Games Club!

Many weeks ago I tried you make it to my local games club: Beyond Monopoly York, but was thwarted. Since then I've been away for all their recent meetings.

This weekend I'm determined to get there, I've been keeping it free. I've not actually played many of the recent Eurogames - if you've been reading this blog regularly you'll know I just tend to play a limited selection fairly often. They've 20-odd games I haven't played so it'll be a good opportunity to expand my gaming horizons and get to know some of the local gamers.

I'll post a session report here to let you know how it went...

My Games Wishlist

My birthday is coming up soon (it's a round number :-) ), so I've been thinking about what games I'd like to add to my collection. I've listed them in alphabetical order:

Antiquity - I've heard good things about this fairly expensive board game, mainly from Mikko Saari's GameBlog. Its recent reprint means that I might be able to get a copy cheaper than the current exorbitant offerings on ebay.

Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedrals Expansion - One of the two Carcassonne expansions I played recently. Of the two, I think it's the one I prefer, but due to playing both at the same time I'm not sure which is which.

Carcassonne: Traders & Builders Expansion - The other Carcassonne expansion I recently played - not so convinced about this one - but it does come with a nice tile-shuffling bag.

Powergrid - Tim recommended this to me a long time ago (he was also the guy who recommended Carcassonne to me even longer ago), so that counts for a lot. It's also in the top 5 on BGG.

Ticket To Ride - A late arrival (I played it for the first time on the weekend), but I instantly loved this game. It's so simple, and yet still provides plenty of strategy. It's easy to see why this has sold over 500,000 copies in the two years since its release.

Tigris & Euphrates - Reiner Knizia has designed a staggering number of games, and lots of them are highly thought of. The only one I've got (Lord of the Rings) I really enjoy. Tigris & Euphrates is supposed to be one of his best and it remains in the Top 5 on BGG despite being released 9 years ago.

Ticket To Ride

A few week's ago the boys came down for a weekend and Mal brought with him a copy of Ticket to Ride, I was interested to play it as I'd heard lots about it, and yet it didn't get a look in as we ended up playing Carcassonne, Border Reivers and Caylus. Mal came down again this weekend, so I asked him to bring TtR down again in the hope we'd get a chance to play it. He did and we did. So here's a short review/session report after only a couple of plays.

Ticket to Ride is the first game I've played by celebrated games designer Alan R. Moon. I've heard lots of good things about it (especially the new TtR Europe and TtR Marklin editions). First impressions are very good, the box design is attractive, and has a slightly League of Extraordinary Gentlemen feel about the artwork, so it evokes the right time frame (turn of the century) nicely. The board too is visually interesting, the cards are well done (the use of both a colour and a symbol to differentiate between different types is good - especially for the colour blind). The pieces look like carriages, even if they feel a little cheap and plasticy. Plus, it has the 'Spiel des Jahres' winner badge on the box - which is always a good recommendation.

Mal explained the rules to me, which took a remarkably short amount of time, and then we settled down for a couple of games. We only played a couple of 2-player games, so I don't know if the rules vary for more players, but as a 2-player I thought it was excellent. The aim is to connect American cities with your carriages. The board consists of a network of cities with tracks between them, only one player can claim each track (although some tracks are double - and in a game with more players both tracks can be claimed, although in our 2-players game we could just claim either of them). The longer the track (they range from one to six), the more points you get, so it pays to claim the longer tracks; however, to claim a track you need the appropriate number of carriage cards of the correct colour. There are 'wild' carriage cards which can be used as any colour, and several of the routes are grey and can be claimed by carriages of any colour - although they still have to be all the same.

In addition, each player starts with some route cards, which specify two cities and a number of points, if you can connect those two cities with your carriages then you get that number of points at the end of the game, however if you can't then you lose that number of points. You begin the game with three route cards (though you can discard one of them), and you really need to make sure that you only hang on to routes you can complete.

The game proper consists of each player in turn taking one of three actions:

• Picking up two new carriage cards, either from the five face-up cards, or a random one from the top of the deck


• Picking up three new route cards, and discarding up to two of them


• Claiming a track between two cities by discarding the appropriate number of carriage cards of the correct colour and placing your carriages on it

Play continues until one player has two or less carriages left, at which point the scores are calculated. There's 10 point available for the longest continuous route, and you add (or subtract if you failed to complete them) the points for the route cards you collected to the points you gained for claiming the tracks.

It's a very simple game to play, however there is still plenty of strategy to be had, as you need to get the routes before your opponents do; try to scupper you opponents routes and balance the drawing of route cards, carriage cards and claiming routes. There's a fair amount of tension as you amass the carriage cards you need to claim vital routes, all the while hoping your opponents won't beat you to them. Do you claim some spurious routes to distract your opponents from your real targets? Or would that waste valuable carriage cards?

The only thing I'll say against it is the 'veneer' nature of the theme. A cursory read of the box reveals a theme about a prize race: $1 million to the first person to visit every American city, in the vein of Phileas Fogg. But you don't have to visit every city to win the game, and the game would work just as well as freight routes between star systems as it does rail routes between American cities. Still, that's a minor niggle.

I loved the game (so much so that it has immediately appeared on my wishlist), it was a very simple, elegant game, and, as is the case with many of the Eurogames, fairly quick to play. I give it an 8.

Mal and I played two games, in the first one we both took about 5 route cards, and got all of them, Mal got the longest road and beat me by 6 points. In the second game Mal had a fairly long route, and then claimed a track near that one. I was lucky enough to have the carriage cards to claim the track between his two routes and I took it, hoping it would scupper him - and it did! I'd taken two fairly ambitious route cards at the beginning, and I managed to claim them towards the end of the game. At that point rather than risk getting some route cards I might not complete I just claimed long tracks where I could. When the game finished Mal revealed the route I'd stuffed for him, it would have been worth 17 points so he effectively lost 34 points from his score. I won that one in the end with a fairly hefty margin.

Games Night

Last night we had some friends round for games. There were only five of us in the end (lots of people were away for the Bank Holiday weekend). We started the night with a 3-player game of Carcassonne while we waited for the others to arrive. Strangely, my almost legendary inability to win a multi-player game of Carcassonne deserted me and I won the first game - despite the presence of Roman, who is a very competent gamer.

Once Karen and Jochen arrived we settled down to a 5-player game of Puerto Rico. I based my strategy on shipping to the new world, but I was outclassed in terms of production by almost everyone else. Still, I got off to a good start, managing to utilise the Craftsman and the Captain in the first two turns in such a way that I was the only person to benefit. I was strapped for cash for most of the game (I had only 1 coin in the final five turns), so I didn't get many buildings. Still, despite all this I managed to come second, behind The Wife. Who was delighted to have won the game. Really delighted :-) It was a really close field, with the spread of scores between 39 and 45. I guess one of the good things about Puerto Rico is that everybody thinks they are in with a chance of winning - which keeps everyone interested.

We finished up with a few games of Carcassonne, as it was getting late and people were getting tired. We played two 5-player games, and then a 4-player game without The Wife, and again I managed to do surprisingly well. I won the first of the three, and came joint first with Karen in the second. Not quite sure why, I wasn't trying a new tactic or anything (although I did try to concentrate more on building lots of small cities in the field I was farming). I came down to earth with a bump in the final four-player game though, I came last by a fairly hefty margin, which was nicely won by Jochen.

All in all a great night's gaming. Plus I learnt the meaning of Funkenschlag (the German title for the game Power Grid), and got to practise my Deutsch a little.

Ninja Galaxy Has Arrived

I went to the post office this morning to collect my review copy of Ninja Galaxy. It had been delivered earlier in the week, but I wasn't around.

First impressions are that the production quality is high - the pieces are of good quality and attractive (I especially like the ninja figures and the see-through dice). The box, rules and board artwork are technically good (even if they are not to everybody's taste - they are very colourful, with a cartoon flavour). The game arrived a little damaged (it had been posted in a Jiffy-bag) but nothing too serious, just a slightly dented box.

I've not had a chance to read the rules yet, or play a game so I'll post again once I have.

Border Reivers Tiles Completed

Well, it's taken me a long time, but I've finally finished both sides of the tiles for Border Reivers. I had to start again a while ago due to working at the wrong resolution initially. I've got some feedback from BGG, printed them out at my parents, made some changes and finally incorporated the hills too.

I've now started on the design for the cards, hopefully this will go a little smoother, now that I know the resolution (and the cards design is simpler too).

Technorati

I was interested today to see who is linking to this blog, as I'm getting more hits now than I used to. I used Technorati to do a search to see who was linking to me and was surprised to find a link to this site on Yehuda's blog.

That was a nice surprise, Yehuda's fairly well known in the games world (he also blogs on Gone Gaming), and was chosen as Geek of the Week on BGG this week. It's only fair to reciprocate :-). If you're interested in blogging on the subject of gaming (in Israel in particular) check his site out - it's an interesting read.

Carcassonne Expansions

What a bizarre, yet fantastic weekend. How many times have you sat watching a heavily-prostheticised Finnish metal band win the Eurovision song contest with a room full of drunken metal fans, while a man in top-hat and tails bounces past on a spacehopper? It was a first for me too! It was Tim's birthday weekend, and in between the copious beer and champagne we managed to get a shed-load of Carcassonne games in. Despite the presence of Munchkin (and all its expansions), two copies of Citadels, Puerto Rico and Border Reivers, only Carcassonne got a look in.

I played in a bunch of 4-player games, a 3-player game and a 2-player game. As usual, my Carcassonne ability held up in the 2-player (I won that one), but I didn't win the others. I don't know why I fair so badly in multi-player games, but I almost never win them, I usually tend to come second or a fairly close third. I rarely get lamped, but I almost never win. Strange that I do so much better in the 2-player games.

Almost all the games I played were with the basic game plus the Traders & Builders and the Inns & Cathedrals. It was the first time I'd played either, and seeing as we played them both simultaneously I can't really differentiate between them. So I'll comment on them as a gestalt-entity. They introduce several new mechanics:

• The bully - an extra large meeple who counts as double.


• Resource tiles - city tiles which yield a resource to the player who finishes a city, regardless of whether they have any meeples in it.


• Inns - A tile which doubles the points for a road if completed, and makes it worthless if unfinished


• Cathedrals - A four-sided city tile which makes the city tiles scores as three points rather than two if finished, and nothing if unfinished.


• The Builder - A meeple you can add to a city or road you control. Once placed, if you add to that city or road you may draw a second tile.


• The Pig - A pig-shaped meeple that when added to a farm you control makes adjacent cities score 5 instead of 4 points at the end of the game.


• A cloth bag - for shuffling the tiles.

I enjoyed all of the new mechanics, probably the resource tiles the most, I certainly made the most use of them. The bully was also good fun, and simple enough to use. Inns added an interesting new dimension to road-building, making them worth a lot more, however, you really need to complete each of the roads you get a meeple on. Cathedrals were used mostly as a scuppering plan - pick an opponent's city that's looking like it's worth a fortune, and place a cathedral in it. Everyone will now gang up to ensure that city is never completed. I also made pretty good use of the builder, but forgot the pig in every game. Which just leaves the cloth bag - a thing of beauty, it's so much easier than shuffling the tiles after every game.

Both of the expansions come with extra tiles, and this was where I was not so enamoured of the expansions. The new tiles seemed to lead to improbably-shaped cities and lots of tiny farms. This really altered the balance of the game, as the farms were far less open and it was much harder to muscle in on an opponent's big farm.

I'm not totally convinced about the expansions, I did really enjoy the new mechanics but I'm not so convinced about the new tiles. I probably would need to play the expansions a few more times to get a better feeling for them, but for the moment I'm tempted to play the new rules without some of the new tiles...

Jack's Top 5: Number 3

It describes itself as 'An Epic Board Game of Galactic Conquest, Politics and Trade' and the emphasis is definitely on Epic - the box measures 59cm x 30cm x 10 cm an weighs an absolute ton. It's Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition by Christian T. Petersen (herein after referred to as Twiglet for the sake of brevity).

First impressions? It's Fantasy Flight Games at their best, it's huge, has hundreds of detailed plastic pieces and lavishly illustrated box, tiles and player mats. It has 10 races (though only six can play) and vast action and political card decks ensuring that you never play the same game twice. The rules are also clearly explained and well illustrated, but the sheer breadth of them means you're bound to miss some rules the first few times you play.

That's the good, so what's the bad? Well, you've got to be prepared to give up a day to play this one, I've played many games, the shortest of which was a 3-player, with players who had all played yesterday, that came in at an impressive 2.5 hours, the longest game (a 5-player with several newbies) was curtailed after 10 and a half hours. Yes, 10! It's one of those games where you know it would go much faster if you all could remember the rules, sadly it takes so long to play that you can only play it every few months, by which time everyone has forgotten them again. We also struggle to fit all the pieces onto our 5' x 3' table - this game takes up a lot of space. Still, even for all that I love Twiglet.

It's not only epic in terms of box size, the rules read like all you favourite games rolled into one über-game, it has a variable turn structure (very similar to Citadels), a modular hex board, surprise action cards, politics and voting, combat, claiming territory and victory objectives. The rules also include 5 'game options' which allow you to tweak the rules slightly, like very simple expansions.

The modular board consists of a number of hexagonal tiles (between 28 and 37 depending upon the number of players) which each feature either a star system containing 1 or 2 planets and possibly a wormhole entrance which connects to another tile on the board, a nebula (limits movement, good defensively), a supernova (totally impassable), an asteroid belt (cannot be moved into or through initially), or a player's home system featuring 1 to 3 planets. Planets provide resources (used for building ships and buying technology) and influence (used to vote on laws and elections). When you use a planet's resources or influence you exhaust the planet and it cannot be used again until it has been refreshed at the end of the turn. The game also features trade goods, which you receive for bilateral trade agreements between players - these can be used interchangeably with the resources provided by planets.

Play begins with each player in turn taking one (or two, depending upon the number of players) strategy cards. These strategies each have a 'primary' ability available to the player who chooses it, and a secondary ability, available to all the other players at a small cost. The choice of strategy determines the running order of the subsequent turn (much like Citadels) so you can get the jump on an opponent by choosing a lower-numbered strategy. There are eight strategies:

1. Initiative (primary: none but you don't have to pay for other player's secondary strategies and you get to move first and choose strategy first next time; secondary: none)


2. Diplomacy (primary: choose a player - you cannot attack each other this turn; secondary: you may refresh half your planets allowing you to use their resources or influence again)


3. Political (primary: resolve a political agenda and rig the political card deck; secondary: you may draw an action card (surprise tactic)


4. Logistics (primary: gain 4 command counters (needed to expand you fleet, play other players secondary strategies and move, build & attack); secondary: spend influence to gain command counters)


5. Trade (primary: negotiate new trade agreements, then earn trade goods from your trade agreements (+3) or break everyone's trade agreements; secondary: you may earn trade goods from your trade agreements)


6. Warfare (primary: you may deactivate a system you have already moved into or built in, allowing you to move further or build more; secondary: you may move some of your units into an adjacent empty tile)


7. Technology (primary: gain a technology of your choice; secondary: you may pay 8 resources (or trade goods) to gain a technology of your choice)


8. Imperial (primary: gain 2 VPs and reveal a public objective; secondary: you may build in a system regardless of whether or not it is already activated)

The main bulk of the turn then consists of players taking it in turns to either: play the primary ability of their strategy card and then let the others play the secondary; activate a system to move into it, attack another player, capture planets and/or build reinforcements there; activate two systems to swap forces between them or pass. This phase continues until all players have passed. To activate a system you need to place one of your limited supply of command counters in it, and once activated you may not move units into or out of that system. This means you have to think careful about the order in which you activate your systems and your command counters limit the number of systems you can activate in any one turn. Command counters are also required to perform the secondary ability on the majority of the strategies, so they really are very important - you will find yourself often hoping to get the Logisitics strategy to replenish your supply of command counters.

At the end of each turn you get to refresh your planets, receive an action card (very useful surprises that can really scupper an opponent's plans), claim any of the public objectives you have met for some VPs, or your secret objective for more VPs and return the strategy card you chose. The turn then begins again. The game is won when a player gets 10 VPs, most of the early public objectives are worth one, and most of the secret objectives are worth two, however, just playing the Imperial strategy card gives you 2 VPs, so the game is almost always won by the player who chose it the most. There has been a lot of complaining on BGG about how the Imperial strategy card breaks the game since if you don't take it every chance you get, you will get beaten by someone who does. However, I'm lucky enough to play it with a bunch of people who don't all rush to the Initiative and Imperial strategies, we play the game and try to win through a variety of strategies - that's not to say they never get chosen, just not always.

There are several different units each with their own model and strengths and weaknesses, and combats can be fought in space and on the various planets. Each race has its own special abilities which will affect your style of place, some of them are strengths others are weaknesses, and since there are 10 races and you determine your race randomly, the game will be different every time you play.

It is not the most original game, either in mechanics (the designer freely admits he was influenced by several other games in a Designer's Notes section in the rule book) or in theme (anyone fancy trying to find a synonym for 'War Sun'? The large, spherical and most deadly unit?), but it is a well crafted and beautifully presented game. The length of the game is perhaps a bit excessive (the box claims 4-6 hours, but it certainly takes longer than that if you haven't played it for a while) but I love it none-the-less. Rumour has it that an expansion is forthcoming which will increase it up to 8 players! For which you will require a small country to act as a table and you'll need to start early to finish a game within the day. Overall, I give this an eight, though I'd be tempted for a little higher if it was a slightly shorter game.

Jack's Top 5: Number 4

I'll probably repeat this Top 5 exercise in a few months time once I've had a chance to play more games, I would imagine this one will be upwardly mobile during that time as it is phenomenally popular on BGG and I've only played it three times, so I'm not fully up to speed on it yet. So without further ado:

Caylus by William Attia is fairly heavy strategy game, themed around the building of a castle. Players compete as foremen, each trying to gain the most credit for the castle's construction. Initial impressions were not that favourable: an awful box illustration and nigh-impenetrable rules, however the board design is quite clever with an integrated scoreboard, and a track ordered in activation order, and as ever with the Eurogames the pieces are lovely little stained wooden numbers.

Once the game gets underway, players take it in turns to place workers in buildings to gain resources or other benefits. Only one worker may be placed in each building (with a couple of exceptions) each turn, so turn order is important. Fortunately, one of the buildings allows you to move up the turn order by placing a worker in it. Each player only has six workers, and placing a worker costs money (starting at one dernier, but rapidly increasing as players pass), so your options are limited in three dimensions, as other players fill the other buildings, you run out of money and you run out of workers.

After the every player has passed you each get to move the Provost, a mechanism which allows to to disable the more advanced buildings. Moving the Provost costs one dernier per square, moving him forward makes more buildings accessible, moving him back disables buildings instead. Players try to place the Provost in a location where they can activate all the buildings they have workers in, while denying as many of their opponents as possible. In addition, simply moving the Provost forward will speed the end of the game, while moving him back can delay it - allowing players an opportunity to end the game at the time most opportune for themselves.

Once each player has had a chance to move the Provost, the buildings are activated in order, and each player gains the resources or other benefit from the buildings they had workers in. The order is important, as I've already fallen foul of it a couple of times, placing workers to perform an action, safe in the knowledge that I've placed other workers to gain the requisite resources, only to realise later that the action worker is activated before the resource worker has collected the necessary goods. There are buildings to let you build other buildings, gain resources, trade resources for cash, gain cash, trade cash for resources, change the turn order and several others. The options throughout the game are manifold, leading to plenty of interesting strategising. Buildings come in several types, wooden(basic), stone (more advanced), residential (earn you cash) and prestige (contribute significantly towards winning the game). Each time you build a building you get a small VP bonus, and every time another player places a worker in one of your buildings you get a further VP, so buildings are a potentially winning strategy.

After building activation, all those players who placed a worker in the castle get to deliver batches of goods to the castle building site, contributing towards one of the three stages of the castle. Each batch must consist of three different goods, and you may deliver as many batches as you have goods. Batches earn you a significant number of VPs (5, 4 and 3 respectively for the three stages of the castle), and in addition, the player who delivered the most batches this turn gains a Royal Favour (more on these in a minute). When each section of the castle is complete, players may gain additional favours if they have delivered enough batches to that section, or lose VPs if they have delivered none.

The Royal Favours mentioned above come in four flavours: Cash, VPs, Resources and Building. Every time you gain a favour you may increment your marker along your choice of one of the four tracks, with successive favours on a track giving a larger reward, encouraging players to specialise on one or two tracks. The favours are a nice mechanism which allow players to choose their reward for building the castle. Short on cash? Gain money favours. Getting creamed on the scoreboard? Gain VPs.

From the three games I've played (two 4-player games and a 2-player game) it is clear that Caylus is a very good, and very complex game. There are still whole realms of the game I've yet to experience, and rules which I've failed to get right, but there are so many options and strategies that the game certainly appeals to me and offers plenty of replayability. I can easily see this becoming a favourite as time goes on. With limited experience I give Caylus a solid 8 on the BGG scale.

Jack's Top 5: Number 5

As promised earlier, I'm going to review my current five favourite games. This list will probably surprise a lot of the more hardcore readers, as I really haven't played a lot of games. Every time I try to get to my local games group something comes up - so I'm limited to my collection and those of my friends. Having said that, I think the games in my top five are excellent, and stand a good chance of remaining there as I get to know more games.

Coming in at number five, the game which has sold 10 million copies over the last 11 years (according to SpielBoy including expansions and variants): The Settlers of Catan. Or The Kettlers of Satan, as Tim insists on referring to it. :-)

I've only played the basic version of Settlers, although I have heard from a wealth of sources that the expansions (especially The Knights and Castles of Catan) really bring something to the game. Settlers was one of the first 'German-style' or Eurogames to really score big and it's easy to see why.

Players interact throughout the game, reducing the amount of 'downtime' while you wait for the other players to complete their turns. Each player's turn begins with a die roll to determine which territories will produce goods this turn. Any player with a town or city on the corner of those territories gain those resources - so right from the very start multiple players get involved. The active player gets to propose trades with other players, leading invariably to the age old 'I've got wood for your sheep' joke, and then they get to spend resources on roads, towns, cities or cards.

The aim of the game is to earn 10 VPs through building towns (1) and cities (2), maintaining the longest road (2) and the largest army (2). In addition, some of the cards give you the ability to gain VPs too. Once a player has built a town or city those points are theirs for ever, however the largest army and longest road points can be stolen if another player out-does them in that arena.

Strategy enters the game right from the off, as players have to chose the locations of their initial towns. You place towns on the corners between two or three territories, and aim to get access to all the resources in the game through your towns. Each territory also has a number associated with it, which determines how often the resources are produced. Since the resources are produced when the territory's number is rolled on 2D6, you want territories with numbers near to 7. However, throughout the game players get to place the 'Robber' on a territory, stealing resources from an adjacent player, and stopping that territory from producing until the Robber is moved again. So you don't want to chose territories with numbers too near 7 as you can bet that those will be the most robbed, and hence least productive, territories throughout the game. Further strategies include going for the longest road or largest army, intentionally blocking another player's longest road attempt and building cities to increase your income.

In summary then, Settlers is a great game, undoubtably. It's fantastically successful, and it's easy to see why: continuous player involvement, fairly short game time, a wealth of options at every stage and plenty of strategising opportunities. In terms of production, the version I've got is so-so, the box has an average illustration, the cards and tiles are alright and there's no insert to organise the pieces within the box. However, the rules are very well explained, and the wooden pieces are beautiful. In addition, there are lots of 'play hints' strewn across the pieces themselves - from dots and colour cues on the number counters showing their relative production frequency, to the way the resource cards tie in with the tile design for the tiles that produce them. Also, the cost of purchases on the little 'shopping list' cards that every player gets, make the game easier to pick up and learn. Overall, I give it 8/10 on the BGG scale.

Citadels & Carcassonne

I was down visiting my parents and the in-laws last weekend, and on Saturday night we got a five player game of Citadels in, followed by a few games of Carcassonne.

I've not played Citadels in a good few months, so it was interesting to come back to it. There are definitely some things about it that I really like, I love that the person who finished the game gets a bonus but doesn't necessarily win. I love that the turn order is based on the role you chose, rather than your seating position. However, there are some things I don't like. While the roles that target a character rather than a player are definitely fun to play for the person who chose them, trying to second guess the target player's choice, they aren't so much fun for the player who gets hit by accident when they guess wrong. As a result you tend to end up going for the mediocre roles (i.e. not the Merchant or the Architect) as you don't want to be targeted by the Assassin or the Thief either intentionally or accidently.

Maybe I'm just bitter because the Warlord destroyed my Castle in the first turn, and I was assassinated in the second turn. After which I struggled to get back in the game. I didn't play an aggressive game (I don't think I chose the Assassin or the Thief once), so my combination of a fairly defensive strategy and my fear of the high-risk roles obviously didn't work out for me. In the end Suzy won with 25 points, and Matt, Jan and I came joint second with 22.

After that I played three games of Carcassonne. Just plain old vanilla Carcassonne, not even using the River expansion that ships with it. In the first game Matt won when Suzy joined up her second farmer with one of mine, shutting me out of the farming points I needed to sneak past him. Matt and I then played two 2-player games. Matt had won the first game without doing any farming (just some mammoth cities), so he stuck with that strategy while I farmed for England. In a 2-player game I think the farmers will always win the day, as proved to be the case in those games. Still, the more I play it (as you can tell, I'm playing it a lot at the moment) the more I like it, and I've had it several years now.

I also spent a decent amount of time on the weekend working out some Border Reiver ideas with my Dad (who's an artist and designer), trying out some of the feedback I got from BGG and pounding his colour printer until it ran out of ink :-). I've taken on board several of the BGG suggestions and will have new artwork available soon.

New Border Reivers Tiles Design

As I mentioned a while ago I had to redo the tiles design I had started for Border Reivers increasing the resolution for better printing results. I took advantage of the opportunity to write a small program to accurately place the overlay elements, and since then I have been working on improving the drawing side of things.

You can see the latest version over on the Border Reivers Design Page. Still not quite finished, but it's definitely getting there.

I'm currently soliciting feedback, so if you've got any comments now's the time to make them before it goes to the printers :-)

2-Player Caylus

After a hard afternoon on the allotment, The Wife and I tried a 2-player game of Caylus. Since we'd both played it a couple of times before, we were off to a flying start. I tried to concentrate on building the castle, and getting favours - which I used to gain money. I was fairly flush for most of the game as a result. The Wife managed to match me batch-for-batch delivering to the castle however, and she too raked in the favours. She went down the building track and due to an error in rules comprehension was royally rewarded. She also built a lot more buildings than me, and was reward for that too.

We didn't use the provost much, but even so, with only two players the game was over quite quickly (about an hour and a half). I'd spent the last four or so turns stock-piling gold and stone to get a prestige building, however, in the last turn I realised that if I didn't delivery some batches instead The Wife would, building an unassailable lead. It turns out the lead was unassailable anyway, she beat me 105 to 95.

As a 2-player Caylus was good fun, and much quicker than as a 4/5-player game. It retained the majority of its manoeuvring, only the turn order is simplified out. I think I'm enjoying it more with every play, but I've yet to understand it well enough to win a game :-/.

On The Wife's recommendation I'm going to do some reviews rather than session reports over the next few days. My current top 5 games reviewed in reverse order - number 5 counting down to number 1.

Another Games Weekend

This weekend several friends came down for the weekend, the original plan was poker then DnD, instead we played lots of board games, and then eventually got around to the DnD today.

Saturday night there were three 3-player games of Border Reivers and a 4-player Caylus and an Über game of Carcassonne (featuring two sets of tiles). I played two of the Border Reivers games and the game of Caylus, so I'll give a session report on those. Maybe Mal will post on the others...

First up was my second game of Caylus, and again I enjoyed it. I played with Dave, Wilka and The Wife, of which only The Wife had played before. Now that I knew how to play, the rules were simpler to explain than reading them, so we got moving fairly quickly.

I only built one building all the way through this game, which was probably my undoing, I did best on building the castle though, and very well on favours too. I tried to build on the turns when I could definitely build first or build the most. Often this worked, however, I was rarely first in the order of play, and as I result I often lost out on the two or three resource production buildings.

Again, we built none of the blue prestige buildings, we didn't even build any of the green residental buildings. However, there was a lot more of using the provost to shaft people - in fact Dave got down to that in the very first turn :-) The game ended when I filled the Towers section of the castle. Due to the continual use of the provost for shafting, the provost often ended behind the bailiff, so the bailiff moved forward pretty slowly.

Dave won the game, helped by a healthy stash of gold resource cubes, I finished joint second with The Wife about 4 or 5 places behind.

We then played a couple of games of Border Reivers without The Wife. In the first one Dave left himself wide open, while Wilka holed up defensively. Spotting an opening, I went for Dave, quickly beating him in his castle, then sacking his city, followed by converting his last town. With Dave annihilated, I controlled the mine and two thirds of the board. I quickly started stockpiling cash (I'd not spent much on re-inforcements) and Wilka realising I would beat him to the cash total started moving towards me. However, Wilka had fortified fairly fair back, and the map was pretty slow due to the location of the forests, and got the cash before Wilka could reach me.

The second game was very different. Dave was determined to get his revenge, and everyone played conservatively, saving cash. Wilka went for the mine with lots of armies, while Dave and I built fortifications to defend our borders Wilka started raking in cash from the mine. We built second cities, and Wilka reached the amount needed to win the game - he just need to hang on to it until the beginning of his next turn...

Then Dave played Insurrection successfully stealing some money - enough to stop Wilka winning the game and get him to the winning mark. Due to his thorough fortification of his borders neither Wilka nor I could reach him in time. So Dave took the crown.

Both games were fairly quick 30 - 45 minutes I think (though I was fairly drunk by then and not paying attention to the time). The other game of Border Reivers (played by Linz, Mal and Gav) lasted much longer - there were pacts (formal and otherwise apparently) and many excited noises from Gav :-)

Advice for Board Game Designers

I stumbled across another great thread on BGG by Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower fame.

This thread is the second part of Tom's collected wisdom on board games design. Tom's been around the block asking an impressive list of game designers, publishers and reviewers for their advice to aspiring designers. The results are definitely worth a read, they'll repay the time spent reading them many times over.

The first part of the advice is available on The Dice Tower's website.

Antiquity Reprint

I read on a thread on BGG that Dutch games publisher Splotter are doing another print run of Antiquity. Antiquity has got some very good reviews both on BGG and from Mikko Saari on his gameblog.

When I first read Mikko's review I was very tempted to buy a copy, but the fact that it was out of print and would cost me a small fortune to get a second-hand copy on eBay put me off. Now it's definitely on my wishlist.

Caylus

Last night we had some friends round for games. After a brief discussion we decided to try out Caylus, and settled down to a 5-player game.

First impressions? The rules make it seem incredibly complicated. I'd not read them before, and I was reading them out aloud to the others and we were all completely confused. Once the game got underway it was actually fairly straightforward, but the rules made it feel bewildering. Halfway throught the first turn someone dropped out so we ended up playing a 4-player game.

There were a whole bunch of parts of the game we hardly used, no-one used the Provost to stop other players performing actions (although some people tried the Provost was always moved back to allow them to perform their action); there was no discussion around the Provost moves; no-one built a blue prestige building and we weren't sure which buildings to build to gain points most effectively when someone else placed a worker in them.

In the final turn I thought I stood a pretty good chance of winning, but The Wife pulled a rabbit out of a hat and managed to deliver three batches, and then Roman and Jochen delivered two, leaving me with only one space available. The Wife promptly won, with me trailing her by the three points I could have got had she not outmaneouvred me in the package delivery.

Chatting afterwards Roman said he thought he preferred Puerto Rico, and could see obvious similarities between them (delivering batches = delivering goods, both feature buildings and colonists/workers). I think Caylus maybe become more entertaining once I've a better grip on the rules, and am a little more experienced with it, but for that we'll have to wait and see...

Games upon Games

Well, games-wise this week is proving to be very busy, after the weekend with Mal, I played a few games with Richard on Monday and we're having friends round for games again tonight :-)

First up - last weekend. In addition to the copious games of Border Reivers mentioned in a previous post The Wife, Mal and I had a game of Puerto Rico on Saturday night. It was my first 3-player game of Puerto Rico, and I was impressed by the speed of the game - it seemed to go much quicker than the 4- and 5-player games. Mal hadn't played before, so we talked him through his options as the game went along - he was up and running very quickly, as is pretty much expected with Eurogames - they look and sound complicated until you start playing at which point you realise the play is straightforward - it's just finding a winning strategy that's hard. Mal made use of his Hacienda to build up an impressive range of plantations, and made good use of it, getting several early shipments off to the Old World. The Wife and I got the Construction Hut and proceeded to stock up on quarries, so in the early stages we had very few goods to trade or ship. One difference we spotted was more available wealth in the 3-player game (possibly due to the ratio of role cards getting doubleloons to players which is 1:1 for a 3-player game). As a result we all got one of the large buildings. The game ended when I filled all of my building slots, and in the final count Mal's judicious use of the Hacienda and Captain paid off as he won the game by a healthy margin.

Monday's games with Richard consisted of two games of Carcassonne, followed by a game of Border Reivers. It was Richard's first game of either, but as usual Carcassonne proved a very entertaining and easy to learn game. I won the first game as Richard had not spotted a large area I had managed to farm on my own, however, Richard struck back winning the second game by a healthy margin after he managed to join a massive city of mine to a tiny city of his while simultaneously completing them both. Nice.

We finished off with a game of Border Reivers, and yet again I was beaten at my own game. As I've said before combat is Border Reivers is brutal - if you go into a fair fight you're both likely to lose lots of armies. Richard played fairly aggressively, made good use of the cards (he had 4 at one point - that scared me) and often went into fair fights. Somehow, feeling on the back foot he got me attacking him back in fair fights, rather than waiting for backup or manoeuvring an advantage. It cost me, I lost a few fights and the Richard could wipe me out at the end. Still, I enjoyed it - there was a bit of back-and-forth over the mine and some interesting use of cards too.

That's enough for now, more after tonight's games fest which with any luck will feature a first outing of Caylus...

Border Reivers Workout

Mal's down for the weekend, and the first order of play was some Border Reivers. Mal has played the game more than anyone but me, we had a series of games over several weeks in 2004 where we must have played nearly 20 games against each other - he knows the mechanics very well, and knows when to use the subterfuge cards to cause the most carnage.

I was keeping an eye on the length of the games to check that the time estimates I have are realistic, and I was also interested to know whether the game was usually won by one of the two mechanisms (by collecting cash or by annihilating your opponents).

We played four games over the afternoon, ranging between 20 and 45 minutes in length. Mal and I each won two and we each won one by accumulating cash, and one by annihilation :-).

I think I was most pleased with the variety of the games, we laid out 4 very different boards, and the resulting play was very different as we choose new strategies to capitalise on the board layout and the unexpected ploys of our opponents. We had some great battles to control the mine, and yet in other games the mine was hardly used. In some games the really nasty 'Insurrection' card came out, in others we used less aggressive cards like 'Reiving Party' to lure our opponents into the jaws of a trap. The card that got the most usage was the 'Market' which we agreed (and Mal had spotted ages ago!) trumped the 'Military Academy' and 'Guildhouses' cards. With that in mind, we discussed some new rules for the 'Military Academy' and 'Guildhouses' which makes them a more attractive proposition, I'll need to play test those new rules soon, but conceptually they sound like a winner - bringing some interesting new decisions to the reinforcements phase.

A Good Day for Border Reivers

Yesterday I had the day off work to wait in for a bloke to come and fix a bunch of things in the flat. I took advantage of this time off to concentrate on getting some stuff sorted out for Border Reivers, and had a very successful day.

First up was a phone call to a printer to explore ways to reduce his estimate for the various printed parts of Border Reivers. This generated some useful ideas, and a new request for a quote with different specifications.

Secondly I did some work on the second attempt at the tiles design, making some decent progress and fixing a bug in the computer program I've written to generate the overlaid details on the tiles.

Finally, I went into town to do a bunch of chores and popped into my FLGS Travelling Man. I thought I recognised the guy behind the counter as the Managing Director of the chain who I had spoken to on a previous visit, and I was right. I chatted to him for a good while and managed to get a huge amount of really useful information about distributors and how best to approach selling the games in shops. He also said that they will buy directly from publishers, which was great to know.

He was so helpful that I felt honour-bound to buy Caylus before leaving :-)

Über Games Weekend Part 3: Sunday

Here's the last post describing last weekend's gaming.

Sunday was a fairly relaxed day, we got up late, had a roast dinner and the others headed home late afternoon. In between all that we managed to fit in a 5-player game of Puerto Rico and Tim and I played Border Reivers. So how did it go? Puerto Rico first...

It was Tim, Vicky and Dunk's first game of Puerto Rico, whereas The Wife and I had played it a few times recently. Things got off to a fairly brisk start with the Haciendas, Construction Huts and Hospices disappearing quickly as in the previous games we had played. Having been completely short of cash in previous games I made use of the Prospector early on to ensure I had money to build. Being near the end of the order of play for the first round I had only the Hacienda available, so I ended up throughout the game with loads of plantations (far more than I could occupy). I was determined to get the Residence to take advantage of my many plantations, but The Wife beat me to it, so I had to settle for the Customs House. That turned out ok for me in the end as Dunk accidently gifted me a shed load of VPs in the final turn :-). I was keen to get the Factory this game, but in the end I went for the Customs House instead, which was a much better call. Dunk got the Harbour (it's first ever outing for our set) and that is a very scary building to see in another player's hands. I won it in the end by a 4 point margin with 49 points thanks to Dunk's Captain miscalculation.

I really like the hidden VPs it makes counting up your score at the end exciting too :-)

After that Tim and I had a quick (only 20 minutes!) game of Border Reivers. Tim hadn't played it in ages, and suffered really bad luck on his reinforcement rolls, whereas I got a free reinforcement in the first turn. I managed to secure the mine, and build a second city, raking in a high income. Tim opted for 3 towns instead of the city and then attacked the mine with one of his remaining armies, and an 'Ambush' card. Combat is brutal in Border Reivers, especially when you're evenly matched so we both lost our armies. Spotting a weakness (Tim didn't have any reserves defending his land) I managed to romp through and butcher him in fairly short order. The game wasn't much fun for Tim, he felt pretty outnumbered due to the reinforcement rolls going in my favour. In his place, I would have attacked the mine with greater numbers instead of settling the towns, and ensured I had some defences in fortifications behind the front line just in case I lost the battle.

Über Games Weekend Part 2: Saturday

Saturday morning began with a debate over what to play (okay, it actually started with a fry-up) Tim wanted to play Puerto Rico at some point and was keen to play Twiglet, Dunk favoured Settlers fearing Twiglet would take over the weekend.

We eventually decided to go with Twiglet, which was brave as the only two previous 5-player games we had played had both lasted over 10 hours! I thought that seeing as we had all played it once before (even if it was ages ago for some of us) the game would be quicker, and fortunately I was right. It only took 5:15, literally half the length of the last game we played together as a group.

We played the Distant Suns expansion again, which I'm loving, and had a nice, fairly balanced game. The Wife got off to a swift start playing the Imperial strategy a couple of times and edging out into the lead, after that we generally took it before she had a chance, so we slowly started to catch up. Most of us managed to claim one or two of the public objectives so we were all around 3-5 VPs with The Wife out ahead on six or seven. Dunk was the aggressive race again (which suits his playing style well), and he had a run in with Tim fairly early on, which forced Tim to tool his area up to the nines with PDSs, scaring Dunk off. I've never been one for buying PDSs, but after the impression Tim's 6 PDSs had on Dunk (who had a fair armada featuring two Dreadnaughts) I'm coming around to them. The Wife and I and later Vicky and I had a little spat but generally nothing too vicious.

About four turns in, The Wife went for Mecatol Rex (which we all guessed was part of her secretive objective) but none of us had the will or the fleet to oust her from there. So it came to the end of a round with the Wife on seven points, three shy of winning. We were convinced she had met her secret objective (worth another two points) but it was clear that she couldn't meet any of the public objectives this time, so we were gearing up to take one of her homeworlds off her next turn - preventing her from claiming any objectives. When suddenly, out of nowhere, she reveals an Action Card which lets her refresh half of her exhausted planet cards. That freed up the ten resources needed to claim one of the public objectives and it's game over! It caught me completely by surprise. Nice :-)

Here's a snapshot of the game in progress. As usual click on the picture for a full-size view.

Über Games Weekend Part 1: Friday

Friday evening, after our guests arrived, we had a bite to eat and caught up, we settled down to a couple of games of Carcassonne. We just played vanilla Carcassonne with the River Expansion (that comes in the box).

I don't know what it is about Carcassonne, I can hold my own when playing 2-3 player games (which is what I play most of), but as soon as it comes to a 4 or 5 player game I seem to lose the plot when it comes to farming. Sure, farming is harder with that many players all fighting for a piece of grassland but still, you'd think I could adapt. Still, the games were fun as ever, and until the farming was totted up at the end I was definitely in the running (plus I got the immense pleasure of getting the monastery with road which fitted perfectly into a hole in the map for a very gratifying instant 9 points :-) ).

Carcassonne with its simple mechanics and very short play time is a great starter or closer to a gaming session, or a filler while waiting for another game to finish. It's definitely worth that 9 rating I gave it on BBG. Even the randomness of the tile-drawing doesn't bother me - I like that you have to pit yourself against your opponents while dealing with the hand your dealt - there's enough tiles that you're unlikely to suffer really bad luck throughout a whole game.

The first game went to Duncan, then Vicky won the second a good night's gaming and a great start to the weekend - at that point it was time for bed...

Games, Games, Games!

This weekend we've got some friends coming up from down South, and there will be plenty of drinking and gaming :-). I'll post some game reviews/session reports once the alcohol-haze has cleared.

In other news, I'm probably going to go to The Cast Are Dice in Stoke in August, so if you're going I'll see you there.

Border Reivers: 1 Step Forward...

2 steps back :-(

After speaking to a bunch of printers while investigating the cost of getting the various Border Reivers parts made I've found out that the work I've done on the tiles is at the wrong resolution so I've had to start again. The good news is I've worked out how to do more of it automatically, so I'm writing a computer program to do a lot of the hard work for me.

In other news the pricing on the limited edition is progressing nicely and the first few pre-orders are starting to come in, despite the fact that I haven't really started advertising it yet, and I don't even know how much it'll cost.

Right, I'm off to bed in a mo, but first of all, welcome to HamsterOfFury a new member and fellow board game designer who joined the blog today - I'm looking forward to his posts about his experiences designing games.

Dollyo: Making Progress

I've had some time this evening to do some more work on Dollyo, my second game. It's still very much in it's infancy, but a game is starting to take shape.

At this stage in the game's development I'm playing 2-player games against myself to try and balance the early stages of play. I'm only using a couple of the game's mechanics - I'll build things up once the stuff I'm currently testing becomes a bit more stable. It's changed a lot during the last couple of weeks, tonight though, the concepts stayed the same - it was just the balancing factors (exchange rates, etc.) that were varying.

One of my aims with Dollyo is to make a game for 2-7 players, since Border Reivers is only 2-4. Once the game settles down a bit I'll need to start play-testing games with more players to ensure the balance doesn't go out the window as the game scales up.

I've also been investigating printers for the limited edition run of Border Reivers. I'm expecting to do the printing myself (I'm buying an A3 colour printer soon), but if I can get a reasonable price for a small print run from a professional printer I might well go down that route. The problem with small print runs is that you don't get any of the buying in bulk discounts so it ends up being quite expensive to make and hence you need to ask a fairly steep price for it.

BGG Addiction

I've become addicted to BoardGameGeek. I'm checking it frequently, posting on random forums, looking up every new game I hear about.

I think the guys that run it are doing a fantastic job, and very shortly I will be donating to the coffers (I heartily approve of supporting good services supplied by fans), in the meantime I have to earn my currently salary in GeekGold! To which end, I've entered a lottery :-)

Games Club

This afternoon I'm hoping to get to my local games club: Beyond Monopoly. All being well, I'll get to play a load of new games and then post a session report this evening or tomorrow.

Tiles Screen Captures

As promised in my last post, I've got some preliminary tiles images posted over on the Border Reivers design page. Have a gander and let me know what you think. There's still plenty of work to be done on them.

Border Reivers Tiles

I spent a good five or six hours yesterday evening on the tiles design for the limited edition of Border Reivers. It went really well, I managed to get the coastlines, roads and numbering done for the first side (I haven't started the second side yet).

I had previously done a version by hand, and I've nearly caught up with how much I had done for that version already. I've the trees, villages and waves to do and then I'm making forward progress again.

In the next couple of days I'll post some work-in-progress images of the tile design over on the Border Reivers website.

Lots of Puerto Rico

This weekend passed in a Advocaat-soaked (don't ask) blur, but we did manage to get 3 games of Puerto Rico in after various meals. The first one was with Karen, Jochen, The Wife and I (won by Karen) and then on Sunday, Rebecca, Paul, The Wife and I played another two games (one a piece to Paul and I).

All three games finished when we ran out of colonists, unlike the first time I played when Roman built all 12 of his buildings. Our scores climbed steadily through the three games as we learnt the game more thoroughly, and the final game was very close with me just scraping a win in the very last round.

The more I play it, the more I like it. It is a great game. I'm convinced that buildings are key to winning, as Paul got only 4 victory points from transporting goods to the Old World in the last game, and yet he very nearly won, despite my 18 victory points from transportation.

Oh, and as usual after every games session we finished with promises that we should make time for a game of Twiglet.

Paint Shop Pro

I've started work on a new final version of the Border Reivers tiles. I'm creating two A3 sheets which feature the design for each side of the tiles. Previously I've attempted to do this by hand and using Microsoft Publisher - neither of which were the right tool for the job. Is Paint Shop Pro the best tool for the job? Probably not, but I own it and it's the best tool I've tried so far.

Should have some more to say soon, and we've got friends coming round for tea tonight and lunch tomorrow, and hopefully there'll be games after each meal :-). I'm hoping to give Puerto Rico another outing now that I've a better idea what I'm doing.

Border Reivers

Border Reivers was my first board game, and I designed it between Christmas '01 and 2003. The game has been finished for the last two years, and I've got a prototype that I made to playtest the game with friends.

Last weekend my parents came to visit and I talked to my Dad extensively about my games design work. As a result I've decided to manufacturer a limited run of Border Reivers, while investigating getting it properly published.

So, I've started working on the final deisgn of the tiles and cards and I'm going to invest in a hefty printer for printing the tiles and cards.

I'm thinking of using Plastics for Games for the pieces (although I'd prefer nice wooden pieces like those of Carcassonne, Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan, I can get cheap plastic pieces that fit the bill in the UK).

Interested in a copy? Then either email me at Jack@ReiverGames.co.uk or post a reply to this post.

Dollyo - Making Progress

As I mentioned in my last post Dollyo was started around two years ago, but paused for a very long time.

This time round I'm keen to take the game in a slightly different direction, by reducing the emphasis on combat and increasing the emphasis on trade and politics.

I begin my design of a new game by thinking about what elements I want in the game. To begin with I tend to include far too many elements creating a very complicated game, then slowly over time simplify out those elements that work the least well. I scribble down all my early ideas, then try to start playing the game against myself to set the mechanics up. It gives me a chance to tweak the elements of the design to improve the balance, or change the speed at which the game plays. At this point the board/tiles are scribbled on a pad of paper and I use pieces from other games to represent the game pieces & cards where I can, scribbling bits on scraps of paper where I can't.

That's as far as I got today - it'll be a good while before the game is ready to start playing with other people.

For the record the following stages my games go through are:

• Making my own cards and pieces


• Extensive playtesting with the rules regularly changing


• Playtesting with infrequent rule changes and 'beta' cards, pieces, tiles and board


• The prototype - by this stage I've made 'nice' bits, and the rules are fixed

Design

When I created this blog I promised you design as well as reviews/session notes, but I've been so busy on other projects that I've not really done any solid design for a while - I've been limited to scheming while commuting to work.

Thanks to a snow day I'm now at home with some time to spare so here's my first thoughts on Codename: Dollyo a new game I first started about 2 years ago staight after Border Reivers, that has been paused for about 20 months :-)

Like lots of the new German boardgames available at the moment Border Reivers had a victory point mechanism (in the form of first to 40 gold wins the game), but it was possible to circumvent this mechanism by slaughtering your opponents before anyone reached the 40 gold target. In Dollyo I intend to do something similar, but with a couple of new (to me, at least) twists. The first is to limit the actions you can perform by the number of victory points you currently have. I like the idea of this, especially since it 'makes sense' in the setting of Dollyo, and I've not seen it anywhere else. The second is something that I've seen in Citadels by Bruno Faidutti (Fantasy Flight Games), the first person to reach the victory point target (in the case of Citadels the first to eight city districts) is not necessarily the winner - although you do gain an advantage.

The Beast!

We finally got a chance to get another game of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition in this weekend, only four months after the last game. We played with Paul, who had played with us last time so we had the double advantage of all three players having played before in the not-too-distant past, and only three players - so the finally total was only 4 and a half hours. It really is a beast :-)

Here's a snapshot of the penultimate turn before I got a lamping :-) Click on it to see the full-size image.

I won the game in the end, using the 10 victory points mechanism - as always seems to be the winning strategy. Unusally, there was no combat in the game until the final round when it was already clear that I was going to win - so there was a definite 'Well we've got to have at least some fighting' feeling about it.

I also tried a different strategy this game, using the Politics strategy to ensure a plentiful supply of the rule-bending Action cards, and making the most of my race's technology special ability, by ensuring that I never chose the Technology strategy myself - allowing both the primary and secondary usages. I ended the game with 13 technologies which was nice :-)

It was also the first outing of the Distant Suns expansion pack, giving each planet a random effect such as extra trade goods, hostile locals or radiation which kills your landing party. It slowed the expansion of the player's empires down and added a new dimension to the exploration and expansion - I'll definitely play that again in the future.

As usual after Twiglet games, we said we need to play again soon, to take advantage of us all have the rules in our heads, who knows when we'll get round to it though...

Hot Carribean Action

So after a few attempts that were called off due to sickness, I finally got a chance to play Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games yesterday.

Expectations were high as it is the most popular game on BoardGameGeek, and first impressions after a single game are that it is really good. The wife is already saying that she definitely prefers it to Citadels which is also a great game.

It uses similar mechanics to Twilight Imperium 3 and Citadels where players choose a different role each round. However, unlike citadels where only one player gets to perform the action associated with the role, and Twiglet where the actions differ depending upon whether you choose the role or someone else did, in Puerto Rico everyone gets to perform the same action (although the person who chose it gets a related bonus).

Players take it in turns to choose a role, starting with the 'Guvnor' (which rotates clockwise each turn), and they and then the other players get to perform the action for that role. Because of this, you spend very little time waiting for other players like many of the other German games.

The aim of the game is to have the most victory points at the end, and there are two ways of gaining points: by shipping goods to the Old World, and by building buildings. You also get to create plantations which provide an income of goods for trade or shipping. In the game (with the wife, Jochen, Karen and Roman), I didn't concentrate much on generating money, so I couldn't build many buildings, which bit me at the end as I came out 4th out of 5. Next time I think I'll keep that in mind and try to get more building done.

In conclusion, there are a lot of really nice mechanisms in the game, and at first blush it seemed to be very interesting and certainly replayable, and, as usual with German games, the wooden pieces are great and the printed pieces are nice enough. All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase.

One, Ah, Ah, Ah...

So, I got my first taste of the Count of Carcassonne today in a couple of games with the wife. In the first game we didn't really comprehend it, and failed to use any of the new game mechanics, in the second I forced myself to go against my instinct to use the new mechanics just to see how it worked.

The new tiles and wooden piece are just as attractive as the original pieces, and the new mechanics give you a method of treating your limited number of followers as reserves, placing them in the city of Carcassonne where you can use them to help you claim cities, farms, roads and cloisters as they are completed. You can choose which to claim as they are scored, rather then when you place the tile which reduces the speculative nature of placing followers. In addition, the fact that you can only place a follower in the city when you have given your opponent points means that you change the way you interact with the other players which also makes things more interesting.

The main downside is that it definitely increases the complexity of Carcassonne, and its fixed starting position (not one but twelve tiles!), reduces the variation between games.

I'll have to play it a bunch more times before I can firmly make a call on it, but the early impressions are it'll be nice to play once in a while, but I think I'll still prefer the basic game most of the time.

In summary, the new mechanics noticably change the play of Carcassonne, it becomes a totally different game, and while this will increase the longevity of the game it definitely makes it more complicated. Carcassonne has always seemed a game you won't bore of, it plays quickly (30-45mins), it's very simple and yet there is a great depth of strategy involved and you usually feel that games are won or lost by your moves rather than your luck. Is the Count worth it? Well it only cost £3, so probably yes, but it doesn't significantly improve the game - just changes it.

New Look, New Games

What do you think? The wife has gone to town on the design and boy does it look gorgeous :-)

In other news, I bought Puerto Rico from Rio Grande Games, and the Count expansion for Carcassonne today, hopefully I'll get a chance to play them tomorrow when we go round to friends for dinner - look out for some feedback soon.

In yet more news, I've spent a little time working on Codename: Dollyo again, so I will try to post about some design in the next couple of days.

Carcassonne extensions: first impressions

Hello. Mal here. Jack’s been kind enough to invite me to join the gaming party.

So, without further ado, and for a change, it’s Carcassonne. Specifically, the Carcassonne extension packs, The Count of Carcassonne and The King And Scout. I bought both of these packs yesterday and they seem to be of wildly different complexities. I’ve yet to play with them, but here are my first impressions from a skim through the rules.

The Count of Carcassonne

Muckle rock hard to understand! You get an extra 12 tiles to start the game, placed in a pre-ordained arrangement. These tiles form a large city, the city having 4 quarters (districts rather than literal quarters). The Count, a purplish meeple reminiscent of the "One! ah ah ah, Two! ah ah ah", Sesame Street character, is placed in one of these quarters and... oh, I don’t know... he, like, controls either cloisters or roads or farms or whatever.

I’ve probably got it completely wrong already, but suffice it to say your meeples can be placed in the city along with the Count and the position of said purple fella affects the scoring of the various ’trades’. As I said, it’s not a simple thing. Once I’ve had a game or three, I’ll write it up properly, but for now, I think I’m gonna ease myself in with...

The King and Scout

Or, more accurately, The King. This extension pack is actually 2 separate extensions: one for the original Carcassonne; and one for the Hunters & Gatherers edition. Given that neither Jack nor I have the latter, it’s the King part I’m interested in. To say that this extension is simple would be an understatement. All it boils down to is a few new tiles (just 5 of them!) and a couple more scoring mechanisms. These new scoring mechanisms are simply Longest Road and Largest City bonuses. In other words, the person with the longest completed road at the end of the game gets one extra point for every completed road in the game, regardless of who ’owned’ it. Same thing for the largest city. Whether I needed to buy the extension pack to get these variations in the game is a matter I’ll be chatting to my wallet about.

As I say, I’ll write up a proper review of these two once I’ve had a shot with them. Hopefully then I’ll actually be able to explain the Count, ah ah ah!

Buntu Circus!

Jochen came round this afternoon for a few games and we ended up playing 'The Buntu Circus' by The Buntu Circus Ltd. a great game I got about 6 or 7 years ago, and haven't played for ages. The game is interesting, and very different from anything else I've got, it certainly provides a mental challenge and is a nice balance of skill and luck.

After that we played four games of Carcassonne - it's great!

More Carcassonne

Got a few more games of Carcassonne in last night before Mal left, and I finally won one. The key to Carcassonne is definitely the farmers, you need to pick the area you farm though, in one game, Mal and I both ended up with four farmers on a single field - which severely limits the number of men you have available for other point-winning schemes.

I'm thinking of buying a new game soon, not sure what though. I'll probably go for a 'Spiele Des Jahres' winner as I've come up trumps with them in the past. Anyone got any suggestions?

I'm hoping to get another game of Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition in soon, it's a fantastic game, the downside is that it takes a whole day to play, and because it's so complex, and we play so infrequently, you spend most of the day trying to remember the rules :-(

Introduction

This new blog serves a dual purpose, allowing me to post about progress with the board games I'm inventing, and to allow my friends and I to review and recommend board games they've played.

Off the bat, I played several games of Carcassonne from Hans Im Gluck games last night with The Wife and Mal, and then just Mal. I lost them all, but I'm still loving Carcassonne - it is a truly excellent game that doesn't pale with lots of play.

Carcassonne was a winner of the prestigous 'Spiele Des Jahres' German board game award, and I'm finding that to be a reliable indicator of a game's quality.