Dale Yu: Gathering of Friends 2007 Report – Part Two of ???

This is a continuation of my report on the Gathering of Friends where I recap the games that I played during the week.  In case you missed the first part (which would not be surprising because I posted it a little bit late!), you can find it here.

This report will cover the new games from Sunday and Monday:

Sun 4/1
Tulipmania (Scott Nicholson prototype)
Age of Discovery (Mayfair)
Through The Ages – Full Game (Czech Board Games)

Mon 4/2
Haselwurz and Bärenklau (Murmel)
Volle Wolle (Zoch)
Colosseum (DoW)
Guatemala Café (Eggert)
Pig In A Poke (2F prototype)
Portobello Market (Schmidt)
(Alan Moon prototype)
Sakkara (Kosmos/RGG)
Tanz der Hornochsen (Amigo)

Tulipmania

This is a prototype from Scott Nicholson.  I’ll say no more unless Scott wants me to.

Age of Discovery

This was a pre-production version of the game which is soon to be released by Mayfair.  It is a moderately complex game where each player tries to finish trade mission and supply expeditions in order to score victory points.  There is a fairly nice card-drafting mechanism that allows players to try to plan ahead.  I’ll spare you some of the details primarily because I simply don’t remember them - and I didn’t take notes while we played.  What I remember is this: You have a hand of cards, and each card represents a color of ship with a numbered value.  On your turn, you can choose to buy or draft ships from the market.  There are five different ships available at any time, and you can see what ship will become available once you purchase any particular ship.  You can also choose to supply an expedition or a trade mission. 

The one thing that I remember about the game is thinking that some of the “secret missionâ€? scoring cards may be unbalanced.  Before I go further, I’ll freely admit that this statement is being made with only one play under my belt and a less-than-complete grasp of the rules.  In any event, it was a bit frustrating to have the final score basically determined by which secret mission card was randomly dealt to the players.  My problem is that the cards have scoring criteria of varying difficulties, but it did not seem as if the payouts were commensurate to the difficulty.  The secret missions score using a system that combines how well you did in meeting the secret criteria in the expeditions multiplied by a factor determined by how many trade missions you were able to complete.  Pretty wonky, if you ask me - and I’m not just saying that because I got the “hardestâ€? mission and scored no bonus points!  All the other players in the game agreed that the potential swing in points from these cards seemed huge in light of the overall scoring.

Again, let me temper that statement by saying that we didn’t really realize how important the secret mission cards would be to the final score, and as a result, I’m not sure that anyone really played a game tailored towards maximizing the score from the secret mission card.  But in any event, I’m generally not thrilled with any game that relies upon this mechanism so much.  It seemed to make the bulk of the gameplay meaningless other than setting up for the huge final scoring.

I’m certainly looking forward to trying it again – and perhaps my fears will be proven wrong that the bonus cards are imbalanced.  It might just be that I need to spend more time worrying about fulfilling the secret card criteria than anything else.  It looks as if it will be released later this spring, and I’m sure that it will make it to the table shortly thereafter.  The artwork on the cards is quite good, and the visual appeal will also help get this one off store shelves.  And other than the endgame scoring, the rest of the game actually had some fairly nice decisions to be made.

So, officially, I’ll remain neutral on this one pending a few further plays.

Through The Ages

Kevin was getting ready to leave and wanted to get in another full game of Through the Ages.  We sat down for a four-player game and got through it in just over five hours of actual game time.  Our game was slowed by multiple conversations (as is wont to happen at the Gathering) as well as some time lost to get up, go get lunch, and then re-convene to play the game.

It was a fairly tight affair with Kevin holding the lead through the early part of the game.  Mostly due to the way the cards came out, I was far in the rear as far as military strength went, and this put me on the wrong end of more than a few event cards.  However, as I was not expending too much energy building military units, I was able to get a fairly strong victory point machine set up.  By the end of the second era, I was in the lead, but in a tenuous position as most event cards really affected me negatively.

We must have had a few rounds where we didn’t buy many cards as the final scores were higher than I remember for the full game.  Either that or we put more than our fair share of bonus scoring cards in the event pile.  At the final reckoning, I squeaked out a one point victory, 274 to 273, over Kevin.  IIRC, Valerie was about 25 points back and Brian was a bit further.

This is steadily working its way into my all-time top 10 games.  The full game at the Gathering taught me two important things… 1) I’ll likely play this with only three players from now on.  Though the fourth player really only added about 30-40% more time into the game, it really felt much slower because of the increase in down-time between turns.  The one advantage I found in playing with four is that there was a bit more jostling for military position to take advantage or avoid the event cards, but I don’t know if the overall increase in playtime makes it worth it.  2) I’m just as happy playing with the Advanced rules as opposed to the Full game.  I’m not sure that I lose much when I back down to the Advanced game, and with the right group, the Advanced game would take only 90-120 minutes.

I must say that TtA was one of the most popular games at the Gathering this year – vying with Descent for the non-Nuremburg-release most often seen in play.  I would venture to say that there were at least three separate games of TtA going on each day at the Gathering.  I like the newer non-cone-shaped pieces provided in the later released versions, but for the record, I do not like Larry Levy’s blind person variant board and huge bits .  If you haven’t had a chance to try this one yet, I’d strongly urge you to do so.

Haselwurz and Bärenklau

This was an Essen release from last year that no one (except for Frank Branham, apparently) was able to find.  I suppose that I should ask Ben Baldanza if he got a copy as well as he is the other usual suspect when you’re looking for a game that no one else was able to get a hold of! 

In this game (or activity), the idea is simple – you’re supposed to rescue strange animals or plants.  The board is constructed throughout the game and it consists of different colored hexes – think Settlers of Catan with uglier art than even the original Mayfair edition.  On your turn, you place a tile anywhere on the map such that it touches at least one other tile.  Then you get a chance to move your meeple.  Your meeple can use the movement abilities of four different creatures (one that flies, one that only uses rivers, one that only travels on grass, etc) to end its turn on a particular hex.

Once movement is done, you then look to see whether you are adjacent to a vertex that matches the hiding spot of the plants or animals that you’re looking for.  If so, you collect the animal/plant and score the appropriate number of victory points.  Is it fun?  Maybe.  Do you have much control over the game?  Not really – unless you’ve marked the back of the hexes and can always draw the type you need in order to catch the targets.  It was an interesting enough activity, but I’d really think twice before I call it a game.  I’m glad to have played it, and I’m very glad that Frank owns it instead of me.

Volle Wolle

Tried this one again.  Not much different from the first play.  Still a luck/dice-fest – but not a bad filler when you’ve got 15 minutes to kill

Colosseum

I finally got a chance to try the new Days of Wonder game, Colosseum.  I will admit that I approached the game with some trepidation after my experiences with Cleopatra from last year.  The game is, as usual for DoW, beautifully produced.  The theme has each player taking on the role of a Roman theatre owner who is trying to put on the best show during the festival.

The scoring system is a bit unique in that the winner of the game is the player who has the highest singular score for a show during any of the five rounds in the game.  The upside of this is that the game really does reward a good long-term plan for success.

I’ll only briefly go over the gameplay as I’m certain that the game has already been reviewed in depth elsewhere online.  The game has five turns per round.  In the first phase, you’re able to somehow improve your arena or obtain a new script to produce a new play.  Next, each player gets a chance to buy some performers at auction.  Afterwards, there is a trading phase where players can trade with each other in order to mutually improve their productions.  Fourth, each player gets to put on a show.  Maximum points are achieved if you have the appropriate mix of performers.  Bonus points are scored due to additions to your arena, previously produced plays and distinguished visitors in your arena at the time that you are scoring points.  Finally, in the upkeep phase, the current leader obtains a bonus counter to be used for the rest of the game – but also has a tile stolen from him from the person in last place.

I find the game quite interesting.  It is definitely a tactical game as you try to succeed in the short term to allow you good income as you prepare for your final show where you will likely score the highest score for the game.  The downside of the game is that there aren’t really multiple paths to victory – in the final analysis, you need to have the right chits that match the script in order to do well.  Given the random nature of how the performer chits come out, you don’t really have a lot of say over the direction of your strategy – rather, you have to mold your plan in accordance to the performers you’re able to collect.

I’ve had a good time with each of the three games of Colosseum that I’ve played, and I look forward to adding it to the collection.

Guatemala Café

We played what appeared to be a pre-production copy of Guatemala Café.  I’m not sure if we were playing with the right rules as we had a number of rules questions that we were unable to get answered while we were playing it.  As a result, I won’t really be able to give a meaningful report on the game.  To me, it felt a bit like Santiago or Dos Rios – games that have solid mechanisms in place but seemed to lack that certain something called “funâ€?.  Again, I’ll reserve final judgement until I’m able to play the game in its finished from with a firmer understanding of the rules – and I’ll certainly try it again because my overall track record with Eggertspiele games is quite good – I very much enjoy Neuland and Die Dolmengotter.

Pig In A Poke (2F prototype)

Another game that I won’t comment on – not because I don’t want to – but more because I can’t.  Go and ask Friedemann about it.  I will say that it’s a very clever game, and I heard more than a few people say that this was the “bestâ€? prototype they played during the week.  (The other prototype that I heard lots of positives about was something by Stephen Glenn – but I never had a chance to see that one, so I can’t say.)

Portobello Market

Portobello Market was another one of the new games that was getting a fair amount of play.  It is a very quick moving game which is really an abstract placement game with some thin theme pasted on… To support this theory of mine, please note that the previous version of the game had a railway theme!  In this game, players take turns placing market stalls onto the street or placing people (shoppers) at the intersections of the streets.  The number of actions that a player can take each turn is determined by a set of tokens (initially with values of 2,3, and 4).  Once you use a token, you cannot use it again until you have used them all up.

In any event, there are two ways to score points in Portobello Market.  First, you can permanently discard one of your action tokens to score points based on the number of market stalls you have surrounding the area where you played the token.  There is some tension in this decision because you get a replacement token whose value decreases.  Thus, the earlier that you score with your token, the more actions you get on your replacement token.  However, if you play your token earlier, you will likely score less as you haven’t had quite as much time to place down market stalls.

The other way to score is to completely fill a street with market stalls AND have it surrounded on both ends with shoppers.  In this case, you would score the point value of the stall (between one and three points) and multiply it by a modifier which is determined by the colors of the meeples at the end of the street.  There are two basic colors of meeples: gray and pink.  Five of each color are mixed in a bag, and if you choose to place meeples, you draw them at random from the bag.  There is some nice strategy in the drawing of meeples as well as you can decide where to place them after you see their color – therefore, you can try to decrease the scoring of streets that you’re not on with lower scoring (gray) meeples when you draw them.

The game ends at the end of the turn when one player has played all of his market stalls.  I tried to make it clear each time that I taught the game that the end can come very quickly!  For instance, in the four-player game, each player gets only 16 stalls.  If that player did nothing but play stalls, the game could end in 5 turns (4, 3, 2, 4, 3)!  I actually like the seemingly pre-mature ending of this game because it constantly keeps players thinking about what to do if the game ends on the current turn. 

Overall, the game was the best of the new crop for me.  It scales well for 2, 3, or 4 by changing the number of market stalls you get to use.  It takes about 20-25 minutes once everyone knows the rules, and it is easy to pick up.  This is a definite buy for me, and I would place this one on my SdJ-nominated list if I were to make one.

(Alan Moon prototype)

Hmm. All I can tell you about this is that I played a game.  It was designed by Alan.  It was fun.  You should have been there to see it – as I think it only got this one play during the week.

Sakkara

Sakkara is the new two-player game from Kosmos.  Jay had a copy at the Gathering as he was deciding on whether to do it or not for Rio Grande.  He pulled my brother and I aside and taught us the rules.  I’ll steal a description of the mechanism from our (new) fearless leader Eric: “Players randomly arrange tiles in stacks of one or two on a grid, then they take turns placing two figures each on the board. On a player’s turn, he can move one of his figures one space orthogonally, claiming the tile on that space. Both before and after a player moves, he can play tiles from his rack. Tiles can be placed into a pyramid for that player, starting with a ship and wheat, then continuing with nine other tiles, then four tiles on those, and finally a crown, or tiles can be used for spells and special effects to grab lots of tiles or move your figure in a special way. When tiles are used for the latter purpose, they’re stacked, then the opponent places them on the board for reuse. Markers can’t move up more than two tiles, though, so you often need special abilities from tiles in order to put these tiles back into play. Whoever crowns his pyramid first wins. “

Brian and I learned the special abilities of the tiles in about five minutes and we were quickly underway.  Based on some lucky tile uncoverings, I took the lead quickly and got out the entire bottom level of my pyramid before Brian even had half of his.  It sort of snowballed from there unfortunately.  The second level of the pyramid is made with the red colored tiles which are used to cast spells.  As a result, I was collecting the tiles that allowed me to cast more spells to continue to surge ahead.

We did find one possible problem with the game.  In the current tile-set, it is possible for a few types of tiles to “run outâ€? where all of the tiles are either already in the pyramid or possibly in the players’ hands.  The issue here is that I might be done with the bottom level of my pyramid and may also be holding all of the remaining rectangle tiles which my opponent needs to finish his bottom level.  There is a tile (the snake) which allows you to steal a tile from the opponent, but only one of them in the entire game!  The problem arises when I have all the remaining rectangle pieces as well as the snake.  The game is effectively over as there is no way for my opponent to ever get those tiles out of my hand.  After we discovered this, we notified Jay who then went on to ask the Germans about this possibility.  I was told that their response was basically a shrugging of shoulders. 

Other than that little bit of lockup (though no better or worse than the lockup seen in Balloon Cup) – it’s actually a pretty clever game.  I like the way that you can use the tiles to either build your pyramid or to possibly use their special abilities in spells.  There is a fair amount of tactical play that would bring this to the table frequently if it were not for the checkmate possibility.  We’ll all have to wait and see what Jay decides to do with this one.

Tanz der Hornochsen

This is the boardgame version of 6 Nimmt!  Let me preface this by saying that 6 Nimmt! is a card game that I don’t particularly like.  The boardgame version has more bells and whistles, but is basically just a longer version of a game I find painful.  I played with a fun group which made the whole experience positive, but it was still just 6 Nimmt!  I managed to pull out the win after Alan How stepped in a huge pile of cow sh*t on the last turn.  Woo hoo!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

Comments:

< Back Home