October 18, 2011 - Sukkot Games Day

Nadine, Emily, Eitan, Gili, Jake, Eliezer, Meir, Rochelle, Daphna, Eszter

Rochelle is from Australia and comes regularly to our evening sessions.

Gili, Emily and Eitan are regulars.

Eliezer and Meir came from Beit Shemesh, Eliezer attends the group there, Meir is in yeshiva.

Eszter is originally from Hungary and came a few times during the summer.

Jake is a new oleh from Boston, he's been here 3 weeks.

Daphna is in ulpan, she made aliya 3 months ago from LA. She heard about us from Eitan's mom.

People arrived between 1:30 and 2 pm, and most stayed until 10:30. One additional person emailed for directions, which I didn't see until the evening, but he could have called because my number was in the announcement that he had. My new neighbors who just moved here from Efrat combined their sukkah with ours, so we had a lot of space. And it didn't rain, though it did get cold later in the day.

Carson City

Nadine 44, Emily 40, Gili 35, Eitan 33, Jake 25

We picked this as easier for a new gamer than Amun Re with the auctioning. Jake has played Settlers, but this was his first more complicated game, and it took him a while to understand all the different implications. Emily and Eitan were also pretty new to the game. There was a lot of fighting for everything, and a lot of duels. Last round Gili, Jake and Eitan had 10 cowboys. I managed to get the white cowboy only once, by passing early, for the third round, but that was enough to put me far enough ahead. I had the building discount card the first two rounds, which helped me because I had good buildings and income from the start, and third round the available buildings weren't good and people didn't buy many. This is the first time I understood how the surroundings work for buildings other than mines and ranches, I thought it was buildings and houses, but it's actually only houses.

Eitan robbed people's income several times, Gili fought him but I didn't, he took half of my 15 for a saloon twice. Everyone except me fought for the guns on the last round; I had used all my workers to get money third round so I went last and took the plot card. Gili played well but had bad luck in dice rolls, which Eitan had counted on. Overall people liked the game.

GoSu

Gili and Eitan played during a break.

Taj Mahal

Eitan 61, Eszter 42, Gili 36, Daphna, Jake
Jake left partway through but they continued playing. First play for Jake, Eszter and Daphna, who all enjoyed the game. Eitan said he understood and liked the strategy this time.

R-Eco

Eliezer and Meir played when they arrived and we were still playing Carson City.

We played at the end also:

Eliezer 15, Nadine 10, Emily 7, Meir -1

El Grande
Nadine 30, 76, 107

Eliezer 26, 63, 99

Meir 35, 79, 92

Emily 14, 50, 86

Rochelle 23, 61, 85

First play for Meir and Rochelle, Eliezer explained the game.

Eliezer picked this and was teaching it as we were finishing Carson City, so I joined, and then Emily also did. There was a bit of confusion as we tried to start El Grande, finish and count points for Carson City, and select restaurants and order food. We tried a brand new one, Daisy where Shakespeare used to be, with mixed opinions, and some people ordered from Village Green.

I wasn't ahead until the end and didn't think I'd win. Meir was ahead most of the game, with Eliezer catching up. Other people did things at the end which helped me, such as special scoring. My region was New Castille which I don't like because it's competitive and in the middle, but someone put the 4-0-0 scoreboard there which helped me because then everyone stayed out of the region. Until the very end, when two others went there from the castillo, matching my 3 pieces, and giving all of us 0.

The scoring round before, no one challenged Meir in Granada because we all thought everyone else would go there, there was duplication in where we went from the castillo. Rochelle caught on and played well, but hurt herself by making her Old Castille region too competitive with the 9 point scoreboard. People put large numbers of pieces into the castillo, and then crowded small regions such as Aragon and Seville.

Lo Ra
Emily 8, 19, 39

Nadine 10, 13, 28

Meir 0, 9, 26

Eliezer 5, 3, 22

Eliezer really liked my Jewish theming and pictures, he had played regular Ra. It was hard to get everything we needed. Eliezer took a large set at the end of one round, and Meir got the three items he wanted at the end of the game before the last auction tile.

Tangrams

Daphna got this recently so we played a few cards after everyone else left. The wooden pieces are nice.

July 26, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ben, Gili

My brother showed up, mostly to collect things I'm giving away. :-)

Carson City

Nadine 56, Ben 50, Jon 50, Gili 43

Scores approximate. First play for Ben. This game, like Endeavor, is deceptively slow in the first round or two only to explode in the last rounds. This must be the first game in a really, really long time that I had to think for an extended period of time before deciding on a move - not once, but twice. Both times were for role selection.

Like all but the first two times we've played, I reduced the gun bonus from three to two (though it still counts for three when calculating gun spaces) on both the role and the "three gun" board space. I found that three guns was just too many; it essentially meant automatic victory on all future gun battles. That meant that, if you were fighting someone in several spaces, this battle determined all other spaces, which was too much to decide with a single die roll.

Ben points out that reducing the "three guns" space to two guns only nets you a single gun gain, since you have to give up a guy to take it, and the guy counts as a gun, anyway. Not to mention that, if you fight someone for the gun, they get their guy back, netting them a one gun gain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Trust me. It still works much better this way. In fact, there was no lack of people fighting for the "three gun" spot, which proves my point. On the other hand, no one took the gun role this game, but he has been chosen many times in previous games, so there.

Anyhoo, I took a strong start, while Ben made a small error in understanding one of the buildings, so he gained a little less income than he was anticipating. Nadine and Ben were hot on my heels by round two, however, and Nadine passed me by round three. I still had more building points than she did.

In round four, however, I chose roles last. Ben took the sheriff gaining him a 5/1 trade, while Gili and Nadine both took the roles that let them store $60, giving them a lot of 6/1 trade. That left me with roles letting me store a maximum of $30. Advantage Nadine.

Then Ben and Nadine fought over one of the scoring spaces, Ben lost the die roll even though he was up on the tie, and Nadine took the five points that Ben would have taken. If the single die roll had gone the other way, Bwn would have won instead of Nadine. And that's why we all hate dice.

May 11, 2011

Participants: Jon, Gili, Eliezer, Nadine, Yaakov

Eliezer joins us from the Beit Shemesh game club; I had played with him on Tuesday night. Yaakov has played some games before, such as Magic and Settlers. He was a fine young gentleman, and I ope he comes again.

I was distracted during the first part of the evening with some phone calls and other issues.

R-Eco

Gili 30, Nadine 10, Yaakov 7

Nadine taught this to Yaakov while I was indisposed. It's interesting how wildly the scoring values in this game vary from play to play. In some games, a high score is below 10 and some of the players have negative values.

Carson City

Jon 38, Nadine 35, Yaakov 35, Gili 33, Eliezer 29

First plays for Yaakov and Eliezer. We play with the yellow roles, except for one of them. Also, the "gunslinger" role and the "gun chip" space provide only 2 guns as far as combat is concerned, but count as 3 guns for the reward spaces. We also still play with dice combat, which I hate; we'll try the other methods next time.

I'm happy to see that all the ending scores were relatively close together, though it looked like Nadine was fairly running away with the game. She drops a lot of points and cash early on, and then takes the sheriff and places it on the 5:1 scoring in round 4, hoping that she can simply keep her initial lead. On her last turn she simply placed 7 guys on the "take 4 coins" space.

Eliezer was almost at zero points going into the fourth round, so kudos for him for making it to 29 points.

I was pretty sure that Nadine was going to keep her lead at the end, though I knew that some of us would catch up. In the end, she was still ahead after we all traded in our cash, but she finally lost after the occupied board spaces were tallied. She only had 3 occupied board spaces, while we all had 5 to 7.

I started off losing a whole lot of combats, but I also won a few; it only felt like I lost more than I should have. I like the mechanism of giving you your guy back if you lose, which is a relatively decent compensation.

Feb 16, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Mace, David K, Avi K

David returned after a long absence, and brought his son Avi.

Nile

Mace, Gili, Nadine, Jon/Avi

Mace wanted to play this for the filler game. He started off quite well. I gave up my position to Avi when he came, because he likes the game more than I do, though I think the game may grow on me if I play it several more times. I don't know what the results were, if any.

Carson City

David 60something, Mace 40something, Avi

First plays for David and Avi, Mace taught them. I don't know much else about the game, but I think they all enjoyed it.

Shipyard

Gili 110something, Nadine 90something, Jon 80something

This is what happens when I don't write scores down. First play for all of us, we learned some of the rules and all of the strategy as we played.

At first the game seemed interminably long and complex, as Euros tend to do. Just setting up the game took an hour; and, like Le Havre, the game pieces are not easily stacked on the board and tend to make a complete mess, unless you invest in some kind of cup holder system for the parts.

"Like Le Havre" is also the feel we had for the great number of pieces and turn methodology in the game. Unfortunately, Le Havre is just on the other side of the border that Agricola just manages to just stay within: a great sprawling complex game which is fun, but only if all the players are experienced and able to take their turns in a timely manner. And yet difficult to get that experience and hard to take one's turns in a timely manner.

The game is a series of rondels and queues, around eight of them. The main one is the action rondel. On your turn, you move the action marker that you used last time to the front of the queue and then you take any available free action, except the one you used last time. If you take an action not used often (i.e. further back in the queue) you get some money, though not much.

The actions are either a) move a marker around one of the rondels and take one of the items now marked (or pay to move the marker more spaces), or b) take one of the items in one of the queues (for free if at the front of the queue, or pay a little extra for items later in the queue).

When you complete a "ship", you gain points for various items on your ship and how well those items match other items on your waterways. At the end of the game, you gain points for items you have acquired during the game in from hidden missions, most of which must be on ships that you've completed.

There. That's probably the quickest explanation ever for this complex a game.

Nadine, as usual, found it dry at the beginning; she tends to judge games harshly if the tactics and strategy are not more accessible, espeically if they have a lot of pieces. I think she began to soften a bit as the game came to a close, mostly because she beat me. Gili managed a triumphant first ship of 24 points, and then some great end scoring to boot.

I look forward to playing again, but I'm not sure how often it will make it to the table.

January 26, 2011

Participants: Jon, Alex, Gili, Binyamin, Shalom, Nadine, Mace

Alex is a game designer who dropped by to show us his designs, get feedback, and make some connections. Shalom came for his first time, even though he's an experienced gamer who lives in the area. Welcome to both of you.

Alex's designs range from the puzzle-like - think Rush Hour, though they are more imaginative - to the simple abstract. One of his designs was something like Go-Moku meets Abalone. Each player places a marble on the board such that it touches at least one of the other marbles and then pushes it and any other marbles in the line one space. The first to get four in a row wins. The game is for 2-4 players. We were unsure if the game was solvable for two, or a forced draw for experienced players, though we suspected it would be. Still, it's better than Abalone.

Tobago

Shalom+, Nadine, Gili

Nadine won this last time, but I didn't think it was her type of game. She thinks it's entirely tactical. First play for Shalom and he won by about 10 points.

Bridgetown Races

Binyamin 6, Mace 6, Jon 5, Alex 5

First play for all of us. Carey, the designer, sent me a copy, since I had played a prototype at BGG.con 5 years ago and had liked it. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 8 different colored flags. To do this, you simply have to cross 8 different bridges containing 8 different flags using the mode of transportation that corresponds to that flag. The flags are put out randomly and the ones you need may not be available at the bridge that you need them to be.

The components are nice, but they're a little unwieldy. You place a flag that you're won on a little board on the name of the bridge, indicating that you won that flag on that bridge. However, the flags easily fell over at the slightest jostling, so we kept having to remember how they had been arranged.

As for the game, it seems to be pretty easy to get to around 5 or 6 flags, and then it's nearly impossible to get any further. if you have 6 differently colored flags on six different bridges, you need exactly the other two flags on exactly the other two bridges to win. The odds of this occurring during the random placement of the flags at the beginning of the round on the last round or two are nearly zero.

You have two possibilities to remedy this. First, one person, once during a round, can swap two flags on the bridges. Since only one person can do this, and every one else is out to make his life miserable at that point, it is unlikely to do anyone much good. Second, you can pick up a different color flag on a bridge that you already have, discarding the one that is there, and hopefully allowing you to then pick up the discarded colored flag on a bridge that you don't already have. There is a slightly more than non-zero chance that this can be done, but it's tough.

As a result, in the last one or two rounds, if you already have your five or six flags, you're unlikely to be able to do much other than prevent the other players from getting what they want. Mind you, this is from a single play experience with four players. It's possible that this is not the case with less players.

As a result, and due to not having a sensible tiebreaker rule, though I had fun counting the steps and choosing my actions, the game didn't have an interesting conclusion. I found out later that Carey has posted an interesting tiebreaker rule on BGG: it makes certain flags more valuable than other flags, which could give you something more interesting to do at the end. I would go further and simply give each flag a point value; you win instantly if you collect 8 differently colored flags, as usual, otherwise you score your flags and the highest score wins.

I intend to try again with some of the other group members.

Carson City

Binyamin 57, Mace 51, Jon 35, Nadine 31

First play for Mace. I'm guessing the last two scores.

We had played CC with 3 players, and were hoping to try with 5, but Shalom had to leave early. Still, 4 players was a world removed from 3; a lot more competition and fighting. 5 is going to be a bloodbath.

We all still like the game, but the gun supremacy, if established early by one player as Binyamin did, is too strong, even when we reduce the gun role and gun chip to "2 guns for fighting purposes, 3 for income or point calculation purposes". Still, if more than one player tries this strategy at the same time, it may balance out.

I had no ranches and one mine, but I had some good saloons (which Binyamin robbed twice). Mace had 4 ranches and associated buildings to tap them. Binyamin had only 12 (down to 6) incomes from buildings, scoring the rest from robbing and the spaces that gave bonuses for guns.

January 12, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, Binyamin

Wow, we're back up to four people. Woot!

Gosu

Jon, Nadine, Gili

I bought this because I'd heard it was a cross between Magic and something, I saw some demo videos, and it looked like it might fit some of the group. It was not a hit with us three, and I'll tell you why.

You start the game with 7 cards and 2 tokens. On your turn you can play a card, play a token, or pass. If you pass, you can't play for the rest of the round. You play a card in front of you like you do in Fairy Tale, only here you have to play certain cards before you can play other cards, and you have strict limits on how many cards and how many of each type.

Most cards do something when they come into play, such as let you draw a card, or flip over or discard one of your opponents' cards, or they have some global effect.

You can play your tokens to draw a card (play both to draw three) or to activate certain cards' abilities.

The round ends after everyone has passed, and the player with the most points from cards in play gains a VP. Everyone un-flips all of their cards and gets back their two tokens. However, you do not clear the board or draw any more cards. You just start the next round.

The game ends when someone has three VP.

The game has a steep learning curve. We had no idea what was going on for a while. We had no idea how the second and subsequent rounds would make any sense if you didn't draw cards between rounds and you already had basically full boards; wouldn't whomever was winning just keep winning? We didn't know why anyone would pass if they had cards to play to increase their score; holding them back for future rounds didn't seem to make sense.

We were hampered in all of this by cards that are not intuitive or clear. The text of what they do is small and hard to read from any distance. A card's effect might occur when it comes into play, or out of play, or while it's in play, or when it is mutated, or some other event occurs, but there's no obvious way to know which card does what from the wall of 20 or 30 cards in play on the table at any one time. (We figure out that a yellow halo around a number means some kind of general effect, but that was the extent of it.)

It appears that the game was played and designed by a group of guys who knew the cards inside out and didn't take into account that new players don't have their familiarity. That's probably not true; probably all the new players they tested it on were teenage Magic geeks who have a greater love for figuring out how a game works than actually playing the game.

Despite all of this, I could tell that there was something to the game. As the first round went on, I began to see how cards interacted and the opportunities for making interesting combinations. When the second turn began, we got new cards through spending our tokens; they were never used to activate powers, because we would have needed some other way to get new cards at the beginning of the round ... think.

Gili was far behind at the end of round one, but she won round two, so it's definitely possible for a lot to happen from one round to the next.

There were two other problems. First of all, there's nothing to do on other players' turns, and these can take a long time with the wrong players. And second of all, there's nothing to do once you've passed until the end of the round, and that can take an even longer time.

We quit after two rounds. I'd like to get more familiar with the cards and try again with two players.

Tobago

Nadine 39, Gili 35, Jon 35, Binyamin 21

Second play for me, first play for everyone else. Tobago hits a light spot where Carcassonne, Settlers, and Ticket to Ride hit. It's got a light theme, pretty components - but not too many, and a quick, clear ending. It's got too much luck to be very strategic. While there are a lot of choices as to what to do on a round, there's not a great loss if you make a slightly worse choice or a slightly better choice: place your card here or there mostly doesn't matter, except near the end of the game.

The defining mechanism of the game is the most fun, and that's figuring out what spaces on the board get defined by the cards as they come into play. The other defining mechanism, the treasure distribution, is where the luck comes in, and it screwed over Binyamin once, which was once too many for him. Actually, as long as you have at least one amulet, it's not that big of a deal. All things being fairly equal, the winner is essentially random, You have to play quite well, or specifically well in the way the game is going, to win regardless of mild-swings of luck. Nadine managed to play specifically well for the way our game went, without knowing that she was doing it.

Gili very much like it.

Carson City

Jon, Nadine, Binyamin

First play for Binyamin. We only managed to get in two rounds of this before Binyamin had to leave for the night. However, it was enough for Binyamin to know that he wants to buy the game to have for the groups he teaches.

We played with 2 red cards and 5 yellow cards, and also with the three gun token worth only two guns as far as gunfights go but three guns as far as scoring and money and so on. It didn't matter too much; we really have to play this with four or five players.

January 05, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili

Another small game night, and all these new games to play, too.

Dominion/Prosperity

Jon 95, Nadine 85, Gili 65

First play of all the new Prosperity kingdoms for me. We had the treasure that lets you get a Gold, but then we also had Thief. Ouch. Nadine and Gili took early thieves and nearly emptied me out. I had to take one just to take back some of my stuff. However, since they weren't trashing Coppers like I was, my Golds and Platinums didn't help them as much as they helped me.

One nifty combo I had was the new Reaction card that let you take cards you gained and put them onto the top of your deck + Thief to take the cards + Castle to give two actions so I could play them both.

Carson City

Nadine 41+, Jon 41-, Gili 35ish.

None of us had played, or even read the rules. We punched out the game and I read the rules quickly to set us up. The game looked a hell of a lot like Caylus, and it played a little like it, but nowhere near enough to bother me.

In CC, you have the Caylus-like track of spaces on which to put workers. The middle spaces of the track get buildings that, if you place your workers, you can place onto the plots you own on the grid-like board. A round consists of: taking a role (like Age of Steam), placing your workers, executing the spaces one at a time (losing your placed workers in the process), returning money in excess of what you can keep to the bank (every $10 returned = 1 point), getting new workers.

The roles give you free money, or plots, or discounts on buildings, or extra guns.

You can place your workers on the game board; if you do, then when the "get plots" action happens, you can buy the plot.

You can place your worker on someone's building; if you do, when the "collect income" action happens, you steal half of that building's income.

You can place a worker on the same place that other people have their worker(s); if you do, when it is time to get the benefit for the space, you each roll a d6 and add your guns and unplaced workers to see who gets the space; the loser gets his worker back as if it was unplaced, the winner loses his worker but gets the space. So, as you lose fights, your strength grows (you gain in unplaced workers).

During income, your buildings generate income based on how many specific board features they are near or that you own. From $0 to $40.

How do you get points? The last actions in the track are taking points for various things that you have (guns, plots, etc...) or in exchange for paying $2/1, $3/1, $4/1, or $5/1. The cheaper options disappear as the game goes on, and people can fight over them like they can fight over other space.

After four rounds, the game ends. Toss out the money you are forced to toss at $10/1 points, and the remaining money at $6/1 point. Gain 2 points for every occupied plot you have on the board. That's about it.

It looked complicated, as these things do, but execution was smooth and intuitive for the most part. The surprising part was figuring out how to get points efficiently, and how the gun battles worked.

Nadine took the point conversion space in round 2, when neither Gili nor I did; we didn't "get" it. As a result, she was a round ahead of us in scoring. That we caught up as much as we did was amazing.

Gun battles are kind of a problem, and not only because they involve dice and I don't like dice-based combat. There is a role that gives you a 3 gun advantage for the turn; as you can see, that's essentially automatic victory for all battles, all else being equal.

There is also a space that allows you to get a 3 gun advantage for the turn. You would think that this would cancel out the one given by the role, except that acquiring this space may involve a battle, which will be won by the guy with the most guns already, which means the guy who took the role that gives the 3 gun advantage. That's weird. It seems to me that a 2 gun advantage for both of these would have been better.

On the other hand, there were turns where none of us actually fought any battles; on the third hand, we were only three players. That won't happen in a five player game.

So, with this reservation, we all liked the game. Like many such games, you really want to do a whole lot more each round than you have workers for.