inconsequential ruminations

Quo Vadis
The guys did not object to this coming out again. They all agreed that the last time they played they were expecting a much heavier game and that it had ended surprisingly quickly. As usual it was fast and involved tough negotiation, but the consensus was that it was not enough fun. I suspect something less dry, more elaborate and nicer looking, but just as cutthroat, would be preferred. Intrige might fit the bill. In the meantime, Quo Vadis hits my trade pile.

Pirate’s Cove
My brother-in-law asked me which game I should buy. Knowing his tastes, I immediately went for Pirate’s Cove. Light gameplay; beautiful components; lots of theme and pirate jokes; easy rules that you can learn while playing and dice throwing. Bruno Faidutti says that it reminds of the games of the 80’s and, except for the simultaneous action selection, he is spot on. Naturally enough, my crew love it and it has been played twice in three games nights. My brother-in-law goes red in the face while he is shaking the dice before a big throw.

I liked it a lot on my first play, but I cannot see myself enjoying it for too many more plays. I would like to play about once or twice a year, no more. Unfortunately, I can see my crew picking it a lot more frequently than that. Maybe I should have persuaded him to buy Age of Steam instead?

My brother and I played War of the Ring for the second time last night. I lost, but narrowly. I rarely post exact details in my session reports, but one nice benefit of playing such a strongly themed game is that session reports are so easy to write and (I hope) read.

My brother, as the Shadow, went for a military victory from the start and managed to overrun Gondor and Rohan fairly easily. The Free Peoples held out in Dol Amroth, spending many dice to get Aragon crowned, but it was ultimately futile. I set out for the Crack of Doom, but got distracted by the attacks on my strongholds. Although I spent most of the game feeling like I was losing, in the end it was suprisingly close. I was on the second space of the Mordor track, with four Character and Will of the West dice in hand, and almost no corruption, before my brother captured Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, to get ten victory points.

I made some big errors:

1. Until half way through, I forgot Gandalf the Grey lets you regenerate Character cards.
2. I should have used Gandalf the White to defend Rohan.
3. I did not notice the mountains between Helm’s Deep and Dol Amroth until it was too late.
4. I should have used Elfen rings more freely.
5. I should have reinforced my strongholds more cleverly.
6. I should have been bolder on the Fellowship Track. I could have run up it faster, while carrying more corruption.

It is the mark of a great game, when it makes you think this carefully about it afterwards.

We both enjoyed War of the Ring very much overall, but some things stop me rating it as a perfect 10:

• We started at 7.30pm and played until 1.15am, with about a half an hour break – almost six hours and I am now at work feeling groggy. I still think we can bring this down, as we were still referring to the rules, and my brother was excruciatingly slow at times, but this is still very long. Think twice about getting this if you cannot leave the game laid out on a table between sessions.
• There is a lot of downtime for the Free People, as the Shadow has so many more dice to use.
• Handing the figures gets very fiddly, especially for the Shadow.

These issues are not enough to stop me looking forward to playing next Tuesday, when Michael comes to visit. I hope I can persuade my brother to join in, so we can try it with three.

Play By Web

• Amazons: A dynamic, exciting chess like game. You have six queens each. After every move, they shoot an arrow, which moves like a queen and blocks a square permanently. The last person to be able to move wins. I played Mikko twice at Little Golem. He did not like it, but I did. This was not because I beat him – no irony.
• Gipf: I played once at Boiteajeux and a few times against a freeware implementation with AI. This was disappointing. It was static, boring, and hard to get into.
• Dvonn: I am playing this with Mikko at Little Golem. This is much better than Gipf. It is similar to Focus, but with the innovation of having to stay connected to “islands”.
• Twixt: I have played online a little. This is a fine game. It would be more popular if they could persuade BSW to host it.
• Hex: The only thing separating this from Twixt is the knights move in Twixt. Twixt is therefore faster, while Hex reminds me more of Go. I think I prefer Twixt. Again, I played at Little Golem with Mikko.
• Puerto Rico: I started another slow game. Very enjoyable.

BrettspielWelt

To my amazement, I have made my peace with BSW. I have always hated the interface, but the latest release seems to have ironed out some of these problems. As Joel says:

an application that does something really great that people really want to do can be pathetically unusable, and it will still be a hit. And an application can be the easiest thing in the world to use, but if it doesn’t do anything anybody wants, it will flop.

My username is icheyne and I am still figuring it out. If you see me, please say hello and give me a hand. Does anyone know how to turn off that incredibly annoying yell window for good?

• Piranha Pedro: A cute kid’s game where you have to force your friends into the river by selecting movement simultaneously. Pedro follows everyone’s movement instructions in order.
• Carcassonne: This has more strategy than I remember, but I still think it is horribly overrated.
• San Juan: I was impressed. I am not sure it has a place in my collection for now, as I have so many still to play and I have many lighter games, but I will definitely buy it eventually. The basic mechanic of spending cards is very clever.
• Streetsoccer: Too basic for me, even though there is plenty of skill, but it is a fun way to burn 20 minutes.

Settlers of Catan – Dragonslayers
The boys wanted something familiar, but I managed to persuade them to play a variant from the Settlers Book.

Dragonslayers is basic Settlers of Catan, but with the robber replaced by a dragon. The dragon starts in an extinct volcano in the middle of the board. Once everyone has moved the dragon moves randomly, in one of six directions and up to six hexes, wrapping around the board when she hits the end of the world. If she lands on a hex occupied by players’ buildings, she takes a resource card from them. These are placed in the centre of the board and are given to whoever defeats the dragon. You defeat the dragon by throwing a die equal to or under the number of soldiers you have played. This means that at the start, you always lose to the dragon, but by the end, at least one or two players have a good chance. Winning the fight earns one victory point and allows the winner to take three cards of his choice from the card on the volcano hex.

Overall, I was not keen on the scenario. Settlers really needs the leader taming abilities of the robber, which is actually reversed here. The person with the most soldiers, not only gets the Largest Army card, but also wins big bonuses from beating the dragon. Of course, I was probably embittered by having a nightmare of a game. I ended with three victory points, only managing to build a single settlement. My brother froze me out after 15 minutes, so I spent the next 45 minutes wanting the game to end. There is no question that this is the biggest problem with Settlers. I think I prefer the elimination of Monopoly. At least then, you can go away and do your own thing until the game ends.

Alien City
I managed to persuade my friend to play Alien City with me, to make up for my disappointment with Settlers. It is played with a piecepack and Icehouse pyramids together. Maybe because of the extra pieces, this is the richest piecepack game I have played.

The theme of Alien City is simply of trying to build a city with the various pieces. You have to link up towers (Icehouse pyramids) with domes (piecepack coins) on a bed of piecepack tiles. The piecepack tiles are laid suit side up, and these suits restrict your building options.

Ultimately, Alien City is a variant of Fresh Fish, designed for only two players. The mechanic of establishing unbreakable routes on a gradually more constricted board is the same. What makes Alien City superior is that you decide, as the game progresses, where the start and end of the routes will be as you go along. The combination of the piecepack and Icehouse looks great, in fact better than Fresh Fish itself. The theme also worked well with the look of the game and the game mechanics. The rules are well written, although verbose in places.

Alien City is now my favourite piecepack game. Hanging Gardens is good too, but I cannot see it getting as much play. More importantly, it is my favourite two-player no-luck game as well. The basic concept is complex, but it is clear once grasped. Its appeal reminds me of Tigris and Euphrates, which is about the highest praise I can give.

This is the last Google post for a while – I promise. Chris Brooks mentions an extension that adds the Board Game Geek to the Firefox Search Bar.

I have Firefox, but I have been using the following quicksearch for a while instead:

http://boardgamegeek.com/quicksearch.php3?search=%s

Just create a bookmark in your QuickSearch folder and use bgg or just b as the keyword and you’re off.

You use it by just typing “b querystring” into the Firefox address bar.

There is a nice new Propose A Trade With This User function available, on users’ profile pages, at the Board Game Geek. Unfortunately, it is a bit expensive to do this with Americans. I have worked out how to find potential UK traders with this Google search. The search string could easily be edited to find traders from other countries.

I am not fond of Chess. It is all about mental combat and winning, but not about companionship. However, I do think this computer chess opponent that displays its thinking process is fascinating.

[via Critical Section]