inconsequential ruminations

Ivanhoe

I think even the more rabid Ivanhoe fans in my group are getting tired of this. The winner ran away with this just seven “tricks” through the game.

Acquire

This was the second outing and again everyone enjoyed it, even though I ran away with a huge win – mainly because I played it by email more recently.

I am very happy I bought the early ‘90s Schmidt edition. Some might argue that it is not as well made as the latest Avalon Hill edition, but the shiny plastic buildings are fun and the box art is so bad that it is good. How early ‘90s is this? Double-breasted suits and colourful blazers with rolled up sleeves… It makes Miami Vice look tasteful.

We stayed at our cottage last weekend with some friends and managed to fit in some gaming.

Elfenland

We played this with five, including two people who had not played board games in years. It went down well, but I must remember to not to teach thinking games like this after 9.30pm and a big dinner. Our guests were surprised that a relatively strategic game comes in such a light-hearted package. We had a lot of fun joking about gay elves and thigh boots.

Nichte die Bohne

This is too simplistic for me. It tries to occupy the same space as Coloretto, but does not have enough of the same tough decisions. We still had fun with trying to screw each other, especially the non-gamers, but Ness afterwards was complaining that there was too much luck involved and that was even after winning, which is pretty rare for her! You might as well just play Omnibus Hearts.

Dia de los Muertos

My mother is Mexican and my family have always had a soft spot for the Day of the Dead. At my house, we have a weird Last Supper scene in papier mâché that has to be seen to be believed. Due to this, as soon as I saw Dia de Los Muertos, I knew I would find it hard to resist. I manfully bought higher rated card games beforehand, like Mü and Tichu, but in the end I succumbed to temptation. There is no way I was going to settle for the Four Dragons themed reprint, which is based in Chinese folklore.

I probably paid more than I should have for the original to be shipped from the States. The artwork is lovely and although amateurish, the cards are very thick and glossy. The rules are well written and clear, as you’d expect from a hardened gamer like Frank Branham.

The game was daunting to explain, as the mechanics are very quirky, but they fit surprisingly well together. In a nutshell, it is a trick-taking partnership card game, with lots of special cards. In three rounds, you have to capture low-ranked scoring cards in pairs. If you win a scoring card, your right hand opponent draws a card randomly from you and replaces it with one of his choice from his hand. The card distribution is weird, but there are player aids. You can only play to a trick if there is no other card of that colour in it, but you can play black cards to any trick. If you cannot play, you discard the card, which cannot be scored. The special cards are amusing. The weirdest is the one that lets you:

Ask any question about the contents of another player’s hand which can be answered by “Yes”, “No”, or a number.

Although Dia de los Muertos is complicated, it is not as skilful as others in the same category, like Mü, Tichu or even Oh Hell. There is no bidding and no card counting, as all won cards are displayed face up. I miss bidding, but I certainly do not miss the memory element. The game is more about learning how the suits and special cards interact and how to react to the situation.

I recommend Dia de los Muertos to anyone interested in deeper card games. It is now one of my favourites.

Verba Volant, Scripta Manent

We wanted a light closer and a friend asked for Perudo. I managed to convince them to try Verba Volante instead, which is basically Perudo but played with letter cards instead. We played with my Alpha Playing Cards.

The first player has to make a word from a hidden hand of five cards. They say what the word is and the next player has to either:

• accept the word, take the cards, discard one and draw one more and make a longer word OR
• challenge the word. If the word exists, the challenger gets as many points as cards. If it does not exist, the word maker gets the points and a new hand starts.

Picking this was a disaster, especially for me. I lost by a landslide. I did not make a single point, before my brother made 25 words. I could make excuses but ultimately I am bad at word games and lying. I am not ashamed about the latter.

I may be biased by my crushing loss, but I think this is a bad game because of:

1. downtime – there is nothing to do while players are making words.
2. randomness – you have to lie too quickly. We were forced to make long words from impossible hands too fast.
3. lack of thinking. If you are given a poor hand, because you fail to challenge a liar, you have to think of a lie fast, rather than trying to make something from nothing, otherwise you are too easy to spot as a liar.
4. no penalty for challenging. You lose no points, but you can gain some. Therefore if there is any doubt about another player’s word, you will challenge.

I admit that I dislike word games in general, but this is an especially poor one. I played Scrabble a year or so ago and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it, but this was the opposite. Play Perudo instead.

We had a couple of Ness’ friends over last weekend. They played Settlers with us a while ago and enjoyed it so much they bought it. Ness has been talking about Razzia ever since we last played, so this seemed like another good time to bring it out.

Again we found it a taut, challenging experience and our guests (said they) enjoyed it too. The problem was that Ness and I crushed them. It was actually quite embarrassing. Maybe this is not such a non-gamer-friendly game.

I am starting to think that one the biggest requirements for success among non-gamers is that a game has to be fairly random, or at least give the impression of control without being too challenging. Settlers is a good example, in that it requires strategic and tactical thought, but has a serious dose of luck, especially in the early game. Ticket to Ride and Alhambra also fit in the same bracket.

We played Seafarers with a variant from the Settlers Book called Poverty is No Shame.

It is a simple variant, designed to remove some of the luck from dice rolls, especially in the early game. You get a red chip every time you do not get a resource card and every time anyone throws a seven. On your turn, instead of throwing the dice, you can pay a number of red chips equal to your victory point total, in order to name the number that generates resources.

It works well, but distorts the game slightly, although not necessarily for the worse. The winner won by putting lots of his settlements around the same number, so every time he chose it he was paid handsomely. The variant also made it more difficult to dislodge the robber, as the dice were rolled so much less. You had to pay for soldier cards or it would never move.

Although I am quite bored with Settlers, the Settlers Book injects interest into the old format. Rules learning is kept to the minimum, but it still has a fresh feel with new options to explore. I am going to buy Cities and Knights for my brother-in-law’s birthday, as he always demands to play Settlers when he is feeling too lazy to learn something new. Even though I will in fact have the game, he will get the most benefit from it.

Wallenstein

I pulled this out for the first time with my regular gaming group and got none of the usual grumbling about learning new rules. The guys were impressed by the quality of the components and the cube tower. We only had time to play for the first year, but it got a very warm reception.

Once Upon a Time

It looks like I have converted my historical miniatures gaming friend, at least partially, to €urogames. He went into a shop in Manchester the other week and bought Once Upon A Time and Carcassonne. I read about Once Upon A Time at The Ideal Games Library years ago, but never picked it up.

It is basically a party game, which works best for two. The idea is that you are given a hand of cards with fairy tale plot elements on it, for example: queen, tower, sword, two people fall in love, a death, cursed, long-lost, frog. There are also special cards, called interrupt cards. You are also given a single “Happily Ever After” card, for example: “the king relented and allowed them to marry, so they lived happily ever after”. The start player begins telling a fairy story and discards a card whenever one of the plot elements on their cards comes up. The aim is to discard all your cards and finish the story with the plot ending on your “Happily Ever After” card, which is not easy and you have to plan ahead. The other players can interrupt your story and continue it themselves if they have a card that matches an element in your story or if one of their interrupt cards matches the type of card just played, which is much easier. There are special voting rules to stop things getting out of hand, which is inevitable in a chaotic, silly game like this.

It is a clever game requiring you to manage your opponents artfully and it is fun if you like extreme silliness, but it is not really my cup of tea. I think I would prefer it with two, as stories would be more coherent. Ness enjoyed herself and said it would be a good game for children to teaching them confidence with story telling. I agree, but think an adult should be on hand to stop feelings being hurt when things get rowdy. At least I can add another game Ness enjoys to my collection – altruistically of course.

Carcassonne

I still do not understand Carcassonne’s popularity. At least my friend and his partner enjoy it. Coincidentally, just as he bought this, Ness was researching a holiday around Carcassonne, so we could all go together this summer.

Zendo

I finally managed to persuade my group to play Zendo with me. I bought it a few months ago, but when I tried to introduce it originally, a couple of the guys rejected it almost immediately. I think they were a bit intimidated by it. Last Tuesday they were not there, so I pulled it out for another try. Bruno Faidutti explains the Zendo concept nicely. I was attracted to it because it looks so different and is obviously so clever. I was also influenced by the hype.

Unfortunately, it was not a huge success. Zendo was too dry and cerebral for my group, who are a freewheeling banterful bunch, who love games like Dragon’s Gold or Ivanhoe. I enjoy light games and love the type of people who like light games, so I doubt Zendo will ever be enjoyable for me – even though I respect it.

At least I now have a full Icehouse set, so I can play many other games with it. Gnostica and Volcano look interesting and there are some interesting piecepack combination games, especially Alien City.

Kuhhandel

Bruno Faidutti says this is his favourite auction game and it is my joint favourite, along with Medici. I am surprised it is not written about more often, particularly as Ravensburger reprinted it in English as You’re Bluffing.

Despite the childish graphics, it is absolutely brutal. The winner usually wins by a street and the last placed player ends up with almost nothing. There is blind bidding, which might bother some, but I think it works beautifully as people try to calculate how much they can get away with paying.

It should be a 45-minute game, but actually takes an hour. A neat variant for shortening the duration if four are playing is to give each player a chicken, a goose, a cat and a dog. This eliminates the luck in the official short version rules.