Session Report for Friday, 11/3/2006

16 Players, 12 Games

---

Tsuro

(Mike Marshall Drew Kevin L. Phillip Tracy)

MarshallPhilips –

Tsuro certainly was the hot game tonight! Four plays, once with eight players! It’s a fun and clever little filler, I wouldn’t want to play it too often but it does seem perfect for the first game of the evening or when killing some time while another game finishes.

---

Mississippi Queen

(Marshall Drew Scott K. Ty Chris)

MarshallPhilips -

Mississippi Queen is a racing game where players are the captain of a steam boat and are cruising down the winding Mississippi while occasionally stopping to pick up passengers.

In my opinion there are a couple of really clever mechanics in this game. The first is the use of “coal” to get extra actions. Each player starts with 6 units of coal and can burn one anytime to make radical changes in speed or direction. Using coal is always very tempting but often you’re better off resisting that temptation and saving the coal for a dire emergency.

The second clever thing is the way the river unfolds. When the lead player moves onto the last river tile he rolls a die that has three different kinds of arrows: left-turn, straight-ahead, and right-turn. The next river tile is added according to the result of the roll. In this way the river randomly meanders and players are forced to adjust to unexpected twists. This mechanic also serves to limit the runaway leader problem inherent in many race games because the leader can only go so fast lest he not be able to react to a change in the river’s course whereas the players behind get a good look at the terrain ahead for a long ways and can increase their speed more efficiently.

A couple of tricky rules tripped us up a little bit. Each player must pick up two passengers during the course of the race. To pick up a passenger a player must finish his turn at a dock with a speed of one. The thing that’s not immediately obvious is that in order to do this a player must be immediately adjacent to a dock on his preceding turn. He can burn as much coal as necessary but it’s not going to work unless he’s on an adjacent hex.

The other rule confusion is that you must be finished adjusting your speed before you begin to move (unlike your direction which you can adjust during your move). In practice moves are often very fluid where you start to do something and realize you don’t want to do it and so take it back. Usually most players adjust their speed on the fly with the result being the same as if they had adjusted it first. However, occasionally it catches you and you need to make sure your speed is set before you move (most notably when you’re trying to pick up a passenger or end the race.)

In this race the river unfolded such that there was a very long straight unhindered path leading up to the finish line and both Scott and I (having already picked up the requisite two passengers) revved up our steamboats to take advantage of it. But we both got a little too aggressive and couldn’t rein it back in when it came time to slow down so both of us beached our boats and were out of the race. Ty ended up winning with Drew in second and Chris in third.

This game is not to everyone’s liking but I enjoy it well enough. I’ve owned the expansion for 3 years but never played it. The expansion adds some new river obstacles and some coal stops (similar to passenger stops but it refills your coal supply). I’ll start bringing the expansion if anybody wants to play it.

---

Betrayal at House on the Hill

(Clint Phillip Kevin L. August Mike Tracy.)

---

Tsuro x2

(Josh Johan Trent Thomas)

---

Polarity

(Johan, Thomas)

---

Tsuro

(Johan August Kevin L. Thomas Tracy John Phillip Clint)

---

Tower of Babel

(Drew Marshall Scott K. Ty Chris)

MarshallPhilips –

Here’s some math on Tower of Babel: There are 6 construction chips in each of the four colors (24 chips total). The 6 chips have the following denominations: 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6 for an average of 4.5. That means on average 4.5 cards are being removed every turn (assuming every build is successful) but with 5 players 5 cards are being added every turn for a net gain of half a card. If the game goes 20 turns (quite possible) then there’re 10 extra cards by the end. This can be quite apparent as towards the end of 5 player games it’s often possible to complete your own chip without any help (both Chris and I did this in the last round). The situation is even worse if people pass or fail to build, then there’s more cards floating around.

I’m not usually one for variants, I strongly prefer to play a game as designed (especially a Knizia) but after I’ve played a game several times I’m more open to tinkering with it. If I had to tinker with Tower of Babel this is what I’d do:

1) The game provides an extra set of number 5 chips (the ones with two colors) and when you use them you’re supposed to remove a 5 chip of a solid color, that maintains 4.5 chip average. But with 5 players I might suggest removing the 3 chips instead. This will require 8 more cards to complete all of the chips in the game (and balances out the 10 cards that are being added by the fifth player.)

2) The power cards are somewhat unbalanced and some of them are quite sucky (exchange 5 cards? Please, that is weak compared to the one that triples your rejection points). I would suggest dealing one card face up on each monument in the beginning of the game. That way people could see what card they were getting by completing the monument and it would make some monuments more highly contested than others.

I’d be interested to see how those changes play out (though the first suggestion is only for 5 player games).

---

Railroad Tycoon

(Johan Mike August Ty Kevin L. Marshall)

MarshallPhilips –

This 6 player game of RRT was not nearly as close as the last one. Basically, Kevin ran away with the game and Mike ran away with second place. Coincidentally Kevin and Mike built on the east coast and weren’t seriously interfered with while the rest of us jammed into the Midwest and got all sorts of tangled up. Ty got the worst of that congestion but it certainly slowed everybody down.

I think Johan gave everybody a head fake when he build in the southeast first turn to get a delivery bonus but then he never built on that line again and moved his focus to Chicago. This let Kevin run rampant down there. I eventually crossed the mountains and interfered with Mike in the northeast a little bit but I’m not sure if that was what cost him the game or not.

So it’s official though, Kevin is the new Tycoon to watch out for in this game!

---

Descent

(Drew, Chris, Scott)

---

Palazzo

(Drew, Chris, Scott)

MarshallPhilips –

Thanks for discovering the rule I missed over the course of 12 games. That you need to spend a money card to rearrange your stack!

---

Power Grid – Italy

(Kevin L., August, Johan)

-- MarshallPhilips - 06 Nov 2006
to top