Session Report for Friday 1/4/2008

11 gamers 8 games

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For Sale

(August, Bart, Greg S., Kevin L., Ty)

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Power Grid: Italy

(August, Greg S., Kevin L., Ty)

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Zooloretto

(Bart, Marshall, Scott)

Another winning game that Ty brought. I really enjoyed this game and can not wait to pick this up for my own collection. The game uses similar mechanics as found in 'Coloretto', but uses tiles instead of cards and zoo animals instead of colored lizards. I thought the game played quick, and I think it is a game I can talk my kids into playing with me.

-- ScottK - 06 Jan 2008

I also really enjoyed this game. It takes Coloretto and makes it a little more "gamery". There's an economy now and money is very tight. The decisions can be quite tense. It also seems to work equally well with any number of players.

-- MarshallPhilips - 06 Jan 2008

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Taluva

(Bart, Scott, Marshall)

I have to say that, in my opinion, Taluva is just an excellent game. It may be a pure eurogame, and therefore relatively absract, but is seems to be firing on all cylinders for me in terms of juicy decisions, game weight, play time, and general aesthetics.

It's a game that doesn't hold your hand a whole lot, in terms of directing you down certain paths. The play is pretty wide open in that you can place a tile almost anywhere then you can place a structure almost anyplace on the board. There are a lot of opportunities for creative and unexpected plays, especially when placing a tile as a "volcano".

Our three player game was tense and full of momentum swings. The four player game is a little more chaotic, and more likely to go the distance in terms of exhausting the tiles, but it still has the same elegant gameplay.

After this game I upped my rating on BGG from an 8 to a 9. This is the only game that I'm playing right now that I could see eventually going to a 10 for me.

-- MarshallPhilips - 06 Jan 08

1960: The Making of a President

(Bart, Greg S.)

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Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery

(August, Clint, Kevin L., Russ, and a few minutes Marshall)

This was my first time to play Age of Empires III, which I believe it was also for Clint, Kevin L., and Russ. I think Marshall had played it before but had to leave for the evening right after beginning the first Age. The rest of us continued to play only to check the rules a couple of times.

During the first Age, Clint attempted two explorations (Brazil and Peru) and failed by one or two points. Russ started building his army of soldiers to try be the biggest colony in the new world colonies. Kevin started picking up the trade goods for the final scoring. I succeeded in an exploration (Florida) and was able to score for the largest colony in the Caribbean Colony to take a slight lead after Age I scoring.

As Age II progressed the new world colonies started to build and Russ started a couple of battles in the Caribbean Colony. After the second Age the scoring was about the same except further up the VP scale.

During Age III, several strategies were becoming prevalent. Clint was trying to score victory points by exploration, Kevin was trying to built up a stock pile of trade goods, Russ was attempting to take over the New World and I was building buildings and trying to remain the largest colonies in the new world colonies.

The final scoring resulted in a very close finish. The top three players were within three victory points. I believe that I had 82 VP, Russ had 81 VP, Clint had 80 VP and Kevin had about 75 VP.

Overall, We enjoyed the game. It was easy to get in to the game play and pursue different strategies. Game play did speed up later which allow that game not to drag.

Yeah, I really enjoy this game. As you explained August, there are many strategies that one can take and they are all very well balanced. The winner is the one who does things most efficiently in his strategy while also picking up a few points doing some other things.

Once the rules and gameplay are mastered it should speed up quite a bit at which point I think it becomes pretty rewarding in terms of the gameplay to time ratio. I'm looking forward to playing this one a lot this year.

-- MarshallPhilips - 06 Jan 08

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Thebes

(John, Robert, Scott, Ty)

This was the first game of Thebes for all of us, but I do have to say that Ty was very prepared and had even printed out some FAQs that he had came across.

In the game players are archaeologists who must travel around Europe to acquire knowledge about five ancient civilizations and then use this knowledge to help them excavate and hopefully find artifacts hidden in the sands. Later you may choose to display some of your findings at exhibitions if you meet certain requirements of what the public or museum is interested in.

The board is very nice with numbered border (think: ticket to ride) that numbers 1-52 to coinside with the number of weeks in a year. Their are quite a few pieces to the game and really work with the theme of the game.

The game took a bit of time to explain due to the nature of the game and the fact that it has two parts (research and excavate) that work well together but involve some heavy time management.

The most interesting thing I found about the game is the way your turn is decided. The game takes place over a certain number of 'years'. You perform actions taking a certain number of 'weeks' then you move your token that number of weeks on the numbered track around the outside of the board. Instead of going around the table in a certain order, each turn is decided by whomever is furtherest back 'in time' on the numbered track with ties decided by whomever was the most recent to arrive on that 'week'. This means during your turn you may decide to take an action that may take a large number of weeks and possibly an early advantage, but the people behind you can take many more turns if the actions they perform are smaller and take less 'weeks' to perform. The key to the game is 'time' management and making sure you make the most of your actions.

Basically you start the game looking for information about the place you can excavate. You can get specific knowledge about an area to dig at or some general knowledge about all the areas. There are also assistants to help you, rumors to hear, and shovels to help dig. All this information is provided on cards that you obtain during the game.

Then you can go to the areas to excavate. Using the knowledge you have gained for an area and the number of weeks you want to spend 'digging', this will allow you to pull a certain number of tokens from one of the five bags that represent the five locations you are able to dig at. There is a neat little dial all players get that allows you to see based off your knowledge and weeks you wish to spend, how many 'pulls' you will get from the bag. Here is the part that will cause many to love or hate the game. At the start of the game, each of the five bags has 30 tokens in it. 13 are different numbered artifacts, 1 is a general knowledge token, 1 is a specific knowledge token, and the other 15 are 'blank' tokens. As people pull tokens from the bag, you get to keep any artifacts and/or knowledge you get, but any blank tokens you pull give you nothing and you put them back in the bag so future player may have the fun of pulling these worthless tokens later. This means as people are excavating and pulling good tiles out, odds go up for you pulling a blank when you start excavating. This causes a pretty noticable 'luck factor' that could turn some off from the game. This luck can be offset to your favor some by trying to get more knowledge about the area and spending more weeks so that you can get more pulls and hopefully improve odds in your favor, but there is always the chance you could pull 6 tokens and get nothing and someone could pull 3 tokens later and get something on every one. This way of obtaining tokens really works with the theme though, archaeologists can dig for weeks and not find a thing, when they could move over a 100 feet and find a mother lode. It also make sense for the blanks to go back in to the bag, because if someone has dug before you and found something in an area, it should be harder for you to go in and dig in the same area and find something new.

In this game I was very lucky at my pulls and was always getting something on at least half the tokens I pulled. Although on the flip-side I was also getting the chance for more pulls in shorter number of weeks than most of the other players due to all the shovels and assistant cards I was able to obtain.

Ty on the other hand was extremely unlucky, and I remember on a particularly early dig, getting the chance to pull 6 tokens and getting 5 blanks.

There are some other aspects to this game that allow you to get points and can add to the different strategies of the game, but I won't get in to that here.

I really enjoyed the game, and I think we played it without very many errors. Many questions came up, but Ty was prepared every time and I would like to thank him for the effort he put in for having more than just the game instructions considering this was the first time playing for all of us and I know we asked one of the questions found on the FAQ Ty had printed out.

I think the game works well with its theme and I hope we get it on the table again before the year is out.

-- ScottK - 06 Jan 2008

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Ra

(August, Bart, Clint)

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-- AugustRatzlaff - 05 Jan 2008
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