Session Report for Friday, 12/1/2006

15 Players, 11 Games

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High Society

(Kevin, Chris, Tracy, Scott, August)

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Dvonn

(Marshall, Drew)

MarshallPhilips -

Dvonn is a two player abstract game in the Gipf series. Each player controls disks of one color (black or white) on a hexagonal board. The goal is to control the most disks by the end of the game by capturing your opponents disks. Movement is pretty simple, when you move a disk (or a stack) you must end your move on another disk (or stack), you must move a number of spaces equal to the number of disks in the stack you are moving in a straight line. So if you have a 3-disk stack it must move 3 spaces and land on another disk. In this way the playable area of the board constantly shrinks as the disk stacks increase in size until there are no moves left.

There's some more to it in that you must maintain contact with one of the three Red pieces but it's really pretty simple and quick. Generally the strategy is to maintain as much mobility as possible, the person who is able to move last usually wins.

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Hive

(Marshall, Drew)

Hive is another two player mostly abstract game. In Hive the goal is to surround your opponents Queen piece but there is no board and pieces cannot be captured. The board is made up of the pieces themselves and the most important rule is the "one-hive" rule which is that a piece cannot move if that movement breaks the hive into two sections (even temporarily). This results in the main strategy of the game which is to "pin" your opponents pieces by placing your pieces in a way that makes their piece a critical link in the hive.

There are 5 different insects in the game each with their own movement ability:

• Queen - Moves one space around outside of Hive, cannot move into a "blocked" space
• Spider - Moves exactly 3 spaces around outside of Hive, cannot move into a "blocked" space
• Ant - Move unlimited spaces around outside of Hive, cannot move into a "blocked" space
• Beetle - Moves one space, can move on top of other pieces, can drop into a blocked space
• Grasshopper - Moves in a straight line by jumping over pieces, ends in the first empty space, can drop into blocked spaces.

The only other rule is that when introducing pieces into play they must touch your color and only your color. The usual strategy is to pin the opponents Queen as soon as possible. It may seem like the game is then just a race to surround the Queen but there's actually a lot of subtle defensive moves that can be made to protect your Queen even though she can't move herself. If you do manage to get your Queen out of the pin that is usually devastating to your opponents position because of all the move he had invested in surrounding a space the Queen no longer occupies.

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Caylus

(Kevin, Marshall, August)

Another three player game of Caylus. It is much easier to build the blue buildings in three player than it is five player so I think they become more critical. It is also easier to get favors. August went after the favor strategy and he maxed out three of the favor tracks, I think he would have won if he had maxed out the VP track instead of the resource track. I built two blue buildings which was enough to win.

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Puerto Rico

(Drew, Scott, Tracy, Nate)

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Fluxx

(Marshall, Kevin, Phillip, August, Tracy)

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Ticket to Ride: Marklin

(Gary, Micah, Nate, Russ, Brenden)

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Scavenger

(August, Tracy, Kevin, Phillip)

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Werewolf x3

(Marshall, Kevin, Phillip, August, Tracy, Russ, Nate, Gary, Brenden, Micah)

Finally we got the whole group together for Werewolf. Werewolf is more of a "party" game than a board game still it's pretty fun and has strategy, psychology, and deduction.

Basically, there are two teams the villagers and the werewolves. Each team is trying to kill off the other and the first team to succeed wins. When a team wins ALL team members win, including the dead ones (this is important because an important strategy for the villagers is to make themselves targets of the wolves to protect more important villagers). Players are randomly assigned to a team and they keep their identity secret.

The game is played across a series of day-night cycles. During the day everybody is awake and they discuss who they think the wolves might be. Eventually someone is nominated for a wolf for some reason (and it can be quite arbitrary, especially in the beginning). That person has a chance to defend themselves then the village take a vote on whether to lynch. If a majority of people vote to lynch then the nominee is dead and is removed from the game. This is the only way for villagers to kill wolves though often they misfire and kill villagers instead.

Then comes the night cycle when everyone closes their eyes. The moderator asks for the wolves to wake up and silently agree on a target, this is how the wolves kill the villagers and they never miss. The moderator then asks for the Seer to wake up (The Seer is a special villager who gets to learn the true role of one player per night) and choose his target to view. Then the next day starts.

A Werewolf game starts off quite random as the only piece of information the village has on Day 1 is the seer view from the start of the game but it's rarely a good strategy for the seer to reveal that early. As the game progresses more information (in the form of seer views, voting history, and player behavior) becomes available and the game becomes more deductive. There are also other special roles that can be added which increase the strategy of the game.

I like werewolf quite a bit but it's best only occasionally as it does have some significant issues. First of all it's a player elimination game, if you're the first one voted out you can have quite a wait till the next game. Second, unless the moderator keeps it moving the game can really get bogged down with endless discussion. Friday night we played 3 games in an hour which is a pretty good pace. At BGG.con I played in two hour games! Finally, the game lends itself to being dominated by aggressive personalities. Not everybody is comfortable calling somebody else a liar based on little or no information. You really have to make an effort to put yourself out there in this game or you can get steamrolled.

But when things are kept moving and players are in the mood Werewolf is an intense and fantastic game.

This picture is from the deck of cards used to assign roles in the game. The required roles are Wolves, Villagers (the ones with the pitchfork symbol), and the Seer (bottom row, forth from left). The others are optional and can even represent different roles if desired.

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-- MarshallPhilips - 05 Dec 2006
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