Rick Thornquist: Miscellaneous Thoughts / Ostia

After a two week absence I’m finally back!  I have a few miscellaneous things I’d like to touch on this week.  Here goes!

First off, I’m glad to see that Z-Man Games has released an English version of Geschenkt - titled No Thanks!  I think this is one of the best fillers ever - ridiculously easy to learn and fun to play.  I’ve found this game to also be a great introduction for non-gamers - for a warm-up or for those who may find a game like Ticket to Ride overwhelming.  Considering the game is retailing for 10.00 US$ or less, I think this one is a no-brainer to have in your game collection.

I posted a news story a few days ago about a feature called GameFlash that is on the Austrian website Spielen in Osterreich.  GameFlash is a short three frame slideshow plus narration, in English, that describes a game.  Spielen in Osterreich has a whole bunch of these on some new Nuremberg games and I watched almost all of them.  They do a great job of giving you the gist of a game a very short time.  If you are interested in the Nuremberg games, make sure you check out GameFlash.

I really do love it when game companies post the rules for their games on their websites.  It’s great for a few reasons.  Firstly, I can read the rules and pretty much get the idea of the game - determining whether it’s worth buying or not.  Also, if I do buy it and it’s a complicated game, I can tell my friends to download and read the rules before they come over to play it - saving the explanation time.

Fantasy Flight is one of the companies that posts the rules for their games and usually does it somewhat in advance of their release.  Kudos to them for doing this.  I actually downloaded and read the rules for their upcoming Warrior Knights game and I was very impressed - this one sounds like it’s going to be a good one.  Reading the rules reminded me of another game that impressed me after reading the rules - A Game of Thrones - The Boardgame, which ended up being one of my favorites.  I’m really looking forward to getting it when it comes out and giving it a try.

Now that the New York Toy Fair is over, it’s time to look forward to the next big convention - that would be the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas which takes place from March 13th to 16th.  The New York Toy Fair doesn’t usually have much in the way of hobby games and there’s practically no game playing, but GAMA has tons of hobby games (almost all the game companies are there) and there’s lots of open gaming.

I will be there covering the show (here’s hoping I won’t get sick again) and there are a few games that I hope to play while I’m there.  Stephan Brissaud of Asmodee has promised to bring some of his upcoming games - I’m looking forward to trying Renaissance and Iliad.  Atlas Games should have the Morgan Dontanville game Recess! as well as the Ted Alspach game Seismic.  I’m also hoping to play another Morgan Dontanville game - Spectral Rails, this time from Café Games.  Days of Wonder should have the Ticket to Ride - Marklin Edition there - I played a prototype of this but I’m looking forward to trying the final version.  There’s a bunch more, including the aforementioned Warrior Knights plus a bunch of games from Rio Grande.  Should be fun!  Stay tuned for the usual daily show coverage.

Games Played
I haven’t reported on my game playing in a few weeks.  Fortunately for you, due to the Toy Fair, the list of games that I played isn’t too terribly long.  Games played included Doom: The Boardgame - Expansion Set, Settlers of Catan, 6 Nimmt!, Ostia, Traumfabrik, Quoridor, All the King’s Men, Rosenkonig, Hey! That’s My Fish!, Rheinlander, Goa, Web of Power, Coloretto, Through the Desert, Hansa, Flaschenteufel and Mesopotamia.

A couple of random thoughts…

I played the Doom: The Boardgame with the Expansion Set and we played a Deathmatch level.  It was very easy to get into because Deathmatch doesn’t add too many rules to the game.  The map was a bit big for four players, but I still found it fun.  We’re going to play it again but next time we’ll use a smaller map.

I played Settlers again with the food stamps variant.  Very fun, especially using the 3D set.  Traumfabrik is such a fun game - I’m glad Uberplay is brining this one back.  It’s a game that deserves an English version.  Goa - Hmm… I never really liked this one as I thought it was too much multiplayer solitaire.  After playing it again I feel exactly the same.  I love Flaschenteufel, it’s such a weird trick-taking game, but I find it very fun.

Ostia
Mayfair was kind enough to send me a pre-release production version of Ostia and I played it three times in the last week or so.  Here are my impressions…

Though the game has player boards, Ostia is a really a card game. The cards represent different types of goods - wood, wheat, etc.  There are a few of each type of good in the deck.

Each player gets dealt some goods cards and then divides his cards into two groups - four of the cards will be auctioned and the rest you get to keep.  Each player in turn offers up two of their auction cards.  There is a once around auction where players can bid whatever they want (though there is a minimum) and they don’t have to outbid a previous bidder.  They can also pass.  The player who offered up the cards can take any one of the bids - they don’t have to take the highest - or can pay one more than highest bid and take the cards for themselves.  The next player then auctions two of his cards and this goes around twice, so each player auctions off all four of his auction cards.

After this, players take all of the goods cards that they have - the ones they kept plus the ones they got in the auctions.  Each player then secretly divides up his goods cards into three piles - ones for the forum (which gets you money), ones for the senate (which gets you victory points) and ones for the storehouse (which you can save until the next round).  Once everyone has finished dividing their cards, the cards are revealed and resolved.

In the forum, you get money for your goods.  Hopefully you’ll put in goods that no one else does because the more of the same goods that everybody puts in the forum, the less each good is worth!.  In the senate, you may get victory points for your goods.  You add up what your goods are worth (according to a table that is different every round) and whoever has the most gets 3 victory points, second gets 2 and third gets one.

Five rounds are played and, after some game end bonuses, whoever has the most victory points wins.

The idea of the game is firstly, to get the best goods at the lowest price and secondly, to best allocate your goods to the senate, the forum, or to the storehouse for maximum return.  The allocation process has a guessing game aspect to it - you get forum money or senate points depending on what you and the others have allocated.  If you guess wrong as to what others are allocating you can, for example, get no victory points even if you blow a lot of cards in the senate.

In the end I thought the game worked fine, but I personally wasn’t that fond of the guessing bit.  It’s just too hard to tell whether the other players are going to go strong or weak in the senate and you can blow a lot of cards and get nothing.  Others I played either liked it or were neutral on the game.  I think the game is pretty good, but the guessing game aspect of it prevents me from marking it as anything more than that.

And that’s it for this week!

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