Archive
Games Sessions - October/November 2002
29th
November 2002
Games
Played: Clans, Keythedral
Clans
Players: Ben, Mark K,
Garry
This week, we had what we thought
was going to be the welcome return of an old face, Ben. However, after
reading this week’s session, you’ll soon realise that he perhaps
won’t be welcomed back too enthusiastically again. Anyway, only Mark K
and I were there to witness the event so we kicked off with a brand new
game by Leo Colovini, a designer who I like a lot. Clans is all about
moving settlers from some prehistoric time around a landscape to form
larger groups or clans. All settlers start out isolated and each move
brings one or more settlers into contact with another settler or settler
group. Once a group becomes isolated from any other settlers, the group
forms a village and points are scored. The settlers come in five types (colours)
and each player is secretly supporting one colour, so they try to form
villages in which their colour settlers score well. Scoring depends on the
type of landscape the village is founded in and the number of settlers in
the group. If there are five colours present, any colours represented by a
single settler are eliminated and only the remaining settlers score.
As the game progresses, the
players’ colour identities become clearer and this makes the choice of
moves more critical. At the end of the game, you can be faced, as I was
with a number of choices none of which are very appealing but you try to
make the one least damaging to your position. Ben managed to engineer
things so that his pieces scored the critical points in the final couple
of villages. He is very good at games involving visualising positions and
connections and he proved this yet again. Good game though, pretty quick
and some interesting decision-making to be made.
Result: Ben 50, Mark K 43, Garry
42
Ratings: Ben 7, Mark K 6, Garry 7
Keythedral
Players: Ben, Mark K,
Garry
We followed up Clans with the
latest instalment in Richard Breese’s Key- series. This time, players
are competing to build a cathedral in Keydom and gain the most valuable
seats in the new building. It is quite reminiscent of Settlers of Catan in
that you are collecting resources which are produced by various terrain
types. Rather than hexes though, the terrain pieces are octagons, which
when linked together leave square holes into which the players build their
cottages. Each round, payers send their workers out from the cottages to a
neighbouring terrain and collect the appropriate resources. Then players
have the opportunity to spend those resources to advance their cause. They
could buy seats in the Keythedral, they could upgrade cottages to houses
so that more workers can be accommadated, they can build fences to hamper
the progreess of their opponents, they could trade resources and so on.
This continues until the final
seat in the Keythedral is acquired by someone and then the value of the
seats each player has acquired is totalled, the highest being declared the
winner. The initial set up of determining where to build your cottages is
very important. You need to gain access to the different terrain types and
ideally not be in too much competition with others for terrain. I made a
mess with my set-up, placing my pieces too close together and I suffered
in the first couple of rounds in not getting enough of my villagers out
into the fields. Mark K followed a strategy of upgrading cottages quickly
and looked pretty strong in the early stages. However, with me lagging
behind, Ben and Mark were concentrating on each other’s positions which
allowed me to catch up quite a bit. At the end, I had a chance of grabbing
the final 4 seat once I had done a trade, but judged that Ben would be
able to grab it before me, so I tried to set myself up for picking off one
of the 5 seats in the next round. Unfortunately, that round never came as,
through the use of a beneficial Law Card, Ben and Mark also picked up both
5s in the same round. Curses. Ben emerged victorious again, so I’m not
sure it was such a good idea to allow him to come back to the club after
all.
Result: Ben 18, Mark K 15, Garry
13
Ratings: Ben 8, Mark K 7, Garry 8
22nd
November 2002
Games
Played: Industrial Waste, Apples To Apples, Lunch Money
Industrial
Waste
Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G,
John W
Unfortunately, I couldn't make it
this week so Mark K recorded the scores:
Result: Mark K 40, Mark G 38, Nige
33, John W 31
Ratings: Mark K 8, Mark G 8, Nige
7, John W 8
Apples To
Apples
Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G,
John W
Result: Mark K 8, John W 7, Mark G
6, Nige 4
Ratings: Mark K 8, John W 8, Mark
G 8, No-Fun 5
Lunch
Money
Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G,
John W
Result: Mark G, John W, Mark K,
Nige
Ratings: Mark G 7, John W 7, Mark
K 6, Nige 7
15th
November 2002
Games
Played: Age Of Steam
Age Of
Steam
Players: Nige, John W, Mark K, Mark G,
Garry
One of the good things about Essen
is catching up with Martin Wallace and the Warfrog crowd; one of the bad
things (not really) is having Geoff Brown trying to persuade you to buy
the latest Warfrog game. This year was no exception but I was happy on
this occasion to give in without too much of a fight, because Age Of Steam
looked pretty promising. We got our first chance to try it out this week
and I was pretty impressed. This is a train game about developing a rail
network in the North East United States and shipping goods between the
developing cities to make money. And a tricky job it is too, because money
is only available by issuing shares in your company and weighing up how
few shares you can issue to provide the working capital you need is finely
balanced. Too little cash prevents you from getting the more lucrative
special actions and developing your network. Too much and you are paying
out too much in expenses at the end of the year, as well as limiting your
end of game victory points.
The 5 player game is played over 7
rounds, each of which involves in sequence issuing shares, bidding for
player order, selecting a special action for the round, building track,
shipping goods, collecting income/paying expenses and resupplying the
cities with goods for shipping in future turns. The player order bidding
can be critical and with cash being extremely tight, some agonising
decisions are required. As you ship goods you are rewarded with an
increase in income per turn and it is this earning capacity which
translates at the end of the game into victory points, with adjustments
for the number of shares in issue and the efficiency of your rail network.
In our game, we had a big
competition between four of us in the centre and East. Mark G went it
alone west of the Mississippi and benefitted from a plentiful supply of
blue goods for shipping between Minneapolis, Des Moines and Kansas City.
Meanwhile, around the Great Lakes, I cut Nige off from Chicago and he
stopped me from developing North and East of Michigan City. At the end of
round 2, Mark K and Nige misjudged their finances and were unable to pay
their expenses out of cash. Both lost ground on the income track -
definitely not recommended. Running out of time, we agreed to stop at the
end of round 4 with me ahead on the income track but behind Mark G when
the share issues had been subtracted. Nige was a bit behind but had a nice
network in the North which would have benefitted him in later rounds.
All in all, a very good game which
we all believe we would play better after this initial learning game. We
all made significant mistakes, especially allowing Mark G such a free hand
in the West. This could turn out to be my favourite of Martin Wallace's
games.
Result: (end of round 4) Mark G
24, Garry 22, Mark K 9, Nige 6, John W 5
Ratings: Mark G 7, Garry 8, Mark K
8, Nige 7, John W 7
8th
November 2002
Games
Played: Moderne Zeiten, Virus & Co.
Moderne
Zeiten
Players: Nige, Mark K,
Garry
Just three of us this week so we
started off with this new release from Dan Glimne (a name I know) and
Gregorz Rejchtman (who I don't). The game is about gaining control of five
growth industries around the world during the boom time of the 1920s.
Players acquire shares in these industries and when it comes round to
their turn, if they have the majority in a particular industry, they can
claim control of that industry in a certain city around the globe. By the
end of the game, you will have a number of control markers in each
industry and city, and whoever has the most markers in each industry/city
gains a number of VPs. There are also points for most money, most shares
in each industry and for finishing the game and the player with the most
points is the winner.
One of the interesting aspects of
the game is that once there are a certain number of shares in issue, there
is a market crash and the industry with the most shares in issue goes
broke and the shares are lost. This can lead to swings in control as the
industry can then be reborn with future shares played by another player.
In our game Nige managed to wrest control of a couple of the high scoring
cities and managed to end the game before we could react, as he judged
(correctly) that he had a decent lead at the time.
Result: Nige 19, Garry 13, Mark K
8
Ratings: Nige 7, Garry 7, Mark K 7
Virus
& Co.
Players: Nige, Mark K,
Garry
We followed up with this quick new
card game from Zoch. Players are trying to protect themselves from getting
illnesses using injections and tablets while trying to pass on these
viruses to their opponents. Part of the game play is a bit reminiscent of
Bausack. You have a choice of picking a virus/injection card to play on
yourself, or you can pass a virus card to an opponent who either has to
accept it or pay tablets to pass it on. Once you reach a n illness level
of 4, you have a further option on your turn: you can pass one of your
secret special cards onto another player, who can either accept it or pay
you to pass it on. Once somebody reaches illness level 12, they are carted
off to intensive care and the round ends. That person gets -13 points and
the other players subtract their illness level from the value of tablets
they hold and score that number of points (+ or -). The player with the
highest score after a set number of rounds wins.
This is not a serious game but
there are some minor decisions to be made and the screw your neighbour
factor is pretty high, which is appealing to some. After one round, Nige
and Mark were ready to give up on it but I persuaded them to play 3 rounds
and it did improve as we got used to the cards. Very light, would be good
with families if you can get past the text on the cards. Nige doubled up
on his win record for the night, proving that he was by far the fittest of
us all. I can't believe I said that!!!!
Result: Nige -5, Garry -9, Mark K
-11
Ratings: Nige 4, Garry 5, Mark K 5
18th
October 2002
Games
Played: Fische Fluppen Frikadellen, Zoo Sim
Fische
Fluppen Frikadellen
Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G,
Garry
After my lightning trip to Essen
the previous day, I had returned with about 20 new games for us to try.
Unfortunately, a fair number of them didn't have English rules but we
still had quite a few to pick from. We started with this new one from
Friedemann Friese, who had given us the excellent Funkenschlag last year.
This time, his game was expandable so that it could accommodate up to 15
players playing over three tables, and players had the option of switching
tables during the turn. An interesting gimmick if you were willing to buy
three copies of the game. However, as we rarely get above five players at
our sessions, I limited myself to a single copy.
The essence behind the game is
that you are travelling around a Finnish fjord buying, selling and
trading 5 different kinds of commodities with a variety of merchants, to
accumulate the right combination of goods to purchase 3 fetishes from the
fetish salesman (...don't ask!) The first person to get 3 fetishes wins
the game. When you deal with a merchant, other actions happen such as more
of a type of good becomes available for sale, or the price of a good
increases. Money is quite tight in the game and you have to be careful not
to get too low on cash (like I did) or you spend too many turns trying to
recover.
Unfortunately some of the
merchants are more powerful than others and repeated visits to that
particular merchant was an obvious course of action. There didn't appear
to be a way of countering that and Nige managed to take advantage more
often than the rest of us, so enabling him to win. A bit disappointed
really. It's ok but nothing to make it stand out. Even with more boards, I
don't think there is enough here to make it to the table regularly.
Result: Nige = winner
Ratings: Nige 6, Mark K 6, Mark G
6, Garry 6
Zoo Sim
Players: Nige, Mark K, Mark G,
Garry
Last year's Titicaca was a very
interesting game that we enjoyed a lot, except Nige couldn't get to grips
with the spatial awareness requirements of the game. This year's Cwali
release is basically an auction game, but again spatial awareness/pattern
recognition is a major element in determining the value of the pieces
being auctioned off.
Essentially, the players are
competing zoo managers who are trying to develop their zoos to attract
customers away from their opponents. Each turn a tile is auctioned off
representing a section of zoo. The tile shows the animals that live there,
a pathway structure and possibly some trees. Each tile won has to be
placed immediately into your zoo and, importantly all the paths have to
join up with existing pathways. Once placed, if this gives you a better
display for a particular animal type than your opponents (or second best),
visitors are diverted to your zoo. The same is true if you have more trees
than other players and, if you are able to complete a circular path a new
visitor will come to your park. The game is played over five rounds of
five auctions and, at the end of each round VPs are awarded according to
how many visitors you have in your zoo. Most VPs collected at the end of
the game wins.
Money is pretty tight in the game
but you really do need to spend early to do well as further income is
linked to the number of tiles you have in your zoo. I didn't win any
auctions in the first round and so was playing catch-up all game. Nige
built early and then concentrated on getting circular pathways because
visitors attracted in this way can't be tempted away from your zoo. It
proved the winning strategy as Nige won, despite the spatial awareness
thing. I enjoyed Zoo Sim a lot and am keen to play again and as the zoos
become more developed the play area is very nice to look at. The only
fiddly bit I wasn't that keen on was the constant recalculation of who had
the best displays of animal type and the consequent movement of visitors.
However, that aside, another nice Cwali game for the collection.
Result: Nige 118, Mark G 93, Mark
K 79, Garry 66
Ratings: Nige 5, Mark G 7, Mark K
7, Garry 7
11th
October 2002
Games
Played: Quandary, Filthy Rich, Palmyra
Quandary
Players: John W, Mark K, Mark G
A second week with me being a
no-show, so Mark again noted down the results.
Result: John W 87, Mark G 84, Mark
K 67
Ratings: John W 8, others already
recorded
Filthy
Rich
Players: John W, Mark K, Mark G
Result: Mark K 33, Mark G 16, John
W 7
Ratings: Mark K 6, Mark G 7, John
W 7
Palmyra
Players: John W, Mark K, Mark G
Result: Mark K 155, John W 127,
Mark G 107
Ratings: See last week
4th
October 2002
Games
Played: The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game, Palmyra
The
Really Nasty Horse Racing Game
Players: Nige, John W, Mark K, Mark
G
I couldn't make it this week so
Mark K recorded the results.
Result: Nige £810K, Mark G
£410K, John W £385K, Mark K £20K
Ratings: Nige 5, Mark G 8, John W
7, Mark K 6
Palmyra
Players: Nige, John W, Mark K, Mark
G
Result: Nige 141, Mark K 126, John
W 125, Mark G 88
Ratings: Nige 7, Mark K 7, John W
6, Mark G 5
This page was last updated on 22 November 2004
