Session Report for Saturday, 3/17/2007

12 gamers 15 games

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Rumis

(Joanne, Jenna, Marshall) (Joanne, Jenna, Nick, Johan)

Rumis was the first game played at the first official session of the Wichita Boardgamers. To date it's also the most played game of the group. It added two playings to its total at this session.

Both games, I believe, were played on the "step" map, the one where the height limit increases with each row. Jenna won the first game, I don't know who won the second.

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Quoridor

(Drew, Kevin) (Ty, Nicholas) x3

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Hive

(Marshall, Ty) (Marshall, Johan) x2

Hive is the game of battling insects. For some reason this game reminds me of chess, not at all in the rules but in how it feels to play it, albeit much shorter and simpler (as an aside, if anyone has any interest in playing chess at a game session let me know. It's been forever since I played.)

The goal in Hive is to surround your opponents queen. The player has four different types of insects at his disposal each with their own movement rules. The key rule is that the hive must always remain continuous, it's illegal to make a move which breaks the hive.

Strategy in Hive is tightly related to the concept of "tempo" in chess. Every move you make must further your goals or hinder your opponent, wasted moves hand tempo to your opponent. Like chess the player going first has an advantage so it's best to let the newer player go first. The second player has steal little bits of tempo where he can.

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Ticket to Ride: Marklin

(Marshall, Joanne, Jenna, Johan)

Marklin is the gamers version of Ticket to Ride. Among several new rules Marklin adds the mechanic of passengers. Passengers are placed on the board when a connection is played. In subsequent turns they can be moved along unbroken routes of that player's track. As they move they pick up "passenger tokens" from the cities they pass through. The tokens are worth points and, crucially, the value of the tokens decreases with each passenger that passes through a city. Thus, passengers set up an early game race to quickly establish a contiguous network and send some passengers over it before the value of the tokens decreases too much.

In this game Jenna set up a network along the east side of Germany using some long connections and fulfilling some long tickets. She moved two passengers through Berlin which has the most valuable tokens. In the end this was impossible to overcome for the other players.

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Samurai

(Ty, Nick, Clint)

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Acquire

(Ty, Nick, Clint)

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Taj Mahal

(August, Drew, Kevin, Chris, Scott)

KevinLi - 19 Mar 2007

This was my first play of TJ, but I'll take a shot at describing it. First impressions being what they are, take this for what it's worth.

The players take the role of (I think) merchant princes in India. The game consists of 12 auction rounds, one for each province on the game board. Each province has six resources that players bid for. Five of the resources allow the player to build a temple on one of the four building sites within the province. The sixth resource (elephants) allows the winning player to obtain the goods that are available for that province. Points are scored at the end of each auction: 1 for the presence of the player's temple within the province, 1 for each neighboring province that is directly connected by an unbroken line of the player's temples from the just auctioned province, 1 for each trade good won from the province, and 1 for each trade good that the player had previously won that matches a trade good that the player just won in the current province.

Auctions are won by playing cards from each player's hand. A card will have a suit color and one or two symbols of the six resources that are available (elephant, throne, yellow princess, red guy, green guy, orange guy). During his turn in the auction, a player may play face up in front of them up to one colored card and one colorless (wild) card. The colored card must be of the same color as any previously played card. Play then passes to left. If it is the player's turn again, and his cards show that he has the most of any of the resources, he may withdraw instead of playing more cards. For that province he wins the resources in which he had the lead, and he gets any bonuses associated with those resources, such as being able to place a temple. A player may also withdraw even if he won't win anything, if only to avoid throwing away any more cards in a hopeless bidding situation. In a way, this is not really an auction in the normal sense, but almost a betting game like 5 card stud poker. After every round of cards you have to reassess your opponents' cards and your chances of winning, and then decide whether to add another one of your precious bidding cards to the pot in an effort to win something or to fold while you can.

I'm not sure what to make of this game yet, but I would definitely play this again. I got off to a bad start. I had two cards each of three different suits -- basically, enough to "bet" one resource in each suit but not enough to win anything. I didn't realize this, though, so for the first couple of rounds I used up about six cards to win absolutely nothing. In the third round, I passed and did not bet any cards at all, which allowed me to draw an extra card from the deck. I tried to rebuild my hand into a competitive position. I went for a "get all the cards you can of one suit" strategy, always picking up yellow suited cards whenever I could. At one point, even though I had about 7 yellow cards, I still did not have a very good looking hand because most cards didn't reinforce one another. I had something like (making this up for sake of example) green-yellow, yellow-purple, purple-green, red-throne, elephant-yellow, and so on. I had no more than two or three total of any one resource, hardly dominant in a 5 player game. I could've tried to focus only on dominating the yellows during the auction, but it would've decimated my hand in terms of the other resources. So I waited for an auction until I thought I could dominate 3 or 4 resources at once. Unfortunately, it was also an auction that Drew decided he really needed to win. In the end, Drew outlasted me. We spent, I don't know, maybe 10 cards each, and all I won was one puny resource. Needless to say, I ended up last in this game. Oh, well. There's always next time.

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Aladdin's Dragons

(August, Drew, Kevin, Chris, Scott)

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Princes of Florence

(Kevin, Marshall, Drew, August, Chris)

In Princes of Florence it's impossible to overstate the necessity to plan ahead. There are 7 rounds in the game and if you don't know what you're going to do for the rest of the game by round 4 you're in big trouble. For some people this might make the game feel too constrained but I like the challenge of it.

There are basically two strategies to take in PoF^?. One is called the "builder" strategy. Really only one person can follow this strategy per game or they'll get in each others way and will prevent each other from winning. Also, it's usually the person who goes last that tries the builder strategy. The builder strategy, as its name implies, involves getting three builders and as many buildings as possible. Playing works is a bonus and is usually done early in the game when there's a chance at getting the greatest work. In our game it looked like August wanted to follow the builder strategy but he got bid up on the builders a bit too much. Paying 1000 Florins per builder won't work in this strategy.

The other strategy is simply to play as many works as possible and this is what most players will be trying to do. You'll need to play at least five and potentially six works to have a chance. Jesters are extremely helpful in this strategy which is why they are so valuable and can justifiably go for over 1000 Florin in the first round.

This is a game we should get back on the table soon.

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-- MarshallPhilips - 19 Mar 2007
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