Valerie Putman: Prose on Cons—The Gathering of Friends 2008, Part II

The week is nearly over and I haven’t played half of the games that I wanted to try.  Here are a few of the ones I have tried….

Hanging Gardens This quick, light set collection game has an interesting card (should have been tiles!) placement mechanism that will make good use of your Tetris skills.  I wouldn’t mind picking up a copy of this one.

Metropolys The newest Ystari release isn’t the smash hit that their previous releases have been (for me), but it was fun.  Players have buildings valued 1 – 13 that they place around the city.  The turns are really more like auctions since the players continue to place higher value buildings until all but one player passes.  That is then the only building to remain on the board.  The game ends when a player has placed all 13 buildings.  I highly recommend the advanced game with some hidden scoring bonuses at the end.

Jamaica The artwork is amazing on this family style pirate-themed game.  When you spread out your starting deck of cards the pictures match up to create a large mural.  Since there are both cards and dice in the game you have to be prepared for a bit of randomness as you and the other pirates race around the islands collecting gold and treasure (and stealing them from each other, of course!).

Pandemic I generally don’t like cooperative games because I find that the most experienced players often quarterback the entire game.  I was lucky enough to play with a really great group of players and I have to admit, I might play cooperative games more often if it was always with that group.  We successfully cured all of the diseases, but just barely—I think one more outbreak would have downward spiraled us to our demise.

Ticket to Ride the Card Game I was happy to see that this game hadn’t changed much since I played it in prototype form last year.  Players collect train cards to satisfy route tickets as they do in the Ticket to Ride boardgame, but the mechanism for completing the routes is completely new.  The closest I can relate it to is Mama Mia, but even that is really quite different.  I have yet to come close to winning this game, but I look forward to trying quite a few more times.

I still really want to play Tribune before the week is over.  There are also a few more prototypes that I’d love to try.  I guess I should get to it!

Back to the gaming,
Valerie Putman

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