Session Report for Friday, 2/2/2007

13 gamers 13 games

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For Sale

(Drew, Kevin, Nich, Russ, Joanne, Brad?) x2

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10 Days In Europe

(August, Marshall, Chris)

10 Days in Europe is the latest in the “10 Days” line of games. The first game was 10 Days in Africa followed by 10 Days in the USA. 10 Days in Europe keeps the core mechanism of its predecessors, arrange cards in your rack to correspond to a valid trip across the map. A valid trip is simply one where you move from one country to a bordering country and so on for 10 days (10 slots for country cards in your rack).

So far all of the games are identical. The difference is in the special cards. Africa used cars which would allow you to pass through any country at all and airplanes which let you fly between like colored countries. The USA had cars and planes but also special purple planes which were kind of like wildcards. Europe does away with cars but adds boats which let you travel across a body of water to another country bordering on that body.

All in all the 10 Days games are good family filler. They’re not too hard (USA is the hardest) but there is a little bit of strategy. Most importantly they teach geography, if you don’t immediately know where Burkina Faso is you will after a couple of games in Africa

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Incan Gold

(Marshall, Nick, Kevin, Drew, Chris, August)

(Marshall, Nick, Kevin, Drew, Chris, August, Greg, Shelly)

Incan Gold is the newly released English version of Diamant. It’s an extremely simple filler game based on a press your luck mechanism. The theme of the game is of archaeologists exploring ancient Incan ruins for treasure. Each turn players simultaneously select their action then a card is turned up from the deck and added to the continuing exploration. The cards are either treasure or hazards. When two hazards of the same kind are displayed the round is over and all players who didn’t return to camp are killed and lose their treasure for the round.

The player actions are simple, either stay (continue exploring) or leave (return to camp). All the players who stay evenly split any treasure that is revealed that turn (the remainder stays in the game). Players who leave split all of the treasure that has remained from previous turns and then get to put all of their treasure for the round “into their camp” which means they get to keep it for the rest of the game. Once a player returns to camp they may not explore anymore that round.

So obviously the tension in the game is between pushing your luck and staying in the exploration as long as you can to maximize your treasure vs. playing it safe and returning to camp to lock in your gains.

In both of our games someone got lucky the first round and was the last explorer left. This can pay off big time if a large treasure is discovered because they won’t have to split it with anybody. Once you get a lead in this game it’s pretty easy to keep because you have incentive to return to camp early in later rounds while the other player are forced to risk exploring beyond what might be safe.

I think the lesson is not to let somebody get to be by themselves in the early rounds, this will be easier to do once we’re familiar with the distribution of treasure cards because once the big ones come out it’s safer to go back to camp.

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Amun-Re

(Chris, August, Nick, Kevin, Marshall)

After all of the filler we were ready for a meatier game and Amun-Re fits the bill. The only think I’ll mention from this game is a bit of strategy. In the old kingdom (the first three rounds) players usually are facing a choice of getting a set of pyramids or getting most pyramids on one side of the Nile. In our game it seemed like everybody went for a set which is worth 6 points (1 for each pyramid and 3 for the set). But it’s slightly more lucrative to go for the most pyramids because that is worth 8 points (1 for each pyramid and 5 for the most).

I usually assume that I’m going for the most pyramids unless someone commits to it before me and increases my risk of not getting it. With everyone going for a set in this game I was actually able to get most on both sides (worth 10 points) just by plunking down a stone on a province with one pyramid after the third sacrifice. It’s too much to let one person have both sides. If somebody is going to get the most pyramids on a side you have to keep them honest and not let them also get a set or most on the other side.

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Quoridor

(Russ, Johan)

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Tsuro

(Greg, Shelly, Drew, Phillip)

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Wooly Bully

(Greg, Shelly, Drew, Phillip)

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Three-Dragon Ante

(Greg, Shelly, Phillip)

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Shogun

(Drew, August, Kevin)

Shogun is the recently released and rethemed version of the game Wallenstein. Whereas Wallenstein takes place during the Thirty Years' War, Shogun takes place during feudal Japan.

In Shogun, each of the players takes the role of a feudal warlord vying for dominance of the country over a two year period. You win by accumulating the most victory points. Victory points are won through control of provinces and key buildings at the end of each year. You control provinces by conquering them with your armies. You control buildings by either spending the money to build them or attacking the other players' provinces and seizing their buildings for yourself.

The game begins by distributing the starting provinces for each player. Provinces are controlled by placing the player's army cubes on them. During spring, summer, and fall phases, each player has a fixed set of 10 orders that they can use for giving orders to each of the armies in their provinces. Only one of each type of order can be assigned to a province. Orders include: attack a neighboring province, spend money to add reinforcements, spend money to build castles/temples/theaters, collect taxes from the province, and collect rice from the province.

If you collect taxes or rice from a province, the farmers in the province may revolt. If you lose the revolt, you lose all your armies on the province and any buildings in the province are destroyed. Of course, you need taxes to fund your war effort or your construction projects, and you need rice to get through the winter. If you don't have enough rice by the time winter comes, your farmers may revolt again, costing you possible buildings and thus victory points.

One interesting aspect of Shogun is that a cube tower is used to resolve combat and revolts. All attacking and defending cubes are thrown into the top of the tower (see picture below). Whoever has the most cubes come out the bottom of the tower wins the combat. If no one wins, then the province is emptied of all armies and buildings. If you look inside the cube tower, you will see a number of ledges which may trap cubes as they fall down. Thus, there is no guarantee that what you throw in will come out the other end. In fact, at the beginning of the game, the cube is "seeded" with several cubes from each player and several farmer cubes. When combat occurs, one or more of the previously seeded cubes that is trapped in the tower may be dislodged and exit out the bottom. If farmer cubes leave the tower, the peasants may or may not help the defender during combat, depending on whether they are ready to revolt or not. The cube tower adds a fun but unpredictable element to combat.

-- KevinLi - 07 Feb 2007

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Tower of Babel

(Marshall, Nick, Chris, Johan, Russ)

Ok, I’m finally (after a dozen plays) starting to get the hang of this game. I started doing better when I used the strategy of never offering your last card in a suit, and if you must offer your last card do so with the Trader so that it likely won’t be accepted. It’s most critical to have options in this game and to be able to score every round and for that you need cards in all the suits.

I like this game quite a bit but I admit it has a serious problem with 5 players. Way too many cards accumulate in players hands by the end of the game, it takes away the strategy of it. I think next time I play with 5 players I’m going to change the chip distribution and not use the 3 point chips, this should increase the average number of cards removed per turn and keep some balance in the game. Probably another change that needs to be made is that players don’t draw cards after a failed build, instead they can discard one card and draw a replacement if they want to. I’d like to try it with these rules in place.

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Thurn and Taxis

(Nick, Marshall)

Overall a pretty good two player game as it keeps things moving and minimizes downtime since there’s usually not a lot to think about between your turns (whatever strategy you device between turns could instantly be irrelevant if someone refreshes the face up card draw).

-- MarshallPhilips - 05 Feb 2007
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