Dale Yu: Mini-Reviews of Games from This Week

Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve gotten in a lot of gaming in the past few weeks, and I’ve been quite surprised with some of the games that I’ve been introduced to in that time. 

My regular group

First of all, my “regular” group has started to meet regularly again… We’ve managed two straight sessions on schedule which is a huge step forward for our group.  We’re currently getting in a good mix of classic games as well as still making room for the newer releases. 

Sternenhimmel

This week, our group started out with Sternenhimmel – an older Goldsieber game.  It’s so old that I’m sure that I still own a copy, but I couldn’t remember any of the rules at all!  It’s a simple game where the players battle over a set number of constellation cards.  Each constellation is comprised of a number of stars, and players place their markers of varying value upon these star spaces.  The majority of the spaces force the players to play their markers face-up, but there are a few spaces in each constellation where the markers are played face-down.  Each player has an identical set of numbered markers (valued 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 10) and special markers (a “black hole” and two “doublers”).  The black hole marker will remove any adjacent markers in the constellation when the scoring occurs.  The doubler markers will double the value of any adjacent markers when scoring occurs.

Whenever a constellation has all of its spaces filled, the results are tallied and points are awarded.  First and second places are awarded points according to values printed on the card (i.e. 10 pts for first, 7 pts for second).  Additionally, the third and fourth place players get one point for each of their markers in the constellation – and these points are taken from the first place player!  This scoring system brings some interesting strategy into the game, as oftentimes the player in second place will end up scoring more points than the player who finished first – but of course, it is much harder to ensure that end up in second place, and the difference between second and third place is much much larger than that between first and second.

The game also has a very unforgiving set of rules concerning ties.  If two (or more) players tie for first or second place, the initial tiebreaker goes to the player who played the most number of physical pieces to the board.  However, if the tie cannot be broken by that rule, no one earns the printed point value (ranging from 5 to 13) and instead only gets one point per piece (generally 1 to 4) – which is the same reward that 3rd or 4th place would get.  There were a number of times that this rule came into play where a cleverly calculated play cost players significant scores by forcing ties.

It was refreshing to relearn an older game, and the game still has much of the charm that I remember it having.  The game is quickly played – about 20 minutes including rules for our four player game – with a number of interesting decisions to be made.  The players have to make some intuitive decisions as the number of hidden markers is just enough to keep you guessing all the time.  There is a nice psychological game with the hidden markers – would Scott place his doubler marker there or is it the black hole which he’s trying to entice me to waste my own pieces?  Though the player may not have as much control over the outcome of the game as he would like, the short length of the game mitigates this problem IMHO.  I was glad to relearn this one, and it will likely make it back into the rotation of fillers given the ease of rules and short length of play.

Other games

Other games that made it to the table this week were Traders of Genoa and King Arthur: the Card Game.  Traders of Genoa has been one of the alea games which has not gotten much play since it first came out mainly because of the likelihood of a long drawn-out game due to too much haggling and not enough fun-making.  Our game came in at a nice 90 minute pace – if every game of Traders could be played at this speed, I think the overall opinion of it would be much higher. Though I don’t really want to get into the details about King Arthur: the Card Game here – it was a tight affair with the final scores being 42 – 41 – 40 – 39!  It was the first time that I had played the game, and I really think that I’d like to play it at least once more before I make any more comments about it…

Slash and Hack Weekend Gaming

Additionally, I was happy to host a few of my close friends down for a weekend of gaming.  While it certainly doesn’t have the same feel as a larger convention, it was quite nice to have a concentrated time for gaming with only one table’s worth of players!  I got back in touch with my RPG hack and slash roots with a number of dungeon crawls and the like.  [Of course, I managed to balance this out with a weekend of playing host and cooking/baking up stuff all weekend!  Recipes of the snacks at the end of the column…]

Descent

As I have mentioned in previous columns, I have become more enamored with Descent the more that I play it.  While I still do not own a copy of the game, and currently have no intention of buying one, I had another good experience with the game.  I won’t go into many details about the particular scenario as I don’t want to give away any spoilers – but I will say that the scenario that Tyler chose for us was surprisingly different in feel than the other scenarios I had played in the past.  This particular one had more “puzzle-y” elements to it as opposed to a straightforward “kill-all-the-monsters-and-open-the-door-on-the-other-side-of-the-room” feel that many scenarios have.

Though I would like to say that the heroes managed to win with 13 Conquest tokens intact (and never really threatened to go negative at any point) – I found that I enjoyed the game more due to the different feel that the game can have with a scenario such as this and not because the hero side finally won!  It was quite refreshing to see how a different setup could lead to a much different style of game.  It seemed like our party spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out the best way to approach each part of the dungeon.  The base game and expansions each come with about a dozen different scenarios, but there is a huge online database of homebrew scenarios available on the ‘Net so that the Descent player should really never run out of new scenarios to play.  This surprising depth of gameplay and strategy certainly makes me look forward to my next chance to try this again – though I have been warned by one of my close friends who now works at Fantasy Flight that the quality and balance in these online scenarios varies greatly.

The negatives of the game are still present though – the scenario itself took about 6 to 7 hours of game-play time to finish.  Furthermore, there was a period near the end of the game when one of the heroes basically had nothing to do because he had become irrevocably separated from the rest of the hero party.  In the end, it was better for the team for that player to simply remain in town (and thus become a spectator in the game itself) rather than try to come back into the dungeon and be killed again and again.  Finally, though I truly enjoyed this scenario for the different feel it had, there is not much I can do to control what scenario the Overlord will choose.  I don’t want to read the scenario booklet because then I would spoil the surprise of what I might find in the dungeon.  Moreover, I can’t really suggest to the Overlord what kind of dungeon I’d like because…. well, just because! 

On the flip side, I also found out that Descent makes a great babysitter.  My kids were fairly enthralled by the game and spent a fair amount of time playing with the miniature figures.  They also were kept in the group as the official dice rollers for our game.  We set up my Dice Boot (thanks Nick Danger!) at the end of the table and called out the colors of dice that the kids needed to roll.  They seemed to enjoy the game as much as we did!

Other Games

Dungeon Twister (with 4 player expansion) – I had seen this played as a two player game and it appeared to be a very tactical, almost chess-like, game.  Unfortunately, this feeling is lost with the four-player expansion as there is just too much chaos to allow for any real strategic planning.  With three turns intervening between your own actions, it was just too difficult to count on the board situation, and as a result, the game became completely tactical.  Furthermore, on the larger 4x4 board, some of the neat board manipulations (i.e. spinning the board tiles around) become less effective.  In the end, it was an enjoyable enough game, but I think that I will prefer this more as a two-player battle.

Bolide – A luck-free tactical racing game which has already been commented on by Valerie.  My big problem with this game, though it is completely in line with the theme, is that if a car can break away from the pack, it can possibly run away with the game with really no catch up mechanism present in the game for the trailing cars!  Of course, I’ve watched my share of F1 races where the entire race is also decided basically after the first one or two turns… But it is certainly frustrating to realize that a miscalculated turn early in the first lap can basically take you out of a racing boardgame that might take 90-120 minutes to finish – quite unsettling indeed.

Recipes


Dale’s Sausage Dip

Ingredients: 1 pound of Italian sausage, 1 pound of sage sausage, fennel seeds, 1 jar of Jalapeno pepper slices, 1 large block of Velveeta.

Brown the two types of sausage in a skillet over medium high heat; use your spatula to break up the meat as small as you can.  As you are cooking it, add about 1/ 4 cup of fennel seed to the meat.  Near the end of the browning, drain the excess fat and drippings from the skillet.  Then add all of the jalapeno slices from the jar.  I would also add a few tablespoons of the pepper liquid from the jar.  Allow the sausage to simmer with the peppers for a few minutes.  While it is simmering, cut up the Velveeta block into small chunks.  Turn the heat to low and add these to the skillet a few blocks at a time and let the cheese melt.  You will want to constantly stir the mixture now to keep the Velveeta from scorching to the bottom of the skillet.  Once all the cheese is melted, transfer to a serving dish and enjoy.  I usually serve it with Fritos or tortilla chips, but I’m sure that it will taste good on just about anything.

Dale’s Artichoke Special

Ingredients: 4 large globe artichokes; 8oz Brie wedge, trimmed; 4oz cream cheese, ¼ cup milk, 1-2 tsp dry mustard, 1 clove garlic, 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour.

First, prepare the artichokes.  I would recommend steaming them or roasting them.  I usually steam them for at least 45 minutes.  Once they are ready, turn off the heat – the artichokes will stay warm enough as you make the rest of the dip.  While this is going, you should also get the cream cheese and the Brie out of the fridge and let them soften to room temperature… In a large skillet, melt the butter and add the flour.  Stir rapidly to make a roux.  Then add the milk, mustard and garlic and stir to combine.  Add in small portions of the cream cheese and Brie and stir to combine.  I like to get mine to a fairly thick consistency – just barely lumpy, but thick enough that it will stick to the artichoke leaves.  If you need to, you can add more milk to thin it out – but I find that this is usually not necessary.  Once the dip is done, transfer it to ramekins and serve with a whole artichoke.  If you are unfamiliar with how to eat a whole artichoke, I’ll refer you to http://www.artichokes.org/

Snickerdoodles

Well, let me preface this one by saying that we had an impromptu Snickerdoodle cookie contest as both Valerie and myself made batches.  I will admit that my cookies seemed to win the contest as they were all eaten first!  As such, I’ll keep this recipe in my back pocket as my secret weapon!  Bwah hah hah…

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming (and Cooking) Doctor

© 2007 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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I too prefer Dungeon Twister as a 2 player game. It’s a bit sad that the excellence of the 2 player game gets lost when adding 2 more players. One thing I’ve done in the past is adding the base game and an expansion together and playing in teams with players from teams alternating. Just give one player on the theme control of 8 of the characters, the other one of the other 8. It was long and heavy but deep and enjoyable. Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Aug 22, 2007 at 02:53 AM | #

Surya, I think that you might have a good idea there for a four-player game of Dungeon Twister… But really, I think you might get more bang for your buck just setting up two 2-player games next to each other—and with the time that you save—you can each play one more game against someone from the other game! Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Aug 22, 2007 at 07:58 AM | #

You are right offcourse, but it was an interesting experiment. I’m not sure we’ll ever get to do it again, because 4h IS long :) Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Aug 22, 2007 at 08:05 AM | #

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