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Various Games
Apr. 29th, 2006 08:25 pmI've had a good gameplaying week. I played a total of 10 games, each one of them unique, with a few new ones and a one old classic. A few notes:
Divine Right: An old classic that I haven't played in 10+ years. This simplified fantasy wargame has taken on quite a bit of nolstalgia in my head, but I wasn't expecting it to be a particularly good game, so I wasn't disappointed.
There are some interesting systems, mind you, prime among them the ability to ally neutral countries, but there's huge doses of randomness and chaos in the game that don't really befit its length. We played 5 hours. 4 of the 6 players were eliminated, and there were just 3 turns left with myself and Eric F. still in the game. We looked at my 150+ victory points and his 10 victorty points, and agreed that there was no way he could either make up the difference or have any chance of killing my ruler in the timeframe, and so we called it.
Rulers, by the by, are extremely vulnerable in the game, a characteristic that I've seen in some other period games, such as Conquest of the Empire. 3 of the 4 players were eliminated somewhat by surprise when their ruler missed a survival roll. The fourth ruler went out on a survival roll too, but it was after every one of his troops had been destroyed, so that wasn't too much of a surprise.
Divine Right is one of those games that suggests that you draw random chits (here, for turn order) out of a mug. I said "Make sure to get a mug that no one will try to drink out of," foreseeing confusing between the chit mug and food. What I didn't foresee was that Eric F.'s cheese dip looked a lot like a chit mug. On the second or third turn, Eric F. finished up his turn and tossed his turn order chit into the cheese. We all stared in disbelief, then cracked up.
Overall we had fun with Divine Right, but I don't expect we'll be returning to it. Dave W. had been nagging for it over the last year or so, but I expect that'll stop now.
Ostia: I played this game on Thursday, and it was my second play. The game has gotten a lot of mediocre press, but after two games I think it's a pretty good social game. There's lots of auctions and lots of simultaneous selection, but I don't consider the game overrepetitive for its length. Instead I think it's a great logistical game that packs a lot into its slightly more than an hour timeframe.
We had what I would guess was a very unusual situation in our Thursday game, which was a three-way tie. At the end of the game the scores were 11/11/11/11/10. Mike B. was eliminated immediately. I was then eliminated on the first tie-breaker, which was number of warehouses built. I just had 3, while everyone else had 4. The final tiebreaker was value of the goods stored away. Everyone had the exact same four goods, hence the four-way tie.
Though it was quite close, the game could have easily changed. If I'd had $2 more at the end, or Mike A. $2 less, I'd have won on money and scored 12 points rather than 11. Likewise Mike A. could have broken the final tie-breaker by storing "better" goods at the end if he hadn't wasted some goods in a futile attempt to influence the senate.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and the finale actually made it that much more riveting.
Marvel Marvin's Marvelous Marble Machine: A fine, fine abstract where you try and guide marbles through a confusing machine. I think playing with 5 gave us maximal chaos because any other number of players can play teams. Thus it's gone into my play-again-pile (with any number other than 5) before a review.
Other games played this week included: Travel Blokus (with the wife; it didn't go well), Blue Moon, Glory to Rome (a 3-player game where I badly miscalculated the end-game scores; I think this game plays much better with these smaller numbers), Palazzo, It's Mine (a fine "speed Ra"), Industrial Waste (an interesting game that I felt broke down at the endgame, though that may be my inexperience), Carcassonne: Hunters & Gathers, and Warp 6.
Divine Right: An old classic that I haven't played in 10+ years. This simplified fantasy wargame has taken on quite a bit of nolstalgia in my head, but I wasn't expecting it to be a particularly good game, so I wasn't disappointed.
There are some interesting systems, mind you, prime among them the ability to ally neutral countries, but there's huge doses of randomness and chaos in the game that don't really befit its length. We played 5 hours. 4 of the 6 players were eliminated, and there were just 3 turns left with myself and Eric F. still in the game. We looked at my 150+ victory points and his 10 victorty points, and agreed that there was no way he could either make up the difference or have any chance of killing my ruler in the timeframe, and so we called it.
Rulers, by the by, are extremely vulnerable in the game, a characteristic that I've seen in some other period games, such as Conquest of the Empire. 3 of the 4 players were eliminated somewhat by surprise when their ruler missed a survival roll. The fourth ruler went out on a survival roll too, but it was after every one of his troops had been destroyed, so that wasn't too much of a surprise.
Divine Right is one of those games that suggests that you draw random chits (here, for turn order) out of a mug. I said "Make sure to get a mug that no one will try to drink out of," foreseeing confusing between the chit mug and food. What I didn't foresee was that Eric F.'s cheese dip looked a lot like a chit mug. On the second or third turn, Eric F. finished up his turn and tossed his turn order chit into the cheese. We all stared in disbelief, then cracked up.
Overall we had fun with Divine Right, but I don't expect we'll be returning to it. Dave W. had been nagging for it over the last year or so, but I expect that'll stop now.
Ostia: I played this game on Thursday, and it was my second play. The game has gotten a lot of mediocre press, but after two games I think it's a pretty good social game. There's lots of auctions and lots of simultaneous selection, but I don't consider the game overrepetitive for its length. Instead I think it's a great logistical game that packs a lot into its slightly more than an hour timeframe.
We had what I would guess was a very unusual situation in our Thursday game, which was a three-way tie. At the end of the game the scores were 11/11/11/11/10. Mike B. was eliminated immediately. I was then eliminated on the first tie-breaker, which was number of warehouses built. I just had 3, while everyone else had 4. The final tiebreaker was value of the goods stored away. Everyone had the exact same four goods, hence the four-way tie.
Though it was quite close, the game could have easily changed. If I'd had $2 more at the end, or Mike A. $2 less, I'd have won on money and scored 12 points rather than 11. Likewise Mike A. could have broken the final tie-breaker by storing "better" goods at the end if he hadn't wasted some goods in a futile attempt to influence the senate.
Anyway, we had a lot of fun, and the finale actually made it that much more riveting.
Marvel Marvin's Marvelous Marble Machine: A fine, fine abstract where you try and guide marbles through a confusing machine. I think playing with 5 gave us maximal chaos because any other number of players can play teams. Thus it's gone into my play-again-pile (with any number other than 5) before a review.
Other games played this week included: Travel Blokus (with the wife; it didn't go well), Blue Moon, Glory to Rome (a 3-player game where I badly miscalculated the end-game scores; I think this game plays much better with these smaller numbers), Palazzo, It's Mine (a fine "speed Ra"), Industrial Waste (an interesting game that I felt broke down at the endgame, though that may be my inexperience), Carcassonne: Hunters & Gathers, and Warp 6.