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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2004 at 17:29 and is filed under boardgames.