Wall of Maps

Back at my old apartment in South Berkeley I used to have two walls of maps. The first one was in the living room and it was a combination of many of the maps from TSR's Forgotten Realms game. The second one was in my office and it was made up of several Gloranthan maps, running from Corflu, up the River of Cradles, to Balazar via Dagori Inkarth.

After I moved into North Berkeley with Kimberly neither wall ever got put back up. For one, Eric's Forgotten Realms game was by this time done, for another I lost any focus on doing RPG writing for a couple of years, and for a third I didn't actually have much wall space in my teeny little office--just windows, closet doors, book shelves, and a slight bit of space behind my computer.

Well, these last months I've finally be doing real Glorantha writing again, and more often than not I've been flipping through maps. In conjunction with that, I'd opened up a very large wall in my office when I rearranged things earlier this year. So, finally, the Gloranthan wall of maps has gone back up.

( The Wall of Maps )

There are a couple of new maps now, one nice map of the Lunar Empire produced by the Unspoken Word, and a glossy map of Dragon Pass that came in Dragon Pass. I also put up the world maps and Big Rubble this time around, because I had spaces to fill.

The biggest problem is that of the 8 maps I have up, they're in 6 different scales. Even the three maps alledgedly at the same scale (River of Cradles, Dagori Inkarth, Balazar) aren't quite the same (though I learned the original Dagori Inkarth map is closer than the newer one, though it's not quite as nice; I used it anyway). The two prettiest maps, the new glossy, color ones, are also the hardest to see due to light reflections. And, I can't put up the map of the Elder Wilds because it's on the back of the map of Balazar.

Ah well. Anyway, it'll be nice reference as I continue to work on the Elf Book.

The Emperor's New EndGame

Went to EndGame tonight with a rarity, a new game that I really wanted to play. I don't usually bring new games to EndGame, but this time around I figured that it might be awhile before I played it on my review night, and I thought I really might like it. (And, I did, but more on that in a second.)

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First game of the night was Loco! which is a very simple Reiner Knizia game. There are five colors of cards, from 0-5, and also six chips in each of those colors. Each turn you play a card, then you take a chip of any color. The game ends when all six cards of any one color have been played, then each chip is worth the value of the last card played for that color.

It's a clever little mechanism, and a fine enough filler game, but I didn't feel like it held up to other similar games, like the recent Geschenkt. In particular, the control level felt almost non-existent, since each card wiped out everything before it. And, if you got dealt a hand of middling cards, you could never be sure what color was safe to bid on.

Chris A., Sam, and I played Loco! twice as other people showed up. I won at least one of those games, but don't really remember much beyond that, which says something about the game. It's a fine filler, but I've got better ones, so I can't see picking up a copy. If I were to review it for RPGnet I'd give it a 3 Style (the chips are nice, but the cards are flimsy) and a 3 Substance (average).

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The game I'd been wanting to play tonight was In the Shadow of the Emperor, a new HiG game. It's one part majority control, with you trying to take control of seven different electorates, but you then use those electorates to vote on the new emperor. There are some privileges for being emperor (including breaking ties), and some privileges for controlling each electorate. Beyond that the heart of the game is an action point system where you buy actions each turn based on limited cards (meaning each action is only available 1-4 times). And there's a clever aging system for your majority control tokens getting older too.

After one play, I'd call In the Shadow of the Emperor a superb game. It's very rich, with the depth of possibilities alternatively reminding me of Puerto Rico and El Grande. Yeah, that's pretty high praise, and I don't know if the game will have the same replayability as either of those greats, but it's the best heavy weight game I've seen in 2005, and I like it at least as well as my favorite heavy weights from 2004.

This game was between Chris A., David, Sam, and myself, and unfortunately all of the other 3 players had varying problems with Analysis Paralysis. I think that's going to be a real problem for a lot of people in this game because there at least seem to be a lot of choices. Our total gameplay lasted about 2.5 hours, which was maybe .5 hours longer than the game could easily stand.

I wasn't really sure of a strategy at the start, so I just sort of tossed my initial barons out at places where competition looked weak. I ended up with one barony which gave me a free baron every turn, and a diocese which gave me a Victory Point every turn. I was able to leverage those into a game win through hard play throughout the game. There are some real tactics here, and also an interesting incentive to lose control of districts (because you get VPs when you win them back).

Overall, a very intriguing game!

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Last game of the night was Pueblo, which I'd also brought. I think I've written before that I suck at this game of trying to build up a pueblo while hiding the blocks of your own color. I sucked at it again tonight with a last place showing against David, Alex, and Bob, who had one play of the game between them all, to my three or four plays.

I'm not even sure what I do wrong. I think I need to find some good strategy articles on the game.

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It was a great night of play--two new games, including one that I'd really been wanting to play, and an old game that I like quite a bit.