Dale Yu: My Gaming for the Week

It’s been an interesting week gaming for me—with both old and new gamers as well as old and new games!

As you likely know (from my column last week), I am in the process of trying to resurrect my local gaming circle.  The first meeting was last week, and it went off without a hitch.  We had five gamers to start the night, and one of them was new to gaming (my father-in-law). 

He’s played games in the past—in fact, when I started getting into gaming about 15 years ago, he gave me his old set of 3M bookcase games (including Rail Baron and Acquire) which I still have!  However, he hasn’t really played any of the Eurogames yet, so I wanted to get a nice assortment of games to consider trying.  I was initially trying to stick to the lighter games—not because I didn’t think he couldn’t handle them (he’s played Rail Baron before!) but more to allow him a better chance to see different types of games/mechanisms.

The initial list included: Nicht die Bohne!, King’s Breakfast, Transamerica, Around the World in 80 Days, Metro, Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix, Formula De Mini, Royal Turf, Diamant, Zircus Flohcati, Geschenkt.  This was not meant to be the “ultimate gateway list” but more what seemed right in the 10 minutes that I scanned the game closet before everyone came over!

My father-in-law came over a few minutes early, and this gave me the chance to let him look over the box art and to give a short description about any game that he wanted to know more about.  He was quickly drawn to Around the World in 80 Days, so we started to set that one up.  We were just about through the rules when we got a call that our fourth would be a few minutes late, so we put it aside and got out Diamant.

Diamant seemed to fit the perfect niche.  It’s a nice light game and fit the time constraints (15 minutes including rules).  My father-in-law took an interesting strategy of being ultra conservative and had a nice lead after the first three caves—though with a score of less than 20!  However, a late payoff in the fourth mine for one of the other players sealed the game.  In the past, I’ve professed my lack of enthusiasm for this game, and my opinion is still unchanged, yet this game remains in my collection and still gets played because it is so quick to play and generally generates laughter from the players.

Having gotten the maiden game out of the way, we turned to Around the World in 80 Days.  It was a fairly tight affair on the scoring track—except for the fact that I was one or two cities in front of the pack for most of the game.  I finished with a score of 64 or 65 which was as good as I can remember ever doing in the game.  Even though I’d played this game plenty, we still managed to come up with a rules question as we played… If a player chooses the action with the balloon, must that balloon action be used on the first movement in the turn or—if a player plays the action card which allows two movements—can the balloon action be used on that second move?  We ruled that it could be used at any point during the turn, but I’m still not entirely sure that is the correct play.

At this point, my father in law had had enough, but stuck around to at least hear the rules of the next game: Santa Fe Rails.  This is a decent game that had not made it to the table in three or four years.  The tension in this game when you have to decide whether you’re going to play a city card to the table (for endgame scoring) or play a special action card is still quite delicious.  While I prefer Clippers, the game of Santa Fe Rails brought back some good memories of games from the past.  There are a number of games that I really do miss, and it seems that the main reason that they don’t get played much anymore is that they are no longer bright and shiny and new. 

Speaking of that, I also managed to get in a few games this weekend as well.  One of the games that came out was Medieval Merchant.  This is another one of those games that I loved in years past but haven’t played in a number of years now.  It had been so long that it took me a turn or two to remember the flow of the game.  As usual, I underestimated the speed at which the game can end and managed to lose valuable points by not being able to close out a large city which I controlled before the game ended.  Though I did miserably in this particular game, it was also nice to get reacquainted with an old friend—and it makes me want to do this more often.

So as 2007 continues on, I have three goals in my gaming life.  First, I want to continue introducing my father-in-law to gaming and see how that goes.  Second, I would like to try to get out one or two beloved games from the past each month.  Third, I want to try to make my local group become a regular event again.  I’ll let you know how this goes through the course of the year.

FANTASY FOOTBALL UPDATE

Due to lack of interest, there will not be a BGN fantasy football league this year.  Maybe next year!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

© 2007 Dale Yu

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Comments:

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FYI, Rail Baron was not part of the 3M bookcase series.  It was part of the AH bookcase series. Posted by Greg Schloesser on Aug 15, 2007 at 07:43 AM | #

Nice to see mentioned Clippers, very good and forgotten game. Posted by Mario Aguila on Aug 15, 2007 at 09:23 AM | #

80 Days is always a good choice as a gateway game, particularly for folks with a little gaming experience.  It’s still hard to believe it didn’t win the SdJ back in ‘05. Santa Fe Rails vs. Clippers:  like you, Dale, I prefer Clippers, but my ideal game from this family would be a mix of the two.  I prefer SFR’s theme and greatly prefer its components.  Clippers’ no-luck design is very appealing, but (and I hope this doesn’t shock folks too much) I wouldn’t mind a little bit of randomness in the gameplay.  The only real problem with SFR is that card draws near the end of the game can be worth a lot of points or no points and this has nothing to do with how well you’ve played.  If that issue could be solved, I’d certainly play it more often.  I’ve often wondered how the game would play if everyone was dealt all their cards at the beginning of the game. Posted by Larry Levy on Aug 15, 2007 at 09:36 AM | #

Larry, I agree with you completely about Sante Fe Rails about the card draws.  I dislike the fact that the game can often be decided by a lucky card draw in the last few rounds… Though the scenario didn’t happen in our game, we had cities worth 21 and 24 on the board with one card for each left in the draw deck.  Any player receiving one of these cards would have had a significantly increased chance of winning without having done any of the legwork to get that city connected to different lines.  My only real issue with clippers is that the little markers are pretty damn small to see and to pick up. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Aug 15, 2007 at 01:14 PM | #

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