Larry Levy:  A Pair of Second Chances

One of the things I try hard to do as a gamer is to play every new game at least twice.  It’s just too easy to come to an incorrect conclusion about a game from a single playing.  Given the number of new games our group plays, that goal isn’t always easy to attain, but I do my best to get it done.

Last week, I played two games and both of them represented second chances I gave to titles that were at least a little bit lacking in their first play.  Did these games find redemption in their second time around?  Or were my first impressions proven to be accurate?  If you wish to find the answers to these questions, read on.

Colosseum
I got my first chance to play this Days of Wonder game at the Gathering (if you remember, it was only half a game due to some hotel room problems).  The game was pretty good, but I thought that money might not be tight enough and the decisions might be too scripted.  I wanted to check it out again and figured I’d have to wait like the rest of the world for the game to be released.  However, DoW was kind enough to send me a review copy of the game, permitting my second chance to come sooner than I had thought.  Last week was my first opportunity to get it to the table.

The players are impresarios in Ancient Rome, trying to put on the most memorable show for the demanding citizens.  The main components are about 150 tiles that represent things like gladiators, lions, and chariots which are used to put on these events.  There are 30 event programs in the game and each one lists the elements necessary to put it on.  You don’t need all of them to hold the event, but the more you have, the better it is.  The player who has put on the single best show over the course of the game wins.

Each player begins with some coins, a handful of randomly drawn tiles, and two of the smaller event programs.  They also begin with their arena, which is placed on its starting location on the movement track.  At the start, each arena consists of two separate semicircular pieces, which each cover one space on the track.  The track also contains pieces for six Nobles (3 Senators, 2 Consuls, and the Emperor himself).

The game lasts five turns and each turn has five phases.  Every player completes a phase in turn before the next one begins.

In the first phase, players have the opportunity to make an investment.  They can buy one of four different items:

· A new event program.  The two programs you start with only let you put on small events.  In order to win the game, you’ll have to acquire at least one of the larger ones.  All of the larger programs are available for sale to the first player who buys it.

· An arena expansion.  The larger events require larger arenas to house them.  Fortunately, that isn’t a problem, as Rome at this time had obviously mastered Table Leaf Technology.  To expand your arena, you take a one space piece and put it between the two ends of your arena, just like you expand your dining room table.  The mid-sized events require one expansion, while the largest ones need two.  Having a larger arena has another advantage, which I’ll get to in a bit.

· You can purchase a Season Ticket, which gives you 5 more spectators for every event that you run.  There’s no limit to how many of these you can have.

· Finally, you can add an Emperor’s Loge, which will help you out when you get around to moving the Noble pieces.  I’ll explain that later as well.

Normally, you can only buy one of these a turn.  But during the game, you’ll acquire handy little items called Emperor’s Medals.  For every pair of these you turn in, you can make another investment.

The second phase lets you buy the tiles you need to put on your events.  There are five markets on the board and each has room for three tiles.  These are displayed face up.  The start player chooses one of these markets and bids for the three tiles (the minimum bid is 8 coins).  Each player in turn either raises the bid or passes.  When all but one player has passed, the winner pays her money and adds the tiles to her total (everything in the game is public, so all the tiles are face up).

If a player other than the start player won this auction, the start player doesn’t replenish any tiles, but instead chooses another market to bid on, with the winner of the previous auction barred from the proceedings.  This continues until the start player actually wins an auction or he passes.  Then, every empty market is reset with three new tiles and the next player takes her turn.

The standard rules say that each player can only win one auction a turn.  However, there’s an official variant (which is the one the designers use) called Intense Auctions.  With this variant, after the markets are reset and a new player starts an auction, all the players can once again participate.  You can only win one auction per player turn, but you could conceivably win as many auctions as there are players each turn of the game.  In reality, you’ll probably win one or two auctions a turn with this variant.  This is the way we played.

In addition to trying to grab tiles that will help you with current and future events, there’s another goal you can strive for during this phase.  Seven of the tile types are of living things (i.e., musicians or horses, rather than cages).  Each of these seven has a Star Performer card.  If you can get at least three of one of these types and own more of them than anyone else, you get to take the card.  After that, the only way someone can take it away from you is if they have more of that tile type than you.  A Star Performer lets you add 4 spectators to your event total as long as the program calls for that tile type.

Next comes the trading phase.  Money and tiles are eligible to be swapped.  This is done sequentially, with each player getting a turn to offer or be offered trades.

During phase 4, we finally get to present our events.  This is done in two stages.  First, the active player gets to move the noble pieces around the board by rolling a die.  The die is a standard six-sided affair, except that the face with a 1 is replaced by one that reads “1-3”.  And oh yeah, they use Roman numerals instead of pips.  You can move any of the nobles the number that you rolled.  If you have an Emperor’s Loge, you roll two dice and either assign one to each of two nobles or use both to move the same noble.

You have two goals while doing this.  If after you finish moving pieces, there’s a noble piece on one of the spaces of your arena, he attends your event, along with a sizable number of spectators who come to see him.  (Sounds more like the LA Colosseum than the Roman colosseum!) These numbers range from 3 for a senator up to 7 for the emperor, so this is worthwhile celebrity hunting.  This is the additional benefit for having a larger arena I spoke of earlier; a bigger arena equals more spaces to land in.  The other goal is to use the dice to move a noble onto one of their six starting spaces, which are called resting areas.  Doing that earns you one of those nice little Emperor’s Medals.

This is as good a time as any to explain that Emperor’s Medals can be used for more than just extra investments.  You can turn one in during an event to attract 3 more spectators.  You can also use one to move a noble up to 3 spaces in either direction after you’ve finished moving them.  (You can’t get a medal right back by shoving them to a resting area, since you only earn those by moving nobles on a dice roll, but you can sure lure them into your arena by spending one.) Finally, you can turn in a medal for 6 coins.

After you move the nobles, you put on an event.  It can be a new one or one you’ve put on earlier, but you need to make sure your arena is large enough to house it.  The event program shows how many spectators attend if you have all the required tiles the event calls for.  It also shows how many show up if you are one tile short, two tiles short, and so on.  Determine how many of the required tiles you have and use the program to determine what your base number of spectators is.  Then add all the bonuses for Season Tickets, Nobles, Star Performers, and the like.  You also add 5 spectators for every event program you’ve previously produced.  Add them all together and that gives you your spectator total for that turn.

Your score is always equal to the spectator total of your most successful event.  So if an event had more spectators than your current score, you raise it, but you keep your score the same if the total is lower.  You also take coins from the bank equal to the number of spectators who showed up.

The fifth phase is the resolution of the latest round of spectacles.  First, the player with the current highest score gets to add a podium to her arena.  This will add 3 spectators to all subsequent events she shows.  Then, because putting on events is hot and dusty work, each player must discard one of the tiles they used in their event; these tiles go out of the game.  Finally, the player with the lowest score gets to take one tile from the player with the highest score.

That ends the turn.  Play five turns and the player with the highest score wins.

My first half game of Colosseum left me with some concerns, but those have pretty much been answered by this latest session (with three players, by the way).  The Intense Auctions variant made a big difference and I recommend it for just about everyone, including first-time players.  The auctions are a lot more interesting with those rules, money is definitely an issue now, and the extra tiles mean that there’s a wider variety of events that you need to consider, rather than the narrow choices the original rules seem to force you into.

Despite the fact that the mechanics are mostly borrowed from other designs, this game really doesn’t feel like any other I can think of.  Focusing on the one big event is a nice touch and the unusually large scale optimization problems (the largest events have as many as 16 tiles listed) keep you constantly planning and scrambling.  The game also gives you a sizable number of ways of attracting the all-important spectators and trying to come up with the best mix is fun.  The theme and the setting also add to the enjoyment.

The pace tends to be leisurely and it can easily last two hours or more, but there’s next to no downtime, so it never feels like it drags.  There’s certainly some luck in the game, but much of it can be mitigated against and it doesn’t seem to have the uncomfortable mixture of uncontrolled luck and heavy planning that really annoys me.  Just a nice solid design and an enjoyable gaming experience.

Even though the game was fun, there’s one thing that’s making me hold back a bit.  There’s a looseness in the design that’s quite unusual for Kramer and DoW.  With the original rules, it came from the surplus of cash everyone seemed to have.  The Intense Auctions have solved that, but now there’s an issue with the trading.  You’ve got so many tiles that the Trading Phase now seems like less of an essential element of the design.  Usually, I find trading in a game a hugely enjoyable challenge, but it doesn’t really seem to work out that way in Colosseum.  All the information is public and there’s really only one objective for all the players (maximize your spectator total), so deals tend to be like, “Hmm, you need my priest and I need your torch, let’s swap”.  I just didn’t see the potential for clever trading.  It also takes away a lot of the angst from the auction round.  Sure, you’d rather buy the tiles you need, but if Fred grabs it instead and you know you have a tile he’ll need, it tends to take a lot of the sting out of losing an auction.  That, I’m afraid, isn’t a good thing.

There are some other issues with the trading as well.  It can have a huge effect on the critical final round.  In my game, I had every tile I needed after the last auction.  My two opponents, however, weren’t quite so lucky.  However, one fairly sizable swap later and they were in much better shape.  Obviously, the trade was good for both of them and I would have done the same thing in their shoes, but it’s a little disconsoling to be sitting there helpless while your opponents are both improving their lot.  Again, it makes playing good defense during the auctions less satisfying and less useful.

Finally, there’s the potential for all sorts of kingmaking during the trading phase.  Under what circumstances should I trade with the leader?  What about the player hard on his heels?  If I can improve my position dramatically, I have to do it, right?  And if I refuse, then they can accuse me of a different kind of kingmaking.  I can see the makings of all sorts of bruised feelings here.

Even though the game has a lot of indirect interaction, the only real direct contact you make with your opponents is during the trading phase.  But I would honestly consider cutting this phase out to see how it played.  At the very least, it would chop some time off the game, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.  It’s hardly necessary surgery, but with the revised rules, the trading round feels like a bit of unwanted fat, so a diet may be in order.

You always expect a Days of Wonder game to be a treat for the eyes and Colosseum doesn’t disappoint.  It doesn’t have the whiz bang 3D plastic figures some of the other DoW games have featured, but really, I don’t know where they would have put them if they were included—the game is loaded with bits as is.  First, the bad news.  The box is colorfully illustrated, but it suffers from the dreaded Chinese Box Syndrome.  Don’t expect this box to open easily; the first time, it took me a good 20 seconds to slowly inch the cover off.  Happily, it’s getting easier to open, but it’s still a bit of a pain to pry the lid off.

The Chinese printers did a much better job on the rest of the components.  The board is attractive and full of detail, with rather muted colors.  The tiles are very sturdy, with easily identifiable colors (no mean feat with twelve different types of tiles) and illustrations.  The large pictures means that color recognition isn’t essential for playing the game, a theory we successfully tested, as one of our players is color blind.  (To their eternal credit, DoW is perhaps the most color-blind friendly publisher around.) The wooden noble pieces are differently colored pawns adorned with togas, a nice compromise between Euro elegance and AT flashiness.  The rest of the components are cardboard and are attractive and functional.

However, the two bits that stand out for me aren’t among these big ticket items.  First of all, the player aids are just terrific.  With so many publishers ignoring these vital guides or only including a couple of them, DoW went all out.  There are six of these sheets provided (expansion, anyone?).  On the front, all the critical rules are clearly explained.  On the back, the costs, benefits, and requirements for all of the 20 event programs that can be bought are shown.  This is a tremendous help in both learning the game and in deciding which tiles and events to buy.  This is one of the best player aids I’ve ever seen and greatly enhances the game experience.

Even better, though, is the insert.  As I said, there’s a ton of bits in this game, but every one has its own snug place in the insert.  They even provide you with a sheet explaining exactly which piece goes where—how cool it that?  I think Tikal is the only game I can think of that has such a wonderfully designed storage area for its components.

So giving a second chance to Colosseum proved to be eminently successful.  This isn’t necessarily a great game, but it packs planning, trading, and a little bit of luck into a very enjoyable and attractive package.  It has a different feel and an attractive theme.  It looks like another fine design by Days of Wonder and Wolfgang Kramer (and represents a nice start to the career of Markus Lübke) and I look forward to further plays.

Pillars of the Earth
The first time I played what had been considered the SdJ frontrunner, I admired the design, but felt the luck of the draw bag was a huge problem.  As usual, I resolved to give it another try to see if my first impressions were accurate, but I honestly was in no hurry to get it to the table.

After our Colosseum game, we were joined by a fourth.  Pillars was one of the games he suggested as our next game, but I mentioned my problems with my first game.  His response was, “If you didn’t keep enough money to cover your costs if you’re chosen first, no wonder you didn’t like the game”.  In point of fact, we did let our bank accounts get pretty low in my game.  Convinced that I probably hadn’t given the game a fair shake, I agreed that the time for a second chance was now.

And he was right.  In retrospect, it may seem obvious to always have enough funds to cover such basic contingencies, but such is the power of groupthink, I guess.  At any rate, I enjoyed my second game of Pillars much more than the first.  In fact, I found there was quite a lot to think about and plan for and I kind of understand the SdJ Jury’s apparent contention that this may be too heavy a game for the award.  Certainly it seemed as if experience and knowledge of the deck was vital, but fortunately my friend, who’s played the game a lot, was generous with information and advice.  Consequently, we were all able to enjoy the game.  I’m still not ready to put this near the top of 2006, but it would certainly make the Top 20 that I listed in my last column.

My friend Joe Huber had mentioned at one point that his favorite part of this game was the random draw from the worker bag, which I thought a fairly daft statement at the time, but now I understand what he was getting at.  It does lend some chaos to the proceedings, but working out contingencies to be able to handle most of what fortune can send you is quite enjoyable.  It’s a different sort of planning than the standard optimization game, but it works quite well here.

Mind you, my qualms about the bag haven’t been entirely resolved.  You can leave yourself sufficient funds to be able to handle early draws, but there ain’t much you can do if your workers refuse to show their faces until the late picks.  During the last couple of turns, that can be particularly critical.  There are some things you can do to minimize the effects of such bad luck, but it seems as if most successful strategies will require at least one early pick.  Of course, you can always grab the first player role, which increases your chances considerably, but only one player can do that.  Right now, the balance seems to work out, but I’ll have to play more often to see if this can become a problem for me.

So my two second chances turned out to be good ones.  One game had its reputation restored and the other turned from a possible problem child to one I’ll happily play again.  It’s a helpful reminder to myself that I’m far from omnipotent and my first take on a game isn’t always the most accurate one.  To paraphrase an old song, games can be wonderful, the second time around.

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