Session Report for Saturday, 4/21/2007

11 gamers 9 games

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High Society

(Robert, Chris, August, Drew)

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Tongiaki

(Robert, Chris, August, Drew)

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Royal Turf (aka Winner's Circle)

(Marshall, Robert, Joanne, Gina, Ty)

This was the first game of Royal Turf played in the group even though I've owned it since I moved to Wichita. We used to play this game during lunch at my old job and I got burned out on it so I would never bring it. I guess the burnout is starting to fade a little.

Royal Turf is a horse racing game where the players bet on horses to win, place, or show. There are seven horses and each horse has a unique movement card that says how many spaces a horse will move given the result of a die roll. The die has four symbols on it: a horse's head (on three sides of the die), a jockey hat, a bridle, and saddle. There's a 50% chance of rolling the horse's head and a 1 in 6 chance of rolling the other symbols.

A player's turn consists of rolling the die then selecting which horse to move (given the result of the die roll) by examining the horses' movement cards. A horse may not be moved twice before all of the horses are moved once. The strategy in the game is in moving a horse which helps you (i.e. making a big move) or moving a horse which hurts your opponents (a small move) because it cannot be moved again until all of the other horses have moved.

This game was recently republished in English as Winner's Circle

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Incan Gold

(Marshall, Robert, Joanne, Gina, Ty, Scott)

This was quite possibly the worst game of Incan Gold ever. Every round ended early, three of them without anyone picking up an treasure. The game was over in like 5 minutes, it was pretty bad. The winner had four treasure I think. If this was your first game of Incan Gold I'll just say it's usually better than that.

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Taluva

(Ty, Joanne, Gina, Marshall)

Ty brought a new game to the group: Taluva. Taluva most reminded me of Carcassonne in that you lay tiles then you place your meeples on tiles but that's where the similarity ends. I think Taluva is actually deeper and more strategic than Carcassonne.

The terrain tiles each consist of three hexagons one of which is a volcano. Volcanoes can be placed on top of other volcanoes and in this way the board can build upwards. Sometimes this forces meeples to be removed from the board. You also have three different types of meeples each with certain specific placement rules. The goal is to get the most temples followed by towers onto the board. It's a challenging and thoughtful game that plays in about forty-five minutes. I'm looking forward to playing this one again and am thinking of getting my own copy.

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Alhambra

(Drew, Robert, Chad, August, Chris, Scott)

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Mission: Red Planet

(Joanne, Gina, Scott, Chris, Chad)

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Boomtown

(Joanne, Gina, Scott, Chris, Chad)

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Acquire

(Drew, August, Marshall, Robert)

This game of Acquire was played with a variant that is meant to give players more options in case they miss out on the first few mergers. The game is played as normal with the following changes:

1) There is a separate stock market to track the price of each company's stock 2) Stock goes up in price every time an increment of 3 shares is bought 3) Stock goes down in price every time an increment of 3 shares is sold 4) Every so many turns the stock price moves towards its inherent value as defined by the cards that are used in the normal game 5) After a merger a company's stock resets to its inherent value. 6) A player can only buy stock in one company per turn 7) A player can only sell stock in one company per turn and it can't be the same company that stock was bought from.

I think the variant achieves its purpose and it is mechanically sound but it does have some drawbacks. First of all it makes an already mathy game even more mathy, there is a lot of calculation going on. It adds a certain amount of fiddlyness in keeping track of the stock market. And it made the game significantly longer (though we did have new players and we started from a blank board instead of leaving the turn-order tiles in place).

It takes a light game and makes it more of a heavy game and it was definitely a lot less random. That's Ok if that's what people want to play but I think it was too long for what it is. If it can be played in about 75 minutes then it might be worth it. That might be achieved with experienced players and a seeded board.

-- MarshallPhilips - 23 Apr 2007
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