inconsequential ruminations

Only three of us made it yesterday. Despite our tiredness, we all had a surprisingly enjoyable evening. The games fitted our mood perfectly.

Alhambra
I have played this by email before and after playing face-to-face my opinion has not changed. This is very accessible, but bland. It’s got all the virtues and vices of the typical German game. I have too many games in this category, so I will not buy it, even though we had a perfectly good time. I suspect I will prefer Palazzo.
6/10

Cave Troll
At first glance this looks like a dungeon crawl game, like a mini Heroquest, but it is really an easy, quick area majority game with a fantasy theme. There is nothing much to it, but it fits the bill after a tiring day at work. It is almost the opposite of El Grande. I prefer Dungeon Twister, another fantasy game with €uro mechanics, but this is still pretty good.
6/10

Bruno Faidutti’s site finally has an RSS feed.

His Ideal Games Library has long been one of my favourite places to research games on the web and I enjoy his games very much, especially Dragon’s Gold.

I have been fretting quite a bit with trying to find a cheap, short wargame about the Western Front of WWII. After a lot of hunting around I went for Cobra and just won it on eBay for the princely sum of $19.49, including airmail to the UK.

I went for it because it is a step above Target Arnhem in depth and simulation. Both Panzergruppe Guderian and Leningrad are in the same family as Cobra and Panzergruppe is pretty famous, but in the end the western front subject matter gave Cobra the edge. I am more interested in the Eastern Front, but my new opponent definitely prefers the West.

I also preordered A Victory Lost. Apparently it is another Japanese wargame using the same system as Target Arnhem. The rules are only eight pages and it usually lasts three hours, which is perfect for us. I think I can interest my friend in the Eastern Front by then. Multi-Man Publishing operate a preordering system, like the GMT P500, so I hope it gets enough preorders soon.

Rommel in the Desert almost made the cut, but it is expensive to find in the UK and the rules looked a bit daunting to my new wargaming opponent, who suffered quite badly just with Target Arnhem.

If RSS/Atom newsfeeds sound too much like hard work, you can now subscribe to this blog via email.

Some of the other stuff I’ve been up to over the last few weeks:

Wizard Kings
We played dwarves and orcs on the Revolt scenario from Chris Farrell’s website using the v1.6 rules which I think was a mistake. I have not analysed it, but this ruleset seems to reduce the punch of attackers, making it impossible for the convicts to make headway in this scenario, as there is so little room on a single map. I will stick to v1.5 in future, especially on Chris’ maps, which are the only way I want to play the game anyway.

Santiago
This went down very well with the full complement of five players. I am not entirely sure it is a classic, as there are so many finely tuned auction games out there. Time will tell, but it is certainly very good.

San Juan
Still excellent. An inexperienced gamer among us struggled with the concepts quite a bit. I can see how it would be disconcerting for a newbie.

Age of Steam France Expansion
John Bohrer recently recommended this as a gentle introductory map, as you cannot go bust, but I disagree. With four players things still managed to get pretty cutthroat in a rush to connect Paris with the south, and one guy would have gone bust with the regular rules. Rather than being freed to go home, he was sentenced to another 45 minutes of waiting around for the game to end. It is a tough choice. Some people might prefer to be eliminated and save time, but others would prefer to stay in the game anyway.

Target: Arnhem
I have now played this three times, and enjoyed it very much every time. The Allies have not won with a regular historical setup and I am starting to think it would be very difficult for that to happen. Next time I play the allies I will try putting two sets of paras north of the Rhine and one next to Nijmegen. XXX Corps will struggle more in the early game, but at least the paras will have a chance of holding out until they can be relieved. Getting over the final bridge is just too hard without a bridgehead.
I really need to find another game at this level, as I now have a very pleasant partner for light wargames. The main problem is keeping the duration down as T:A takes us 3 hours and that is the absolute limit for us right now. Any suggestions? Here are my current thoughts:

• Rommel in the Desert
• Napoleon at Waterloo
• Hammer of the Scots
• Storm Over Arnhem
• Fallschirmjaeger

The last two are too long and are only in because they are in Chris’ Introductory Wargame List and because my new wargaming partner is Dutch.

Update
I should have emphasised that we are ideally after a Western Front WWII game, probably Battle of the Bulge or D-Day.
Autumn Mist might be a contender, but it does not have a single rating at the Geek.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Crawley to visit Michael and his friends for a day’s gaming. I had as good a time as ever, although I took an even bigger thrashing than usual. It has been so busy at work and home that this is the first time I have had the energy to write it up.

Antike
This one was on a loser for me from the start. Classical Greece is a powerful theme, but it has been done to death in eurogames. As usual, I totally agree with Rick Heli’s review

Empire-building game for up to six that wants to recreate the classic Civilization as a two-hour affair—you know, for those who don’t want to marry a game, but just have a quick fling. Time-wise the folk at Eggert-Spiele have done it, but oh what was lost on the road to this particular Damascus.

Civilization in two hours is the alchemist’s gold of modern gaming, I don’t believe it can be done while satisfying everyone. Antike is not a bad game at all; it just lacks the spark of fun that keeps me in gaming.
3/10 (remember that my average rating is around 5.5)

Caylus
I enjoyed this. I disagree that it’s The One, but I liked it a lot. My main problem with Caylus is the length – it took us three and a half hours not including the rules explanation. How can it say 2 hours at the Geek? This was too long for me. By the halfway mark, I was well out of it and that gets very dispiriting after 90 minutes. The more I play these games, the more I am convinced that multiplayer games should be two to three hours duration at most. Two player games can go on longer, as it is easier to stop when it is obvious who will win.
7/10 but will probably climb.

Lost Valley
I was a little disappointed in this, but I still think it has something going for it. It is short, simple, easy-going, good-looking and very well themed. What I did not like was how the game encourages people to wait around and parasite from other people’s work. I am sure that it could change with more playing, but I eventually got tired of waiting to shake off another player who was waiting around for me to build a mine and I just went ahead and did it. He got more out of it than me and got the win.
6/10 but I am unsure.

Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean
It was strange to play two Classical Greece themed games in one session. Whereas Antike feels a little like the building and fighting part of Mare Nostrum (I have never played Civilisation), Parthenon plays like the trading phase of Mare Nostrum.
Unfortunately this also outstayed its welcome a little. It took three hours, and should have been two and a quarter.
It certainly is an attractive game. The cards are beautiful. Did the same artist as the Mayfair version of Settlers of Catan paint them?
6/10