Games Day: April 24, 2008

Participants: Jon, Saarya, Nadine, Adam, Binyamin, Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda, David Klein, Avi Klein, Yarom, Maayan, Maya, Yardena, Yedidya, Yitzchak, Jonathan, Roie, Omri, Rachel A, Yosef, Dylan, Ben, Gili, Dvir, Shimon, Ari, David B, Pini, Yosef B, Richard, Vera, Raphaela

I'm Jon and Saarya is my son. Nadine, Adam, and Binyamin are group regulars. T"S and Z"Y are Binyamin's kids. David is a group regular. Avi is David's kid. Yaron has been playing games in other parts of Israel for many years, but rarely gets out to my group. Maayan and Maya were his guests. Yedidya and Yitzchak are Yardena's kids. Jonathan is a new group regular. Roie and Omri saw the ad on Tapuz. Rachel A is my wife. Yosef saw the ad on Janglo or my blog, I think. Dylan is a group regular, Ben is my brother and a group regular, Gili is a group regular. Dvir, Shimon, and Ari saw the ad on Tapuz. David B is my other brother and Pini and Yosef B are his kids. Richard, Vera saw the ad on Janglo, and Raphaela is their daughter.

32 people is record attendance. In fact, if we get this many or more in the future, we need a bigger place.

Amun-Re

Binyamin 51, Roie 42, Ben 38, Omri 31, Zvi Yehuda 531

Ben doesn't get to play this game in his community because his gamers object to the other deities and sacrifice.

Nadine 54, David B 39, Yosef 38, Ben 34

This was first game for David and Yosef. David thought it was a good game but the -3 card (stealing 3 gold) wasn't strong enough to overcome the loss of a free item.

Anagrams

Jon, Yardena

I went easy on Yardena at the start of this game under the assumption that I would be much better than she was, since she had Scrabble experience but not Anagrams experience. After a few words, however, it turned out that she was excellent. After that I played as well as I could and we both ended up with about the same number of words.

Bridge

Nadine, Ben, Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda

They played a few hands toward the end of the day.

Cities and Knights of Catan

Yitzchak, Yosef

Played a two-player game to learn the rules, I believe.

Yosef 13, Jon, Jonathan

I started off pretty well, but Yosef relentlessly hit me during the game and rose over my back. He got a quick early metropolis, and another one soon thereafter. He won the game with Longest Road.

Colosseum

Zvi Yehuda 83, Gili 80, Tikva Shira 65

This is a big sprawling game with busy graphics. I played it once and thought it was a typical Euro.

Cosmic Encounter

Binyamin, Pini, Yosef, Zvi Yehuda

I think I have the wrong people written here, except I know that Binyamin got bored by the game since he didn't think the aliens were interesting enough (he had Void/Zombie).

Go

Adam+, Jon

Adam slaughtered me by capturing a large central area on an 11x11 board. I still love the game, but I really really suck at it. I started with two stones.

Jon+, Yardena

I taught Yardena how to play on a 9x9 board. Even by the end of the game, she wasn't quite sure she had grasped the rules of capturing groups. She started with a two stone advantage.

Imperial

Binyamin brought this and taught it to several groups of people, but no one took him up on the offer to actually play it.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David++

David and I did our usual Rochester draft. Both of us ended with serious difficulties in cutting down colors for our deck. I had more Red, but I settled on Blue as my third color. There was no way to cut it down to two colors. I did BGU while David did BRU.

I lost the first game. The second game, I was distracted by some other events around me and forgot to say I was casting a blocker from my hand, so I lost, but David said I should have won (I recorded it as his win). In the third game my deck worked and his didn't. In the fourth, we were well on a repeat of the third so he resigned.

David+, Pini

Pini used my deck to play David while I was eating dinner and lost.

Pirate's Cove

Tikva Shira, Zvi Yehuda

I saw them playing this two player. Binyamin heard the rules and wasn't interested because of the excessive dice rolling. I sympathize, but I like the game anyway, for some reason.

Power Grid

Dylan+, Dvir, Shimon, Ari

I taught the latter three this game and then stepped out for Dylan to play. I forgot that Dylan's grasp of the rules wasn't perfect. As a result, they forgot that you couldn't have more than three power plants. I'm sure they got some of the power plant rotation rules wrong, too. Dylan won on the tie breaker.

Puerto Rico

Rachel+, Roie, Omri

Omri and Roie brought two games, PR and Princes of Florence, both of which I have. They sat down to play with Rachel. I was thinking of warning them that they don't know what they're up against, as she is a killer.

She ended up winning, but not as badly as I won against inexperienced players the day before at the Beit Shemesh club - something like a 10 point spread. She said it was fun, especially when she had no idea what her opponents were going to do, unlike when she played with us regulars.

Race for the Galaxy

Yaron, Maayan, Maya, Jonathan

This was the first time for all of them (2nd for Jonathan?). It took them quite some time, as first game are want to do.

David B 29, Pini 25, Yosef B 15

I taught all of them how to play and then left them to it. As a result, they were often confused. David realized that their was a lot to the game, but the other two were somewhat frustrated. They all would have enjoyed it more if I had played with them as well; I'm sorry I didn't.

Nadine 42, David 32, Jon 29

We three wanted to play this at the end of the evening. Nadine won using her usual brown world strategy. I started with the military world, which I think is a poor strategy in comparison.

David 64, Jon 45, Nadine 41

I tried a brown world strategy, but David took it from me and did it better. He also had yellow worlds going. it was obvious a third of the way into the game that he was going to slaughter us. Which began to make me resent the game. Once I was losing and my initial worlds turned out to have been the wrong ones, there was no hope of catching up and a whole game to know that.

RftG is therefor a fascinating puzzle, but somewhat frustrating as a game.

R-Eco

David 17, Jon 3, Nadine 2, Avi 0, Adam 0

My only points were from not dumping. David pulled the 4 and 5 of red in his last two moves.

Avi 16, Nadine 8, Yardena 6, David 5

Yardena liked the game because the rule set was simple and she didn't have to think too much (she thinks a lot during work, generally).

David B, Pini, Yosef B

I taught them this and they all liked it for what it was.

Yosef, Gili, Binyamin

Played near the end of the day.

Robo Rally

Jon+, Nadine, David, Avi, Adam

This was our opening game and it was fun. We played on one board with two flags at opposite corners. David, Nadine, and I were all close, with Adam right behind. This despite my opening turn as nothing but left and right turns. As usual, chance played heavily in who was able to get the second flag in the final stretch.

Yaron, Maayan, Maya, Dylan, Jonathan

I taught them all how to play, and warned them that a typical game, even on a short board with one flag, takes a good hour and a half. Dylan then won on his second play.

Santiago

Maayan+, Yaron, Maya, Jonathan

This was another new game for all the players.

Settlers of Catan

Roie, Omri, Yosef, Yedidya/Yitzchak

Y and Y really wanted to play but there wasn't enough room so they shared a position.

Shadows Over Camelot

Gili, Tikva Shira, Saarya, Richard, Vera, Raphaela, Jonathan

I taught some, and some had played once or twice. Richard, Vera, and Raphaela came in just as we were about to start and I included them. This was their first game, and they didn't make it through to the end, even though Vera told me that it was much better than Monopoly. Still, it's a fairly complicated game for your first game, though the mechanics themselves are pretty easy.

When they left, three players finished the game three player, each with two roles. Gili inherited the traitor (or started as the traitor). he game ended with seven white swords, but then two flipped because the traitor was still in the game, so the company lost (and Gili won).

Winner's Circle

Binyamin, Zvi Yehuda, Tikva Shira

The opening game for them.

Year of the Dragon

Nadine 104, David 84, Gili 77, Tikva Shira 58

David and Nadine had both played Year of the Dragon once, and David had won that time. Tikva Shira knew the basics, and it was Gili's first time. This game is played in preference to Notre Dame, being considered nearly the same game but better (though ND is a fine game).

January 09, 2007

Participants: Jon, Mace, Shachar, Nadine, Gili, Yitzchak, El-ad

El-ad is a friend of Shachar's who showed up in the middle of games night.

Havoc

Mace 42, Shachar 25

Mace and Shachar arrived early and played this two-player while I finished organizing my life. They needed a few rule lookups during the game, but otherwise managed ok. By the time they were done, El-ad showed up.

Down Under

Gili 28, Jon 23, Nadine 23

I like this little filler game. After this play, my third play, I just started thinking about new levels of strategy and tactics for the game. I believe that a careful player should be able to count several moves ahead to determine if a path is worthwhile or not. Also, the game becomes more confrontational as it goes on.

It's quite nice. I wish I could get the others to like it as much as I do.

Pirate's Cove

Jon 41, Gili 36, Yitzchak 35, Nadine 31

This was my first play, and second or third for the others. As was expected, I really don't like dice combat mechanisms, and this one was no exception. Which is a shame, because I liked every other aspect of the game.

Pirate's Cove is a blind bidding game. Each player has four stats: initiative, two combat stats of which the lowest one determines how many combat dice you roll, and treasure capacity. Each round, five cards are revealed, one in each of five locations, and each player secretly decides which one to take or whether to cash in treasures already earned. Four of the five locations also allow you to increase one of your stats using earned gold, while the fifth allows you to buy power cards.

If two people go for the same card, they fight. Alternately roll dice; hits are subtracted from an opponent's stat of your choosing. An any time, or if one of your stats falls to zero, you can withdraw and fix your damaged stat and draw a power card, or draw two power cards and pay two gold to fix your stat. The remaining player gets a VP and the fought-over card.

Cards give random amounts of VPs, gold, treasures which can be cashed in for VPs, and/or power cards. Power cards are worth VPs, great benefits in attacking or defense, and so on. Naturally, like the dice rolls you need, the power cards you get may or may not be the ones you need. Some are greatly better than others almost any time.

It was readily apparent to me that given a rather straightforward choice between VP's or treasures, VP's were a better strategy. They don't require you to waste a turn cashing them in for treasures, can't be stolen, and require no particular capacity to store. Naturally, if everyone has this idea, there will be lots more fighting over the cards that give better VP bonuses; and, generally speaking, the player with better stats or better power cards will win fights. Or the better roller, naturally.

Adding to the mix is a Big Pirate that travels around to areas 1-6 in order. Anyone who wants the card in that area also has to fight this guy first. He's hard to kill, can do some nasty damage, and may be worth a nice or small amount of VPs.

In our game, the Big Pirate gave a fair chunk of VPs. Everyone else was avoiding him, so I decided early on that the best chance of leaping ahead was to save my best power cards and take him on. Not only will I get the VPs from beating him, but then I will get the card from the area uncontested.

I waited until he was in an area with a nice VP card. Took him out, gained nice points, gained even more nice points, and that was basically game, because the next Big Pirate flipped up to replace him was just as nasty but gave only half the VPs. Furthermore, it was already near the end of the game and people hadn't been saving up just for a battle like that.

So even with my average dice rolling, my planning won the day. Which made me appreciate the game. But still: dice rolling combat. Shudder. There must be a universal way to fix all games with dice rolling combat.

Settlers of Catan

Mace 10, Shachar 7, El-ad 4

I can't believe that Mace has never played this before. El-ad was a total stranger, so that he hadn't played it before wasn't a shock. Anyway, Mace won as you can see, and they continued on for second place, which ended up being Shachar.

Vegas Showdown

Jon 50, Nadine 41, Yitzchak 40, Gili 38

Nadine and Yitzchak had played this once before, while Gili and I hadn't. They had figured out most of the confusing rules from the last play, but we still had to work out a few rules issues. I really liked it, even though I wasn't totally happy with the card flipping mechanics, but once again my enthusiasm wasn't shared by everyone else. Others' opinions ranged from ok to boring to a bit long.

Vegas Showdown is an auction game with bidding similar to Amun-Re except you can rebid in the same place. You're bidding on rooms to lay on your hotel/casino area.

Each tile has doors that must connect (a lot like Alhambra) and gives varying bonuses to your income, people count, or VPs. Unlike other games, the granted income bonuses are not great; still, it's always better to have more than less. Your best method for income is to punt and not build anything once in a while. That starts you off the next round a building's worth of money ahead of everyone else (unless they did the same).

Each round, buildings drop in prices. As the game goes on, the better and more expensive buildings show up. These require you to have bought earlier buildings (like Attika) and they have less doorways so they are harder to place.

At the end of the game, you get points for transitory points gained along the way, filling in certain areas of your board, highest income or people, and having arranged the more expensive buildings in certain ways (this is the hardest and least profitable strategy, from what I could tell).

In fact my victory is based on having acquired the plush transitory VP buildings around midgame, and ensuring that I got roughly the same bonuses everyone else would gain at the end of the game. I can see someone else winning by gaining one or two of the very last buildings to show up, however, which no one ended up purchasing in our game.

After special buildings are bought, new ones are replaced according to a card that flips up indicating what building stack to pick from for a replacement building as well as an "event" that affects the remainder of the round. While these "events" are cute, they don't really add much to the game. In fact, they could easily have been dispensed with and the game would have been must better. It's not because they are "event" per se, it's that they're not good ones. Too many of them randomly give out bonus points to people in a game where victory is not decided by too many points, or otherwise disrupt the game flow too much.

Still, I greatly enjoyed this game and would love to play again, if I can find more willing parties to join me.

October 31, 2007

Participants: Nadine, Yitzchak, Gili, Dylan, Genia

First game day out of three that will be in Nadine's house while I'm away in Canada. The report is from Nadine.

San Juan

Yitzchak 44, Gili 36, Nadine 29

Gili joined late and we let her take extra cards and builds to catch up.
Yitzchak did a good job with a Quarry and Library early in the game.

Pirate's Cove

Dylan 37, Nadine 32, Yitzchak 31, Genia 29, Gili 28

We agreed that there is too much luck in this game - both in selecting
islands and dice rolling. The game is not long enough for the luck to
even out. But it's a lot of fun to play. Thanks to Gili for bringing it
again. Genia did well and was leading for most of the game, but the
resultant attacks had their effect, even though she beat a Navy ship.
Yitzchak was also leading, tied with Dylan, but was destroyed in the last
round. I was behind most of the time til the end.

It's Alive

Yitzchak 50, Dylan 46, Genia 42, Gili 39, Nadine 39

Most of us were waiting for a long time for one missing card. We had a
good time playing. Gili got a lot of Villagers, usually followed by a
Coffin.

October 24, 2007

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Yitzvhak, David, Gili, Orah, Hillel

This was my last games night in Israel before a trip to North America. Nadine will be hosting game nights for the next three weeks.

Gili finally returned after her vacation, and she brought her mom, Orah, with her. Hillel is a new player who found us through my blog. He enjoyed himself, so hopefully he will be back. I didn't get to play with either of them, however.

Colossal Arena

Nadine 11, Jon 10, David 3, Yitzchak 0

The last time I played this I was not impressed. And no one has been hankering for it since then. So I was thinking of adding it to my trade list. Before I did, I wanted to give it another try.

Essentially, the game consists of selecting 8 out of the 12 available creatures to do battle. To do this, you need to separate out the 12 cards for each creature type from the pack of cards, as well as 11 spectator cards, and a few referee cards. The others are set aside.

You lay out the descriptive cards of each of the eight creatures at the top of the table. Each battle is "fought" in successive rows on the table beneath the top row. At the end of each battle, the lowest valued creature is no longer in play. The next battle is fought one row further down, with one less creature. After five battles, only three creatures remain.

Battles are fought by players placing cards corresponding to the creatures in the current battle row one by one. You can cover up a card already in place. As soon as all creatures fighting in a round have a card, the creature with the lowest number is eliminated. If there is a tie for lowest number, keep playing until there isn't. Cards are valued 0 to 10 for each creature and must be played on that creature. A card from single set of spectator cards valued 0 to 10 may be played on any creature.

Each round, you bet, place a card, and draw back up to 8 cards. Special cards or abilities may come into play.

During the game, you place bets on these creatures. The earlier the battle, the more valuable the bet. In the first round you can also place an additional secret bet. Only one person can place a bet on one creature each round, and only after the creature already has at least one card on it from this turn.

The last rule is the one I missed the first time I played and makes all the difference. It is a critical rule that makes the game far more enjoyable. Without it, you can bet on anything you want and then play a card on that bet. Instead, you have to play a card which might enable someone else to place the bet on it before it gets back to you.

Each creature also confers a special ability for you if a) you place a card on it this round, and b) you have the highest valued total bets on this creature.

It's actually an interesting game. The most interesting part is that you can place either low cards on creatures you don't like or high cards on creatures you do. You can end the game with a high card on the last remaining creature without a card yet, dooming some other creature, or a low card on that creature, dooming it instead. Assuming you have the card you need.

However, the game still has a few problems, which we noticed the last time, too.

The biggest problem is the point system, Like Quo Vadis, point scores in this game are simply too low and therefore likely to tie all too often. It's just not enough, and not enough ways to score. Furthermore, the betting system makes most of the bets fairly worthless and most of the creature special powers also fairly worthless. It's a drag on the game. Higher valued bets, the last row being worth something, and interim scoring opportunities ala El Grande would make the game much better.

The second problem is design. The spectator cards look exactly like the creature cards and are impossible to distinguish except by reading the fine print. They should have big words saying "Spectator" on them. And many of the creature cards have nearly the same coloration or name, making them hard to distinguish, too. There is no special corner symbol; you have to hold the cards so that the entire top of each card is visible. This makes setting up the game, and figuring out what you have in your hand difficult.

One other problem was remembering which creatures were eliminated from play each round at a quick glance. This information is important since you need to know how many creatures remain this round. Flipping over their card in the top row wasn't good enough, and in fact made it worse. Instead, we collected all the cards previously played on those creatures and made upside down piles in their column in the current row.

I think my problem last time also may have stemmed from too few players. You definitely need a full complement of betting to make the game interesting.

It's not going to hit the table often. However, it's also not too expensive, so not worth my effort in carrying it over to the U.S. to trade, as I doubt I would get much for it.

In our game, Yitzchak had bad luck and got eliminated often. Nadine and I seemed to overlap on most creatures, which made us allies. I had the nicer bets, but she had a secret bet which gave the final win.

San Juan

Gili 40, Hillel 34, Orah 34

Gili taught this to Orah and Hillel and they played the entire game with open hands.

Bridge

Jon/David, Yitzchak/Nadine
Played as a filler. I opened 2c on one of the hands.

Power Grid

Jon 18, David 17, Yitzchak 16

A win for me, which either means I'm getting better or that my opponents are making more mistakes. In an unusual turn of events for PG, it seemed like I was winning most of the game and then I actually did.

David took the early 8, I had the 5, and Yitzchak the 4. Yitzchak grabbed an early 20 which set the stage for too much coal usage. I seemed to lose the battles for all the best plants, but the others had to spend an extra 10 or 20 to get them. Instead, I built a lot of cities, kept the plant market cycling quickly, and ensured that I wasn't too dependent on the fuel others needed.

They eventually bought some green plants which reduced the resource supply problem, although coal was always still in short supply. I avoided it, since I was always buying fuel last and didn't want to be stuck without any.

Near the end, I had the least plant capacity, but I had 15 cities to their 10 each. But they still needed to buy plants because, even though they had more capacity than me, they still didn't have 17 or 18. So they were stuck buying plants and cities, while I only had to buy plants. And there were enough big plants to go around in Stage 3. In the end, neither of them could afford to get to more than 17 plant capacity, while I raised mine to 18 and bought my last city.

Pirate's Cove

Gili 34, Hillel 30, Orah 27, Nadine 27
Gili brought and taught this. There seemed to be an awful lot of dice rolling and combat from where I was looking. Nadine said the game was nice, but essentially a nice war game, with Eurogame chrome. Battles didn't eliminate your ships, just your cash, so it wasn't entirely war gamey.