Quebec and Oregon

The quiz picture this time has had a one time appearance at the club, this is from the box lid.

The quiz picture last time was of Aya , it is hard to place this game in any category other than to say it is co-operative dexterity game played against a 20 minute egg-timer.

Apologies but I could not get the links to work properly so they are missing this week. (Cut and paste does not always work how I expect). To see more about a game go to Boardgamegeek all are listed on that site or checkout our page of what has been played - the clubs username is MABG.

Oregon at the end won by green. The board shows groups of meeples around the buildings.

Table 1 started with Oregon a game I believe I have covered before, it is simply an area control game however the areas are quite small, players on a turn play a pair of cards to place either a building that can be used by any player or one of their own playing pieces, players get various amounts of points depending on which building they place adjacent to, they also get bonuses for making groups of three of their own pieces. If you play a building next to players pieces they all receive points. There is some skill in the play but I believe that there is an overly large amount of luck in the cards you draw as they dictate where on the board you can place your pieces and buildings.

Table 2 played Scythe , this new game from Jamey Stegmaier and Stonemaier Games looked magnificent on the table with large chunky bits and a nice big board, my copy arrived just the other day so I am looking forward to giving it a play soon, it is shown as 1-5 players so it looks like a few solo games first to get used to the rules I am really looking forward to it.

My table played Quebec which can be best described as a points grab game, it is played over 4 rounds during which players collectively develop the city of Quebec. The board is overlaid with a grid of circles and onto these at gamestart are placed coloured discs which all have three building spaces and show a colour and in which round of the game they may be built. On a turn a player does one action, which could be to send a group of workers to a building site where an architect is, if the architect at this site belongs to another player they get a bonus associated with the coloured disc which are generally sending some cubes to one of 5 camps around the board.

The board at the game start - Architects can only be placed on discs with "I" in phase 1.

Another option is to move your architect to a new building space, when you do the building your architect is currently at gets built and you put a token on it depicting the number of worker groups it had when built, these tokens are important because at games end you score points for each building you have and you get bonus points for each building you have in your largest connected group, the workers that were on this disc then get sent to the camp of the colour of the disc. At the end of the round you score points for cubes in each of the camps around the board, there are additional bonuses for majorities in each group.

The white pawn has quite a lead from concentrating on the camps around Quebec

The game is a mix of area control and resource management but all with the intent of grabbing points, I enjoyed the game a lot and hope to play it again soon, it certainly plays a lot better with five players than with two (my one other play) and one I recommend to those who want some depth to their game.

Table four played a selection of lighter games the first of which was Takenoko which is a nice game with nice pieces, players take two different actions a turn which allows them to either expand the bamboo garden, grow bamboo, take a points card, grab an irrigation marker or feed the panda; the points cards have either a specific layout of bamboo garden tiles, some bamboo food tokens eaten by the panda or a specific growth of bamboo, if you meet the criteria at any point in your turn you can cash in your points cards.

One players Keepers in Pirate Fluxx on Table 4

Their second game was Pirate Fluxx, not a favourite of mine but one I can appreciate being a lot of fun, however when you have been locked into a game of Fluxx that refused to end for over 40 minutes you can forgive me perhaps for not being enamoured with it, saying that though I do own at least 3 Fluxx versions and will play it if pushed.

The third game on table 4 was Spookies which I briefly explained last week, this week they played the family version (as opposed to the tactical version) which involves a die which randomly chooses the character you move, I was informed that this actually works better than the tactical game and requires a little more decision making on your move and the risks to be taken. The fourth and fifth game on this table was Sushi Go Party! which is an upgrade on the original game and adds an element of deck building.

Mystic Vale sleeves containing 1, 2 or 3 card parts

Table 1 in the meantime played Love Letter: Batman which has been covered several times before, they followed this with Mystic Vale a game which has been on my watch list for a while now but I am reluctant to but before playing, I know little about it other than you create your own cards in a card deck building them up in plastic sheets (card sleeves) which hold 3 card parts at a time. If you want more information I can recommend the short video on the Alderac Entertainment Group website to give you a brief feel for it, I understand this system is called card crafting.

My table played Dragonwood which I covered last week, I have since played it several times 2 player where it works equally well and the scores have always been fairly close, as a 2 player filler it has crept into being my current favourite.

Cards with which to make sets in Dragonwood

For the final half hour most gathered for a couple of games of Secret Hitler where there was some confusion among the facist party in both games allowing the liberals a 2-nil victory, the remaining club members played Cheating Moth a variation on the card game cheat.

Info

Comment

Codenames, Dragonwood and Spookies

The ornithologist in me confirms that this is a Goldfinch

Another new game from me (arrived on Monday) can you guess what it is?

Last weeks quiz picture was correctly guessed as Heckmeck Junior, it is simpler than the adult version and plays a lot quicker, it follows the same dice rolling format and makes a simple 10 minute filler.

Table 1 started off with Imhotep, I think BQ covered this one a few weeks ago, it is on my “to play” list especially as it was a Spiel des jahres contender.

Table 2 started with Battlestar Galactica not a lot I can say about this one except how I never really got into it the TV programme even though it was of my era when it first came out in 1978, I have not even seen anything of the newer version not have I played the gamewhich probably leaves me as the last person to review it. What I can tell you is that it is rated as 7.8 on the geek with 23000 ratings indicating to me that it is a good solid game and one that I ought to play, the downside is that if I do like it not only do I have to get the game but also the DVD series.

My table started with Oh My Goods!, this has been covered before and has a nice resource management structure however I still do not enjoy playing it even after five games. In brief the active player deals some card out to a central display and based on what is in the line players decide to activate a card in their personal display, some more cards are then dealt and if enough of the correct symbols are shown the card you nominated in your display gets activated generating cash which can then be used to build another card into your display. The nice bit of the game is that cards activations can be chained so that goods generated by building “A” can be used to give better returns in building “B”.

On the whole this system works well but for me it falls down in several places, first off you need the right cards to turn up in the deal to get cash from your building, this is very “hit & miss” and shortfalls are made up from your hand, secondly you need to churn through a lot of cards to find cards that chain together well, there is a mechanism for this but these cards are also needed for meeting shortfalls in goods to generate cash (as above) so some serious decision making which is nice but it feels “forced”, lastly there is no real catch-up mechanism, a fortunate player is likely to retain any early lead (this is especially so in a 2 player game). Now I want to like this game, the driving mechanisms are very nicely thought out but it does not seem to reward planning and from my perspective just comes down to luck, I want to be proved wrong so I urge you to give it a try and let me know what you think.

The next game we played was Codenames the well deserved winner of this years Spiel des jahres award, it is an excellent group game and plays best with 6 or more. The players play in teams and there is nothing that makes the game more exciting than a bit of discord in the ranks. This game has been gone over before so a brief explanation here, there is a grid of 25 cards laid out on the table of which 8 cards are assigned to one team and 9 to the other, this is shown on a small grid card which only the captains of the two teams can see. The cards have one word on and each turn the captain will give a one word clue and a number of cards the clue relates to, the idea being the team members identify all their cards before the opposite team. We had several games of this where I managed to be on the losing side each time but this did not diminish from the fun that was had, although out of my comfort zone being both a team game and a deduction game I do enjoy this one.

Table 1 had turned to Taj Mahal, an interesting game with some nice mechanics and several ways of collecting victory points however personally I do not like the combat system for controlling points on the board as it can be very brutal and no amount of planning or preparation can guarantee a victory and once you lose a big battle it is very difficult to recover. It is a good well balanced game even if it is not my first choice of game to play and has been covered in an earlier report.

The last game on Table 3 was Dragonwood a fun card and dice game which is an ideal filler, there are two decks of cards one containing monsters and a few items the second contains combat cards, the combat cards have numbers and a colour, on a turn a player can either take a new combat card or combat a monster or take an item, to do the latter two they lay a set of cards as a run, a flush or one or more cards showing the same number, players then roll a number of dice equal to the number of cards played and compare the total against that required on the nominated monster or item for the set of cards played. The nice thing is if you fail to get the roll you only lose one card so you are not penalised for unlucky rolling, I liked this a lot and it has gone onto my “to buy” list.

A small sample of the monsters available.

4 Battle dice rolled with a total of 6, a success if 4 of a kind played or 4 cards in a flush, a failure (7 needed) if a run of 4 cards. (4 cards gave 4 dice to be rolled)

Table 1 next played Spookies, this light hearted push-your-luck game is probably best for younger players at whom it is actually aimed. On a turn you pick a playing piece (or have it chosen by a die roll in the basic version) and then choose how many dice to roll, your aim is to get at least the value shown for the next level in the house that the playing piece is on but with only two of the dice you roll, of course the more dice you roll the easier it is to achieve the value however the rewards are reduced the more dice you use. If successful you keep your rewards and may try for the next level, you can increase or decrease the number of dice you roll each time however once you start with a playing piece any further movement for that turn must be taken with the same piece. All rewards are tokens which may have values of 1,2,3 or 5 thereon however you do not get to see what they are on your tokens until the game is over, so the game is really just a scramble to get as many tokens as you can. If you are unfortunate and do not make your roll, you lose tokens to the board which can be taken by any player whose chosen piece reaches that level when rolling only two dice. It is a game of luck both in the die rolling and the reward tokens however no more so than any other game of its ilk (Can’t Stop comes to mind), it is light and fun and plays in 20 minutes.

Here the dog or green pawn can roll dice to get or exceed 8 (the next floor) rolling 2 dice will get a reward of 4 tokens, 3 dice 2 tokens and 4 dice 1 token. The total of 8 must be on 2 dice only no matter how many are rolled.

The last game of the evening was Codenames where my team lost again even though we had a big swap round of players, I can only deduce therefore that I am rubbish at it. I still had a lot of fun.

Info

Comment

Automobiles and Via Nebula

Another new game from me (arrived on Monday) can you guess what it is?

Last weeks quiz picture was correctly guessed as Trajan one of the nicer resource management games where worker placement is achieved through a mancala process.

Table 1 started off with Via Nebula this report is from BQ on last weeks play :-

Via Nebula...slightly odd name, but very fun game. You're recolonising a fantastical land that was previously overrun by nasty monsters. They've now (mostly) gone, and what's left is a strange fog which blocks the way for progress in resettling the valley. Fortunately, you and your fellow players have the wherewithal to explore and eliminate the fog, so you can exploit resources and build new buildings. What this actually translates to is a big, pretty board overlaid with hexagonal spaces which contain either fog, ruins (where new buildings can be built), meadows which contain resources to be exploited, petrified forests (which are like mist spaces, but harder to explore), and forbidden spaces (where monsters still lurk, and you can't go - usually...). There's a pile of green "meadow" hex tiles, and these will get placed on the board throughout the game as you "explore". You get a well organised player board, with spaces for the meadow hex tiles, your buildings and your workers (two of them in a four player game). Players have two actions per turn to do a number of things. To start with, they can open up "exploitations" of resources - there are five different resources in the game, wood, food, stone, clay and wheat - by removing one of the exploitation tokens which were placed at the start of the game on the meadow hexes printed on the board, and replacing the token with the resource pieces indicated on it and one of their workers. The resources can then be used by *anyone* (though only the player who opened the exploitation will get some VPs for that exploitation action at the game-end). Players can use an action to transport a resource to one of their building sites they have created on a ruin hex, but they can only do that if there's a clear line of adjacent meadow hex spaces from the resources to their building site. Those meadows are created by the "exploring" action, where a player places a meadow tile over a fog hex - and, as an aside, if you place enough meadows, you earn end-game VPs. You can also explore petrified forest spaces, but that uses both your turn's actions. Finally, you can build a building from a "contract" card - you start with a couple of secret contracts in-hand, but there's also a display of four contracts available to anyone who can build the structure they show.

To build, you surrender the resources depicted on the contract card - of course, you'll need to have already transported them to the building site where you're going to build the building. When you build it, you replace the building site marker with a building piece, and you get to take a special action shown on the building, plus you keep the card and score the VPs on it at game end. You need to be careful not to overdo the resources though - if you have more resources than you need when you build, the remainder go on your player board and lose you VPs at the end! When the fifth building is built, everyone except the player who built it gets one more turn, and then you add up points from exploitations, exploring and buildings, subtract any points from excess resources, and the winner is declared. Via Nebula is a tricksy beast. You have to sort of co-operate, but not too much. For example, when you open up exploitations, you know other players are going to nab the resources, but you're going to get a small number of VPs for doing it. And you *want* the others to take the resources, because you only have two workers, and you can't get one of them back until all the resources in an exploitation have been taken (and, trust me, you can't take 'em all yourself!). And placing meadows is good for your future building prospects, but of course *everyone else* can use them to trace a supply line back to their building sites too... Timing is important, because if you can't build when you need to, someone else can swoop in and grab the contract you wanted...and you might get left with resources you have to store. I thoroughly enjoyed Via Nebula, despite coming last. There's a lot to think about, and the replayability seems high, what with all the random setup elements and card powers. Definitely on my "play again soon" list.

Table 1 went on to play Ciúb, a dice rolling game I am sure I have covered before.

Table 2 played 2 games of which I have no knowledge Multiuniversum and The Big Book of Madness, however the middle game Cosmic Encounter I have played quite a few times over the years. I have an Eon edition of the game but the latest is by Fantasy Flight.

The goal of the game is simple, establish colonies on 5 planets outside your home system, a turn consists of drawing a tile which depicts which system to attack (it could be your own), you then decide on a planet to attack in that system (allowing you to establish a colony elsewhere or oust an interloper from your own), once the battle site is chosen the attacker and defender get to ask the other players to ally themselves to one side or the other bringing additional units to the battle, then cards are played to determine the battle victor, losers lose all their units whilst victors get rewards usually a base on the planet in question.

However there are two major wrinkles to proceedings, the first is the players special “race” power which can cause all sorts of mayhem, secondly in battle if both combatants play a “compromise” card the battle is off and they have a limited time to come to a deal. The game is fun and best played as a role-playing game, it is more about the journey than the winning although winning is also nice.

My table started with Automobiles which I touched on last week, a car racing game using a “deck building” mechanic where the deck is actually a bag of coloured cubes. There are always 10 colours in each game, white, light grey, dark grey and black are “Gear” cubes and along with the brown “wear” cubes have the same abilities for every race, the other 5 colours abilities change from race to race and are dictated by random cards from a deck. Players before the race start with 12 cubes (yellow, white and light grey) in their bag and a cash amount to purchase more cubes, once they have got all their cubes the game begins. A player on their turn will have 7 cubes in their “To use” pile, they enact their cubes one at a time – if it is a gear cube they place it on the track where it allows their car to end its movement, this may open up opportunities to use other cubes, the darker the gear cube the faster you will go but all movement for a gear cube must match in its entirety the track travelled over. The other ability cubes may allow movement or may grant some special ability with the other cubes, when such a cube is used it is placed in the “used” pile. Once you have used all the cubes you want to you collect wear cubes for your movement and move your car to its new position, all these cubes go into your “used” pile. Any cubes still left in your active pile can now be used to purchase more cubes, every cube has a “value” to create a purchasing amount – this is shown on the bottom of cards whilst the purchasing price of the cubes is shown at the top of the relevant card, in this way you can improve your collection of cubes, sadly your mix will be soured by the wear cubes which serve no useful function but will clog up your collection.

Once you have finished doing your purchasing you move all cubes in your display to the discard pile then you draw seven new cubes from your bag for your next turn. A lot of the initial decision making is done early in the game when making the first few purchases to define your cube selection, cubes are limited and making the correct early choices can be important, from then on it is “managing” your cube collection with the various powers which can help you dispose of useless cubes, recycle some cubes or otherwise boost your movement on the track, race length can also influence how you manage your car. I do like this game a lot, I was sorely disappointed with Planes which from my point of view was dull with a high luck factor. Trains, also from AEG is another recommended game and amalgamates deck building with track laying on a board.

Gamestart in Barony with deliberate mistakes.

We then played 2 games of Incan Gold as a filler before moving on to Barony, sadly we ran out of time before it concluded but we were not far from the end when we had to pack up. It is a good territory control game and I hope to cover this in a later post.

Table 1 finished with Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, this is a dice game but shares very little with its big brother board game, on a turn you roll a number of dice equal to the number of cities you own, which will grant food, workers, money, goods and a disaster, two re-rolls are permitted with the exception of disasters, they just accumulate. You then use food to feed cities where starvation leads to penalty points, workers are used to build more cities (more dice) or monuments (for points), coins and goods are used to purchase technologies (points and in-game bonuses). It is a 20 minute dice rolling game and an excellent filler.

Info

Comment

New York 1901, Power Grid and Hey Thats my Fish

No clues for this quiz picture.

The last quiz picture was of Bouncing Bunnies designed by Reiner Knizia and one of a range of games from Pegasus Spiele for younger players which includes Viva Topo and The Ladybugs Dancing Party, all are great games for any gamelings (teeny tiny gamers).

The first game on Table 1 was New York 1901, BQ gives us his view :-

This is a light to medium (Ticket to Ride level) tile-laying game, about the skyscraper boom of the early 20th Century in New York. You each get a set of skyscraper tiles in a wide variety of shapes matching your player colour, and some nice little "worker" miniatures, of a flat-capped gent leaning on a girder. The board shows a stylised map of New York, with a number of city blocks divided into "districts" of five different colours, intersected by streets, and each district is further divided into two- and three-space "lots". There's also a deck of cards, each one showing a district colour, and a size (two or three spaces) - there's one card for every lot on the board. Four lot cards are turned face up from the deck, and replenished back to four as they are taken.

On your turn, you do one of two things: Take a card and claim a lot with one of your workers, then possibly build a building on a lot or group of lots you already own, for which you score points; or demolish an old building and rebuild over the top of it with a skyscraper of a newer "generation" (there are three "generations" in the game, bronze, silver and gold, and you can only start building or rebuilding silver and gold when you reach a certain number of points on the victory point track). When you do the "take a card" option, the lot you claim must match the colour and size on the card. Aside from that, you can claim where you like. You have to obey some simple rules when you build (must build next to a street or park, for example), but it's pretty straightforward. There's a couple of little things around demolishing too (like having to put a worker back on if you free up a lot space entirely) but again they're fairly self-evident when you play.

Aside from that, there's three special cards each player gets that let them do things like build twice in one turn; there's some end-of-game scoring cards for majority of buildings along a street, plus a special bonus that changes from game to game; and there's some famous skyscrapers that each player can only build one of, which get big points and also act as end-game tiebreakers. The game ends when someone's got only four buildings left, or when the cards run out. It's not going to set the world on fire with startling innovations, but NY:1901 is a solid, easy to learn game that looks pretty and whilst it has some good player interaction (blocking people from where they want to build being the main method) it's not mean and ruthless.

My table played Funkenschlag or in this case Power Grid deluxe: Europe/North America using the Europe side. The game is about buying Power stations, building sub-stations in various cities, purchasing resources to power them and then collecting cash to do it all again on the following turn, the winner of the game is the player who at the end can provide power to the most cities. Each player is limited to 3 Power Stations, the Power Station cards indicate which of the 5 fuel types it uses and how many together with the number of cities it may power, those power stations available for purchase are auctioned at the beginning of each round this is followed by fuel purchase and then building to other cities. The game is structured so that the leader is always disadvantaged in the various phases so one of the tactics is to hang back behind everyone else, this achieved by having access to the least towns but as this is usually level it is decided by having your best power station being the lowest ranked. Overlaying this jockeying for position to be best advantaged in the different phases is the need to spread so that you have access to the cheapest links and to avoid being blocked in your expansion, these contradictory needs make for a nice tight and interesting game.

Factories from the 2004 edition (bottom row) and the New Power Plants expansion 2007 (top row)

Table 3 was playing the lighter games and commenced with Valeria: Card Kingdoms it was briefly described to me as being similar to Machi Koro with a fantasy theme however the game looked more in depth than that. I need to give it a try to find out for myself.

This was followed by Hey, That's My Fish!, a lovely abstract game where players are Penguins collecting fish, on a turn you move your penguin from an ice floe in a straight line to another ice floe however you may not pass over a hole in the ice or through another penguin nor may you stop on a space with another penguin, all the floes have between 1 and 3 fish on and the ice floe you vacate you pick up and put into your score pile. The player with the most fish at the end wins. It is a game about territory control but with a huge piece of opportunism thrown in, this is an ideal 15 minute filler that can make you think, works brilliantly as a 2 player abstract strategy and should be part of everyones collection.

Pingvinas (aka Hey that's my fish), spot the mistake which caused a quick restart.

Table 3 also played Exploding Kittens a fairly simple card game I have yet to try.

The final game on Table 3 was Madame Ching, I like this game a lot and was one of my better purchases in the latest batch from “The Works” where I picked it up for £12, players play cards one at a time which must be numerically of higher value than their previous card, when they can no longer play a card they get rewards based on the number of cards in the display and for symbols collected on the top of the cards, the winner of the game is the one who collects the greatest value of rewards.

My table tried to get a game of Automobiles going however I had not realised how little time we had to play, I do hope though that I generated enough interest to get it to the table again as it is one of my favourite games at the moment. In short it is a car racing game but travel round the track is governed by drawing cubes from a bag and is in all essence a deck building game but with cubes, a mechanism I first came across with Kings Pouch (a clever lightweight game from Korea). The colour cubes in the players display either match spaces on the track or give special powers governed by cards which are unique for each race and as with games like Dominion it is the player that spots the better combinations and who manage their collection the best that will win.

Table 1 played Via Nebula I have yet to play this one so have no comment at this time. They followed this with Skull King: Das Würfelspiel where the players play pirates (guess whose game this is) who try to predict best the outcome of battles, however as this is another I have yet to play I cannot say how this is done.

Info

Comment

The month of June at Medway Area Boardgamers

This quiz picture is a game one of my newer games.

The last quiz picture was Le Paresseux. It is an excellent multiplayer game, the more the merrier, it is very lightweight and fun.

Apologies for lack of reports – sometimes life just decides to keep kicking you where it hurts and something has to give, to relieve some of the pressure I am afraid this blog was it for a while. So with a month of reports to catch up on I have decided to just go with a list, pictures will be back next time. Facebook carries some views from BQ and SR on some of the games played and JB has given comments on games he has played . All links are in this time.

1st of June we played :- Histrio, BANG! The Dice Game, Port Royal, Ninja Dice, Le Paresseux, Beasty Bar, Tichu, Roar-a-Saurus, Crazy Race, BANG! The Dice Game, Dixit, Splendor, Rummikub, Tsuro, Blood Rage.

Blood Rage - The miniatures are awesome.

Tichu we barely got started on but gave it a round to try to understand the rules but I think it needs someone who knows the rules to get the game moving. Crazy Race is a nice simple light game but not to be taken seriously, the control you have is a mere illusion. Blood Rage Miniatures are fantastic but I am not sure that it is my type of game.

On 8th June we played :- Oh My Goods!, West of Africa, Zirkus Flohcati, Kanban: Automotive Revolution, Cockroach Soup, Flash Point: Fire Rescue, Codenames, Dark Deeds, Jaipur.

Jaipur is a nice card game where you are collecting cards for sets which you can trade in for points, the more in the set the better however the earlier you cash in the sooner you can get the higher point tokens. Flash Point Fire Rescue I highly recommend and is my favourite co-operative/solo game. Cockroach Poker is outside my comfort zone, but quite a bit of fun but definitely for the end of the evenings gaming. I am still undecided about West of Africa a second playing is needed.

On 15th June the games played were:- Automobiles, Sea of Clouds, Broom Service: The Card Game, Queen's Necklace, The Resistance, Citadels, Black Fleet, Medina (second edition)

Automobiles is currently my favourite game, cars travel round a track but your cars movement is governed by what cubes you have picked up, these go into a bag and 7 are drawn each turn for you to use, some have special powers and most attract brown cubes which have no useful purpose and just clog up your hand of cubes.

On 22nd June we played :- Broom Service: The Card Game, Origin, Munchkin, Lost Patrol, Barony, Imhotep, Flash Point: Fire Rescue, Battle Sheep, King of Tokyo, Beasty Bar, One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Battle Sheep is a very nice abstract strategy game with nice bits, Beasty Bar is certainly one of my favourite fillers so much so that I have bought “New Beasts in Town” as well.

On June 29th we played :- Dice City, Port Royal, Keltis: Das Würfelspiel, Automobiles, Ticket to Ride, Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, Secret Hitler, Stone Age, Kakerlakensuppe, Castle Panic, Splendor

Dice City I like but I have only played it 2 player so far where player interaction is a little limited, the mechanism is nice and simple but I have no idea if the combat mechanics are worth investing in however watching the other table playing it seemed that there was some down time between turns. Secret Hitler proved itself yet again where my brain became totally befuddled by all the lies and deceit. Stone Age is a great game and I highly recommend that if you have just one resource management game then this should be it.

Info

Comment