Rick Thornquist: My Week in Gaming / Freya’s Folly, Handy, Das Ende des Triumvirats and More

Amazingly enough, even with all the hubbub involved in getting the new website running smoothly, I actually did get a fair amount of gaming in last week.  Well known Weather Channel meteorologist (and gamer) Warren Madden and his wife Sharon stopped by Vancouver for a visit and we got in quite a few games.  Here’s the tale of my week in gaming.

Tuesday - Freya’s Folly
My regular Tuesday group, after a hiatus last week for the X-Box debut, finally made it back to the table.  We played Freya’s Folly, Lucca Citta, Ra and Can’t Stop.

I got to play Freya’s Folly for the first time while at Essen and mentioned it in my Essen report.  I liked it then and after two more games, including this session, I still like it.  It’s a nice medium weight pick up and deliver game with some set collecting.  After three games it’s obvious that knowing when the game is going to end is key to getting the victory. 

I must confess that I don’t play the game exactly as it’s published.  There is one card, the Thief, which allows you to steal stuff from another player.  The card is way too much ‘take that!’ for me, and I’ve left the card out of the game since my first playing.  I like the game much better without it.

Wednesday - Handy
Warren and Sharon showed up on Wednesday and in the evening my girlfriend Christine and I got together with them to play some games.  We played Fettnapf, Handy, Verflixxt!, and Keythedral.

Handy is a new game from SimplyFun.  My first impression of it is that is sure is different - I haven’t seen anything quite like it. 

The game comes with a set of small colored Styrofoam (at least they look like Styrofoam) balls, a little more than an inch in diameter.  Each player gets a set of five cards, one for each finger on your hand (yes, you Get Smart fans, a thumb is a finger) which are shuffled and place face down in front of each player.  Players sit in a circle and a set of one color balls is set between each pair of players sitting beside each other (so you’ll have one set on your right and one set on your left).  Each pair of player is considered a team so you’ll be on two teams.

To play, player one and player two turn over one of their cards.  They then put a ball between the fingers shown on the cards.  For example, if player one’s card is the index finger and player two’s is the ring finger, they have to put a ball between player one’s index finger and player two’s ring finger and hold it there (you only use one hand to hold the balls, the other is free to turn over the cards).

Next, player two turns over another card and player three turns over a card.  They then have to do the same thing with another ball, but player two has to use the same hand and keep holding onto the first ball.  Then player three and player four do the same thing.  Then player four and player one do it and it keeps going round and round.  Everybody will have one hand in the table and everyone will be holding with their fingers a bunch of little balls (precariously). 

When a ball gets drops, that ball is out and you start again.  Once a team loses all their balls the other teams count up their balls to get their points.  There are three rounds of this and then the team with the most points wins.

I think we were a bit too good at it as there were a few times when we used up all the cards and we hadn’t dropped any balls.  We didn’t play a full game but while we played it we had fun and laughed.  I don’t know if I’d play a full game - I’d probably play it only one round as a ten minute filler.  I think that for me the full game would outlast its welcome.  In the end I found it it light, different, and a decent amount of fun.

Thursday - 3D Collector’s Edition
Thursday was another evening with Sharon and Warren.  This evening we played Diamant, 3D Collector’s Edition and Eye to Eye.

It’s actually funny about Settlers - I’ve never actually liked the game.  I’ve only played it maybe 5 or 6 times in my life and every times I’ve disliked the luck of the production dice rolls.  Even my playing of the deluxe 3D Collector’s Edition last week didn’t change my mind.  In my last column I vowed to use the Food Stamps variant the next time I played it.  I did that this time and, believe it or not, it made all the difference in the world.

The Food Stamps variant is simple.  If you don’t get anything on a production roll, you get a food stamp (a token, usually a penny).  On your turn you can trade in a number of food stamps equal to the number of victory points you have for any resource (you don’t count victory points on your face down development cards).  That’s it!

Amazingly, this took a game which I never really liked and brought it to a whole new level.  The game we played was very, very close and each victory point was fought over.  In the end I felt the player who won did indeed play the game the best as opposed to being the player who was luckiest on the production die rolls (though we were all very close).  Previously I would only play Settlers grudgingly, but with this variant, I actually like the game quite a bit!

Friday - Das Ende des Triumvirats
Patrick Korner dropped by Chez Thornquist on Friday night accompanied by David Einstein.  We played Cities & Guilds, a game I had acquired from Essen for Patrick, and I found it to be a pretty good tile laying game, though it felt to me to be a bit on the abstract side.  We also played Das Ende des Triumvirats, a game I had acquired at Essen for myself, but not yet played.

Das Ende des Triumvirats can be described as a German style wargame.  It only plays with two or three players, which is somewhat unusual.  It’s not simple but not hugely complicated either.  Basically, each player has a set of armies on the board in various areas and each area produces more armies or gold.  Your main guy moves around the board, to grab gold.  He also can take armies with him to invade enemy areas. 

It really does feel like a wargame but the mechanics are very smooth and very German-like.  There are a number of paths to victory and that makes for a very interesting game as you have to watch very carefully where each player is in the victory path.  There is a bit of beating up on the leader, as you’d expect from a game like this, but on the whole we all thought it was very good - very interesting with some good strategy.

Note that while the components of this game are only in German, they are not really a hindrance to the game - by the second turn we didn’t even need them (though there are paste-ups on BoardgameGeek if you want them).  I really liked the game and am looking forward to my next playing.

Saturday - Um Reifenbreite
My last game day of the week was on Saturday with Warren and Sharon - the day before they had to leave.  We played Visionary, Basari and Um Reifenbreite.

I’ve had my copy of Um Reifenbreite for years, but have actually never played it (I have played someone else’s copy before).  I found it to be just an okay game with lots of dice rolling and lots of luck.  The most interesting bit was seeing the mechanics of this early German game which was part of the evolution away from the American style mechanics.  Interesting from a historical standpoint, but not so much from an enjoyment point of view.

And that was my week in gaming!

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