Friday 13th July 2012 Boardgaming report

Finally after my exams, I could join the Friday group again and their late night gaming sessions. Usually we start around 8-9pm and last all the way to 3-5am the next day. :D In this way we can usually get a few heavy games in comfortably within the timings. This session I had a lot of fun because I got to bring out 2 new games of mine that have not yet touched the table and play a new game from someone else.

Feudality

First on the table is Feudality. It plays from 2-6 and reminds me of Glen More. In the game, we are all Barons and trying to grow our fiefdom such that it scores us enough points to win the game. Each player will get a turn to be the Senior Player (i.e. Current Player) and perform a few actions.
First is to roll 2 8-sided dice. These will determine where your pawn will be and also which tiles are available for all players to activate. By activating a tile in your fiefdom, you will either get goods or points or both.
After which, tiles are drawn from a bag and players are allowed to buy 1 tile from those drawn to add to their fiefdom.
Thirdly, the Senior Player can then choose 2 actions to take. Either by activating tiles in their fiefdom OR taking one of 3 additional actions. These actions range from having a secret rendezvous with the King/Queen to score a point or conduct wars against other players or against the "game".
Lastly, depending on the number of tiles you have in your fiefdom and the player count, you will need to pay food to the bank. Then your turn is done.
So all in all, it is a pretty straight forward game without much surprises. The art is cartoony but not in a very bad way. The components are good and very similar to the likes of Agricola and Ora Et Labora. The fiefdom piece is rather thin cardstock and would be better if it was thick cardboard.
Gameplay wise, I think the most fun part for us is thinking of what pieces to buy and then placing them on our fiefdom. There are quite a variety of items to choose from and you want to place them in various spots so that when the dice are rolled, you will get a chance that you will obtain some resources at least.
Interesting thing I found was that food, while initially not very important, became very very important in the later phases of the game. Another point to note is that even though the game is simple to pick up and play, it does take a fair bit of time to play (ours was about 1hr ++) as it takes some time to create enough points to meet the game end criteria.
As you can tell, with the dice present, there is quite a bit of randomness to the game. Even when choosing other actions to take (i.e. attack or rendezvous) it all involves dice thus for those that are not fans of randomness do be aware. One other gripe is the soldiers and the attack options you can select. There seems to be very little use of the attack options. True you can use it as a catch-the-leader mechanism but after every battle you will need to roll to see if your army survives or not. This is a 50-50 chance but it will mean that all those turns where you spent purchasing your army units are wasted if they all die in a single battle due to bad dice roll. Like in Manhattan project, the attack portion seems a bit weak for me.
Still we had quite a good time playing the game for what it is, is a light hearted game. I think I will try it again tomorrow and see how it goes with 5/6.

Inca Empire

Inca Empire is a purchase I made a few months ago but I have never managed to bring it out. Mostly because after reading the rules I am still pretty confused on a few items. Tonight it hit the table and is our highlight for the night.
In the game, you are trying to score the most points by managing your only resource (labor) in a limited number of turns to build items on the map and score points in each of the scoring phases. This is a remake of an older game and is a very good new edition. The components are nice and thick and with rich colors. The map is rather busy though as there are many lines drawn for the roads and each region is color coded to differentiate them. However there are no obvious border lines so this can be somewhat tricky to tell during setup. The road wooden pieces are like toothpicks. They are really really small and thin. Otherwise, good production value.
Gameplay wise, there is a calendar of sorts in the top right corner of the board that details when each phase will occur and what the players will do. So you can plan ahead and decide. There are 4 basic phases in the game. The first phase is where you collect your labor which is the only resource and currency in the game. There is a default number of Labor you will receive at each Era (4 Eras of the game but there are a few rounds per Era) and you get additional Labor tokens for each region you have "conquered" as well as each Terrace you have built. Labor is vital as they allow you to perform the actions like building temples and cities and roads during the Construction phase of a player's turn.
The second phase usually will be the Sun phase. This is a very unique characteristic of the game. During the Sun phase, each player will place a sun card on a separate board. The sun card will either have beneficial traits or harmful traits which will remain till the end of the current turn. The unique portion is because where you place your card, it will impact 2 other players. Also each quadrant can only have 1 new card placed on it thus player order is quite important throughout the game. Thus a lot of interaction here.
The third phase will be Construction phase where you can build cities or temples and here is where you will score the most points. In addition, items you build now will also score you points later on during the scoring phase.
The final phase will be the scoring phase where your roads that are connected to buildings will score you points.
That will be the end of the current turn (usually) and a new turn will begin. Another interesting mechanism is that the first player will have to give 1 to 2 labor tokens to the last player. During the later eras, the 1st runner up will have to give 1 labor tokens and the first player will have to give 2 labor tokens. While initially this seems like a big disadvantage but actually given these tokens is a small setback. Indeed, our winner was the first player for almost half of the game and he was not too worried only until the final round.
A very good game and enjoyed by the group. There are interesting strategies and ways which you can try to block the leader and to score your own points. A big surprise and now I can see why it is rated quite highly in Boardgamegeek though I have never seen it in play at any of the meetups so far. Highly recommended!

Top Race

Final game of the night is Top Race. This is a game that is very similar to Long Shot which I previously owned but involves cars. In the game, each player is given cards drawn from a common deck. These cards, when played, will allow us to move cards along a race track to the finish line. The aim of the game is to have the most money at the end of the game. At the start, players get to auction and own cars which will give a lot of money if they are placed the top 3 at the end of the race. Once all cars are owned and each player has at least 1 car, then the game can begin. During the game, each player will play a card which has pictures of cars and numbers on it and move each car the number of spaces indicated in sequence (top to bottom) unless otherwise blocked by other cars in front of them. The game ends when most of the cars have crossed the finish line and then players will calculate the money earned and the player with the most money will win the game. Its a simple straight forward game with a few variants in the base game. There is a stocks variant as well as a betting variant which we played. Please do not mistake this with other similarly themed games like Formula D and Rallyman. I do like this game as I loved Long Shot when I had it but I will use it as more of a party game rather than for serious gamers. It is a good end to a very good night of gaming.

Pity we did not get to continue our Risk Legacy session (i think we are at round 5/6 now) and I do hope we can finish Risk Legacy's 15th game before the year ends. All in all, a very good night and I hope tomorrow I will get to play Eclipse and other games with another group.

Mage Knight: 1st solo game!

so I decided to spend an afternoon to play Mage Knight. It was still in shrink and I was wondering if anyone wanted it but alas no biters so I decided to break it out and play to see if I am really going to keep this. And boy I am glad I decided to try it once on solo.

The last time I played it was in a 3 player game where we did not get to finish (as it took a really long time) and I only had a rough idea of the game. At that time my impression was still average and could not see what the hype is about.

So I decided to setup the Solo conquest game and after spending about 10 minutes or so setting up I was ready to begin. Gameplay wise it is rather straight forward and I did benefit from my previous play but I had to refresh myself again with the rules. I often have to flip between the scenario booklet and the main rule book to see what I have to do for the dummy player, what I have to do in the scenario and my general game play. I did get some setup wrongly because I took some rather handicapping rules from the first patrol and placed them into my Solo conquest scenario. That is the main reason why I think I could not win (and that's my story and I'm sticking with it! :D)

In anycase I got started off in a steady pace and manage to hire my first minion. Along the way I started to clear the mobs around the area so I could gain experience points and get more minions and better skills. I was getting quite good cards and good plays but once the Cities appeared, I was floored. The minions were so powerful that I doubt I could dent them without getting a lot of wounds. At the end of 6 rounds (3 days and 3 nights) I could not make a dent at the cities. Here are the images at the end of the game.

A few takeaways from the game:

1) It is a fun game but be forewarned it does take a LONG time. All in all i spent almost 4 hours setting up, checking the rules and actually playing. So I can imagine if we played the other scenarios and with more players it will take a very long time. That is kind of a downer for me as it will mean I need to find dedicated gamers to spend the time to play this.

2) The artifacts and spells are very very powerful. I did not see that in the previous game and they gave me a lot of benefits during this game.

3) Cities are really powerful to defeat. I will need to figure out a way. Also after checking up on the better mobs that I could hire if I used the packs correctly, I realized that it is possible. But i will need to be more daring to get more artifacts and spells to prepare myself for the city battles.

4) Ranged attacks are very useful because they allow you to defeat the enemy before they can even attack you. Best is if you can obtain siege attacks so that enemies with fortifications can be brought down easily.

5) Table space. This game requires a rather big table space so that you can lay out everything nicely and have a good view of what's happening. I doubt my current table can take more than 2 if we were to play comfortably.

I can see why this game has such appeal and rated so highly. However I will need quite a few more plays to appreciate all that is Mage Knight. There are several aspects which I have not tried yet (like PVP) and there are still a lot of scenarios to try. I will probably try a few more round of solo play before I am comfortable enough to play this with others. With the Friday group though there are a few experienced players already so perhaps we can get one of the epic scenarios going in another session. 

Weekend Boardgaming: 7th July 2012

Its my 5th Anniversary today! And as a treat, I brought our Huskie, Comet, to the beach to play and romp around. Its been too long since we last brought him and I am very glad he still loves the waters and swimming. ;)

After that I had a small group of 3 others over and we played boardgames. 2 heavy hitters and a few light ones to round off the night. Here we go!

Empires of the Void

One from the group is eager to try Eclipse and since I am still on the fence about buying it (I already have Twilight Imperium 3 and now Empires of the Void), we decided to break this out to play and have a go at it. This time round, the game play was quite smooth and I felt more at ease at the game and knew what I was doing. I had the humans this time but as luck would have it, most of the planets where I can score diplomatic victories against were in someone else's quadrant. Worse, the culture cards I drew were like a rainbow (i.e. not many of the same kind) thus I had to venture far into my opponent's areas, which triggered a retaliatory action that ended up with me very dispersed and missing my New Earth. In the end though, the scoring between 3 of the 4 players were only 1 point apart! I think it will get better with subsequent plays. I am puzzled though because some of the neutral pieces shows different colors of the base ships each player has (i.e. Centipede and Diplomat). I am curious as to when these will come into play. Quite a fun game but I think unless I play Eclipse once, I won't know for sure which is a stayer in my cabinet amongst the 3.

Vinhos

I am so glad I can bring this out again to play as I think just 1 play is not enough to get a good grasp of the game. Explaining the game is again a very tedious affair as new players have to absorb so many different areas of a very busy board which equates to many different mechanisms. When we finally play it, all the players found that there are so many things they want to do but are severely limited by the amount of money they have and by the turns. I think explaining the game will get easier IF I manage to get this into play more often. In this game, our export area and the wine masters area seems very underutilized. Its not from a lack of trying but we found we had other important things to do as well to try to get enough money to do what we want in the game. Very tight game and the top 2 were only 1 point apart. I was far behind 3rd. Definitely a must try again to see where this will be in my cabinet's future!

Nuts!

After our Pizza dinner (this is becoming a common boardgaming grub), we decided to go with lighter games since we already had 2 rather long games (almost 3 hours each). I just had my latest shipment of boardgames (Pastiche for my colleague, Feudality and Nuts! for me) and decided to break out Nuts since it looks rather funny and easy to play. This is a game I CANNOT wait to bring to office to try with my gaming group. I think they will have a lot of fun because it is a rather tongue-in-cheek and VERY cheeky and "naughty" game. The general word play is with the word "Nuts" and so we have cards like "Protect your nuts", or "Poke someone's nuts". All in all, I cannot wait for it to be played next week in office :) Its fun and very light hearted and meant to play that way and not to be taken too seriously. Definitely party game material!

Samurai - The Card Game

Final game of the night is Samurai the card game. This is an abstract game where players are trying to vie for majority of tokens of any 2 (Circles, Squares and Triangles). Failing that, there is another method of scoring (but this seems a bit messy to me). During your turn, you play a card from your hand of 5 (all players have the exact set of cards) and try to obtain a majority in numbers of shapes as depicted in the village/town card that they are adjacent to. The graphics is light and quite nicely done. The cards are squarish and the game unfortunately can take up a lot of table space so beware of that. It is easily explained and quite fast to play and I did have fun even though I think I was dead last. Not bad not bad.


So all in all, a good day of gaming. Even though we did not get to try Mage Knight I will like to try a solo play of it first before tabling it. Now to go read up on Feudality :)

Weekend Gaming: 1st July 2012

Finally, my exam is completed and I feel much free-er now :) Countdown to seeing the wifey and gencon has started! YAY!!!
Lets see what I played today....

Empires of the Void

One of the newest game I have and I think this was a kickstarter. It has been touted as Nexus Ops in space and that is a pretty good description of it. Its like Twilight Imperium light and I have heard it is an Eclipse killer but having never played Eclipse, I cannot comment too much on that.

This is a 2-4 player game where players are different races (with different characteristics) and try to score as much points as they can within 11 rounds. At the start of each round, there will be a pre-round phase where players can research 1 tech and buy as many ships as they can afford. The tech tree, while there are quite a lot of pieces, is not too complicated to navigate and look through so it feels just nice. Buying ships is all about being able to afford (and of course having the tech for it) and then placing the cardboard ships onto the board. I have heard that people enhanced the game using Twilight Imperium 3 pieces and perhaps in my next game at my place I will try that. But overall the pieces are of a good production quality so no complaints there. After this, an event is shown. Then players take turns taking 3 actions from a variety of options to choose from. At the 5th, 9th and 12th round, there is a scoring round and you will get points for the planets that you occupy as well as having the most influence in the Galactic council. The player with the most points wins the game at the end. 

Overall this was a pretty good game and for our first play we did not get too many rules wrong. There is definitely a lot of interaction if you want to win and battles are fast to resolve. There are a few issues though. The Galactic council seems slapped on. There is nothing much to do here except to score points. If there were some politics here (similar to Twilight Imperium) then perhaps there is a reason to chase this scoring. One of the ships require you to pay 1 credit to fight which, thematically does not make much sense. We joked that the ship was being outsourced thus you had to pay the vendor to fire the ship's weapons for you :P 

Still its not a bad game and I would like to try it again to have a better feel of it.

Grimoire

Grimoire was a game that a buddy of mine gave me as a present of which I am very grateful. This is my second play and I think it went along a little too long for its content. Gameplay is rather simple in that during each round, players get to choose a spell from a spellbook (all players have identical books) and then depending on player order, get to cast the spell (if it has not been blocked) and then choose a quest card from the board. The rule book is rather sparse and there are some confusing rules which are not clearly defined in the rule book.Artwork wise and component wise is ok and gameplay is light. There is nothing horrible to complain about the game except it can get a little draggy but otherwise as a filler it is an ok game.

Maharaja

Maharaja is the surprise of the night for me. I had gotten this game from Germany and had to read the rules online to understand how to play. The rules had no diagrams thus I had a little difficulty understanding the game initially and did not have a very good initial impression. But after tonight's exciting game, this is an instant hit with me and my group.

Gameplay wise, right at the setup the game has started. You choose a role and place the houses in available spots along trails on the maps. Then the game will start in earnest. there will be a Maharaja that will travel to various cities on the map depending on which of the Governors are at the bottom of a track. This is important because at the end of the round after all players have had their turns, scoring will be on the city where the Maharaja is at. Scoring is also important because that will provide players with gold with which they can then buy palaces (the crystal tokens) which will then determine if they win or not. The game will end when a player has built all 7 of their palaces OR when any Governor has reached spot 10 on the track (the game will end in 10 turns at most).

During a round, players will get to choose 2 actions from a list of available options. Then, depending on the player character chosen, players will play in sequence and perform the 2 actions. Some of the actions are building of palaces or villages or even changing their roles. While the actions seems very straight forward, the implications and strategies you can formulate are rather deep and intense.

For our group, we started to think really in depth after the 2nd round or so and we had a lot of fun. We cannot wait to try this again and I think with 5 it will be even more cut throat and crowded. Now I know why this game is rated quite highly in BGG.

iOS

So I am weaning off Pocket Planes. After reaching level 21 and with my first Class 3 plane, it has gotten a little stale for me. Which is a good thing because it is sooooooooo ADDICTING! and I have been spending an immense amount of time managing my planes. 

Le Havre has been a very good buy for me. In between playing the solo games (still can't get past 260! :( ) and playing online, I have had a lot of fun! Playing online though can be a little slow because it is on an ad hoc basis so its not a committed 30-60 mins of play but has been sporadic at best. Still its good that I have several games online concurrently.

Summoner Wars. This has been something else I am EAGERLY awaiting. It has been submitted to Apple already last weekend and I think maybe tomorrow I will be able to get it and play. Since I don't have the boardgame copy, the digital version will have to do for now.

A little booboo

I read recently a review on 1955 which I played previously and reported that it is sucky and all. Today after checking with my buddy again, I realised that we have played it wrongly! No wonder we felt it was rather broken. I hope to at least try it again in USA (or maybe get another copy again) and give it another go! Since its a good 2 player game as reviewed, perhaps when I am with my wifey we can get to play it. I intend to play Morels, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small and any number of 2 player games I can get with wifey when I am there. Its kinda sad that I cannot share all my boardgame experiences and fun with my wifey but when I am in NYC, I intend to give it a go. HEE HEE HEE.....

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

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 - 3rd June 2012

After a long week at work and falling sick, I finally managed to get a weekend boardgaming in. When I fall sick, I really fall sick. Interestingly, I checked my sick leave record and since Jan 2011 up to now, I have only had 1.5 days of MC. Man that's gotta be worth something to someone.. hmm
As we are preparing for the Singles event the coming Friday at the Library, we played mostly space-themed games (all except for 1 :P) to familiarize ourselves with the games we may be introducing to those that are coming.
So space games, I played Martian Dice, Eminent Domain, The Resistance twice, Rocket Jockey, Cosmic Encounter (with both expansions), Mag.Blast and Sunrise City.

Eminent Domain
I had this game before but have since sold my copy. It feels very basic to me (even though there are rumors of expansions) and I would love to see how they make use of the different components that are available but as it is right now, it does not grab my attention enough for me to want to play it again and again and again. I have heard from The Secret Cabal Podcast how the crew raved and played it several times in a row but it just does not work that way for me. It feels blend, very solitaire like and not much interaction. I would like to try it again with the expansion when it releases but its a Meh for me for now.

The Resistance
A Werewolf like game but with a Space theme. This time I was the saboteur twice in a row along with another in the gaming group and I guess we were lucky in a way to have won quite easily. This game will be interesting to observe this friday when the Singles play it. For me as the saboteur, if I get chosen to go for the first mission, I will make sure it succeeds so as to throw off the scent. Subsequently, if they select me, I will play sabotage for the mission if it gets selected. My buddy though argues that if it were him, he will definitely play sabotage right at the beginning because then you will just need 2 more to succeed. I will report more on this when Friday comes.

Rocket Jockey
This is a maths like game where you are trying to earn as many points as you can by transporting goods in as long-winded a manner (i.e. as many planet hops) as you can. The game has a rather simple mechanism but it does make you think a lot during your turn. A little too much for a game of this weight. We did not finish playing and stopped halfway through. For the amount of effort, we would have preferred something more medium or heavy weight. Meh for me too.

Cosmic Encounter
This game was rather interesting to me in that I think the essence of the game was lost to some. Remember that the Destiny card choose whom you have to attack but I had a feeling it got a bit personal. Nevertheless, I was the Cyborg and I definitely played this wrongly. Instead of trying to cycle through the draw deck as fast as I can to keep the better cards, I was just holding onto the 3 and waiting for a good time to use them. Unfortunately for me that was a bad move and did not help my cause. Btw, have you SEEN the ships that Tom Vasel had painted for him?

They look so AWESOME! I wonder how much he paid. SO NICEEEEEEEEEEEE *drool*

Mag.Blast

I had not seen this Fantasy Flight game before and was interested to try it out. The art is cartoony and light hearted but still the ships are all unique (with subtle differences and different names and attributes). Essentially, you are trying to surround your capital ship with other ships and prevent your opponents from destroy you while using those same ships to attack others. I mistakenly attracted too much attention by exclaiming my 2 Star Destroyer-like ships and merrily playing the Imperial March song via my iPad. I was quickly decimated (from my sides) and boom I was out of the game. Subsequently its a long weight before dinner happened and we stopped the game but did not continue afterwards. It feels like Bang in space and well player elimination will cause the players to lose focus on the game while waiting for it to end. So while it could be a light filler, its a Meh for me.

Sunrise City

When I heard someone else from the gaming group bring this, I wanted to play it.  I have heard a lot of hype and given my recent purchases of city building games (see my previous blog posts), I wanted to give it a try. So right at the beginning you will draft 3 roles to play for the 3 rounds (its quite a short game). At the beginning of each round, you will select a role and then starting with the player with the lowest role number, place district tiles onto the board (following certain rules). Right at this point you can start to score on the score track. Once all the tiles are placed, you now begin to place your round tokens to lay claim to a district. Other players may place their tokens above yours to overrule your claim. This continues until all tokens have been placed. Now the round really begins.
Players will place building tiles given to them at the start of the round and score accordingly. The score board is an interesting concept in that if you manage to score or reach the 10th point score and stop, you will get 2 yellow stars. If you exceed, you will just get 1. At the end of the game, the player with the most yellow stars win.
Gameplay wise is ok I guess, reminding me of City Tycoon but not particularly fantastic for me. Component wise its very good but I feel WAY WAY overproduced. I mean the tiles are so thick and so big. The discs are big and everything just feels way too overproduced and even borders on unwieldy at times. I just feel that the game could have saved up on a lot by providing adequate but still high quality components. Art wise the colors are a little too blend for me and some of the building tiles have marks on them as if the other building tiles had pressed on them too hard. So in summary, its a Meh for me and I will not get a copy unfortunately. I had wanted to like it and it does look nice all built up but nahh....

Other Loot
My other loot finally came though and I cannot wait to break out Helvetia, Maharaja, Welcome to Walnut Grove, Steel Driver, Empires of the Void and Curse of the Mummy which I will play in office tomorrow!
Wait for my blog posts! :)