inconsequential ruminations

I went to Peter’s house to play Dune today. We played the basic game, without optional rules and with the full complement of six:

• Bene Gesserit – Peter
• Atreides – Iain
• Guild – Derek
• Fremen – Simon
• Harkonnen – Phil
• Emperor – Mick

Dune is still 64th on the Geek, despite having been out of print for 21 years. Copies go for silly money on eBay, although Peter lucked out and got it for £20 a few years ago. It is listed as a four hour game at the Geek, which seems about right.

The art is flamboyantly 1970’s and pre-dates the flawed, but underrated David Lynch movie.

Nice speedos!

Featuring Christopher Biggins as the Baron Harkonnen

We had an excellent time. At one point we played Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon for full 1970’s nostalgia.

I was crushed early on, but the game was always dramatic so did not drag on.

In the end, an alliance of the Fremen and the Guild were vanquished by a Bene Gesserit and Harkonnen team. Naturally the Bene Gesserit engineered the Harkonnen to win on turn five and won the game outright. A sneaky but perfect ending to a great day of gaming. Hopefully Peter will host another session soon.

At the beginning of the year, a friend put in a bulk games order. In the interests of speed, I had to order games in advance, not knowing if they were in stock. In the past I had been completely unsuccessful in getting childrens games and this time I was determined to get some, so I ordered way too many, only expecting to buy a few. Naturally, almost all the children’s games were in stock, so I had a £266 games order.

Comments below on the games I have played:

• Twilight Struggle: Deluxe – I have waited years to buy this and now I can’t find an opponent.
• Chicago Express – Excellent stuff. Keen to play again.
• Chicago Express: Narrow Gauge & Erie Railroad Company
• Money – See my previous post.
• By Golly! – Nice memory card game with chicken poo. My four year old girl (Hellie) likes it.
• Chicken Cha Cha Cha – Memory race game. The better you memorise the cards, the faster your chicken moves. Can go into stalemate, the box is too big and it’s expensive, but the components are cute.
• Circus Flohcati
• Gloria Pictoria – I thought this was a game for very young children, but it’s for 8+. I didn’t realise it is a remake of Get the Goods, an excellent game, so I’m not upset.
• Pickomino – See my previous post.
• Enuk the Eskimo – For 5 years and over, but this worked for Hellie. Lovely components and they get to learn about the food chain – even if it is yet another memory game.
• Click Clack – This is very popular with both Oscar and Helena. The components are lovely, but the box is massive and opens accidentally too easily. It is almost totally luck based, but the magnetic food stash discovery is irresistible.
• Barnyard Critters – Hellie likes this pattern recognition card game very much, although the speed aspect gets her a bit too overexcited before bed.
• Chateau Roquefort
• Giro Galoppo
• Piratissimo

It will be a while until we need to buy a new children’s game.

Another good night with the friendly Isleworth Gamers.

Galactic Emperor

In a nutshell – Puerto Rico in space with fighting. Twilight Imperium was one of the worst gaming experiences of my life. Galactic Emperor uses the same theme and basic structure but strips out the ridiculous play time. At one point I worried it would run on too long, but it finished quite suddenly. There was plenty of table talk and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
7/10 but will probably rise.

Money!

I have been meaning to get hold of Money for years. The new version has top quality linen-finish cards and the artwork is good. The simple rules, simultaneous bidding and short duration all make this feel similar to For Sale.
8/10

Game 1:
Scott – 650
Iain – 460
Steph – 290
Maynard – 60

Game 2:
Maynard – 530
Scott – 520
Philip – 510
Iain – 440
Vicky – 140

It has been a slow few months for games, mainly because I had a contract job away from home, but also partly because I bought a new PC and have been playing too much Fallout 3 and Team Fortress 2.

On Wednesday I went to see the Isleworth Gamers and I hope I will be going regularly from now on.

Pickomino
I bought Pickomino on a whim, hoping I could play it with my four year old, but when I saw it was recommended for 8+ on the box I settled on it as a filler at the club . There is not much to say about it:

• It is a dice game with worms on dominos.
• It is fast – 20 minutes.
• It works.
• It is quite fun, but it’s the sort of game that might get boring if your friends like it more than you do.
• It is probably best played in a pub
  6/10

Liberté
Liberte is a French Revolution themed, medium-complexity area control game, which is about as heavy at El Grande. The Tao of Gaming review covers the mechanics neatly. I bought this second hand for £40, as it’s hard to get hold of and fairly well regarded at #227 at the Geek. I liked that the area control mechanics contributed to a bigger strategic picture. We played with the Daggar Variant, which sped the game up slightly and meant the card display did not clog up. Opinion was divided. Russ and I liked it, Barrie and David didn’t and Emma abstained – a hung parliament. I will play it again – if I can persuade more people at the club to play. Liberté is due for a reprint by Valley Games, who are bound do make a good-looking version. If you like area-control games with a strong theme, definitely pick it up.
7/10

Inquisitio
A horror game about avoiding torture and witchcraft. I won this despite only half hearing the rules due to a bad headache and therefore playing randomly, so I don’t have a lot of respect for it. Ultimately I hate the theme and artwork, so I’ll avoid it.
2/10

For the last few months, I have been steadily playing a campaign of Pathfinder, basically Dungeons and Dragons v3.75, online using regular forum software.

As a kid I was obsessed with RPGs, but never found enough people to play with and only ever played a few short adventures, so this is a nice way to catch up on what I missed. I’m playing a ranger, the class I always wanted to play and he’s turning out the way I always wanted.

Our DM is superb. I get the impression that he’s a frustrated novelist and this game is his creative outlet. I was invited to join the campaign half way through and I thought I would find it difficult to catch up with the action, but I was quickly hooked and spend the best part of a weekend following the story. It reads like a disjointed fantasy novel.

Some choice excerpts:

• Farcical fight with a bunch of pugwampis – bad-luck dogmen
• Climactic boss fight starts with a botched backstab
• Dungeon maps

It’s been very enjoyable. I wonder if forums would work for more avant-garde RPGs?

Update at the request of Simpike

This is basically a PBEM, but using a forum instead of an inbox. It’s superb, but it puts a huge load on the DM. Our DM must spend hours writing the updates and resolving the combats. He even programmed an application to help him sort out the combats. The result is worth it. It’s exciting when your backs are against the wall. We had a character die, so it’s not like he’s making things too easy.

We use a dice rolling website to resolve dice rolls. It requires honesty and it’s often down, but it works.

It’d be difficult to use an iPhone to play. Reading the character sheets requires a lot of screen space. I often have to consult the online rules too. We do have PDF character sheets too, which might make iPhone play possible.

Apart from that, just read the threads to get a feel for it. It’s obvious how it works, but it is a lot of work for the DM.

Five of us played A Brief History of the World in 3½ hours last night. I played it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it. I didn’t want to pay a lot of money on eBay, so I have been waiting for this new version.

History of the World has been around since 1991 and has been published by four different companies. Only classics survive this many reprints.

This new version cuts a bit of playtime from previous versions. The design notes are pretty readable and worth a look.

Rather like Small World, you control several empires taking them to their decline and fall. With simple, intuitive rules you get a flavour of the entire history of the world.

We had a great game with plenty of friendly chatting and I enjoyed drawing parallels to real history – like the Arabs invading Spain or Alexander cutting a swathe through the Middle East.

Duncan remarked that the game feels like a history lesson that plays you. He wanted more strategy. I see his point, but we didn’t use forts or combine events with empires effectively. For me, long multiplayer games needs to be gentle and free-wheeling. Sitting around for hours knowing you have lost at ridiculously over-long games like Britannia or Twilight Imperium 3 is no fun.

My main complaint is that the rules were unclear. At no point is the card layout explained for example. For a game this simple, there are a few too many threads in the rules forum at the BoardGameGeek. I may put together an FAQ.

This is a game for low-brow historians like me. 9/10

The last few months have been crazy for me, so there’s been no chance for gaming. I haven’t logged a game since October, which is annoying me. Hopefully things will look up soon. I’m consoling myself with lots of Fallout 3.

Mikko has been much more consistent, but his blog got hacked recently. His web host weren’t helpful, so he had to move it to a new domain.

http://mikkosgameblog.com