W. Eric Martin: Coming Together for Unity Games XII

Unity Games is a loose coalition of game groups in the greater Boston area, with most of the groups in Massachusetts and several spilling over into Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. While each group is independent, Unity Games formed as the groups became aware of one another and started to cross-pollinate.

Starting in 2000, members from various groups decided to organize a day-long event. Unity Games I took place in October 2000 with only 44 people on hand, but a new UG event has been held every 6-12 months since then, with attendance growing each time. UG XII fell on Saturday, Jan. 27, and attendance bumped over 300 for the first time, straining the limits of the Sheraton in Framingham, MA and leading some to mess with the thermostats for relief from the heat generated by so many meeple movers.

My plan last week was to arrive early, leave late, and take lots of pictures. In reality, I misjudged the driving time, got lost, forgot my camera, and had to leave in the afternoon. Hmm.

Blue Moon City

Alhambra

Thankfully, Phil Alberg had his camera at the ready and captured a few happenings from the day, starting with the UG teaching area. For at least the past five UG events, Phil has organized a teaching area in order to help newcomers learn games and meet other people in addition to giving some players a schedule so they don’t just wander around. Each teacher volunteers a two-hour block of time, during which they teach one or two sessions of the game.

Teachers typically choose games that are good for first-time players, such as Ticket to Ride, Alhambra, Blue Moon City, Hollywood Blockbuster, and Mission: Red Planet. For the second UG in a row, I taught New England. (Back before UG XI, people had contacted Phil and asked whether someone would teach NE at the event. I hadn’t decided what to teach, so I volunteered. Knowing what students want makes the teacher’s job much easier!)

New England

Pilgrims gone wild

Shawn, Spencer, Kes, and Joe had an unusual time on the Plymouth shores. In the first two rounds, no green tiles came out, only a couple of brown ones showed, and no barns were available. As a result, three 10-point development cards and two 6-point green cards were tossed early. I had mentioned that the winning score tended to be around 40 points, but with those cards out of play the scores were definitely going to be lower.

I played in both of the New England games I taught at UG XI, and my participation probably affected how the other players bid and built. I stayed out of this one, and these guys made the highest bids I’d even seen. The first pilgrim came out in the second round, and Joe spent everything to take it. Players seemed to develop plans and stick with them, outbidding each other to take very particular tiles and cards rather than taking the dregs for cheap.

Shawn kept asking questions about the flow of the game—How many pilgrims are there? How many of each development card are in the deck?—and although I didn’t know the deck breakdown, he built towards a 10-point brown development, hoarded his money, and hoped the deck would cough up a fourth card of this type. It came out on the next to last round with him bidding second, so he was able to take the 10 bid and claim the card and the win.

Organic Soup

Huang Di

Two Massachusetts companies participated in the teaching area as well: Immortal Eyes Games and Cambridge Games Factory. Immortal Eyes was showing off Conquest of Pangea and Terra Nova (which seemed to see lots of play throughout the day); Cambridge Games Factory demonstrated second editions of Glory to Rome, Splat! and Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace as well as prototypes of Carl Chadyk’s Organic Soup and Bryan Johnson’s Huang Di.

With Huang Di, Bryan and CGF are in the unfortunate position of following two recent games about the Great Wall of China, which might lead to a “what, again?” feeling among players, but Huang Di plays nothing like Knizia’s Great Wall of China and Colovini’s Dschingis Khan has few fans. Huang Di has a “choose your role” mechanism akin to Mission: Red Planet and a nice economic system in which you have to manage regular workers, forced laborers, and jade in order to build sections of the wall. The game definitely rewards planning for future rounds, a fact I grasped far too late during my first playing. I’m looking forward to the finished product whenever it appears.

Die Macher

For the third UG in a row, I played Die Macher from noon until the late afternoon. The other three players—Brett, Barbara and Dave—were all newcomers, but they had read the rules and watched Scott Nicholson’s extremely helpful video instruction. I added warnings about the fatal mistakes that I had made in the first round of my two previous playings (not participating in the first board and falling short on cash; winning a board without having a media marker present), then we were off.

The first four regions came out 15, 26, 20, and 80, meaning that we’d be extremely tight on cash through the early game and desperate for funds to take control of Nordheim-Westfalen. Dave, Barbara and I all had similar parties to start the game, so clearly two of us were going to coalesce (as we called it) on the first board; Brett, the party of Yes and not at all aligned with any of us, started dumping resources in Nordheim early, ceding the first region to others. Dave misplayed his Shadow Cabinet card, so Barbara and I formed a coalition with no opposition and took the first region.

Brett stepped in and won the second region, but without a media marker for the bonus points. He had already made both of the errors I warned about, yet those 80 sure points in Nordheim seemed to be all he would need to cream us since his party membership was trending nicely.

The three of us teamed up to remove all of Brett’s media markers in Nordheim, then Dave and I formed a coalition (with me forcing it on him) to win the region. Brett still scored the full 80 points, though, and looked to be pulling ahead. That picture was replaced over the next two rounds as Dave won the fifth and sixth boards on his own, placing his third and fourth media markers on the big board for bonus points. He was also scooted ahead of Brett in party membership in the final rounds and matched national opinion enough to win the game with 347 points. I placed second with 317, Brett had 306, and Barbara had 184.

I’ve played Die Macher three times now, once each with three, four and five players, and all of the playings have been engrossing. Four hours pass without you noticing as you try to juggle resources across multiple regions and keep an eye on what everyone else is doing. The generally low region values in this game forced everyone to take party money often, which kept membership down, consequently giving us less money in the third and fifth rounds, which encouraged us to take even more money from the parties. Someday I’ll get to play with DM pros and see how people with experience approach the game, but until then I’ll keep learning on my own, most likely at UG events for years to come.

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Ur made the transformation from unplayed to played status, but I’ll hold off on making too many comments as a second play is needed, nay, demanded. Three of us played, and while the other two kept dinging each other, I stuck to my third of the board and ran away with the win. Ur is a multiplayer, perfect information game with only the mildest of thematic washes, and none of us caught on too quickly to the interaction between the various actions. We tried this, that, and the other, discovered what made the game tick., and can play for real next time.

Next week is a mystery to both you and me…

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I had a great time at Unity games - thanks to all who helped set this up.  It’s always a great opportunity to get in a big game that is impossible to schedule during shorter weekday game nights.  For me, my big game was Scepter of Zavandor. Posted by Jim Forsythe on Jan 30, 2007 at 10:39 AM | #

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