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Archive Games Sessions - July - September 2003

26th September 2003

Games Played: I'm The Boss

I'm The Boss

Players: Gordon Robinson, Dean, Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

We were lucky enough to be joined by a fellow gamer from one of our neighbouring clubs tonight. Gordon Robinson is a regular at the Halesowen Boardgames Club, near Birmingham and he'd ventured the hour's drive to the depths of Shropshire to see us. Dean also made a welcome reappearance after a few weeks' absence. Having just got hold of I'm The Boss the week before, I decided that this was the ideal game to introduce Gordon to the ways of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club.

The game is all negotiations and card play. The aim is to make money by bringing together suitable investors to secure certain deals.Once the deal has been completed, the Boss receives the proceeds from the deal and pays to his fellow investors whatever price they had agreed upon to secure their support. However, players collect cards which enable them, when the cards are played,  to become involved in the current deal, stop others being involved or even scrap the current deal and take over as the Boss to attempt secure the deal. Gameplay is simple - either collect cards or attempt to strike a deal. The more cards you have, the more influence you can try to exert when the deal-making takes place, but then you have to pick the right battles, otherwise you can find yourself playing cards and not getting the benefit you had hoped. The game ends after between 10 and 15 deals have been struck and whoever has the most money is declared the Boss.

The game is very chaotic but keeps all the players involved all the time. The way in which deals can change very quickly is fun but sometimes a deal can take what seems forever to conclude. At the start of the game, I felt I was picked on left, right and centre. Luckily, the early deals are the least lucrative so I didn't fall too far behind especially as I used my poverty to try and engineer my way into later deals. Nige managed to keep getting involved small-time in a lot of deals and Mark K took advantage on a couple of deals where he held a key investor, without whom the deal was a non-runner. Gordon played Mr Reasonable throughout, trying to keep everyone on his side (or at least not gunning for him). A couple of his deals he pushed through by paying everyone out whether they had investors to contribute or not, merely so the deal wouldn't be challenged. The final deal (number 12 as it turned out), he used the same tactic but gave himself just a little bit more. Nobody was sure who had what in terms of money at the end. Nige looked to be in a good position but Mr Reasonable had done just enough to creep ahead on that last deal.

We all thought this was terrific fun but one or two of the deals did get a bit bogged down. Probably if the game had played a little bit quicker, we would have rated it really highly. However, it is definitely going to get played again soon and it will be interesting to see how it goes down with fewer players.

Result: Gordon 41, Nige 39, Garry 36, Mark K 28, Dean 22, Mark G 20

Ratings: Gordon 7, Nige 7, Garry 7, Mark K 7, Dean 7, Mark G 8

19th September 2003

Games Played: Nobody But Us Chickens, Formula De Mini, The Big Idea

Nobody But Us Chickens

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

Diet Evil Games had kindly sent me a review copy of their latest release, which I’d tried out on the family and now wanted to check the opinion of the Shrewsbury Games Club. Nobody But Us Chickens is a family card game, which inevitably will draw comparisons with Hick Hack Im Gackelwack. The idea of the game is to capture the juiciest chickens by canny play of your cards, outguessing your opponents at every turn. Everyone starts with identical hands of 9 cards, which contain a mixture of chickens, foxes, rats and guard dogs. Everyone places one of their cards face-down on the table and then all are revealed. If only chickens are played, they gather in the centre of the table and are added to the next round of cards played. If foxes or rats are played, and there are also chickens present, the predators start eating the chickens one by one; foxes taking first pick, then rats, with foxes devouring the remainder of chickens if any. If there are no chickens present, the foxes and rats go away empty handed. A guard dog chases any predators away and is rewarded with all the chickens, but if there are no predators, but only chickens, the guard dog is unsuccessful. Once all 9 cards have been played, the round ends and players score points according to the chickens they’ve caught. Play a number of rounds equal to the number of players and the person with the highest total points wins.

The game is all bluff and double bluff – Ooh there are some juicy chickens there so now’s the time to play my fox, but then if I do that, Nige might play his guard dog so I ought to play a chicken, but if Nige plays a fox instead, I ought to play my guard dog. I quite like this kind of guesswork but it’s not to everyone’s taste. Nige does not like this kind of game at all – it’s probably too much fun for him – but Mark G and I are happy to wile away fifteen minutes or so like this and usually enjoy the ride. It’s perfect to play with non-gamers and, as that’s the market it’s aimed at, it should do well.

Mark G got off to a flying start gaining 14 points in the first round. I managed to peg him back in the second round and found the cards fell perfectly for me in the third, giving me a commanding lead. Although Mark K and Nige scored double figures in the final round, it wasn't enough and I took the win.

Result: Garry 44, Nige 30, Mark G 24, Mark K 23

Ratings: Garry 6, Nige 2, Mark G 6, Mark K 5

Formula De Mini

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

Mark K and I quite like Formula De but it can take quite a while to get through a multi-lap race so I was very interested to hear good reports of the streamlined version, FD Mini. The basics of the game are the same but the way in which penalties are assessed has been greatly simplified. You merely have a single supply of wear tokens which diminish as you suffer collisions, brake too hard, over-run corners or drop down multiple gears.

We played a three lap race on the two-lane circuit and completed it well within an hour. Nige shot off to a flying start whereas Mark G and I both crawled off the starting grid. Due to some excellent driving over the rest of the first lap, I managed to get back into contention with Nige and Mark K, while Mark G’s car continued to cause problems and he dropped back. A couple of poor die rolls on the second lap ruined my chances but I still held out hope as all of us refused to go into the pits and we all got bery low on wear points. Just as Nige came round to lap Mark G right by the finish line, Mark’s car finally blew up leaving Mark K comfortably in second place, a position he was unable to sustain, as his car packed up on the penultimate straight, allowing me to sneak second place. Nige, however, had a fine drive, easily deserving his win – a fact I’m sure he’ll remind us of next time.

FD Mini is excellent. It doesn’t have quite the same complexity in managing your car as the original but benefits from being a cleaner design and playing much quicker. The race seems more exciting somehow and that’s just what you want from a racing game.

Result: Nige, Garry, Mark K=Mark G

Ratings: Nige 7, Garry 8, Mark K 8, Mark G 7

The Big Idea

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

We ended with a shortened game of The Big Idea, a Cheapass game which relies on the inventiveness of the players to make the most of it. By combining two cards, you are trying to persuade other players to invest in your latest invention, so improving its chances of being successfully brought to market. The game is lots of die rolling and it doesn’t really matter about the result – it’s all about the sales pitches. The minds of our club members must be really questionable as our innovative offerings included Erotic Pussies, Love Chairs and other dubious items. Mark G unfortunately struggled with the whole concept of the game and so his inventions didn’t get the investor interest they needed to succeed. Nige’s “House of Ideas” turned out to be the most consistent and gave him a second win of the evening.

Result: Nige 88, Garry 78, Mark K 70, Mark G 66

Ratings: Nige 5, Garry 5, Mark K 4, Mark G 5

12th September 2003

Games Played: Ra, Africa

Ra

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, John, Garry

First up tonight was one of my all-time favourites, Ra. Reiner Knizia has produced some marvellous auction games such as Traumfabrik and Modern Art but Ra is the one I would choose out of all of them. Mark K and I got off to very slow starts, with Mark particularly picking up lots of monuments. Nige and Mark G had a few battles over most Pharoahs and John kept the rivers nicely flooded for lots of points. In the second round, I suffered the indignity of getting negative points, trying to be a bit too greedy in the last solo auction – much to the amusement of everyone else. I had managed to pick up some good monuments though which I hoped would bring me back into contention at the end. However, Mark K ended up with a very valuable last solo auction which, with his impressive monument collection, gave him enough points for a good win.

Result: Mark K 41, Nige 36, Garry 35, Mark G 29, John 24

Africa

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, John, Garry

I then persuaded the others to have a go at Africa. I’ve played this a couple of times before and enjoyed it but Mark K and Nige have played once and both took a bit of a dislike to it. Admittedly, it is light but I think there are a fair few things to think about.

I seemed to keep picking up monuments and had an abundance of basecamps to place. Nige managed to pick up a fair number of goods and all of us tried hard to acquire gold and gems for the endgame bonuses. Unfortunately, I was unable to place my last basecamp so missed out on a few extra ponts, potentially, and Nige managed to grab enough from his goods and the gold/gem bonuses to claim victory. However, the scores were extremely close and Mark and Nige reckoned it had played much better than on their last encounter with it.

Result: Nige 51, Garry 49, John 48, Mark K 46, Mark G 44

Ratings: Nige 6, Garry 6, John 6, Mark K 6, Mark G 7

5th September 2003

Games Played: Clans, Tyros, Crokinole

Clans

Players: John, Nige, Mark G, Garry 

With Mark K unable to join us tonight, this session took place at my house. We started off with Clans, the Spiel Des Jahres finalist and a game I had played but nobody else had. I quite like this game as it’s quick and has plenty to think about. I think everyone managed to work out which colour each of us represented fairly easily. John played a good game and managed to squeeze ahead of Mark G and me at the end.

Result: John 35, Mark G=Garry 32, Nige 26

Ratings: John 7, Mark G 7, Garry 7, Nige 7

Tyros

Players: John, Nige, Mark G, Garry

We then tried this game from a couple of years ago by Martin Wallace. Although I got it at the time, I’ve never played it until now but I’m sure it won’t be long before it makes a reappearance as we all enjoyed it a lot. The game is set in the Mediterranean and is about the expansion of four empires through the area. Players try to establish cities or ships in regions controlled by the largest empires as, at the end of the game, each region controlled by a player scores points dependent on the empires relative size, with city controlled regions scoring near enough twice as many points as ship controlled areas. So the primary objective is to be able to build cities with a secondary objective of having your ships alone in non-city controlled regions, while attempting to thwart others from doing the same. This is achieved through collecting and spending cards on various actions such as building ships, moving ships and building cities.

There is a trading element but in our game the green empire remained tiny, making the green cards near worthless. (This may have been because we neglected to take account of the bonus for establishing cities in all four empires). This meant that more often than not we were trading green cards with the bank rather than other players. As the game neared its conclusion, I switched to getting as many ships in ports as I could and this gave me enough points for the win. This surprised me a bit, as John had done very well to establish most cities in the largest empire and I thought he was in the best position. He only scored 4 ship points though whereas Nige got 15 and I amassed 21. We all found this to be very tense with plenty to think about. Often, you had to adapt your plans to take account of the cards you acquired but, even when you didn’t get the ideal cards, you could usually do something to help your position. Another good game from Martin, which hasn’t got the same reputation as some of his others but is still a fine production and nicely put together by Kosmos.

Result: Garry 79, Nige 74, John 73, Mark G 54

Ratings: Garry 8, Nige 8, John 8, Mark G 7

Crokinole

Players: John, Nige, Mark G, Garry

As we were at my house, I decided tonight was the time to introduce the others to Crokinole. This is the best flicking game there is and always gets lots of laughs and groans. The aim is simply to get more of your pieces close to the centre of the board and ricochet your opponents’ pieces out of play. Each round, a team has twelve shots and the team with the highest points left on the board at the end of the round scores the difference between the two teams’ total points. First to get to 100 or more wins.

For this event, John and Nige took on Mark G and me. Now I’m not a good Crokinole player, as I haven’t played that much but Nige and John could probably do with about 20 years’ practice before their next game. Although it took four rounds, Mark and I emerged triumphant with a score of 125-0. Ratings probably reflected the players’ relative ability at the game, but it was still kind of fun.

Result: Mark G+Garry 125, John + Nige 0

Ratings: Mark G 8, Garry 8, John 4, Nige 5

29th August 2003

Games Played: Stephenson's Rocket, Ad Acta

Stephenson's Rocket

Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G, Garry

Nige asked me to bring this along, as he fancied trying it again. I’d played a few times before and enjoyed it but Mark K and Nige had found it disappointing on their only previous game. The basic thrust of the game is about developing train lines and controlling the more important lines by owning stations or shares in those lines. Points are scored during the game by linking lines up to cities and towns on the map and merging lines together. In addition points are awarded at the end of the game to those controlling any surviving lines and for having acquired commodities during the expansion of the routes.

This is qute a thinker’s game but it plays reasonably quickly, if overanalysis isn’t permitted. Although quite dry (not a lot to laugh about), it fits the theme pretty well. Mark K and Nige enjoyed it much more than their previous experience. Mark K and I raced down England from the North, while Mark G stayed in the South. Nige tried to do a bit of everything and picked up qute a few commodity tokens. However, Mark K’s line became the dominant one and this, coupled with him picking up quite a few points linking it to towns on the way, meant that he came out the winner.

Result: Mark K 62, Garry 54, Mark G 49, Nige 43

Ratings: Mark K 7, Garry 7, Mark G 7, Nige 7

Ad Acta

Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G, Garry

I had seen this listed on this year’s International Gamer’s Award nominations and was curious to try it. I managed to get hold of a copy a couple of weeks ago and somehow persuaded people that a game about bureacracy and filing cabinets was worthy of trying out. Each player runs a government department and is trying to get his files processed and filed away at the right time to score maximum points. However, each file has to processed by two or three different departments in strict order and the other departments will try to ensure your file is sped through or delayed so that you get fewer points. On a player’s turn, they have three (or two) actions and these are to process their top-most file or force an opponent to process his top-most file or store actions for future turns. Once a file has been processed, it is put in the outbox and at the end of the round is transported to the next department or, if complete, sent for filing. There are six filing cabinets and is each becomes full, players get points. Once all the cabinets have been filled or someone reaches 35 points, the game ends and the person with the most points wins.

This turned out to be a bit of a brain-burner and lasted a bit too long. I also felt that the random dealing out of files could prove a bit unfair if your files, which benefited from scoring early, were buried at the bottom of someone’s inbox and vice versa. There were some nice ideas in the game and we, perhaps, ought to try it again to see if our opinion differs on a second playing. Nige proved to be the top bureaucrat.

Result: Nige 26, Mark K 24, Garry 20, Mark G 13

Ratings: Nige 6, Mark K 6, Garry 6, Mark G 6

22nd August 2003

Games Played: Cannes, Crazy Race

Cannes

Players: Nige, Mark K, John, Garry

Four of us this week and, first off, we tried Splotter’s latest game about film-making that was released at Essen last year. The idea behind the game is to use your limited resources in the best way to acquire the necessary components for a blockbuster film and to launch completed films at Cannes film festival. There are three types of film: sci-fi, action and ‘girlie’ films and each requires a different mix of actors, special effects and scripts. In turn, in able to acquire your actors, effects and scripts, you need to accumulate a combination of other elements. How you acquire all these thing is the crux of the game, as you need to construct a network linking the locations from which you can acquire the combination of elements to progress your film production. Once you have the necessary bits, and can complete a film, you can then launch it at Cannes and receive a revenue for it. The person accumulating the most revenue by the end of the game wins.

Our game took a little while for us all to get a handle on what we were doing. Unfortunately, scripts were non-existent until late in the game, while we all took lots of advantage of the ‘old boy network’ to further our cause. Consequently, the game finished a bit too quickly, with Nige able to launch his first and the only completed film at Cannes and end the game by laying the last old boy marker. The remainder of us were all primed to launch films on our next turn, but it was too late. This made the game slightly disappointing and I’m not sure with repeated playings whether many more than one or two films could ever be completed – certainly not with 4 players. The mechanics seemed sound enough but it didn’t excite any of us that much.

Result: Nige 13, Mark K=John=Garry 0

Ratings: Nige 5, Mark K  5, John 6, Garry 6

Crazy Race

Players: Nige, Mark K, John, Garry

We then tried another of Michael Schacht’s little train games from last year’s Essen. Having played Mogul and really enjoyed it, I was looking forward to this, but found it to be much less satisfying. The fact that I got trounced didn’t help. This is a race game where you are moving one of your set of trains forward and leapfrogging those in front of you. The ability to move is done using a blind bidding technique, with four lots of movement available each turn. Points are awarded to trains passing the half way point and finishing line and the person accumulating the most points wins.

I seriously underbid on most of the turns and although that should have allowed me to bid higher on later turns, I picked the wrong fights and still lost out too often. Mark K , on the other hand, could do no wrong and his trains must have been running on diesel rather than steam as he romped ahead comfortably. Not bad but nothing special.

Result: Mark K 28, Nige 15, John 10, Garry 7

Ratings: Mark K 5, Nige 6, John 6, Garry 6

25th July 2003

Games Played: Mammoth Hunters, Der Herr Der Ringe: Die Zwei Turme Kartenspiel

Mammoth Hunters

Players: Nige, Mark K, Garry

Just three of us this week but two new games to try out. Mammoth Hunters is the latest in the Alea big box series, produced in English by Rio Grande. Yet again, Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum seem to have come up with another winner - we didn't hit the problems that others seem to have reported and, although I suggested playing three instead of four rounds, we went for the full four and wrapped up the game in about 75 minutes.

In each round you attempt to place your hunters in areas close to the mammoths. However, others are doing the same and each area will only support a limited (and, until the end of the round, uncertain) number of hunters. In addition, to be able to place and move hunters, you play 'light' cards which cost a certain number of rocks (the game's currency) and to get rocks you need to play 'dark' cards, which benefit your opponents. So, each round you have to balance the play of light and dark cards in an attempt to further your cause more than your opponents. This mechanism of helping your opponents ensures the game remains close, as you don't choose to help the leader and, if you fall behind, others will tend to play cards to help you rather than others. Some have suggested this makes most of the game pretty academic, but I'm not sure I agree as the later rounds tend to build in tension as the play area contracts (the ice age is coming and the board becomes progressively covered in uninhabitable areas of ice), and more conflict takes place. At the end of each round, hunters from the weaker tribes are killed off to satisfy the population limit of each area and then each remaining hunter scores points depending on how many mammoths are in the same region. Highest total after the end of the fourth round wins.

Our game was very close. We each had a good, bad and mediocre round during the first three scorings. In the final round, I chose to try and go for glory by moving a second mammoth into my strongest region, having judged that there weren't many more cards that would move mammoths left in people's hands. However, Mark K managed to become the strongest tribe in that region and with campfires totaling a big fat zero, the population toll became just too great for me. One more campfire would have let me win in the tie-breaker but, as it was,  Nige managed to hold on for the win. As a three player game, this worked very well. The addition of one or two more players will certainly add to the playing time and it may outstay its welcome if it runs to more than two hours but, for now, I really enjoy Mammoth Hunters.

Result: Nige 44, Mark K 43, Garry 41

Ratings: Nige 8, Mark K 8, Garry 7

Der Herr Der Ringe: Die Zwei Turme Kartenspiel

Players: Nige, Mark K, Garry

We then tried Reiner Knizia's latest Lord of the Rings card game. Although it uses pictures from the film on the cards, the game is pretty abstract. The games is played over six rounds, represented by  different locations on the journey from Amon Hen to Minas Tirith. Inbetween each location there is a series of card-drawing actions (between one and four), the idea being to collect cards that will be useful at future locations. The cards come in four different colours and display one of four different characteristics: strength, wisdom, endurance and determination. Each location shows the characteristics (usually one or two, except Minas Tirith which shows three) and VP markers to be won at that location (one fewer than the number of players). Players in turn lay down however many cards they wish, trying to have the most cards with characteristics matching those marked on the location card. The player with the most matching cards takes the highest VP marker, second most matching cards takes the second highest marker and so on. However, anyone who scores VPs at a location loses a number of cards, with what is remaining being carried over to potentially be scored at following locations. Whoever has accumulated the most VPs after the sixth round is obviously the winner.

There were one or two nice ideas in the game, the way the card drawing phase works was neat and recycling cards was very necessary to doing well. Due to the way you lost cards after scoring locations, you also needed to decide whether to play cards for the short term (just the current location) or for longer term (future locations as well). Nige and I got off to quick starts, while Mark K kept accumulating more and more cards in his hand. Unfortunately, although the high-scoring VP markers were at the later locations, he missed out too much at the early ones. I sacrificed the chance of scoring at Minas Tirith, concentrating instead on the preceding location, Helm's Deep. I managed to grab a 5VP marker there and that was enough for me to edge out Nige for the win. Another nice quick game which played well with three players. I'll be interested to see how it differs with four or five.

Result: Garry 17, Nige 16, Mark K 10

Ratings: Garry 6, Nige 6, Mark K 7

18th July 2003

Games Played: Blokus, Mystery of the Abbey, Paris Paris

Blokus

Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G, Garry

With it having been four weeks since I last got to play at the Club, I was very keen to get a few games in tonight. We started off with Blokus, which is a pretty simple but quite challenging abstract game. Now I'm not a big fan of abstracts, but after trying it online, I was hooked. Each player has a set of 21 pieces of various shapes that they are aiming to place on a 20x20 square board. Your first piece is played from your home corner square and all subsequent pieces must connect to one of your existing pieces but only at the corner; they cannot connect along an edge but can share edges with the other players' pieces. Eventually, it will become impossible for you to place a piece, at which point you drop out and you score negative points based on size of the pieces you are unable to place. If you are able to place all your pieces (which is pretty difficult), you score positive points and the winner is the person with the highest positive score or least negative score.

Nige was groaning from the outset as he has great difficulty with spatial awareness games, but I insisted that the spatial awareness aspect wasn't that bad in this game. By the end, he agreed that it wasn't as bad as he thought it was going to be. I managed to weave my way across the board to best effect and grabbed the win. I do like this game - the way the colours spread across the board and interweave with each other I find very attractive. Also, you are trying both to set up ways for you to expand further all the time and restrict your opponents opportunities to expand. Very nice.

Result: Garry -3, Mark G -17, Mark K=Nige -23

Ratings: Garry 7, Mark G 7, Mark K 7, Nige 5