Dale Yu: Thoughts from Gulf Games

Just got back from the latest installment of Gulf Games, and I was lucky enough to get a number of games to the table that I had been wanting to play.  I’ll include my thoughts on those games below.  If you’re not interested in the nitty gritty, there is a quick one sentence review at the top of each game.

Blox

One Sentence Review: Exactly what you’d expect from a SdJ Finalist: light, accessible, quick to play.

I finally got a chance to play this SdJ Finalist, and I enjoyed my two playings of it.  It’s light and abstract, but it’s quick to pick up and quick to play.  The gameboard is made up of different colored squares and you can move your four pawns around the board by playing a card which matches the color of the square that you want to move to.  The board also is seeded with towers of blocks.  These towers can be captured if you have cards in your hand that exactly match the colors of the towers.  When you capture a tower, you score victory points for the tower as well as capturing the actual blocks in that tower.  Later in the game, you can then construct towers (again as long as you have the right cards in your hand).  The last major thing you can do is “laser beam” your opponents pawns.  If you happen to have three or more cards of a color that an opponent’s pawn is standing on, you can blow up that pawn – and score points in the process.  There appear to be a number of different strategies as you can concentrate on the destruction of towers (and construction of new ones!) as well as on “laserbeaming” your opponents to oblivion. 

Cash-a-Catch

One Sentence Review: It has a bell.

Hmm, what to say about this one… It’s a game about collecting fish.  Oh, and it has a bell.  Otherwise, it’s a set collecting game where you try to get as much of the types of fish that you’re collecting while not getting any non-matching fish.  You get paid much more for larger sets, though you risk losing cards if other people sell the type of fish that you’re collecting (kinda like If Wishes Were Fishes).  It’s a quick game, and did I mention that it has a bell?

Blasphemy

One Sentence Review: We couldn’t finish the game, so I can’t say.

I was really hoping this would turn out to be a good game.  But, it’s really just a roll-and-move in Pharisee’s clothing.  Also, I still couldn’t figure out whether the humor is meant to be outright blasphemous or not.  Everytime that I thought that the game was headed to the gutter, we’d read a card with an actual scripture teaching – and I’d expect a game that was headed for pure blasphemy to not bother with any of that actual stuff from the Bible.  In any event, the game stalled as one of us never managed to catch John the Baptist to get started on his journey and the humor on the cards grew thin quickly.  We mutually decided to abort it while the rest of us were still wandering about in the Wilderness.  Though I’ll likely try it at least one more time, this is likely headed for the sale or trade pile.  Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in speeding the trip to the trade/sale pile.

Nefertiti

One sentence review: An auction game set in ancient Egypt where you collect sets.
Two sentence review:  An auction game set in ancient Egypt where you collect sets.  It’s not called Ra or Amun-Re.
Three sentence review: An auction game set in ancient Egypt where you collect sets.  It’s not called Ra or Amun-Re.  It doesn’t have a bell.
Four sentence review: An auction game set in ancient Egypt where you collect sets.  It’s not called Ra or Amun-Re.  It doesn’t have a bell.  It needs to be played at least two more times by myself before I can do any other sort of review than this drivel here.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with Nefertiti, and there are actually a few things that set it apart from other auction games… but in the end, it’s still just an auction game.  I have found that I have really not enjoyed many games that use auctions as their main mechanic, and Nefertiti seems to fall into the that crowd.  However, I did find that I was in the minority as most other people that tried it seemed to like it.

What does it have going for it?  First, there are different styles of auctions in the game which changes things up a bit.  Second, there are multiple things available at each auction so that multiple people can win something from each.  Third, the scoring system rewards you for collecting sets of things that others aren’t, and there is a bit of a game in trying to be the only person collecting a particular thing.  Finally, there are a couple of special actions which can really shake up the game (such as letting you steal a tile from an uncompleted auction or allow you to score your tiles early when the situation is favorable for you!).

So… I’ve just given a bunch of really good reasons why this one should stand out from the gaggle of auction games, yet, in my first play, it didn’t.  However, I think there’s enough there that makes it worth trying again.  Maybe I got up on the wrong side of the bed that morning, who knows?

Tinner’s Trail

One sentence review: The best Martin Wallace game I’ve played not named Age of Steam.

OK, now I admit that my one sentence review may be damning the game with faint praise, but I really do like what I’ve seen of Tinner’s Trail.  In the game, you are trying to mine tin and copper from the ground and convert them to Victory Points.  Along the way, you have auctions that grant mining rights for different regions of the board.  In each round (4 total in the game), you can allocate some of your 10 time points to improve your ability to mine.  However, like Jenseits von Theben, turn order is determined by how much time a player has already spent.  So, if you get to go first and choose a powerful action (which, in turn, takes a lot of time units), it might be a long while before you get to do anything again!  As a result, there is a constant balancing act going on where you try to do the best possible action for yourself while remaining in a good place in turn order for later turns.  I’ve only played it twice, so I’m not quite ready for a full review, but thus far, I’m very impressed with this game and I look forward to getting it on the table again.

Tribune

One Sentence Review: Very tight card set collection game with multiple paths to victory.

I hadn’t yet been able to play this one as the only English copy at the Gathering of Friends was in constant play, and I could never figure out how to get to the Tribune table when the game was not being played!  Now that I’ve had a chance to play the game, I must admit that I’m very impressed with the way that everything works together.  In the course of the game, you collect cards into your hand and then use those cards in various ways to generate victory conditions.  The victory conditions themselves are varied – in the game that I played in, we had 8 different victory conditions to choose from, and the winner was the first person to get to four of those first.  There are short, middle and long versions of the victory conditions included in the game, so the game should be able to accommodate most groups and time slots.

Cards are collected from the board in a style similar to Pillars of the Earth where players put their meeples down on action spaces to claim a card/action in a particular space.  Most of the areas simply have you paying money to pick up the card in the space, but there are also some areas where you may have to participate in an auction for cards.  Once you have cards, you might also use some action spaces to sacrifice cards (to gain favor of the gods or to gain laurels).  You could also use your cards to try to take control of one of the social groups of Rome (Vestal Virgins, Senators, etc).

Though I’ve only played the game once, I was taken by the game.  It was my first choice off the prize table, and I was lucky enough to get an early pick to bring this game home with me.  I hope to get it back out to the table again soon to explore it a bit more.

Horus

One Sentence Review: The winner of the game is the one who has the most victory points after doing something with tiles and wooden dobbers for about 20 minutes.

Well, you draw a tile out of a bag and place it to the board.  Then play a card out of your hand and place it to the board.  If you want, you can place a scoring piece out into any area whose size matches the number on the card you played.  At the end of the game, you score one point for each tile in a region where you have the most scoring markers.  Until that time, you try as hard as you can to get the game to the end point to make the scoring come sooner.

Duck! Duck! Go!

One Sentence Review: A much much lighter version of Roborally where you pilot your duck around to the three waypoints and then onto the finish line.

This is a new release, coming out at GenCon, designed by Kevin Nunn.  It’s a nice game which is similar in some regards to Roborally.  Each player has a duck which they have to navigate thru to 3 waypoints before reaching the finish line.  You have a hand of cards, and in each round, all players secretly and simultaneously choose a card.  When they are all revealed, the ducks move in order of the numbers on the cards (lower numbers first).

Monastery

One Sentence Review: Your monks work and pray and then work and pray – and manage to build a monastery from scratch in 2 days!

We only played about one-third of a game as we missed a few rules in setup which led to a fairly unbalanced game as well a few smaller rules along the way – all of which added up to an aborted play.  We would have restarted right then, but the Liar’s Dice tournament was about to start, and we never managed to get back to Monastery.  I was intrigued by what I saw, though – and I’d like to try the game again with the right rules to see how it really plays.  The game certainly appears that it may hinge on some lucky tile drawing, but I can’t say for sure until I see the game as a whole.  Then again, what tile-based game doesn’t come down to luck of the draw at some point?

Okko l’ère d’Asigiri

One Sentence Review: Two player war game set in Japan with cool miniatures to move about the board.

I picked up this game as a raffle prize, and I’ll admit that I didn’t know anything about it when I got it.  My two game choices when I arrived at the raffle table were Okko and Senji.  Both were Japanese in theme, and I took Okko on Chris Comeaux’s recommendation that there were cardboard miniatures used in this game.

The game is essentially a 2-player battle game split up into a bunch of scenarios.  There are a number of double sided terrain tiles that can be combined to make a wide variety of landscapes to fight in/on.  Interestingly, many of the tiles have house interiors on them, so you often end up with ninjas fighting inside a house plan.  The rules are fairly straightforward, which is evidenced by the fact that I was able to pick up the rules in about 10 minutes.  The scenarios are small enough that the players are usually in contact with each other by the second turn, so you spend most of the time fighting.  Each scenario has a different victory condition, so they all play a bit differently, and you certainly have to approach each one with a different strategy to achieve your goals. 

On your turn, you first roll 4 special dice which give your party members stat increases or special abilities.  You then move each team member according to their movement allowance.  Importantly, the direction that your player faces is important as it is possible for someone to sneak up behind you and have a distinct advantage in that combat (those damn sneaky ninjas!) If you get close enough to an enemy, combat ensues.  Combat is a simple affair where the attacker and defender each add a d6 roll to their attack or defense ability.  If the difference between rolls is small (1 or 2), the loser simply retreats.  If it is large enough, the loser could be completely eliminated from the game.

Each scenario is fairly quick, taking maybe 20-30 minutes.  While it’s more of a wargame than I’d usually play, it’s easy enough to learn and play, and I’d be happy enough to play it again.  Of course, I did also give the game to Tyler who likes this style of game more than I do, so I’ll likely only play it with him as he is now the only person I know that owns it!

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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