Battlelore

I convinced John to play Battlelore with me and since he hadn’t played it before, he gave it a try. When I arrived at Gravitt’s house, he still had same gamers from his day games. They convinced me to go to Chuy’s with them to eat (sadly I had already eaten before coming over).

Finally after dinner was over, we started playing. Since John was new to this game system, I explained the rules to him. And then we started out playing a basic scenario. Too bad he didn’t like it. Shockingly enough, he compared it to Titan by saying it was just as bad. Sigh.

Antiquity

Ed and Susan held another gaming day and the group made the long trek up north. Susan wanted to play Antiquity. Jon and myself eagerly jumped in. Paul volunteered to play as well. After explaining the rules, we jumped in. I started out strong but then bogged down. I was playing a little too conservatively and not pushing my economy. In this game, if you do not have enough food, you take graves. These graves take up spots and can disable buildings. But you can man a hospital to remove the graves. So it is only temporarily punishing once you bring enough food to meet the demand. It is definitely a balancing act where you want to efficiently use your workers. I tried out the forced labor building. But I wasn’t that efficient in using that building either. When Jon announced that he could win the game in two turns, I scrambled madly. And it was at that point that I realized that I could use the market to get the goods I needed to also win the game. Doh! I already had one winning condition with Santa Maria. It then came down to a tie breaker. So we carefully counted unpolluted areas in our control. And I pipped Jon for the win.

Paul was definitely having problems in this game. He wasn’t bringing in enough food to keep ahead of the famine level. So he started taking graves. When it was clear that he was going to lose the game, we allowed him to remove all of his graves and ignore further ones. Next, he realized that he was out of wood. In this game, it takes wood to make more wood. So we gave him a couple of freebies. Unfortunately for this game, the first game that you play is a learning experience. Your goal is to stay alive during the game. And you can’t hope to win your first game unless everyone is is a newbie too.

Die Säulen von Venedig

Ed brought another new game to the table. This one looks like it has interesting bits and a bit of theme. But it also has some problems. There are cards that give you abilities and, from a hand of five, you select one, simultaneously reveal it, execute it in turn order, and then pass it to the player on your left. You do this until you run out of pylons. The cards are (generally):

• Take control of the gondolier. If a building is built on the river, then you score points.
• Take pylons and mark some of them as owned. Buildings are built on pylons. If you build on a pylon that is owned by another player, you still score all of your points, but, the other player scores three points for each of their pylons that you use.
• Take buildings from the stock. The builds come in different shapes and victory points that they generate.
• Perform the action that someone else has performed during this turn.
• If someone plays a certain type of card, then you get six points. There are three types of cards that correspond to three of the above actions.
• You can pick a person and spy on them. Take one of their cards and give them something else.
• You can cover marked pylons and not give those people any victory points. Ouch.

The problems in this game is the simultaneous reveal and guessing what others will do. Since you must build your buildings on pylons that someone has placed, another person can take up the only spot on the board if they build before you. Another problem is the power of the start player. They get to pick a person and randomly take a card from them. Another card from your hand is given back to them. Ugh. Also, your actions are limited to what cards you have in your hand. So if people upstream play cards that are not beneficial to you, then those cards are going into your hand. You must keep an eye on this during the game.

I made a couple of mistakes during this game (after post game analysis, of course). I got second place though so I wasn’t too upset. Ed probably hates me because I picked on him once during the game (there was a choice of two places to cover and not give any victory points to players).

Perikles

Ahhh, I have been dying to try this game out. And Jon was nice enough to enable me. Susan also wanted to play it to decide if she wanted to buy it.

The only problem was that I played this game past my bed time. So I made a major mistake in the final round. Ugh! And when I got home and went to be at 12am, I woke up four hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep. Major ugh!! I have noticed that my sleep cycle is highly fragile… Still, I had fun playing it. And want to play it again.

Another sad thing is that our gaming group do not like many Wallace games. They like Age of Steam, Volldampf, maybe Tempus, and possibly Liberté, but do not like Struggle of Empires, Byzantium, Empires of the Ancient World, Perikles, or Princes of the Renaissance.

Formidable Foes

I received Formidable Foes on a game order and had to play it. It is the third in a series of Friedemann Friese games (Fische Fluppen Frikadellen and Fearsome Floors being the first two). You have bartered with Prince Fieso and have escaped his monster, Furunkulus. Now you must fight in a dungeon!

There are 46 monsters, Prince Fieso, Furunkulus, and two treasure chests. Fighting is really simple, just roll two dice (one for the monster (2,3,3,4,4,4) and one for the player (1,1,1,2,2,3)) and subtract the player from the monster. You pay the difference in power chips and with a -1 difference you instead get one gold. Both you and the monsters have wisdom. You cannot fight wiser monsters than you. For less wise monsters that you can fight, you advance to the wisdom of the monsters level + a constant modifier (different based on the number of players). If the monster is too dumb (where you cannot get any wiser), then the monster dies of fright.

Most of the dungeon is hidden and is only revealed when you beat a monster in front of you and you can now see past it. Intersections in this dungeon are randomly determined when you can see them. So there is a little bit of variability in this game.

Because you can sometimes loose up to three power chips when you fight monsters and usually loose at least one, you must sometimes choose not to fight and rather grab some more power chips. This has the effect of stalling your progress in the game. You do not keep pace in the wisdom department. And other people are killing the monsters that you are able to kill. So there is another way to gain wisdom. And that way is to follow people and learn from them. The problem with this approach is that you only gain one wisdom point per turn.

Another equalizing mechanic is the dumbest player. Whoever has the least wisdom is the dumbest player. This mechanic is enabled after the 23rd monster enters the dungeon. The dumbest player is not in contention for winning the game. And therefore can control the dumbest monster to possibly hose other players. At the start of your turn, you can move the dumbest monster up to three chambers. As the monster walks to the new location, it can pick up a player. If the carried player passes another monster, that person is dropped off.

The game ends when both the prince and Furunkulus are killed. Your victory points are the total of the gold coins on the monsters that you have killed. This game had a lack luster first impression. It was definitely not as fun as Fearsome Floors. I will have to play it another time to see if it is worth keeping.

Himalaya

John brought Himalaya to the house and suggested it. I definitely wanted to try it out. Adam countered with Zepter. Himalaya is a simultaneous path traversal game. You program six moves during a round and then reveal it. Everyone then executes their moves in turn order. This mechanic creates a lot of conflict in this game. The two main types of conflict are in picking up resources and fulfilling resource demands. There are five resources that are ordered by priority. You always pick up one of the goods in priority order. So, if someone arrived at a spot and picked up the only good before you could, you are hosed. If they picked up a good of a color that you wanted, you are hosed. Each location on the map might possibly demand goods. The demand can be from one to three goods. The first person to arrive at the spot and drop the goods off get some choices. Other people are screwed. The choices can be to place the only statue at the spot (giving from 1 to 3 points), place men in a region (for an majority win in influence), or take some number of herds that were represented on the chit.

Three times during the game, you score for majorities in goods collected (gaining 3 victory points for each majority). And at the end of the game you compete in three contests: most points in statues, most number of herds, and most influence in the regions. The winner of the game is the person that does the best in these contests.

Unfortunately for me, this is a guessing game. And Doug was able to get to spots that I was planning on going to before me and hose me. A lot. This is essentially a guessing game where, if you guess differently than other people, you will win. Not the type of game that appeals to me.