inconsequential ruminations

I had another excellent day at Michael’s in Crawley. I have decided I enjoy these more than my regular gaming sessions. This is partly because my main gaming friend has gone to live in Birmingham to do a Ph.D., but also because it is excellent to play with someone as enthusiastic about games as me.

Antiquity

We deliberately set the day aside for playing longer, deeper games, so Michael immediately went for Antiquity, which we played with three. This is the biggest game I have ever played – a true monster game. The first game was essentially a learning experience, as it could not have been anything else. Although the box says two hours, it took three and a half hours of shifting tiny cardboard chits. It is the mental equivalent of doing a hard winter’s day work on a building site, not that I know what that is like. The other guys thought it could be brought down to two hours, but I think you could only comfortably do that with two fast and experienced players. Two and a half to three hours would be a fairer estimate for experienced players, particularly for a four-player game. Interestingly for me, Michael told me that it is much heavier than Die Macher and similar in style to Roads and Boats. This is a relief as there is no way I could get my regular gaming group to play Antiquity. Before this I can never remember seeing a game where the box specifies 14 years plus.

Antiquity is a colonising game. You have to populate the board with cities, farms, fisheries and mines in order to reap harvests, which allow you to colonise more. With the profits from your harvests you recruit workers and buildings for your personal city board grid, which is exactly like Princes of Florence. Recruiting workers allow you to colonise more and man buildings. Manned buildings give you special abilities. At some point, you build a cathedral, which gives you a fixed victory condition target and a useful special ability. The first person to reach this target wins the game. Rather like Age of Steam, there is a potential death spiral effect, although from two sources: pollution and famine. Famine is a level that increases throughout the game. If you have not harvested enough food, you have to fill your city spaces with gravestones rather than buildings. Pollution happens after you farm or mine the land, and means you have to either expand to unspoilt areas or spend resources cleaning up.

I found it difficult to escape pollution and famine throughout the game. Once they start to drag you down, it is difficult to stay ahead of them, as you have to spend all of your resources taking countermeasures. However, this is a beginner’s problem. One big mistake was not buying a cathedral early.

Overall I enjoyed Antiquity, but I would not buy it. Apart from the length and fiddliness, which I can overlook, my main complaint against Antiquity is its almost total lack of player interaction. Multiplayer solitaire is an overused slur, but in this case it is true. At least in Princes of Florence you get to have an auction for resources with other players. In Antiquity, you only interact with your opponents in the end game when you expand into land in the centre of the board or when occasionally trading goods. After the first couple of turns, I did not even bother looking at what my opponents were up to and stayed wrapped up in my own calculations. This might actually be an advantage for those who enjoy playing deep games solitaire, or for playing by mail. Maybe Splotter should set up a public High Score table for each cathedral, so people can compare how they get on? My analysis may be proved wrong in later games, but next time will be with two players, which will at least reduce time by a third.

[Greg Schloesser complained about the price on his blog]:

My one big “pass” is likely going to haunt me: Antiquity from Splotter. I was prepared to pay up to 50 euros for the game, but to my shock, I discovered it was 70 euros. I’m sorry, but the game just isn’t worth that amount of money. I had the chance to view the game and its components, and it is basically lots of cardboard and a thick rulebook. The components probably should have given the game a price-point of 25 euros or so. Even allowing for the increased costs due to a smaller print-run from a small publisher, it still shouldn’t have risen much beyond that level. As a matter of principle, I just wasn’t going to pay that much for the game. I was able to purchase several other games for that price and will likely play these other games more often. Still, I fear I will ultimately regret this principled decision.

I disagree. The game looks fantastic and the enormous box is filled to the brim. I can mail order this from Splotter for €99.20 (£60), including postage from Holland. If I thought my group would play it, I would not think this was too much, as the components are so good and it is such a niche game.

Coloretto

Although I have owned this for a couple of years I have never played it properly. I was impressed. Surely this is the quintessential Alan Moon set-collecting game? It is basically the card-collecting phase of Ticket to Ride stripped down to the essentials, without tickets or track-laying.

We played two games with four players, including a nine-year-old girl. She loved it. On her turns her expression was hilarious.

I will not play this often, but it definitely has its place in my collection, particularly when I next make a concerted effort to play with my mother and sister.

Memoir 44

I was feeling burnt-out after Antiquity and there were only two of us, so I asked for a game of Memoir 44. I had read a lot of conflicting opinions about this with some grognards despising it and even some €urogamers criticising it for a lack of war gaming depth. On the other hand, it won the International Gamers Award, which is indicative of true quality.

There is not much to say about this that has not already been said elsewhere. It is simple, dynamic and fun, but I doubt if I will buy it unless all my local friends who like heavier games abandon me…

I like that it includes unbalanced scenarios that should be played twice to get an aggregate score. We played Omaha Beach, which is pure D-Day, charging up the sands into withering fire. Next time I play the Allies I will immediately throw all my infantry into destroying lethal but vulnerable artillery and keep my tanks hanging back, using them as mobile artillery, rather than for storming bunkers.

As the Allies I was quickly destroyed in our opening game, which was very disheartening. I only got two victory points before Michael won. The next game started badly, but Michael ran out of steam and with some lucky dice and cards I managed to pull back a win. Overall, we drew on two Allied victory points each. For me this was the top gaming moment of the day.

From the pictures at the Geek, Memoir ’44 looks almost identical to Battle Cry. I almost feel like I can give it the same rating on the Geek.

A couple of weeks ago, Michael brought me the Puerto Rico Expansion, from a trip to Playing Games in Central London.

We played it with three tonight, the first time I have played Puerto Rico with three and it scales excellently. After all my five-player games it was strange to see the mayor oscillate between small and large payouts.

I was surprised at how different it felt with the expansion. The new buildings really put me off my stride and I came last. It was the best thing that could have happenned as I am sure I would have won if we had played with the originals. Rather than choosing the buildings in turn, we played with the following:

• Aqueduct
• Hacienda
• Construction Hut
• Small Warehouse
• Guesthouse
• Trading Post
• Large Market
• Small Wharf
• Factory
• Special Factory
• Harbour
• Wharf
• Customs House
• Guild Hall
• Residence
• Fortress
• City Hall

This distribution was recommended by Alex Rockwell and played well. I found the Aqueduct, Guest House and Special Factory particularly interesting.

If you want to comment here about poker, texas or hold-em – you’re out of luck… sorry.

My MP3 player does not have fast forward or rewind buttons, so I have found a method for splitting up GeekSpeaks into manageable chunks:

1. Run mp3DirectCut – it is a 134KB ZIP file, and no install is required.
2. Open the MP3.
3. Click Special/Autocue.
4. Set a time value for the length of the excerpts. I like three minutes.
5. Click OK.
6. Click File/Save Split.
7. Select a folder to save to.
8. Select a base filename for the new MP3s.
9. Click OK.

You should now have several MP3s that will sort neatly in your player.

Four of us played Expedition. This was discussed far more in 2000, when I first started playing games, but the increasing flood of new eurogames seems to have submerged this classic.

Bruno Faidutti provides a decent rules summary:

There are three different expeditions, figured with arrows of different colours, leaving Europe to discover archeological sites. Each player on turn advances one of the expeditions, trying to reach one of his secret goals, or one of the public common goals. Travel vouchers and action cards make for some special actions and nasty tricks, such as change a goal card, move the last arrow of an expedition or place a blocking token.

Expedition works very well. It is easy to learn and requires a nice amount of planning. A couple of years ago, I played this with a family of non-gamers and they loved it. The adults I played it with this time also got a lot out of it.

I just read Rick Heli’s capsule review, which mentions a rule we played incorrectly, due to an incorrect translation – more than one arrow of each color may be placed on each black line. This changes the game a lot, and probably for the best, as otherwise some remote locations become impossible to visit, requiring spending travel vouchers to remove the research mission. I will use Rick’s translation next time. Obeying Rick’s advice, we always play the Variant A branching rules, as it reduces luck.

As an archaeology grad, I enjoyed the board and cards, with detailed German descriptions of the various ancient sites. I just wish they were in English. This game is begging for a reprint. It has to be better than all pure educational games on the market.

Michael came over and we played War of the Ring between 6.30pm and 11pm, excluding a break of half an hour for food – four hours. This was Michael’s first game, which slowed us down, but he had read the rules and is an expert gamer, so it was not a major factor.

As the Shadow, he squeezed the Ringbearers hard, with usually three or four dice waiting for hunt rolls. On the other hand, for most of the game, I had almost as many dice as him for moving armies. Combining this with Michael not noticing his almost undefended Mount Gundabad stronghold at all, which was obscured by two pieces, and some lucky rolls, I managed to capture a free people’s military victory just before he was due to go home. If I had not been so lucky and he had known the map, it would definitely have taken longer. Acknowledging Alex’s comment on my last post, this was played according to the slow pattern he outlines, but it is a perfectly viable strategy. Michael dictated the pace of the game with his strategic choices.

I enjoyed myself as much as before, but Michael did not. He sent me his thoughts:

It’s a game that I think everyone should experience and although I came away with largely negative thoughts I was still thinking about it when I went to bed which is always a sign that I have enjoyed a session. You also (probably) saved me £40 as I had a very strong itch to buy it. [A flaw in my character means that itch, whilst diminished, is still there although my head is sending very strong signals not to scratch it!].
I was extremely disappointed with the game as I was convinced I would really like it. It oozes theme and I think the Fellowship/Ring to Mordor/Hunt mechanism is excellent. However, at its heart, it’s a wargame – and a distinctly average one at that (if anything it reminded me of Axis & Allies but not as slick). The game is overly long with much of the time spent fiddling with the pieces and understanding the plethora of rules nuances and the exceptions created by the cards. Whilst the board and pieces look extremely attractive, in game terms, the implementation is poor; Mountains and regional borders are not particularly clear; units just don’t fit in the regions and regularly cover key cities/strongholds which, if you’re not totally familiar with the map, can be fatal; the decision to (presumably) cut costs by making allied nations all the same colour makes it virtually impossible to distinguish them resulting in a distinct loss of gameplay and a feeling that you spend more time trying to understand where you are rather than actually playing the game. Now I accept that this is based on one play and familiarity will address some of these issues but I found Squad Leader easier to take in and less clunky after one outing and the prospect of spending another 20 or 30 hours just to get to a level where I can start to think about enjoying it as a game is not my idea of fun. I’d be happy to play again but I would much prefer it if some of the theme had been sacrificed for playability and a shorter playing time. And a final note, to flag this as 2-4 player game is merely to satisfy the marketing people. This is a 2 player game. The rules for 3 & 4 are tagged on at the end in an attempt to sell more copies.
I chose not to read any of the comments on the Geek before I played so that I could make my own mind up. One of the factors that I thought would be in the games favour was a high replayability factor. Interestingly, having now gone and read some of those comments, many of them seem to be suggesting that actually this is not the case and it becomes quite repetitive. Now I am willing to accept that this may be down to playing with the same players all the time but, nevertheless, it did lead me to think that the supposed replayability is in fact down to the fact that you will have to play 20 games before you actually understand all the rules and (particularly) the card mix. In other words the replayability comes in the learning experience rather than the game. That’s fine if you have the time to be able to do this but my gaming time is limited and I would rather spend it elsewhere.

Michael makes a lot of good points, it is unsurprising his reviews are so often chosen as Spotlight Articles for the Geek’s front page, but overall I disagree. I like this game and the mechanics fit the theme. Bruno Faidutti lists this on his Games true to their theme list, saying that theme was paramount in design, and that mechanics came afterwards and had to conform.

Answering Michael’s points in order:

• Overly long – I am undecided about this, but it is a problem.
• Fiddly, monochrome figures – Very annoying, especially for the Shadow. I would prefer counters.
• Fiddly rules – Every game we have played something wrongly, but it is improving.
• Unclear board – A big problem for the first couple of games, but this game I had no problems
• Multiplayer rules an afterthought – Difficult to confirm without playing them, but it looks likely.
• Replayability – Hard to say, but all my three games have followed different patterns, particularly the last with Michael, even though the Fellowship have still not won by destroying the Ring.

I agree with most of Michael’s points, but I still think this is an excellent game.

I recently put together some excellent translated event and character cards for Wallenstein. It turns out that their maker, Norman Petry, has created many other similar player aids.

The best thing about them is not their looks, which are perfect, but the attached assembly instructions and guidelines for creating your own player aids. They are worth downloading, even if you are not interested in any of the games Norman has made aids for. The assembly instructions are great, as they can be applied to making most games components. Now I feel much more confident with assembling downloadable free do-it-yourself games.