I like this game since it has dice and it has mechanics that mitigate the randomness of the dice. But I have yet to win the game. This game had some new players in it. So it turned out that everyone played with group-think. Which I absolutely hate. Because I seem to loose out on arguing my case or convince others to change their plans and hose someone else. When I hear things like “and you can move the Supervisor here to hurt Mark” and “okay”, I just cringe. It was no surprise that I did not enjoy playing this game…
We played this quick and lightly meaty game as a partnership game. Our team maxed out the orange color first. So I turned to other colors. Unfortunately, red was our Achilles heel and it proved to be our downfall.
This is a new game that I wanted to try. It is a bidding game that uses four currencies for five auctions. You bid on chips that give you actions in three categories: money, victory points, and drawing cards. Also, there are two structures that you must build that will let you score more victory points. If you don’t build the church, then you cannot score past 25 and if you don’t build the cathedral, then you cannot score past 45. So it is imperative that you keep some money to build those structures when you need them.
I like the tiles in this game. They have a great build quality to them. And I like the Tichu-ness of the game play. We played only five rounds (for the number of players). I think that this was too little as it doesn’t offset the luck of the draw. But still, its an alright game.
Next up was Sticheln. With four players, I think it starts pushing into unpredictable territory. It is at its best with three players. And I like the feeling of impending doom that this game gives you. On my hand, I had some poor choices. So I went for the blue suit (10, 8, 5, 3 – I think). I was a bad sign when someone else chose blue as well. Luckily for me, I was able to duck under the tricks on my 10 and 8 card! Phew!
WTF? Is someone drinking biscuits at this convention?
I like this old Knizia game. Part of its charm is the “what if” scenarios that you imagine when you pair up famous actors in old movies. The new re-release is just ugly. They use fake but recognizable parody names. Gah! Anyways, I was surprised that my 19 green movie was able to hold up for the whole game. It got me best picture for two years and best picture overall. At the end I was trying to finish any one of three yellow movies. I just needed one chip each. But it was not to be. Still, I finished in first though.
Since I have been playing 42 at lunch lately, I had to play this tournament. My partner, Brandon, was new to 42 and I tried to teach him all that I knew in the time before it started. He did well though. What was different was the utter lack of variants that we used during the tournament. The two were that you could call doubles as their own suit and that you could call nillo at anytime. You couldn’t lead the low side of a bone or splash or plunge. I think that the nillo at anytime is just too powerful though.
In the first game, I came across an interesting ethical dilemma. Due to the table, I had difficulty shuffling the bones. Sometime, one would flip over. So when someone told me that they had noticed that the 6:5 flipped up and then tracked it during the shuffle, I was not happy. They declared that they were going to take advantage of people messing up. When it happened again, that person would stare like a hawk during the shuffle. Of course, trying to speed up the shuffle was not helping matters. Afterwards, Marty told me a good way to combat that by taking the tile and one other and putting them behind your back. You then swap them or not and replace them on the board.
Oftentimes, I might be able to see someone’s cards during a game. I either don’t look at them or if it is just too obvious, then warn them. Thankfully, our game group does not have this type of person playing at it.
On the second round, one of the opposing teammates called nillo a lot. Like three times. And was set each time. So from my experience, the winning percentage of nillo calls during this tournament was not very good (like 25% or so).
On the third and final round, our score went from 0/3 to 3/4 to 3/6. I never had a hand worth bidding. How sad… Still, it was a blast!