Memoirs of a Board Gamer

For several years, we've been hosting a monthly game night and even with our modern busy schedules, we've been able to find a quorum from those fifteen people to gather for a game or two. There are times when we've had enough to split into two tables but that's rare.

Although Lisa is still recuperating from an illness, she felt that her recovery had progressed to the point that we decided to jump start the group again after canceling a few months. We ended up with seven last night so we grabbed 7-Wonders so that we could all stick together for the first game. Five of us were already familiar with the game so we ran through the rules for one of the couples. It's nice when other people who outwardly proclaim they are not gamers lean in to help new players through tough decisions or for rule clarifications. And they don't call themselves gamers; well I beg to differ!

7-Wonders is one of those odd games that it takes a while to get through the rules: what different cards do, how you score points, how you build resources to have enough of them to build cards in the future, how the "free" building works when you've built the appropriate predecessors, etc. But in the end, if you play it once, odds are, you'll like it. I've yet to see anybody (even people who say they don't even like games) not get it. Many new players (and old for that matter) want to play it again immediately afterward. The great thing about the game is that it plays in roughly the same amount of time (about 30-45 minutes) regardless of the number of players you have. The game is family accessible; you can easily have younger kids pair up with adults to help make partner-based decisions. There is one expansion already out and another due this summer that officially introduces partnership play. I'm really looking forward to it.

We spent a lot of time after the game just hanging out, talking about kids, costs of colleges, etc. and generally had a nice evening sitting around the table chatting. After one couple left, I pulled out China and with the five that remained we quickly ran through the rules and got started.

China is a really great game by Michael Schacht. If you've not played it you really need to pick up a copy if you can find it. China is another game that plays well with several different numbers of players (the double sided-board provides different maps depending on the number of players) and like 7-Wonders, you can play it and be boxing it back up in less than 45 minutes, an amazing feat given the depth of the game in such a simple package.

Lisa survived the ordeal without any long term physical issues so we're both glad she's on the mend and ready to do it again next month. Now, I'm off to pick out a game for the two of us to play later this afternoon.

Lisa and I like Oregon but like many games, it's been awhile since it's seen the table. It's easy and quick to play. Sometimes you feel forced to make the best of bad cards but it has proven to be a good activity for us to spend some time together without too much heavy lifting.

She mentioned Stone Age so we dusted it off and gave it a go. In the past, we'd played the heck out of it the first few months we had it but it has been a long time since it's seen the table. It does play a bit mechanically once you get the hang of it but we were both glad to have let it out to see the light of day again.

Next up we played three or four games of Kingdom Builder. We even played one game with the same set of boards and only shuffled the cards to see how differently it played. Lisa won the first game handily and I felt trapped in a corner. The second game I won by a decent margin so, at least in that board set up, the cards can make a huge difference. There's not much heavy lifting in Kingdom Builder but Lisa really likes it for a nice activity to pass the time on a lazy evening.

When Lisa felt up to learning a brand new game, I pulled out Hawaii intending only to introduce her to the game but with only two, we quickly finished and she said she liked it but could see that it would be completely different with more players. With two, it's relatively easy to purchase the stuff you want but with more players, the goods are scarce! Cool "feet-ples".

I pulled out Terra Nova, a game I got for free a couple of years ago but had never played, and after only a few moves, Lisa was ready to pack it up. She's not one to like abstract thinky games. Players start with all their "guys" on the board and then move them around reminiscent of the Hey! That's My Fish! mechanic but instead of pulling tiles up you wall off territory and in an area majority game mechanic earn points. She really didn't like it and felt that every move she made would make her feel silly when the next player (me!) took advantage of a weakness of position. Too "chessy" she called it.

Lisa has always like Lost Cities and the few times we've played the board game version she's always had fun. We'd never played it with just the two of us but we gave it a shot and it was an enjoyable activity for the night. I like it better with more players but the mechanics work well and it's light enough we could talk about other things while we played and grumbled about not getting the cards we needed :-)

Tonight we pulled out Rattus with the Pied Piper expansion. Rattus works much better with more players and we played with the incorrect rules for the Soldier making the Nun card too powerful. Lisa took great advantage of that but could feel that something was amiss. Still, we had a good time. Lisa was ready to play another game back to back so it's a winner and a keeper.

We failed to get Dominant Species to the table during Cabin Con 2012 but in this month's game night we brought out the great beast and finally gave it a go.

I was first taken by the artwork. It's not everybody's cup of tea but, for me, it falls in line with another recent title Vanuatu and to some degree, another one of my favorites Tal der Könige. Its beauty is in its simplicity. A 3rd printing is due to ship later this summer and although they've boosted up the richness they've kept, for the most part, a simple design. I'm very tempted to purchase the 3rd edition but more on that a bit later.

I'll not really go into the rules much as there are many. The game has a listed play time on BGG as 3 hours and we managed to get it done (the first playing for all six of us) in about 4.5 hours. So, yes, it's a big commitment for those used to much shorter games. The rulebook weighs in at 20 pages so, again, a big commitment. I, unfortunately can't speak to the quality of the rules, as I was taught the game by others, a rarity in my group since I'm one of the two to three teachers. Another rarity is that I don't already own a copy...yet.

At a high-level, the game felt like El Grande mixed with Vanuatu: chaotic area majority mixed with a modular board and worker placement. Players take on the role of one of six creatures (insect, arachnid, amphibian, bird, reptile, mammal) and begin the game with a set of worker pawns and species cubes (the numbers are determined by the number of players). The board is populated with an initial set of terrain tiles that represent different scoring opportunities, the beginning of a glacier/tundra (placed on top of the center hex), and "element" chits of various types (grub, grass, sun, seed, meat, water) at the corners of the terrain tiles. Different animals begin the game with an innate ability to prosper in hexes that have specific element chits at their corners (e.g. insects like grass for example).

Image submitted to BGG by Nicolas Acosta - Used with permission

Your job, is to try to grow the hexes of the earth to score points, and to populate and create majorities (dominance) of your species cubes by placing them onto and migrating them to appropriate terrain tiles. Which tiles are appropriate for your species changes over time as well as your ability to survive disasters, adapt to changing conditions, etc. There are two types of dominance for any given terrain tile. The first only requires you have to have at least one cube on the tile but the value is determined by evaluating the element chits that are at the corners of the hex as they related to your creature. If you're better/stronger at surviving on that terrain type given the elements that are available, then your creature will be dominant. This comes into play throughout the game when scoring a tile for victory points. The second type of dominance is more like El Grande in that you determine the ranking of species on the tile based on the number of cubes. In a very thematic manner, ties are determined by the natural pecking order of species (e.g. birds are generally higher on the food chain so they would break a tie with insects). Again, this ranking scores points for numerous players when the tile scores throughout the game. Depending on the tile's terrain type, points are awarded for as few as 1 player (only first place) on tundra to as many as 4 players for sea and wetlands. The more players that can earn points on the tile, the more the tile is worth. For example, a tundra tile earns the single player only 1 point. But a sea tile earns the 1st-4th players 9, 5, 3,and 2 points respectively.

Image submitted to BGG by Brian P - Used with permission

Each round, in turn order (this is also variable), players place their "workers" on one of the action "eyeballs" one player at a time until all workers have been placed. There are 12 actions available to each player when placing their worker but there are limited locations to place a worker. The earlier in the round you go (the variable turn order), the more likely you'll be able to place a worker on the location your absolutely need to have. In other words, like many worker placement games, you can get shut out of taking a particular action. After all workers have been placed on the actions (intitative, adaptation, regression, abundance, wasteland, depletion, glaciation, speciation, wunderlust, migration, competition, and dominance) the workers are pulled off and in a top-to-bottom/left-to-right order and the action performed. The actions can be roughly summarized in order as: adjust turn order, become better at surviving in tiles with specific elements, protect yourself from losing the ability to thrive as well in certain elements, place elements on the board, destroy elements on the board, actively target a specific element on the board, place a new glacier/tundra tile (displacing many species on the tile), place cubes on the board, lay out a new terrain tile, move cubes around on the board, attack species cubes, score a tile.

At first, the number of actions is daunting. There are so many variables it's difficult to get your head around what represents a good move. The moves themselves are relatively simple but choosing what to do when...well, that's where the fun is. When a tile is scored, the player (if one exists) that has the element-style of dominance, which may not necessarily be the player who chose to score the tile, or strangely enough, may not even be a player who earned any points for scoring the tile, has the option of choosing a card. The cards contain text that describe what occurs immediately when the card is chosen. Some cards grant players points, others create catastrophic impacts on the board killing species, destroying elements, triggering the growth of tundra, etc. Again, the El Grande similarities are strong here.

As I said, the game ran 4.5 hours. Very long for my group and, in general, long for my tastes as well. However, I really enjoyed the game. The theme really helped me like it more than, say, a space-themed game. The theme was well integrated so the rules, felt, well, right. Easy to understand and keep straight. I really look forward to another play and given that the 3rd printing is coming out soon and given they've kept the artwork relatively simple, I'll most likely lose my willpower and purchase a copy for my collection.

I first played Hawaii at Great Lakes Games 2011. At the time, the only production version available was from Germany and I really wanted to take it for a lap around the table. I don't read German but, luckily, I found someone to teach it to me and with only that one play, I was hooked. I preordered the English version from Rio Grande Games and in the few weeks since it arrived, I've managed to play a few games solo (playing three players). I can't really give a solid review of the game per se given that I've not played it enough times "live" but I thought I'd regurgitate my thoughts up to this point.

Hawaii doesn't fit neatly into any one particular category of games exhibiting flavors of worker placement, set collection, and resource management. The board, like the game Luna, comes as numerous narrow strips and when assembled like a puzzle, leaves an enclosed, unpopulated area in the middle. Numerous cards/market-stalls (the same for every game) are shuffled and randomly placed within this area to form the island. The board is directional with a beach and smaller islands on the southern border and the randomized market stalls stretching to the north.

In front of each player is a little hut to hold secretly, resources gathered during the round (i.e. shells, fruit, and feet...yes feet)as well as an angular shaped piece of cardboard (much like the game Vikings) where collected tiles will be placed while building villages. In addition, each player is represented on the board with a large meeple. The game is played over several rounds where players, in turn order (variable from round to round), starting at the beach, travel/walk from market to market buying the goods that each market is offering. Players must pay feet to travel from one market to the next and they must pay shells to buy the goods. The goods offered come in various types: (village huts, tiki masks, boats, hula dancers, surfers, fruit, gods, etc.) On each turn, it's up to each player to decide which market to visit and in which order to visit them. The number of goods for sale in each market varies from round to round as well as the price of each good. In general, the earlier you arrive, the cheaper the good but there's no way to predict the price of any goods from round to round or how many will be available since each market stall uses a nifty randomization mechanism where one to N spaces are populated with markers pulled from a bag. The markers have numbers from two to six (the cost in shells to buy a good). Each market also has a limit on the total cost of all goods available from that market in the round. If you pull a token causing the sum to be too larger, the token is NOT placed in the market (one less good available that round) and the token is flipped over and represents fish that can be gathered with another action in the round.

Most purchased items are placed directly into your personal village building area according to some relatively simple rules. Some tiles provide more goods of a certain kinds at the beginning of each round (e.g. additional feet, shells, fruit) but provide no points, others score end game points, etc. However, to score any end game points, you must make sure that your village is long enough. And of course, you can buy items (tiki masks) to reduce the length you personally need to make the village to score points at the end of the game. It's unfortunate but it does happen that you may not be able to score anything for a village you've worked hard at but failed to complete by game end.

Resources can be tight at times (oh....I wish I had one more foot!) and you can get shut out of purchasing a resource you really need because someone got there before you. They've layered on a few more features with a little token (the token/price you take when you purchase a good from a market) collection mechanism each round to help you score points during the game (similar to the strength/battle points in Kingsburg) and if you've got enough boats (and feet), you can visit a set of islands on the south end to collect points and special tiles without buying them. When you're done walking around the island and/or run out of resources you return to the beach and eventually make your way to the turn order track where you can decide what order you'd like to go in for the following round. They sweeten the deal by placing ever increasing token values by choosing to go later in the subsequent round.

At game end, players simply determine which of their villages met their personally defined minimal required length, score any end game points, and the player with the most is the winner.

I really like the variable order of the market stalls. Form one game to the next, you have to adjust your strategy based on how close a stall is to the beach. Those near the north end of the island can be very costly to get to. I also enjoy the Kingsburg like strength mini-game and the inclusion of those tokens into the mix to determine turn order. Lastly, I think the components are very well done. Kudos to Rio Grande Games for nice production quality, rich artwork, and a clean set of rules.

I've played enough games to see that although the variable board does mix it up a bit, it may not provide enough variability to drastically adjust your strategy. I suspect there are two or three basic strategies and once you see the layout of the board, you'd just pick the one that makes the most sense and stick to it. That said however, there is enough tension for the little decisions throughout the game to keep it exciting. I don't suspect analysis paralysis should play much of a role but time will tell.

Box Front photo by W. Eric Martin - Used with permission

Last week I was contacted by a fellow BGG member from Alaska polling for people willing to trade a game for his freshly out of shrink copy of A Few Acres of Snow. The BGG software supports you creating a formal, expiring, offer to trade a game from your collection for a game in another user's collection. If accepted, the two parties pay for their own shipping and on the honor system, simply mail the game. Given that it's the honor system you're taking some risk but the software also supports trade ratings and the ability to contact potential parties outside of the trade system. I usually contact the person directly, establish the current state of the game being traded, in my case, for only new or like-new games.

As luck would have it and wanting a copy of A Few Acres of Snow, I shipped off my copy of Container (hadn't seen the light of day in years), and when the copy arrived I tore into it. A Few Acres is a card-driven, two-player, battle game from Martin Wallace. The game pits the French against the British for dominance in northeastern North America during the 1700s. The game uses a deck-building mechanic which is to say, players start with a fixed hand and then amass more cards throughout the game. Many cards serve multiple purposes depending on how they are played and many simply muddy up your deck.

The first printing of Wallace games that come directly from TreeFrog are signed and numbered by Wallace himself and have premium components. I have two other games like this: Tinners' Trail & Steel Driver. Unfortunately, the copy of A Few Acres is a 2nd printing and is not signed or numbered and has lower quality components. The 2nd printing fortresses are simply black discs and I decided, on a whim, to pimp out my copy with homemade bits that resemble the 1st printing fortresses. What you see in the image above is the end result. Below is an image of the bits while being made.

Analog Game Night for February 2012 came and went several weeks ago. I'm striving to be more prompt in my blogging and rather than simply promising myself to do better in the future, I'm flushing my backlog of posts by sitting down and writing a little bit. It's cathartic to chase the monkey off my back so to speak, and it's good practice to attempt to organize my thoughts into semi-coherent sentences.

Seven of us met and after opening up the table, we split into two groups, four playing Alien Frontiers at the far end and three, at the near end, playing Antverpia, a Hamburgum expansion.

It's usually difficult to focus when two games are being taught in close-quarters but being a Hamburgum fan, and having wanted to to play Antverpia for some time, I was able to focus and we got down to making the rondel sing. I can't say much about Alien Frontiers other than it seemed to progress relatively slowly. I'm not sure if there was a lot of analysis paralysis or turn discussion going on but that was the only game that group got to play the entire night. It took hours!

On the other hand, with three, Antverpia moved along nicely. That's one of the nice features about the rondel mechanism that Mac Gerdts is so fond of. There is really so little down time between turns that the experience borders on a sense of speed chess or something. Several times I would quickly move my pawn on the rondel and was almost beside myself waiting for it to get back around to me. The game accelerates throughout especially when you're driving towards some goal that will take you several turns to accomplish and you have the sense that others are working towards the same goal. When you see somebody purchase one of the bells…the race is on!

I think I may like Antverpia over the base game. The rules are stream-lined, boiled down to just what's necessary to retain the essence of the game. I own the expansion but have never played my copy but would gladly play it again. Right now for that matter but, as I look around the family room…nobody is within sight. Maybe I'll crack the shrink on Hawaii and see what the box holds.

Thanks for coming guys; I'm looking forward to next month.

A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting on the couch on a lazy Saturday afternoon contemplating many of life's mysteries. Finding no solutions and coming out of my daydream reality, my eyes focused on my game collection. Spilling from shelves and draping from the top of an armoire, the colorful mass holds protected, a dusty triangular box. A box with gaudy artwork that makes one wonder what was going through the minds of those that decided on the final copy. Pulling myself off the couch, I grabbed a chair from the kitchen and standing upon it, dug my way through the stacks of games, pulled out Tal der Konige and blew the dust from the grail game that so captured my desire.

Ignoring the box art, Tal der Konige is simply beautiful. The chunky, thickly painted cubes, reminiscent of those in Medina, give the game its stark beauty, accentuating the simple iconography. Beyond its artistic beauty, at its core, lies a game of extreme back stabbing and schadenfreude.

To earn points, players are attempting to complete the building of pyramids on locations spread throughout the board. To earn more points, players attempt to build them out of like-colored blocks. Obtaining blocks in sufficient numbers, in the desired colors, at the correct moment is difficult and players may at times earn less points for completing mix-colored pyramids or pyramids with each layer composed of the same colored blocks. But, the pyramids must be completed to earn any points.

Players move one of two overseer and several builder pawns around the board and allocate them to building sites affording them the ability to add cubes. However, depending on their numbers at a site, other players can invade to steal blocks and, at times, wrestle away control of the partially built pyramid. Piles of randomly drawn blocks are auctioned at the beginning of each round and players blind bid on the lots by dividing up a collection of bid tokens to whatever piles they wish to bid on. Some of the bid tokens have nothing on them so players can bluff what they're interested in bidding on.

Players then secretly determine where their overseers will move by programming in their allotted movement on a wipe-off placard. When everybody is done, the movements are revealed and the overseers are moved in turn order. If a player is unable to move where they expected, due to the programmed move of an earlier player, well, they're just out of luck.

Once builders are moved in turn order, players steal blocks, take over pyramids, and place blocks to complete pyramids or push them closer towards completion. Any blocks not placed in the round, are used to construct the big pyramid in the middle of the board and when that pyramid is complete, the game ends. Points are awarded to players who have completed pyramids and the player with the most points wins.

Tal der Könige was my grail game for years. I wanted a copy just to have it in my collection. I'd love to play it with my group but I'm not sure that will happen. We're very much a "cult of the new" kind of group but maybe I'll try harder to get it to the table at some point. That said, I'd never trade or sell it. It's just such a unique and beautifully manufactured game that catches the eye of most anyone that sees it.

One has to reach all the way back to 2007 to find my last cabin-based gaming adventure. I'd made the offer to my gaming group to organize another cabin-con and with six of us we set out this past weekend to spend a few days in the wood-burner cabins at Lake Hope State Park about an hour and a half south east of Columbus.

Check-in was 4pm so I took off a half-day of work and carpooled with two others and arrived right on time. We grabbed the key cards, found the cabin, and started unloading. The weather was supposed to turn bad later that night so we rushed to get all of the games into the cabin before the freezing weather broke, but more on that later.

The three of us got settled in and started a game of Phoenicia and about half way through, the other three had arrived and after settling in, they started downing the chili we'd had warming in the crock pot.

After dinner we grouped up for a six-player game of Modern Art. I'd not played it before so I was glad to finally get this older gem in my played column.

Since one of the guys brought a card table and chairs, we could split up for two three-player games. We pulled out Kingsburg and Ninjato.

We came back together and finished off the night with Incan Gold. I slid into bed around 1:30 and since I was assigned to Saturday's breakfast, I was planning on getting up around 7:30 to put an egg-caserole and cinnamon rolls in the oven so that it would done by the time everyone started getting up. Unfortunately, about 2:30am, the power went out due to the ice-storm and and by morning it was freezing in the cabin. Everything in the kitchen was electric so cooking anything for breakfast was out, and so I started trying to get a fire going in the fire place. The fire place is mostly cosmetic (no damper?!) so it really didn't put out much heat but it was better than nothing.

We ate fruit, nuts, beef jerky, and some other junk food for breakfast and while waiting for the power to come back on, I taught Kingdom Builder to a couple of guys that had not played it before.

At the other table, two guys started going through the rules for Dominate Species and Eclipse. Cabin outings are great times to get epic games to the table but more on that later.

As a group we'd decided to take a stab at Eclipse and if the power didn't come back on by 4pm, we'd pack up and head home considering the outing a big bust. We set up Eclipse and immediately realized that the rules were a bit more complex than the "teacher" thought and it took us a very long time to get the handle turning. As luck would have it though, around 2pm the power came back on and by 3 or so, we'd gone through a few turns, battled, lost, warmed up, and gotten enough of a feel for the game that we packed it up and decided to save it for another day.

While one of the guys went out for a run (marathoner!) I taught San Marco to the three others and then sat out and chit chatted with another while he fixed lasagna for dinner.

While lasagna was heating up, four of us sat down to a game of Quarriors and by the time we were done, dinner was ready. I don't know if it was the cold night and morning or what but we all seemed to tuck into big slabs of lasagna and bread with abandon.

After cleaning up, we split up with one side of the table playing Castles of Burgundy and the other playing Vanuatu, one of my recent favorites.

We finished the night with a six-player game of Horse Fever, another new title for me. A few of us thought long and hard about playing another light game but knowing we had to fix breakfast, clean up the cabin, and be out by 11am, we probably made the right decision and headed to bed.

I always have a lot of fun doing these cabin-con outings. This group of guys made it very easy to coordinate and everybody pulled their weight on food, cleaning, etc. I'd love to make it a yearly event but I'm not sure my group could swing that. Our ages are diverse ranging from empty-nester, high-school, middle-school, elementary, and new born so successfully organizing and pulling off an event like this is not much short of a miracle. I feel we got lucky that, even with the weather, it worked out well and I had a really great time. Before I knew it, it was time to pack up.

Thanks guys for sharing your weekend with me. Let's do it again soon.