New Hampshire Session Report

Last night, Scott, Jef, and I played the Age of Steam: New Hampshire Expansion.

For a full session report, check out:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/4038250

For a short session report, read below:

It was fun.

Power Grid and More

I arrived home yesterday to find my Bezier Games Essen set waiting for me on the porch! I opened everything up and carefully packed away my age of steam maps and then broke the shrink on Beer & Pretzals. But the first game up on the agenda was a new prototype from Emanuele. As always, I can't say anything about this game. The core mechanics are there and it could shape up into a pretty good game.

Mike, Jef, and I started to punch out the B&P components, but Dan arrived and we put them aside to start explaining the main game of the night to Mike: Power Grid (w/ the Korea expansion). Power Grid is one of Dan's favorite games, and he has hinted that he would like to play it for some time. This week, without any brand new toys to try out, I finally broke down and suggested that he bring it along. We explained the rules to Mike and we were soon playing. I screwed up (I think) early on and bought a trash plant requiring expensive fuel. But I am sure that I made a plethora of other mistakes along the way. Anyhow, Jef and Dan were very close in the end, but Jef pulled out the win.

I enjoy Power Grid, though I must admit that there are other games that "do what it does" that I like more. Brass is one of these, but, I actually enjoy Wealth of Nations much more as a Power Grid replacement.

After Power Grid, we played Beer & Pretzals. This is Ted Alspach's latest part game and it is fun. Oh, and the components (drink coasters) are of a very high quality and feel great! Each player has a set of coasters that they are trying to throw into a string circle that is setup in the middle of the table. The coasters show pretzals of varying types that also have different values if they are uncovered at the end of the round and if they are inside the string or touching the string or touching something that is touching the string. It's fun, it's quick, and even better, it came with Age of Steam maps. This is definitely an Essen Set that I don't regret purchasing.

And tonight....its PASOS night. And that means Age of Steam!

PASOS Disco Inferno Session Report

Last night, we (Scott, Jef, and myself) played the Disco Inferno Age of Steam Expansion.

The Session Report is now posted, check it out, it rocks:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/4003733

Congress of Gamers

The Congress of Gamers convention in Rockville, Maryland was last weekend (September 26h-27th). I was able to attend on the Saturday with Jef. I had hoped to meet up with Ben Stephenson and Simon Halder for a game or two of Age of Steam. Sadly, convention timing issues negated those plans. Still, I had a great time despite the lack of AoS action.

Cosmic Encounter: We arrived at the convention around 9 am and were talked into a game of Cosmic Encounter by Noah, a young chap rearing for a game. I have only played Cosmic once before and Jef has never played it. Noah did a good job of teaching the game, and I did a good job of not putting my ships into the drop ship. I was the virus, which gave me an incredibly advantage in just about every aspect of the game. As such, I was able to utilize absolutely no skill to ride out the character ability to the win.

Unpublished Prototypes: After checking out the games for sale, Jef and I were joined by Perrianne for a playtest of one of Emanuele's games. Then, with about 15 minutes before Perianne had to jet, we played another prototype with Simon.

Sushizock im Gockelwok: With the hope that Ben would arrive soon, we pulled out Sushizock, one of my staple convention games. This was Jef's first try at the game but we were soon up and rolling. Jef pulled out the win, but fun was had by all.

Perikles: Ah. Full disclosure time. For about a year now, I have ridiculed the rules for this game. They are too tough, they stink, they are too vague. All of those phrases have exited my mouth. And, I will now admit that I was too tough on them. I was able to do a pretty solid teaching job just by reading quickly through the rules and then we were up and running. No sir! A good game, especially if you simply stay away from the rules question forums on the geek. I think they just make it more confusing than it has to be.

Hau La: Simon, Jef, and myself were joined by Ken for this crazy dexterity type game. It has some incredibly neat components, twisty foam type things that you bend and insert into holes on the board and in the pieces themselves. The goal is to have a marker of your color higher than all of the other player's markers. This is done by first inserting one of your pieces into other pieces and then plugging a hole with your marker. Check out a picture of the game on the geek, it will make more sense then. I liked the game as a novel concept, but it seems to offer tremendous advantages to players based on their turn order. If you fall behind early, you will never catch up (or I never could).

Und Tschuss: I then introduced one of my favorite Wallace games to both Simon and Jef. It continues to be one of my favorites afterwards. In fact, Ken informed me that you could find in print copies of the game in Japan! I will have to check with my friend Misa to see if she can scrounge up an extra copy for me.

Ricochet Robots: Ken then introduced us to Ricochet Robots. He is a pro at this game, with well over 100 plays. And Jef and I were new to the game. He creamed us! Over and over again Ken took us to school. I enjoyed the game, and I am glad that I have played this classic, but I don't know if I would seek it out again.

Handelsfursten: Herren der Meere: Ken, a Knizia fanatic, showed Jef, Myself, and Gary this excellent game. Each player starts out with 2 ships and they will soon be loaded with 1 of the 5 different wares. Then 5 cards are laid out in the center of the table. Each card depicts one of the 5 wares. The value of each ware is determined by how many cards it has in the center of the table. A basic turn consists of playing a new card to the center, thus covering an older card and altering values. If a player has one of the ware types of the card that was just played, they get cash/vp equal to the new value of that good. It is definitely a fun game and one that I would play again. It was neat to try to figure out what other wares people were invested in and also to try to manipulate the market yourself. I may try to find a copy of this game.

Escalation!: Next up was another small Knizia game, this time themed after suburban warfare. The artwork is interesting, but the game was also fun. The deck of cards is essentially composed of numbers ranging from 1 to 15. On your turn, you play a card or cards (they must all be the same value). But, you must play cards that have a higher value/sum than the previous card(s) played. It is similar to a trick taking ladder game. If you cannot play the cards, or you choose not to, you take all of the cards that have been played up to that point. These go into your score pile. At the end of the game, the person with the smallest pile wins. I don't know if I would purchase this game, but it was fun to play. I just wish that Zev would use card stock more similar to the Amigo games. These cards were so thick that they were hard to shuffle.

Dragon Strike: Next up was a classic dungeon crawl with Nick and Ben. So, this is me we are talking about, and if you know my tastes, you will also know that I don't go for dungeon crawls. Yet the company was great, which meant that the game was great. Our goal was to rescue a dwarf from the dungeon and to also break the sun stone. We had almost accomplished that task when the timer ran out and the dragon broke loose into the dungeon. Jef escaped with the dwarf and broke the sun stone. Sadly, I was destroyed and so was Ben.

After Dragon Strike, we went out to eat with Ben and Nick. While waiting to eat, however, we played...

Gother than Thou: And this game....well....the company was good. The cards were somewhat amusing but I was left to ponder why such a game existed.

So, that's my convention report. I had a great time and was glad that I went.

Tonight, I play Age of Steam with Pierce, John, and Jef!

PASOS Finland Session Report

The Session Report for last night's Age of Steam Session has now been posted.

Wednesday Gaming Recap

I have to admit, the thing that I hate most about these "session recaps" is the opening statement. I am under this mistaken impression that it is important to segway into the good stuff. Perhaps this time I will take a different approach. So, here we go:

Mike, Jef, Dan came over for gaming. Mike and Jef arrived before Dan. This is what we played.

(BTW, that sucked. I won't do that again.)

Schwarzarbeit: I plan on talking about this game in greater detail on the next Dice Tower podcast and I have published a detailed review of the game on BoardGameNews.Com. So if you are interested in a game description, just check out those sources. Mike had played before, but Jef was new to the game. We ended up playing two games, as each one only takes about 30 minutes. I ended up winning both games, though it is largely because I denounced many more workers than Mike and Jef. This is pretty important to do in the game, much more than it may seem at first as you can get away without denouncing anyone during the game. It probably works best with 3 players, as the information overload that comes with deduction games is overwhelming with more. So, I'm glad we played and I will probably bring it out again soon.

Jungle Jam: After eating, we still had about 30 minutes to go before Dan was scheduled to arrive, so we pulled out Jungle Jam. Jungle Jam is a cheap ripoff of Jungle Speed. But, I picked it up cheap at Ollies and I don't feel the need to purchase the other game. Sorry. Anyhow, the goal of the game is to grab the totem in the center of the table faster than the other player. When you need to grab the totem is determined by cards with symbols on them that you flip over on your turn. If your symbol matches another player's symbol the two/three of you enter into a jam and have to grab the totem. The loser takes the other player's cards and adds them to their stack. It's fun, quick, and dangerous. We played three games, of which I won 2.

Brass: Once Dan arrived, we were ready to go with the "meat" of the night...Brass! I was looking forward to trying a new strategy, though it really didn't work out that way. What I did do was to quickly churn through my lower tech level cotton mills so that I could get tech level 3 mills out in the canal era. Sadly, I was unable to ship these mills in that era, an error that set me back for the rest of the game (and cost me first place). I was in a bad place for most of the rail era, taking out way too many loans and riding low on the income track. Still, my high tech level mills paid out in the end, and I was only three points behind Dan for first place.

PASOS Session Reports

Last night, Jef came over and we played two 2p games of Age of Steam. Sadly, I do not have Ted's new Essen maps, so we just pulled out the St. Lucia and Jamaica maps. Anyhow, the session reports are now posted:

St. Lucia - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/443751

Jamaica - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/443737

Oh, and Pierce....I lost the second game. Yes sir. The mystique of invincibility is gone forever.

Last night, we dined on Brass!

Last night we played Brass. Right on cue, Shannon Applecline wrote another excellent article on Martin Wallace and his games.

Here is a link to the article

I have enjoyed his series of reviews and strategy articles and I would highly recommend them if you are interested in some insight into Martin's games. In this latest installment, Shannon discusses some of the key aspects of Martin?s economics games. Particularly timely was his discussion of the Economic Modeling that is used in Brass. To directly quote the article: "Brass instead approaches things from the opposite direction. Herein buildings aren't objects to be exploited, but rather are liabilities that don't have value until they're actually linked in to the economy. As you flip your buildings by locking in their iron and coal supplies or by linking factories and ports, you're creating an economic network."

Brass is one of my favorite games. I have now logged 15 plays, although perhaps 10 were played online. The reason why I like it so much is that each game is inherently different as you are forced to utilize the cards you are given. A recent article on the geek discussed primary strategies to the game. I did read seriously read the article, but I do not doubt that particular strategies do exist. I often go after a strategy of developing through my Cotton Mills so that I can build the best by the end of the game. Nothing special here, but it is a plan that requires certain cards to work. If, at the start of the game, I don't see this plan working, I will try for something else. Last night, in particular, I was awed my Mike's early ramp up the income track via shipping cotton to the external market. Next game, I would really like to try that out, and then build a tremendous amount of links in the second half of the game.

Oh yeah, but what about the commentary that I quoted. It's correct, and it makes the game really cool. Your buildings are worthless unless they are connect to the rest of the game. A solitary coal mine gives you nothing! But once you (or someone else) has connected it, then BAM!, it is suddenly valuable. And supply and demand is not missing from this little model. No sir. When Coal is low or Iron is low, it is incredibly beneficial to be that player that builds the Iron Mill, fills the external market, grabs the quick cash, and probably flips their tile.

Alright, so what about the game last night. This was Dan?s second game, my 15th, and Jef and Mike's first. I was able to give both Jef and Mike good instruction for the game, though by the time Dan arrived, I must admit that I was a bit tired and my teaching stunk. Sorry. Anyhow, as I mentioned above, Mike came out strong in the Canal era and did some quick cotton shipments that really ramped him up on the income track. I build a strong network of Tech 2 and 3 buildings as well as a number of Cotton Mills that I neglected to ship in the canal era. Dan took the Shipyard strategy and had a Tech 1 yard built before the end of the era.

Scores at the end of the Canal Era were:

Brad - 28
Jef - 27
Dan - 41
Mike - 25

In the Rail Era, I continued with my plan to ship tons of cotton. I build a number of ports and continued to build a couple more cotton mills. Dan amazed all of us with a quick build of 2 shipyards in one turn! Arrgh. This really swung the game. I don't think that Mike really capitalized off of his income position and I bet that he could have built a stronger network of rails. Jef played a strong resource game, though I was able to jump in on some key iron and coal builds due to turn order. In the end, Dan was able to win, but it was close. I had a super turn that involved shipping cotton from 4 mills to 3 ports, but this was not enough.

Final Scores Were:
Brad - 136
Jef - 115
Dan - 139
Mike - 103

Brass may see play again next week, as it is simply too difficult to teach to warrant only one play. And it is so much fun!

PASOS Session Report

Here is the session report from last night's game of Age of Steam. We played the CCCP expansion from Alban Viard.

Ferrocarriles Pampas

Last night I was finally able to play Ferrocarriles Pampas. I have put off bringing this game to the table for a number of reasons. First, and most importantly, a reading of the rules gave me the strong impression that it would only work with at least 4 players. Second, lukewarm reviews made me somewhat to use precious gaming time on it. Third, it was a long game with a somewhat hazy end game condition.

Ferrocarriles Pampas is a predecessor of Pampas Railroads and Wabash Cannonball. Many of the game elements are the same, but there are some significant changes. First, money used to purchase shares is paid to the bank, not to the railroad. Second, actions are selected based off a chit pulled at random from a bag. The actions are the same (construct track, offer share, pay dividends), and the game ends after the 8th dividend chip is drawn, but the randomness is very different than the other games in the series. Third, when a player draws the construct track chip, they do not necessarily get to build the track that they propose, instead, you enter into a very unique mechanic called Consortium Bidding. Finally, at the end of the game, in addition to earning cash for the value and income of your stocks, players received additional monies based on city cards that they were given at the start of the game. These are kept hidden and, at the end, are worth the value of the city times the number of different railroads going into that city times the number of track built into that city. It is likely that this final mechanic either spawned from the consortium bidding idea or it necessitated the bidding.

Consortium Bidding makes Ferrocarriles Pampas unique. It has been denigrated by Bohrer, and probably for good reason. I am not sure if it works, but it sure as heck is neat. Basically, players have the option of proposing two different track builds when the construct track action occurs. Then, players can choose one of the two options and bid to try to make it happen. In this way, players form alliances and share money to increase the value of different railroads. It is a unique mechanism in train games, and one that I have not experienced in any other game. It could potentially create rapidly shifting alliances or it could stimulate long term alliances as two or more players team up. What it almost certainly does do is force you to work with other players. I found that it was incredibly difficult to propose a build and actually have it occur if no one supported it with me.

Sadly, the mechanic overstays its welcome after the first 2 hours. Although it was novel at first, low cash supplies and the inherent knowledge that we would be entering into these bidding rounds over and over again made me wary of the concept. I cannot speak for anyone else, but it had definitely worn off it?s sheen by the 2nd hour of play.

Finally, as can sometimes be the case with Winsome games, the quality of the components really detracted from my enjoyment of the game. The fiddly bits were all over the place and a small knock to the board was cause for general havoc. Heck, the value and income markers were two inches long and a quarter of an inch wide!

Then, at the end, the city cards were hardly worth the effort. Dan took the time to figure out how much they were worth to him, approximately $10. I forgot to keep track of my card?s values, but they were not worth much more than $15, if that. I understand, at least at the theoretical level, why consortium bidding would be neat in combination with the city multipliers. I would help you build into a city because I benefit in the end. It just didn?t work out that way.

I ended up winning, but I would have rather played Pampas Railroads. Consortium Bidding is unique and interesting, but it does not seem fully developed. There is a nugget of a game in there somewhere, but despite what I am sure were intensive play-testing sessions, it never got there.

Yet if you wanted to play this game, make sure that you realize that it is not Pampas Railroads or Wabash Cannonball. Because cash does not go the railroad, the incentive is to win stocks as cheap as possible. Because dividend payouts are random, you can try to push your luck to win shares cheap when other players are out of money. But all of this is random and for a 3 hour game, this type of randomness should not be tolerated. I am glad I played it, but I highly doubt it will be played again anytime soon.

A Session Re-Report

What a night. Sadly, Jef was unable to attend, but Mike arrived at around 4:30 and we setup Memoir '44. I don't remember the scenario we played, but I do know that I had some troops on top of a hill that let me use Recon cards as if they were Air Power cards. And I dropped some pain on Mike's troops. Then, I was able to use my artillery to drop even more pain. The pain was too much and the game ended in an Allied victory in a shorter amount of time than it took to set the darn thing up.

After Memoir '44, we tested a new prototype. It was fun. A good deal of fun. That's all I'm saying.

Then we ate dinner. After dinner, we setup the main game of the evening, Trainsport: Switzerland.

Mike compared the overarching goal of this old Winsome train game to Ticket to Ride. While the comparison does not do it justice, it is a good way to quickly explain the game. In Trainsport, you build track with the hope of completing specific routes that will then instantly payout cash. The difference between this and Ticket to Ride are numerous. In Trainsport, there are N goal cards setup next to the board (where N=the number of players). Any player is allowed to complete these goals, so for most of the game you are racing to complete them first.

Second, you can build any track you want, so long as your network is contiguous and you can afford it.

Overall, the game was hampered somewhat by the Winsome production quality. I have no problem with Winsome games, they are what they are. But it did grow difficult to figure out tie-breakers as the game neared completion.

Also, the games real depth comes from a knowledge of the different goal cards. In this game, though I won, it was probably a bit more to do with luck than anything else. Becuase I didn't know what routes were important, we couldn't plan on the better ones.

I had a very good time playing Trainsport, and I think that it would get better every time.

Oh yeah, while waiting for Dan to arrive and after setting up Trainsport, Mike and I played 3 quick games of Pico 2. This is a very good game of out-guessing your opponent. Well, it is "very good" because it is an average game that plays really quick! But it's fun. And the art is cool.

After Trainsport, we tried out the prototype again. This time with 3 players. It's still fun.

Then, we played FITS. I cannot give enough thanks to Ted Alspach for releasing the expansion boards for FITS. Without them, the game would have grown stagnant. With them, I get very very low scores. But I have alot of fun doing it. We played 3 different expansions last night. The first was from the MOTS set, and featured a basic symbol scoring. I ended up with 9 points, Mike had 4 and Dan had 7.

THEN, we played this crazy expansion with lots of negative circles that you really should cover up. I didn't cover up many. I had -59 points. Dan had -33 and Mike....Mike seems to be FITS god. He had 65 points. Finally, we played a neat expansion that has a bunch of letter dots. Your goal is to, after dropping all the pieces, to take the uncovered letters and form 2 words. You score points for letters used and lose them for unused letters. And this is where things became violent.

Mike tried to tell us that "redousing" was a word. Dan disagreed. Mike wanted a dictionary. Dan pulled out his iPhone. I grabbed a dictionary. Bugs flew out of it. Redousing? Nope, not a word. What!, Says Mike. Nope, Says I. Not a word. Then Dan threatens to Re-Punch Mike if he keeps this up. Mike is scared. He knows that for Dan to Re-Punch him, there must be a punch that takes place before that. He thinks this over. Two punches? Nope, not worth it. Mike re-sulks into his corner. Re-Calculates his score. Then re-tells us his re-score. Mike re-had four points. Dan had 5. I had -20.

Thanks for gaming guys!

Chicago Session Report

I've posted a session report of last night's gaming session (on the new Chicago map from the Steam Brother's) on BGG. Here is the link:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/3869435

We also played Tinners' Trail, which I did not report on, but will gab about here. I have not played TT for a while now, but it remains one of my favorite middle weight Wallace games. At the WBC, Jim mentioned that he was lukewarm about it. Mind you, he didn't say that he disliked the game, only that it had not met his expectations.

This is easy to understand. We are dealing with Martin Wallace here, the king of the heavy economic games. And Tinners' Trail is not that. Instead if is a middle weight speculation game featuring some a cool time track that determines turn order, auctions, and a good bit of randomness via the dice roll for ore prices at the start of each turn.

But approach Tinners' Trail with the understanding that it is a middle weight game, and I hope that you will find that it does a brilliant job satisfying this niche.

In last nights game, I knew that I was in trouble from the start, when my "tried and true" tactic of starting a bunch of auctions for mines and then dropping out seemed to be backfiring on me. Instead of leaving the others cash poor, Jef and Jim had some very good mines that they got very cheap. Darn. Jim had some brilliant early rounds and sold a ton of ore, as did Jef. I, on the other hand, sold a minimal amount and did not hit up the investment boxes as hard as you need to in the early rounds. Further, my mines simply did not have enough goods to carry me through the end of the game.

In the end, Jim came out just above Jef and I was a distant third. But last nights game reaffirmed my enjoyment of this game and, for the time it takes, it really is a great game and was a brilliant first entry into Wallace's Treefrog Line.

Age of Steam: Washington DC

Last night was great, as always. John, Jef, Dan, and I played the Washington DC expansion for Age of Steam designed by Alban Viard.

Here is a link to the geeklist and the session report.

Baltimore & Ohio

We brought out Baltimore & Ohio for the first time last night. B&O was just released, as part of the Winsome Games Essen 2009 set. It has been compared to the 18XX genre of games and probably has a playing time of around 4-6 hours. I talked to Mike and Dan, and I asked if it would be okay to start the game with the goal of stopping half way and picking up where we left off next week. Everyone agreed and we were up and running after a good bit of rules talk. Like all Winsome games, the rules are short and are, overall, not that difficult to read through. However, the strategy is tough, and it takes some time to wrap your head around the different way that share price and the selling/buying of shares works. And heck, even then, you still have to figure out how they work to drive you towards winning the game.

The idea was sound, but the implementation didn't work last night. Mike and I were basically in the game, but Dan fell into a hole and probably was not going to dig himself out of it. I suspect that the problem had to do with the under-capitalization of his company. He started two and the second had a severe lack of money that was simply difficult to make up for. We also forgot to enforce a rule that would have kept Mike out of a profitable city early on, so Dan had alot stacked up against him.

We didn't finish the game last night. I believe that we ended about half way through, and my railroad had the highest share value of (I think) $120. We also decided that we would not continue with this particular game. I enjoyed the first half play, so I hope that we will get it out again soon. But I did know that it could not be fun for Dan to have to sit through what we all believed to be a losing situation. I am not sure if we will try the "complete half and then finish the next week" strategy or if we will do a weekend session, but again, I hope we play it soon.

PASOS: NE USA Session Report

I posted a Session Report from last night's game of Age of Steam using the Steam Brother's North Eastern USA expansion map.

I was very impressed with the map. The one major change in the rules are the addition of the Speculation action, which replaces production. Because of a reduced count of cubes on the initial production chart and because this action no longer exists, the ability to artificially increase shipment value via speculation is one of the keys to success on this map and the Steam Brother's did an excellent job making the action valuable. Kudos to them for taking the time to playtest and hone their map as much as they did.

Cars, blank, and Trains

I had Jef and Mike over last night for gaming. Dan is on vacaction, but he will be back next week. I also have gaming tonight, so I am going to keep this session report brief. I need to save my words for the Age of Steam session report on the NE USA map that we will have a go at.

Automobile: This was my nickel game of Automobile. This week, I made sure that I started with the full $2000. (Two weeks ago I shorted myself $1000 by accident). And, surprise, I didn't have to take out any loans this game. Jef was new to the game, so Mike and I went over the rules and in about 20 minutes we had started up the game. Jef had some strategically oriented questions at the beginning of the game, and Mike and I had some comments, but honestly, I will not yet claim that I am any good at this one. Both Mike and Jef honed in on the Mid-Range factories at the start of the game, while I singularly topped out productive capactivies of a Low-Range car. With 3 factories and a parts factory, I was able to consistently churn out 14 cars and sell them with the help of "Howard" and my distributors. Later, I bought into a high-range factory and in the last turn, I purchased the first mid-range factory on the board. This was perhaps the most interesting of my moves. I figured that I could shut it down via a special action to avoid loss cubes, but the cheap price of the factor really made it attractive (in my mind). At the end, I won the game by a wide margin. We played the game in about 45 minutes and I think that we will try to pull this out again soon. I hope that Jef is able to make future Wednesday gaming sessions as he would be a good addition to the team. Perhaps we will also try Lokomotive Werks again soon.

Unpublished Prototype: I really can't mention anything about this new game. But, I am very pleased with the components! Yeppers, I am getting better and better at making bits. Come check them out sometime.

Vom Kap bis Cairo: We had time for a 30 minute game at the end of the night and I had recently read the rules again for this excellent train game/auction and filler. This is a card game from adlung and features a deck of cards depicting different terrain types. The purpose of the game is to build a railroad over 8 terrain cards. A round is divided into two phases. In the first phase, N cards (N=number of players) are revealed and players simultaneously bid X dollars. The player with the highest bid chooses one of the cards and places it in front of their locomotive. This card now represents a terrain type that they have to build over. Then the other players, in bid order, choose a card as well.

After players have their cards, they are given the opportunity to build over them. Starting with the player who bid the most, and then going in clockwise order, a card is revealed from the deck. The cards, in addition to showing a terrain type, also show some number of track icons on them. These icons help you to build over the terrain. For example, a mountain takes 8 track icons to build over. For any missing icons you can pay $10 to complete the build if you want. If you choose not to build, you turn over another card, add it to the previous one, and the next player has the same choice. This continues until someone builds and then those cards are discarded. Once a player reaches the end of their current track (the card they bought that round) the round ends and another round begins.

I am so glad that I lost my "fear" of auction games as they are some of my favorite games due to the high level of chatter and player interaction that they bring along with them. Vom Kap bis Cairo, because of the theme, the game length, and the easy rules, is one of my favorite auction fillers. If you havn't tried this one out, I would suggest doing so.

2nd PASOS Meeting

Last night Scott and Jef joined my for a go at the Portugal map. This map is part of the 2009 Winsome Essen Set. I have posted a session report on boardgamegeek.

I also started up a geeklist to keep track of the maps that this group has played.

Finally, just a couple of random thoughts about the specifics of the group. Right now, I have high hopes to maintain weekly meetings on Thursday night. Both Scott and Dan can make bi-weekly meetings, and Jef has said that he could come weekly. This gives me a standard group of 3 players. But, and this is important, I really want the group to have at least 4 people for most of the sessions. This means that I need one more person to come on a regular basis or 2 people on a bi-weekly schedule. If I can't do this, then I will probably dial the group back to bi-weekly sessions.

3 Player Age of Steam is fun, don't get me wrong, but it is not 4 or 5 player Age of Steam. The game really shines at those player counts and I really want the majority of the sessions to have that count.

...Wabash Cannonball

And then Mike reminds me that I forgot to comment on Wabash Cannonball. It seems that it slipped my mind that I played the game. And, don't worry, I am never short of words when it comes to games. After End of the Triumvirate, we had plenty of time to play another three player game of Wabash Cannonball. Coming off of 3 straight near last place finishes at the WBC, I was primed to lose again.

Three player games are inherently different than 4 player games (in more ways than the simple player count) and it may be that we should try it out with 4 before too much time has passed. I didn't lose last night, I came in second. In the opening auction, I floated two companies (Red and Blue) at around $18 each and Mike started the Yellow railroad at around $20 and Dan took Green. Dan and I took more opportunities this time to Burn the Capitalize Action, but I am not sure if I totally understand why this is beneficial.

Truthfully, I am starting to grow frustrated with the game. It is no one's fault but my own, but I have yet to grasp the strategies. Right now, I still finish the game with enough intrigue to play again, but this will start to wane, and at some point I will probably set it aside. Until then, let's try a 4p game, perhaps in two weeks, and see if the tactics become more visible. I don't mind losing over and over again, that is not a problem, but I want to know why I am losing and why someone else wins. I want to understand how the stocks work and how the different actions taken (or not taken) influence the game. I know that these understandings exist, I just have to grasp them.

Wednesday Night: Memoir '44, Pico 2, End of the Triumvirate

Yesterday's gaming session included Memoir '44 (with the Air Pack), Pico 2, and End of the Triumvirate. A good night, but, you will find out that Memoir '44 is teetering right on the edge of the trade pile. It had better shape up or it's going to be shipped out.

Memoir '44 (w/ Air Pack): I have almost all of the Memoir '44 products, and I was thrilled to pick up the Air Pack in a trade with Jim Carvin. Mike, who has consistently maintained that he enjoys the game, was up for a game during the first half of the gaming night (before Dan arrives). He arrived at around 4:30 and I grabbed the Air Pack box and the box for the base game. I had heard good things about the new player aid cards in the game and the scenario setup rules, so I was excited to try out them out, and to fly some planes around the board. BUT, we spent a good 30 minutes setting up the scenario, trying to figure out the poorly written rules, and digging through different expansions for pieces, rules, and boards.

By the time we started to play, I was nearly fed up with the game. Look, I know that it is an expansion heavy game and that it is difficult to incorporate all the different packs into the scenarios, but I have the Air Pack and I want to fly planes! Why do the introductory scenarios in the book not utilize the planes in a way that eases you into the system!

I am a pretty good reader of rules, even if I have my fair share of questions afterwards. But if the rules are well written and formatted, I can generally understand them. I don't care if DoW included cards to help with the rules, they should be properly explained in one place in the rulebook. I shouldn't have to reference three different rule books and a number of different cards.

Then, Mike barely had the opportunity to fly the frickin plane. Because he couldn't bring a plane onto the board until daylight, he only had one turn to do it and it was not the strategically optimal play. So we spent around 20 minutes trying to figure out how to use the planes and then we didn't even get the chance.

Okay, I'll calm down now, but Memoir last night was frustrating. I won't give up on it yet, but it's ease of playability score is dropping like crazy and it needs to rise some if I am going to be able to play this in the future.

Pico 2: Yay! Now this game is easy to teach. You have a deck of 11 cards ranging from 4 to 13, and 16. Each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards. The remaining card is removed from the game. Then, each player simultaneously plays a card (they choose). They are revealed and the larger value card (assuming that it is not more than 2x larger) wins and goes in the players score pile. The lower valued card goes back into the other players hand. This continues until one player only has one card left in their hand. Each player totals their points (cards have a point value) and then they switch hands. While not as "deep" as Memoir '44, I like playing this game. It is only a 3 minute or so game, but it is a good way to pass the time while waiting for another play to arrive.

End of the Triumvirate: When Dan arrived, he brought along our next game. End of the Triumvirate is a 3 player only game set in ancient Rome. Each player takes on the role of a different politician, shuttling their token around the playing board to different locations. Each location that you control either produces troops or money and you use these to influence your position on the board. Money can be used to improve your Political or Miliatary competence or to earn you votes in the election. Troops help you to acquire additional locations.

There are three different ways to trigger the end of the game. One way is to capture a certain number of locations on the board, a military victory. Or, if you win the election two times you will achieve a political victory. Finally, if you achieve maximum competence on both the military and political tracks you will win.

I enjoyed playing, but I am not sure if it is a game I really like. Last night, I described it as a lighter Wallace game, akin to Byzantium or After the Flood. While this is not a perfect comparison, End of the Triumvirate definitely had the same "feel" without many of the confusing and fiddly rules that Wallace will often include in his game. Yet those rules and details add something to Wallace games that make them neat, so I would hesitate to totally discount their value.

The playing time was only about 45-60 minutes after the rules explanaion and it did not seem to have the 3p issue where 2 players will go after each other and thus leave the third free to win the game. Because of the different victory conditions, each player has to be aware of the others standing on the board. So, good game, I would play it again, and I need to play it again before I pass any real judgement on it.

Last night, I went for the political victory, Dan went after the military win, and Mike tried to be competent. Mike and I failed and Dan won. Interestingly, we were each 1 turn away from victory when Dan won the game.

14th Gathering of the Four Horsemen

Yesterday was the 14th Gathering of the Four Horsemen. It was a full day (9am-8pm) of gaming and we got in a record (?) number of games. Of the games played, my favorite was Martin Wallace's Railways of England and Wales. But, I will talk about that more in a minute. Below, are the games that we played and some brief comments for each:

The Kaiser's Pirates: GMT, so help me if you ever have a warehouse sale! Doug, in full blown war-gamer glee attacked the recent GMT warehouse clearance sale and ended up with a number of new games. Included in the booty was the Kaiser's Pirates, which we played yesterday. In this war game played with decks of cards, each player has 4 different German pirate raiders and 4 different civilian vessels. The point of the game is to sink opponent's ships to score victory points while protecting your own. A standard turn is composed of either attacking an opponent's commercial ship with one of your raiders or attacking one of their German raiders with an intercept card from your hand. These attacks will typically result in a damage cube, which lowers the die roll of that ship in the future, and thus makes it easier to destroy.

I have no major qualms with this game as we played it. The rules call for 3 rounds of game play, and a round ends when the deck of action cards runs out. Yesterday, it took us a good 90 minutes to play through the deck once and then we decided to end the game. That was fun, or at least it was manageable. If I had to play that game for two more rounds I would have slipped into a coma from boredom. It is an experience game, but that experience needs to know it's limits. In my opinion, PanzerZug is a much better game that accomplishes the same thing.

Tower of Babel: Next up was Tower of Babel, an older Knizia game. If I recall, Tom Vasel had given this game a very poor review, but I am on the fence. The game consists of player's attempting to complete the 8 wonders of the world. Each of the building sites has 3 different chits on them, showing one of the 4 building elements. The players also have hands of cards that similarly depict one of these elements. On your turn, you simply go to a building site and state that you are going to build that third of the site (by choosing one of the chits). Then, each player simultaneously makes an offering of some number of cards. Of the cards that match the symbol on the chit, the active player gets to choose the offerings that he/she wants. As long as enough elements are either chosen from other players, or added by the active player, that "third" of the building is completed. You want this to happen because if your offering is accepted you gain influence points on the building that you were working on. When that building is finally completed, you will gain victory points for majority control. If your offering is not accepted, you still gain victory points equal to the number of relevant cards you offered (matching the symbol). Finally, if you are the active player, you get to keep the chit which scores you points at the end of the game for duplicates of that type.

I have to disagree with some of the comments about this game. It is not terrible, but neither is it great. It plays quickly and is not difficult to teach, but it is very dependent on the other players. I can imagine gaming groups or simply games where one player, despite excellent play, loses because the others players want him or her to lose. Because of this, I would hesitant to outright recommend the game. I think that there are games out there that have this type of majority control scoring and rotating scoring that make the game attractive. China and Web of Power are examples, as is Knizia's Rome, an out of print but great game by GMT.

Railways of England and Wales: Alright! This is the latest Martin Wallace game (and probably last game) from FRED, in the Railroad Tycoon line of Age of Steam variants. What makes this game unique is that railroad control is share driven. I have not played any games in the 18XX series, but I have heard that this is akin to an 18XX lite game. Anyhow, at the start of the game, players are given the opportunity to purchase shares of one of the 6 different railroads. As soon as one player has the majority of a railroad's shares they become the president of that railroad and they will make the decisions concerning track building, mergers, and cube shipments. Money paid for the shares goes to the railroad for paying dividends and building track. Extra money can be acquired by the railroad by either issuing shares to the bank at the railroad's current share price or by issuing more shares to player's. Railroad income goes up or down during the dividends phase based on the amount of money that it pays out relative to it's base share/income price.

This is definitely an interesting game and one that I wouldn't mind playing again. I did find the linkage between railroad share price and payouts somewhat difficult to grasp at first, but I must have done something right (because I did win in the end). I think that the major reason for my victory was acquiring a large number of shares in one railroad and running it on a tight budget. I never had to issue shares to the bank, so dividend payouts were definitely undiluted. At the end of the game, I earned a great deal of money from the purple railroad. I was also able to acquire shares in other profitable railroads. I think that Doug especially made the mistake of purchasing share after share of his blue railroad which added money to the railroad that was not needed. Thus, he only succeeded in making each of his previously purchased shares less valuable. Sadly, I do not own Railroad Tycoon, nor do I plan on purchasing it. I like Age of Steam so much more, so I see no need to purchase a base system to play an expansion. The game is good, but I think that I get the same thing from other games such as Pampas Railroads or even Wabash Cannonball.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Yes! That's right, my pick of the day was this "classic" cooperative game from Milton Bradley. Buffy is a roll and move game where one player controls the forces of evil and the rest take on the roles of popular characters from the TV show. At the start of your turn you roll the movement dice and can move around the board collecting cards, trading cards, using cards, and attacking the evil vampires (or if you are evil, attacking the good players). It is a roll and move game, but I have a good time playing it. It is quick and the lone evil player still has a very active role in the game, because they have control of one main character and a number of minions. The game end conditions are set by the scenario that you play, and it does move along pretty quickly. Yesterday, for example, the game ended in about 20-30 minutes when Doug rolled TWO fangs and sired Buffy.

Space Alert: We played two games of Space Alert yesterday. So I have now played three games. My first game at BGG.Con was awful and I did not have a good time. My first game yesterday was awful, and I did not have a good time. But by the third game (second of the day), I finally began to gain an understanding of the game and it was a pleasant experience. In the game, players play down cards to program the actions of their characters in the spaceship. You run around pushing buttons which fire lasers, add energy to those lasers, activate robots, activate shields, add energy to the pool that the energy for the lasers is drawn out of, and, most importantly, "jiggle" the mouse so that the screen saver does not turn on. It is a cooperative game, and the negatives that you have to overcome are driven by a soundtrack provided with the game.

As I said before, I did not initially like this game. On my first two plays, I really didn't understand what the heck was going on and it makes for a ridiculous end game as your programmed moves are carried out. The most direct comparison here is Robo-Rally where your programmed moves can go astray, but at least you quickly get to re-program your robot (to some degree). Here, you are done and you have to sit there for some time knowing that you have screwed up and there is nothing you can do about it. Yet by the next go we all had a better idea of how to play the game and it was more fun. When things go right, it is a blast, or even if they go mostly right. It is only when the entire game/programming is a train wreck that I do not enjoy the game as much.

Snow Tails: The final game of the day was Snow Tails, and Ed wore his paper hockey helmet to celebrate the game (and boy did he look ridiculous). At the core, Snow Tails is a standard racing game. You start at the "start" line, race through a course, and finish at the "finish" line. But like most games, it is how you do that middle part that makes it unique. Each player has a dog sled that features three slots for cards. Two spots in the front of the sled represent your pulling power and one in the back for your brake level. Each player has their own deck of cards with values ranging from 1 to 5. The decks are shuffled differently, but each deck is the same. You also have a hand of 5 cards (minus any dent cards you have received by crashing into things). On your turn, you can play 1 to 3 cards, but played cards all have to have the same numerical value. Then, you add up the two front cards, subtract your brake level and move forward that number of spaces. The trick is that if your two front cards are not equal, then your sled will veer off to the left or to the right. For example, if your front cards are a 4 and a 1, and your brake is a 2, then you will go forward 3 spaces and also go 3 spaces to the left.

This was my second go at this game, my first taking place at PrezCon and I had a much better experience this time. In my first game, we used a harder course with trees and tighter turns, and it was not conducive for a learning game. We played an easier course, and it allowed us to really see how the cards interacted with the sled movement for neat results. And that is the key to my enjoyment of the game. I realized that there are certain games where "neat" results can happen. This game is one of them, where the interaction between the sled movement, the 2 front cards, and the brake card can make for some really cool maneuvering. Agricola is another. But sometimes, neatness doesn't happen, and I find that frustrating. I must be like a whiny child at the point, I see cool stuff happening around me, and I want to do it too!

As far as racing games go, I have to admit that I still like Robo-Rally more. But this game has a great theme and it is definitely worth a go.

After Snow Tails I headed home. Tomorrow, I may head out to the Central PA Games Club meeting, but I also have a good bit of work to take care of, so we will see.