanced (due to the die placing mechanism). There are really a lot of end game scoring available and thus, like many games of this nature, you should start off with 2 or 3 objectives and then focus on them throughout the game. You will probably not fare well if you change objectives in the middle of the game. There is plenty to do and score points with and you cannot neglect any areas especially those that will provide end game scoring as there will be a lot of points to be scored at the end. The game also provides you plenty of opportunity to sabotage each other as you can place die to block opponents as well as purchase the jewellery pieces that he needed to complete an objective or take the objective he wanted away from him.
All in all, its quite a good game but I will definitely want to play more to see if there are any areas of the games that are skewed to win and thus making it mandatory to expand on that to win. Good components for an Alea game and quite well thought out game from Stephen. Recommended!


Felix the cat in the sack

Light Auction game next where each player gets a set of same cards (all cats including 2 negative point cats and 2 dogs). In a round, all players will simultaneously select a card and then, in player order, place them from left to right. Then starting with the start player, he will place a bid. This bid is to win all the cards for that turn. The first player to pass will receive 2 coins. 2nd player will receive coints and 3rd will receive 6. The winner will take all the cards (be it good or bad). The dogs help to chase away negative cats or highest positive one but will cancel each other out if both are played. The winner is the one with the most points from the cards as well as most remaining money left. Light and pretty good with oversized cards. I am not really good with auction games though as I have a problem gauging the value of a card and may often overbid. Still the group had fun as we commented on the funny artwork of the cats. Try before you buy!


Ground Floor

One of the kickstarter games that gotten a lot of hype for its components but also some people have complained quite a bit about the game for its duration and dragginess. In essence its a worker placement game where you will get more and more workers nearer to the end of the game and thus have more and more actions to take and choose from and thus surprisingly, the game can get longer. During the game we are all contractors or real estate development companies and we are trying to build our tower as high as we can so as to score a lot of points and win the game. The main currencies of the game are Information and Money but there are only about 2 or 3 options to obtain either during the game. once all players have placed their "job scheduling chips", the game will go into resolution for each job. That is the end of the round and the game will end when a player has built at least 5 stories in his tower. The game does take quite a bit of time to get thru and can get really tedious at times. The publicity track did not appeall to me to invest in as it will, at most, allow you to employ new workers first as well as decide first where to place your workers. To me, it is an OK game I guess but I don't think I will want to play it again. It just did not click with me. Components are really nice, thick boards and thick chits with a nice modern-like artwork to boot.Pity though as I really wanted to like this game. I have yet to try Skyline, the kickstarter bonus that came with the game. Try before you buy!


Railways of the World Card Game

I have been wanting to try this game for some time now as I really liked the base game however never managed to justify the cost. There was a recent warehouse sale and it was going for really cheap but I did not go down on the first day and it was snapped up quick. Managed to play that snapped up copy though so its cool. Its a relatively straight forward pick up and deliver game where you have cards that you use to lay tracks to stations and then you can choose to deliver goods. Everything that you do will score you points and the player with the most points at the end will win the game. There is an end game scoring as well based on the combination of goods you have collected as well as if your tracks are of a bigger value to a station and thus you will score points for that station as well. I tried going by the goods method while my opponent went by the laying tracks and station method and she trashed me horribly. It was not a bad game and I had fun but I will probably not play this again. A few more gripes about the game. It can get really messy. Because the cards you are laying are rather free form and there is no board, you can end up needing a lot of space to play the game and having to shift cards slightly to the left or right to accomodate for new tracks and stations. The cards aren't really of a normal size so sleeving maybe a problem.Since most scores are usually around the 150 points region, the scoring track is woefully inadequate and not large enough. The scoring bits should have been made smaller to facilitate multiple players' scoring bits on the score track. Try before you buy!


Tanto Cuore

Another game that has peaked my interest and I have wanted to try. This is a dominion-clone with 1 different mechanism and a cuter and anime-like theme. Components wise, the game is very pretty. Pink cards, nice art, anime-looking maids (some in compromising positions, be warned!) and they even provided very nice card seperators and it all fits nicely (even sleeved) into one of those boxes that you can use to store Magic the Gathering cards. During the game, players are trying to hire maids which will provide them with benefits when "serving" as well as victory points at the end of the game. Similar to Dominion, you will have 1 "serving" where you can play a Maid card to get benefits, you will have 1 hire where you can use "Love" which is the currency, to get new Maids from the town. The main difference is that you can "chamber" your maid (play the maid card into your private chambers) so as to declutter your deck. In addition, there are private maids which you can hire and they go straight to your chamber and provide you with a benefit every turn. Another smaller difference from Dominion is you can purchase bad effects to be placed into another player's private chambers. This may cause a maid to fall ill (thus preventing that maid from providing victory points or benefits) or give you negative points if not removed. The game will end when 2 maid stacks are empty in town.
This game requires a good sense of humor and the right crowd to be able to pull it off. If you role play and make suggestive tones or just simply read off the phases or your actions during the game and if the group does not get offended, then this game can be quite fun. We were amused by all the suggestive tones being made by the phases and our actions but found the game could drag on as its not that simple to just clear 2 stacks to end the game. Near the end, I got bored of repeating myself and the fun factor nosedived until we just wanted the game to end. It could be because we weren't playing properly as we just thought like we were playing dominion when we can do a lot of sabotaging on each other but we did not. I will definitely want to play this a few more times and see how it goes. I wonder if my office crowd will be amused as I am at the game :) Try before you buy!


CO2

Tried another 5 player game (yes I am asking to be punished lol) and this time the ending was quite surprising to me. Near the end of 3rd Decade we realised to our horror that the earth wasn't going to make it. The last 2 turns we negotiated with each other on how to safe the earth so that we can continue playing but a bad draw of 40-points for the last dirty power plant brought us to 500 and we lost. It was surprising to me because this is the first time the game won and we all lost. I love how my pimped out CEPs looked on the game. I also realised I played 1 rule wrongly (dang it, this rule book needs to be improved!) in that when we build a power plant, we must have at least the tech level on that particular tech tree as that many tech cubes on the power plant. This will probably cause a lot of the previous games to be tainted as well. I wonder, given the multitude of rules clarifications, if the designer realises there's something wrong with how the rules were arranged/designed and if there will be improvements in the future. Still I do enjoy the game and hope to finally play it all the way through correctly for once. Recommended!

Village

Another game of village as we helped to punch out a new sealed set and taught the owner how to play. This time however it dragged on really long as no one really wanted to finish the game. However, due to this, I found myself being able to complete the touring portion even though I started at the middle of the game and also move myself up a lot on other tracks. As usual, I forgo the market track and I won by 3 points in the end over the player that focused a lot on the market track. Its pretty interesting how, by dragging the game on, I had so much opportunity to start my travelling and went to 5 places to get quite good scoring. If you haven't gotten this game, go grab it. Expansion is coming out too and can play up to 5. Recommended!


Kaigan

Finally played Jon's hidden gem as mentioned in our podcast. Art wise, as mentioned by jon, it looks horrible. The choice of components as well is quite surprisingly. There are 2 main boards and the boards used to represent the map of Japan is made of paper. PAPER! OMG. Still gameplay wise its like Zooloretto / Coloretto on steriods. The subtle way in which you are placing your cards as well as the order in which the cards have been placed in a row and when you choose to claim a row is intriguing. Then there is another way of scoring depending on how many cubes you have placed on the map board. i think it is quite interwoven the various mechanics but during the game I wasn't really into it so much. I guess it could be because I have had several games before Kaigan and the gaudy art was not helping my involvement of the game. Still I can see the appeal of the game and I would say try before you buy!


Aladdin's Dragons

A game I have never played before and this looks really old. To my surprise, its rated within the top 500 on BGG and designed by Richard Breese and published in 2000. This game is all about bluffing and reading your opponents to win artefacts. The game will end when all artefacts have been taken and the player who has the most artefacts at the end of the game wins. During each player's turn, they will place a chit from behind their screen into one of several areas available on the board. They will place the chit face down. Each player has identical set of chits numbering from 1 to 9. After all players have placed the chits, the areas will resolve 1 by 1. The player with the highest sum total from the chits he has placed there will usually win the rewards/action of that area. Later on in the game, players have access to artefacts that can add +3 to their total OR double the value of a chit which can make the game interesting. There are spells as well which can turn a 9-point chit to a 1-point chit. There is a guard at the palace as well which you have to beat to be able to have the option to purchase artefacts. However the game can be quite prone to analysis paralysis as players can spend quite a good deal of time mulling over what to play and where to play it. For a game that is almost 13 years old, it is quite nicely designed and fun. If it ended a little earlier though might have been  much better. Try before you buy!

Zombicide Season 2 kickstarter
If you aren't aware, there was a little game called Zombicide (ok not so little) that was released from Kickstarter with much fanfare and a LOT Of miniatures. It is a co-op game where players control characters and try to survive or win in a number of scenarios as provided in the game. Recently, Cool Mini or Not (creators of Zombicide) have released Season 2 on kickstarter! It is a standalone game by itself and in the kickstarter they are also releasing Toxic City which is an expansion that is compatible with either Season 1 or Season 2. News is that within the first 2 minutes the project has been funded (their target was usd25k) and now, with 25 days to go, they are almost reaching usd600k! I have decided to back this (my first kickstarter backing!) and I can understand now why it is so addicting. To keep refreshing the page and seeing the number jump and seeing all those stretch goals being unlocked makes me all excitable but also makes the waiting that much more tedious. Still if you are interested in the game, do check it out and go back it! With the amount of goodies they throw into the game it is definitely worth while :)
Check it out here!

Week ending 24th Feb 2013: Hoplomachus The Lost Cities, Innovation Figures in the Sand, Taluva, Formula Motor Racing, CO2, Snowdonia, Morels, Heartland, Homesteaders, Express 01, Love Letter, Le Havre The Inland Port, Phantom, Blood Bowl Team manager, Village, Siberia The Card Game, Coup

Quite a few new games and the highlight was FINALLY being able to play CO2 again with 5 are the highlights of this session. Lets take a look!

Hoplomachus The Lost Cities

A Kickstarter game that was backed by my friend who brought it over to give it a go before deciding on the standalone expansion that is currently on Kickstarter now. This is a quick gladiatorial type of combat game where 2 players pit their heroes and armies in a bid to kill the opposing hero and win the game. This game can also be played as a solo game against various arena animals/creatures. The main focus of the game are chips which are used to indicate your unit as well as health. During your turn, you will draw from a bag containing chips of your army as well as tactics which are like spells. Then you will choose from 4 available chips to execute. It can be either a unit, in which case you "summon" the unit, place it on 1 of 6 summon points and stack a number of red chips underneath the army unit to indicate its health. It can also be a tactic chip in which case the effects of the spell is executed. This game is all about battling and gaining enough Crowd Favour points will allow your Hero to unfreeze and start to move on its own and fight as well. Turn passes from player to player until 1 player manages to kill the opponent's  Hero and wins the game. It is a fast pace easy to learn game. You move close enough so that you can start to whack at someone. Combat is dependant on the dice you can roll and how many hits you have rolled. Each hit will deal 1 damage to the enemy. I won with the opponent's Hero barely even out of the gate because my unit was fast moving. The game comes with 3 different groups but replayability maybe limited because the base set of units are the same. There are some unique units to each group though and they do showcase the power and strategy that is unique to the group. Production quality is quite good as the game mat is similar to those used in the landscape map of Wings of War. Nice thick mousepad like material. Average game for me but I won't say no to playing it again.


Innovation Figures in the Sand

I have loved the base game as well as the expansion but having never been able to bring it out very often, I had to let go my copies. Innovation is quite an intriguing game to me with all the splaying and the icons and now there's an online version which seems to make the game flow much more smoothly. My friend had bought the latest expansion and thus we gave it a go. Figures essentially adds well, famous figures to the game as well as new features to the game. I won't go too much into details but the game now takes longer with all expansions added in as each player needs to have 8 achievements to win. We did not really get to use a lot of the Figures expansion features as we drew more of the previous expansion than figures. Its still quite a challenging game deciding what to go for and what to meld and I realised having a good draw of hand is quite important to progress forward and win. I am still abit meh about the game but i won't reject to another game just to make sure that is how I feel. Components wise, card art and stock are just the same as the base art. If you prefer a nicer art, do take a look at the IELLO version.

Taluva

Played 3 games of this and my friend Jon mentioned about the imbalanced for the first player because he/she will have an advantage in this game. Also, since this plays quite like Chess, if other players are not diligent in blocking others, they could easily allow that opponent pull ahead. I did enjoy my games though as it forces me to think and see where I can block and still score. Perhaps this might make a better 2 player game but I have yet to try with just 2. Components are nice and the final picture looks really good with the different levels and all the nice wooden buildings. I still feel this is a good game.

Formula Motor Racing

A card game about F1 racing by GMT? Really? This has gotta be some form of joke ya? Well lo and behold, my friend had this game in his collection and we brought it out to play. It reminds me a lot of Tiki Topple. During your turn, you will play a card with which to manipulate the current standing of the race cars which are setup in 1 straight line. When the game ends, you will total up the points where your cars are positioned and whoever has the most points will win the game. So its a fast filler that is quite dependant on the cards you draw and how you play them. I think it will benefit more if, like Tiki Topple, the colors that you are aiming for are secret at the beginning. This will not make it so easy for other players to guess what colors you are and target you specifically.

CO2

Finally managed to play a 5 player game with ALL the right rules. It certainly took quite a bit of time and can be frustrating at times. Some of the issues Jon mentioned in his rant on BGG I definitely faced for example goals that do not seem fair when faced with so many players (i.e. the UN Goal objective). While you are faced with at most 12 moves in the entire game, these 12 moves will take quite a bit of time for them to finish. Having only 12 moves also severely limits what you can do in the game. Also the tech tree's powers are even more evident in a 5 player game as the player who won was maxed out in several of the tech trees AND had the leader in tech objective card. The action cards in your hands are also more important because they can give you that much needed white cube to rush in and built that power plant before another player can. So while I still love the game, I won't play it with 5. At most 4 will do for me. Time to try the Solo game and see how it fares. Still loving it and I managed to get a set of skull-like stickers to stick on my CEPs. A little pimpin' :)

Snowdonia

Played Snowdonia Variant where players can choose which side they want to begin from and plays up to 4. I think this variant does not create as much competition because it is dependant on which side the players choose. 1 player could very well be all by himself at 1 side without much competition. So I think if I were to play Snowdonia again I will play it in its original version. Its an ok game for me and nothing fantastic as far as I can see.

Morels

Been wanting to bring this simple set collection game out for a go again as it has been some time since I played this. Its still quite a nice game but I am wondering about its replayability. There are already quite a lot of set collection type games in the market and I have quite a few of them so I am not sure, but perhaps I need a few more plays to determine its final value in my collection.  One thing i realise i am disliking is how card games require you to refill the market or the central path where all the cards are by pushing the cards down and refilling from the end of the line. This is amazing tedious especially in this game where its a constant refill every turn. Luckily I sleeve my cards thus they won't wear down so fast but its a hassle to keep pushing cards down the line. I wish designers can stop this "mechanism".

Heartland
A game that I manage to snag at a recent FLGS warehouse sale (first of its kind in Singapore!) This is a tile laying game with a small tech tree at the side. During your turn, you will get to lay a 2-square tile or a 1-square tile (each player begins with the same set of five 1-square tiles). When you lay the tile, you will get to score either victory points or farm points. Farm points are used in the small tech tree and if you manage to max out any of the 5 columns, you will get to score a livestock tile which gives you some points at the end of the game as well. If all of your markers are at or past a certain row where the farm pieces are, then you get to place your farm piece which will net you victory points every round and also prevent other players from scoring victory points on the fields your farm is on. Its an interesting game as you are trying to score more for yourself while at the same time blocking other players. The tech tree seems a bit odd as its possible for a player to max out a column during a turn immediately. Granted we were not very adapt at blocking each other in our first game but still to be able to do so seems odd. Once a farm is out on the board though players start to target the farms to minimise scoring per turn for that player. Components are nice and thick and functional. Art wise is a little bland but functional. Not a bad purchase for the price.

Homesteaders

This time I had a better idea of what I am doing but the game seems to end too early when I am just getting into the grove of the game. One little nagging thing I have with games like Homesteaders is the ability for concurrent play. While I am not saying my opponents will cheat, I would like winning to be not tainted and not due to mistakes or carelessness made by opponents. Of course you can enforce such that each player takes his/her turn before the next player takes his/her turn. This will however make the game possibly unbearably long. It certain has enough buildings to allow for sufficient replayability but since all buildings are available every game, I guess it is possible for you to plan such that each game you will have the most optimal sequence of buildings to select and win the game. I will definitely want to give this a few more tries.

Express 01

Sigh. I really wanted to like this game. I had thought it looked interesting enough to give it a go. Card quality is very nice and art is not too bad. However the game play with the 2nd group seems to fall very flat. It may still work with the right group but I haven't managed to find the right group. The mechanism where cards in your hand are used to purchase items and potentially they can be used as stocks or routes make it more confusing than if you were playing Glory to Rome which has similar implementation of the cards. If there were a solo variant, that may save it enough for me to keep it in my collection.

Love Letter 

Another 2 rounds of Love Letter. Even though it seems light I enjoy it quite a bit. Somehow though I don't really feel the randomness as readily as others do. I still feel that there's some skill involved especially when you are taking the Guard. Love letter for me so far still trumps Coup.

Le Havre The Inland Port

Played 3 games of this 2 player version of Le Havre and loving it much. I still haven't managed to break the 222 barrier and I am wondering just how I can maximize my game play. I tried going by the food route but somehow along the way when your opponent starts to use your buildings your plans start to get screwed. This is also an ideal game for the iOS especially with a very good AI. I wonder if anyone out there has a good strategy can share with me?

Phantom

Another game of Phantom. This time both of us stored a lot of power on both sides of the tableau and so we were trying to draw Charmer ghosts to draw the Character cards and score. Once that happens though the game went pretty fast. I managed to score my 11 points pretty fast and I won the game. The art is beginning to wear on me because its a lot of neon colors and not aesthetically pleasing. So after a few plays, its kinda unique and interesting but I doubt the replayability will keep it in my collection for long.

Blood Bowl Team manager

Another game where I was so intrigued by the theme of Warhammer that I had to grab it. So far I have YET to play it even once and i was glad to be able to table it finally. Its an interesting card game where you, as a team manager, is laying cards (up to 6 in a round to a maximum of about 5 rounds) which represent your players that are competing for highlights or a tournament for that round. When you play a player, there are certain actions associated with the player which will resolve. Once all team managers have passed, then we will check each highlight and resolve a winner. All will receive the corresponding rewards which may come in the form of Fan Points (victory points), special team cards or even Star Players which will boost your team's capabilities.

Village

Ah, one of my favourites in 2012. I played quite a bit of this once I gotten my own copy and when i was in New York as well last year. Its been quite some time since I brought out my copy to play and boy, am I super rusty. I came in last I think and I am not amused! I used to be quite good with this game but i made some mistakes which probably cost me about 10 points. I wouldn't have won anyway but well it may have made some difference. I used to be able to score quite decently with the Travelling as my main scorer but this game was cut short by another opponent who was aiming to finish the game fast to prevent the winner from gaining too many customer tiles. Still a fun game for me but my friend wasn't too keen to keep the game anymore. Pity as I am looking forward to the expansion and the inclusion of 5 players. I wonder how that will play like.

Siberia The Card Game

Played this with 4 players this time and I am thinking its not suitable for 4. For 2 and 3 maybe but for 4 this makes the game quite hard to control and plan as most of the time, the items you want are snatched up quite quickly. A gripe that I mentioned just now with Morels however is not an issue here as you just replace those cards that were taken by drawing from the deck. There is no need to push the whole row of cards here. Phew! Still average about this game so far as it doesn't bring anything new to the table for me. May not make the cut.

Coup

2 more games of Coup! Taught this to a new player who prefers this to Love Letter. I guess inherently its in my nature to trust someone and with so little clues its hard for me to judge if a person is bluffing or not. So far ALL my challenges have been for naught and I am usually losing in the game of Coup. I did win once tonight though because of my opponent did not pay attention to the coins I have amassed which allowed me to perform a final Coup on him to win the game. So far the "beauty" of this game hasn't really shown itself to me. Lets hope I can get more games in to allow it to shine.


And so that's it, a great week of gaming! :)

Boardgaming in New York City

So in case you don't know, I was in NYC to visit my wife who is currently studying in Columbia. That also allowed me to make a side trip to GENCON 2012 of which I am very grateful to be able to do. While in NYC, I managed to get some boardgaming done as well and meet up with a friend, Gil, who designed Prolix.

AGRICOLA: All Creatures Big and Small

I'm the Rhino btw.. no points for guessing why :P

Agricola:All Creatures Big and Small - I scored
50 points and won! Wife wants a rematch.

I have been wanting to play some games with Wifey for some time now but given that she is now in NYC and I am still in Singapore, that is kinda difficult. Also, I have been shunning from 2 player games mainly because I do prefer more people in my boardgame sessions. After trying out Twilight Struggle, I decided to stop avoiding them and embracing them instead. Thus I went on a 2 player games buying spree and when I visited my wife, I decided to try one of them. We tried Agricola:All Creatures Big and Small. I had Morels as well but did not have a chance to try it. 

Agricola:ACBAS is a light version of Agricola and focusing only on the animals. It is a simple game and plays within 30 mins. It is also relatively easy to explain but I think I fudged this up a little. 

Side note: I MUST find someway to improve how I explain games. During GENCON, I have had the opportunity to see how the volunteers demoing games explain games to people.. The best seems to be able to merge story and theme with the mechanics. In most of my explanations I tend to just go for the nuts and bolts (win by most points, how you win? do this and that) and I hope to improve on this in the future.

I will not go into details of the game because you can read a lot of the reviews online at BGG. It is a fun game and my wife demanded a rematch after our first play. I must say having very cute components is certainly a draw factor to me now when playing games. They could have easily provided cubes to represent the animals as they did in Agricola (without the animals expansion) but I am so glad they went with the horses and sheeps and pigs. Its light, fun and attractive, I highly recommend it for those who are into 2 players or hoping to draw their other halves into the world of board gaming!

GOA

GOA - I have heard so much about this and
finally manage to try it. Interesting Euro which
will definitely reward more plays so that you
get a hang of what is important. I am starting
to realise i suck at Auction games.

The last time I was in NYC, I attended a Meetup at the cafe Cosi. I decided to head on down again this trip as well as meetup with Gil who had helped me previously. I saw some familiar faces and when Gil was here, we decided to play his favorite game, Goa. Now I have been hearing about Goa for some time now but never had a chance to play it so I was quite excited to try it. Goa, like a lot of euro games out there, is all about obtaining resources and then using these resources to advance yourself and thus position yourself to score points during the end game. Each player usually have 3 actions per round and each round starts with an auction. The unique part of this auction is the market (center of the board) with which each player will choose a tile for auction during that round. Each player also has a player mat which shows the progress of each sections which will help the player in subsequent rounds and count towards the final score during the end game scoring. During the early part of the game, I thought I was doing quite well as I was proceeding at a steady pace. But nearing the end of the game I realize I was not utilizing the tiles in the market well and lost out in the end. Its a typical EURO game and kinda feels dated to me in a way. Still fun though!

VILLAGE

VILLAGE - One of my favourite games of 2012.
There were 2 tables of this being played and
I won handily as I had majority in 3 of the regions.
I am RED player btw.

After Goa I was looking around for another game to play before meeting my wife for dinner and Gil did break out Village to play. There was another player who wanted to play so I gave up my seat, since I do have a copy at home. Then another group brought out Village as well so I decided to join them. Village is a very fun Euro that is recently released and I was glad I snagged a copy from Germany. It is not too difficult to explain but perhaps needs a few plays to grasp what is important. It is colorful with good components (except when you have to stick the stickers right at the beginning). The unique mechanism is the killing of your own people which itself is a viable strategy and may score you points in the end as well! This also helps to speed the game along too. This game only 1 player concentrated on the customers whereas the rest of us tried the various areas. I was lucky in that I manage to have majority in the travelling section and the book of honors. I even managed to have majority in the Chapel which sealed my victory. A very good game and a good contender for my game of 2012.

All in all, I had a lot of fun while in NYC and I cannot wait to be back. I sure hope to be able to play some more 2 player games with my wife!

Weekend Boardgaming: 27th July 2012

My last major weekend boardgaming before I am off to NYC to see the wifey! YAY! :) I have scheduled 3 days of gaming so here we go with Day 1! :P

Shear Panic

So this time 3 of us played this (all guys btw :P ) and it must be said that for such a light little game, there can be a lot of analysis paralysis if the gamers are competitive enough. That's because of the situation of perfect knowledge where we all get to see all the other moves that the other players have left and thus work out the different combinations which they can use them. We can also see how much time they may spend and thus plan on how to best score at each field. So while the game mechanics are light and simple, depending on the players, this game can drag. Also, during our lunch time gaming group, at the last field, this is where the most damage can be done to players. If you have planned wrongly or get sabotaged, you may find your 2 sheeps being sheared and you are out of the game effectively. In summary, for what it is, it is an ok game with awesome components, certainly to attract people right at the get go. However if you over think it, then it may not be as rewarding as the time spent on it.

Richelieu

This is a very new game from White Goblin Games which I manage to get my friend who traveled to UK recently to transport back for me. In the game, you send your agents to participate in intrigue missions (either by sabotaging or helping) while trying to increase your standing in the income and military track. By sending the most agents (providing a positive score) and helping to win the intrigue missions, you get a certain benefit as stated on each intrigue mission. At the end of the game, the player with the most points win the game.
There are a few interesting mechanisms in the game that add more options to what you can do. For example, during your turn you can choose to collect income or place an agent (or two with payment of more money) or advance the military track (by paying money as well) or buy jewelry (which are worth 4 points at the end of the game). In addition, placement of your agent on the intrigue cards has its own little meta game.
A few bad points about the game though. Thematically its very light. There is a military track but there is no fighting per say in the game. Its just another track to earn points at the end of the game and to gain some bonuses. The board, as you can see above, is very cluttered with design and pictures. It would have been better if it was clearer. The coins come in denominations of 1 and 3 but the colors are so similar that its hard to differentiate. Furthermore, we often find ourselves with not enough coins so I am not too sure why they gave so many.
That being said, the component quality is very good with thick cardboard stock for the pieces. The board is nicely matted.
I think I may have to give it a few more plays to see if it will stay in my collection.

Village

The game that we were all waiting for. We started off with a 3 player and when our 4th player game, we restarted again. It is not a very difficult game to teach but requires maybe 1 round to grasp and understand the mechanics to plan effectively. Village is a game where you are trying to maximize your family members to score you the most points at the end of the game. During your turn, there are 7 spots on the board where you can take action on if there is at least a resource/plague cube for you to take. A round ends when all cubes have taken. Then a Mass action is taken (monks and/or your family members) will appear in the church and allow you to advance their standings. The 7 areas are then repopulated again and the new start player (if someone has taken the next start player token) will begin the new round. The game ends when either the Village book OR the unknown graveyard is filled.
After playing this game, it is not hard to see why it has won the Kennerspiel des Jahres Game of 2012. 4 of us pursued quite different plans of attack as 1 tried to kill off his family members to populate the Village book and score points and end the game earlier. The other sent his 1st generation family member to travel the world (or disneyland as we call it) and he was one of the oldest 1st generation family members to still be around. There are many possible ways to score points in the game but they do not seem to be too disconnected from each other like how I felt when playing Trajan. I love how everything is visible on the board (except the point where player with the majority in the Chapel will score 2 points every round).
Once you get the gist of the game, the gameplay can proceed fairly quickly. Components are also of a good quality. I have heard some players do not like the fact you have to kill off your family members but we had fun joking about it, especially the player who tried to populate the village book and thus was happily sending them to their deaths. Plague cubes, which increases your time by 2 and thus increasing the rate at which your family members will die, is frowned upon at the first few rounds but will rapidly become a tactical choice nearer the end.
A good buy for me and definitely enjoyed by everyone around the table!

Dominant Species: The Card Game

Since I got my copy of this quite early, the group wanted to try this to see how it is. There are some inconsistencies with the naming convention as pointed out by my group which can lead to some confusion. Otherwise, its an interesting little card game that I will try to bring to my office the next time around and see how they will take it. The picture of the salamander which represents amphibians should use the picture of a frog instead for clarity. A final point to note is that the cards should be shuffled thoroughly as what you can do per round is quite dependent on your card draw. Not a bad buy so far. 

For the Win

Abstract game to close off the night. This just came in from the Kickstarter and since it had the 2 extra token set, we decided to give it a go. Abstract games I don't really fancy that much as I require a bit of theme with my games. Still I am avid enough gamer to give it a go. Essentially you are trying to get 5 different tile types to connect together (touching by the corners count too) and they must all be active (i.e. not on the side with a big X) to win the game. During your turn, you can take 1 or 2 actions and they consist of actions like moving your tile 1 space, placing a tile, activating a power etc. The main mechanism of the game is the special powers each tile has which will allow you to maneuver your tiles to win the game. With more players, there is a need for guarding each other, otherwise someone may slip in a win very easily (like what I did).
The components are nice handy tiles and feels good. For the price and the quality of the pieces, its very affordable and worth it.

So all in all, a very good gaming night. 2 more days to go! :)