Session Report for Friday, 5/4/2007

9 gamers 9 games

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Coloretto

(Ty, Marshall, Paul, Chris, August)

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Taluva

(Ty, Marshall, Chris, August)

This is my second playing of Taluva and I have to say I'm pretty taken with the game. It's pretty much a standard Euro and it doesn't feel very original but it does perfectly fill that medium weight, less than an hour niche. It's in the same category as China, Samurai, and Hansa in terms of weight, complexity, and play time. And for me, you can't have too many of this type of game.

In this game we had a difficult time building the island up because August had scattered about a bunch of single settlements and singletons can't be volcanoed into oblivion. This forced the island to grow out and resulted in a much friendlier game where not many huts were destroyed. I think this game could be played on a more cut-throat level once everyone understands the strategies.

I would have like to have volcanoed my own huts as a matter of fact, in order to cut one large settlement in two and enable me to play another temple, but there was no legal play that would do it. The only strategy left to me was to play all my huts and go for an early victory by running out of two kinds of structures. I couldn't quite get rid off all of my huts though and was stuck with one.

Chris ended up winning the game by playing three huts and one tower. I look forward to playing this one again.

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Settlers of Catan

(Greg, Kevin L., Paul, Drew2)

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Samurai

(Ty, Marshall, Chris, August)

After Taluva we broke out the old standby Samurai. After many games of Samurai I've realized it's all about efficiency. In a typical game of Samurai you can expect to play 15 or 16 tiles and you need to capture 8 or 9 figures to have a chance. So you need to do slightly better than 1 figure per 2 tiles played. This ratio should help guide your decisions when deciding whether a play is efficient or not.

The best way to gain efficiency is through the use of the special tiles. And the best special tile is the one that lets you swap two figures. I believe the game often comes down to who uses this tile the best. You should definitely not use it unless you are able to close off a big capture with it.

In our game I used the "switch figures" tile, along with another tile, to capture three figures. I believe this was probably the difference in the game as several other players didn't capture any figure on the turn they used that tile.

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Hey! That's My Fish

(Ty, Marshall, Chris, August)

What a fun little game this is, I really like it. If it's not obvious by now the key to the game is not capturing valuable fish tiles (although that helps) it's in cordoning off territory for yourself so that you can go on capturing tiles long after your opponents have had to drop out. It's all about not getting stuck.

I'm going to have to pick up a copy of this game as soon as my son is old enough to play it.

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Tsuro

(Greg, Paul, Chris, Ty, August, Drew2)

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Blokus

(Drew2, Ty, Chris, August)

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Twilight Struggle

(Kevin L, Marshall)

Twilight Struggle is a card driven wargame which recreates the Cold War. Players represent either the USA or the USSR as they seek to dominate the world without triggering a nuclear conflagration.

The heart of the game are the cards. There are 103 and each one contains an operations value and an event. The event may be a US event, a USSR event, or an event that can be applied to wither. Events are typically some historically based episode such as Fidel takes Cuba, or Indo-Pakistani War. When a player plays a card he must choose whether to play it for the event or for the operations points. Playing for operations points lets him add influence to countries or try to trigger a coup. Playing for an event triggers the effects of the cards. You will inevitably hold some cards which trigger events for your opponent. In this case your options are to play the card for the ops points (in which case your opponent gets to take the event) or try to use the card to advance in the Space Race (the leader of the space race receives certain benefits and points). There are occasionally opportunities to discard a card and this is when you want to dump your opponents most powerful cards.

The card play is what generates most of the tension and decisions in the game. You have to decide how best to neutralize your opponents cards that you have in your hand and how best to use your own cards. You also have to pay special attention to what area of the board is going to score and concentrate your efforts on that area.

The game is actually not complicated at all. The real difficulty is in knowing the cards. A player with an intimate knowledge of the cards is going to have an advantage, so this is a game that rewards repeat play.

In our game I was the USSR and I jumped out to an early lead. At one time I had 15 points where 20 points automatically ends the game. Slowly but surely however, the US came back. The tide began to turn in the mid war when Central and South America became open for scoring and I just could not break in there. The efforts I devoted trying to break in didn't pay off and I could have used those efforts to solidify my hold on Europe and Asia. In the late war I lost control of both of those territories and the game swung solidly towards the US. The US won by controlling Europe at the end of round 10.

A game I recommend if you're at all interested in the time period and can devote enough time to a couple of plays.

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Power Grid - France

(Drew2, August, RUss)

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-- MarshallPhilips - 07 May 2007
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