Matt Carlson: Back to some Family Gaming

Due to some bonus gaming time with teenagers lately, I’ve been able to check out several new (to me) games that fall on the lighter side of things.  Some haven’t quite hit a nerve with me, but I am very pleased with The Hanging Gardens as well as Airships and hope to keep both of them in a somewhat regular rotation.

All in all, I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent playing these lighter games, but will welcome being able to play a more brain-burning game or two at our upcoming game club night.  The primary game limitation at school is time, so games need to be playable in under an hour to have any hope of being completed in time.  Thus, I’m constantly looking for solid games full of interesting decisions that don’t take too long to play.

While playing these games I have noticed an interesting effect.  The gamers in the school’s club vary greatly in ability.  Some of the students who are a bit slower to pick up the rules of a game can have a significant affect on the game’s outcome.  While they aren’t going to win very often, they are extremely unpredictable and that can add a bit of chaos into almost any game.  I’ll continue to ponder the issue and hopefully address it more deeply in a future column.

In the meantime, here’s a rundown on some of my most recent games.

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Airships – I wrote about this dice-rolling game last time and have played it even more since.  While I could see myself getting bored with it if played too much, I think it could easily survive a fairly regular rotation.  For the length of the game (short) and complexity of rules (low) there are some good decisions to be made and fun to be had.

The Hanging Gardens – This was recently released in the US via Rio Grande Games and I was given a review copy.  Anything I had heard about the game previously had already fallen from memory so I was going into the game with mild trepidation concerned that I might have to put together some sort of review on a mediocre game.  However, I was very pleased to find out that the game hit some sort of sweet spot for me.  Players take turns building up sets of monuments by placing 2x3 playing cards on top of one another.  Any spot on a card that contains a monument must be overlaid on top of a previous card (either a blank spot or replacing another monument).  When a player creates a set of three or more adjacent monuments, they can take a scoring tile from the available pool.  In an interesting twist, there are six scoring tiles available, but the top four can only be taken if a player creates a set of four or five adjacent monuments.  A set of six monuments awards a player with a bonus scoring tile from the top of the stack in addition to the player getting their pick of any other scoring tile on the board.  Scoring tiles come in various suits.  The more tiles of a given suit, the more valuable the set.  The Hanging Gardens reminded me quite a bit of Alhambra, in that players are attempting to build a play area and also maximize their holdings by specializing in specific scoring tiles.  However, the scoring vie set collection makes the game different in execution.  In both my 3 player and 4 player games, I found the game moved along at a good clip (well under an hour) and seemed interesting throughout.  There may be a bit too much chaos or luck involved when players compete over the same types of scoring tiles, but so far I have not found that to be the case.

Change Horses – Change Horses is another game recently distributed by Rio Grande.  Each player is assigned one of several horses.  Players take turns playing cards to move each others horses in an attempt to be the last place horse at the game’s end.  Horses move in odd numbers of spaces, so turn order is extremely important.  The last place player can typically play a card to guarantee their horse will have an even movement and thus not have to move at all.  There are two versions of play.  In one, player order is randomly determined each turn while in the slightly more advanced rules players bid for turn order each turn using non-renewable resources (carrots).  I found the game to be a very good game for non-hardcore boardgamers.  The theme is intriguing enough to gather a bit of interest (you’re trying to _lose_ a horse race) and the rules are simple enough to quickly explain and get playing.  I find the basic game (semi-random turn order) to be a bit overly chaotic, while bidding for turn order each round shows more promise.  I have to play the bidding version a few more times to reach a final conclusion for myself, but the game has already shown plenty of promise amongst the high school club for its ease of play and short setup time.  As might be expected for a game where players win by losing, the tiebreaker rules are slightly unclear (does that mean you win or do you lose by winning?) but the rest of the game is attractive and will help draw in anyone playing it to experience its theme.

Worm Up – I obtained a copy of Worm Up at GenCon this year but have only recently got it onto the table.  This game for 2-5 players consists of bidding one of five movement tokens and then moving one’s worm across the table towards a finish line.  A worm is seven hemispheres representing your worm.  Each space of movement is achieved by taking a back segment and moving it to the front of your worm to form its head.  Players can bid 4,5,6, or 7 moves as well as a special X bid.  If more than one player bids the same number, they cancel out and don’t get to move that round.  The X bid allows a player to move any number not bid that round and the player also gets to slightly adjust the finish line to help themselves or hamper their opponents.  With three players, the game was very hit or miss.  Typically two of us would bid similarly and then end up in an ongoing bidding war while the third player slowly made their way to the finish line unhindered.  I would like to see how the game plays with 4 or 5 players but I’m concerned it may become extremely chaotic in that environment (there would be even more chances of someone bidding your exact same movement.) I thoroughly enjoy the “feel” of the game and could see it as a pretty decent kid’s game since they get to play with all the fun little worm pieces.  As a fun little filler it can be entertaining, but I do not expect to be able to find much depth to the game in future plays.

Rolit – The very latest game I tried was Rolit, a game sent to me over at www.GamingWithChildren.com by someone who has started distributing games from Goliath (a European game company) here in the United States.  A quick glance over at BoardGameGeek declares Rolit to be a sort of four-player Othello.  This sums it up about as well as can be done.  I played a three player game and there are some definite drawbacks to adding more players into an Othello-like game.  Players take turns placing a token on a grid, if your placed token is able to surround (on two sides) opponents’ tokens they all roll over to display your color.  Thus, as in Othello, corner squares are very powerful as ones’ piece can never be surrounded.  In a three or four player game, a single player could consistently be eliminated from the board if the other players choose to always attack the newest placed piece.  (Unlike Othello, a player never loses their turn.  If there is no legal capturing move a player can simply place a new colored piece onto the board.  I expect four player games to be even more chaotic, but once the game reaches a mid-point the chaos factor has died down somewhat.  Early on, a player can be severely hampered by aggressive play but clever positioning plays much more of a factor as the game moves on.  Unfortunately, the game does fall into the category of game that can reward one player for poor plays by an opponent.  Unevenly matched opponents may find that the game will swing for or against them depending on the decisions of the less skilled player.

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All in all, I didn’t find any diamonds in the rough that have a shot at displacing any of my more meatier favorites.  However, Airships has earned a spot on my short list of medium to lightweight games, The Hanging Gardens will see more play at our high school game club, and I look forward to trying out Change Horses with more non-gamers to see what they think.

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