Wichita Boardgamers
Session Report for Friday, 03/03/2006
13 Players, 14 Games
Rumis
(Marshall, Kevin K., Stephanie, August)
MarshallPhilips -
This was the first game of Rumis for both Stephanie and August. With new players in a four player game I like to use the Wall map, the one shaped like an "L" (for what it's worth with three players I like to use the Tower, the narrow tall one. The Step and the Pyramid I usually save for when everybody has experience with the game).
As usual with the Wall two players built down one leg (Stephanie and August) and the other two players took the remaining leg (Marshall and Kevin). Everybody did a good job of not being blocked out till the end but it turned out that space was shortest on the August-Stephanie leg so they were eliminated first.
I actually don't remember who won the battle between Kevin and Marshall.
Cartegena
(Kevin L., Kevin K., Richard, Mike)
High Society
(Scott, Marie, August, Stephanie, Marshall)
MarshallPhilips -
After the game of Rumis more people showed up so we broke into two games: Cartegena and High Society.
I've discussed the economic aspect of High Society before where adding more players to the game causes inflation in the auctions. It doesn't take Allen Greenspan to see that when the amount of stuff for sale (in this case the luxury cards numbered 1 through 10) remains the same and more money is available to chase that stuff (each player comes with his own set of money which increases the total amount of money in the game) then the price paid for that stuff is going to rise.
With five players it looks like a card is worth about four times its number. So the 10 card is worth $40 and the 6 card is worth $24 etc... The 2x cards are worth about the same as the 10 card. Of course this also depends on when in the game the card comes up for sale and how many red cards have been revealed so it's not always such a straight forward multiplier.
With four players I think cards are worth about three times their number. And with three players it's actually the number of cards that you pay which is more important. You should never, never, never pay more than two cards in an auction in a three player game regardless of the price. In a three player game you're going to be winning many more auctions and you'll need the cards in your hand for the endgame.
As this was a five player game prices were sky high, often above the 4x expected value. The game ended somewhat early (with about 3 cards still unrevealed) and so everybody still had a decent amount of money in their hands. Marie was the poorest with $33 which normally wouldn't be a disqualifying amount.
Scott won the tie breaker with a mere 8 points.
Cartegena
(Richard, Marie, Kevin L., Shelly, Greg)
Samurai
(Chris, Kevin K, Scott, Patrick)
Palazzo
(Mike, Marshall, Stephanie, August)
MarshallPhilips -
Palazzo is another game where the economics vary with the number of players. In this case the amount of stuff (the "floors" of the Palazzos) remains constant no matter how many players there are. Each player doesn't bring his own set of money though, instead it's the limited number of actions that drive inflation.
You see the floors are acquired via the build action but there are a fixed number of build actions per game. With fewer players you have more chances to get tiles. With more players your chances are fewer so when somebody puts tiles up for auction you need to bid more aggressively. With two players it's quite common to fully complete 3 Palazzos each of a consistent material. With three players you can usually complete one plus a couple of partial Palazzos. With four players it's very tough to complete even one Palazzo because you just don't get that many chances to acquire the building materials that you'll need.
In this game, however, August did indeed complete a full Palazzo of a single material and that powered him to victory despite having a -5 Palazzo also. And this was another four player game in which one player (in this case Stephanie) got screwed pretty bad because there's simply not enough to go around.
Ticket to Ride: Europe
(Marie, Richard, Shelly, Greg, Kevin L)
MarshallPhilips -
This is the sequel to the popular Ticket to Ride and this time it's set in nineteenth century Europe. It's more than just a new setting though, there a quite a few new rules also. If you're familiar with Ticket to Ride the American version then here are the changes in the European version:
1) In the beginning the ticket cards are divided into Long tickets and Short tickets. Each player is given 1 Long and 3 Short Tickets from which they must keep 2.
2) Several of the grey connections (grey meaning any color can be used to complete it) have little train symbols in them. For each of these symbols one wildcard (locomotive) is required to complete the connection.
3) There are also tunnels in this game. With tunnels you are uncertain of how many cards it's going to take to complete that connection. The way it works is that when you try to complete a tunnel connection you must draw three cards off the top of the deck. For each color that matches the color you are using plus for each wildcard that you draw you must come up with one more card from your hand to complete the connection.
For example, let's say you're trying to complete a three link yellow tunnel. You play your three yellow cards then draw three off the top of the deck. Perhaps you get a Blue, Wild, Yellow. Because you drew a yellow and a wild you must play an additional two yellow cards for a total of five to complete this link (you may use wildcards if you like).
If you fail to complete a tunnel you take your cards back in your hand and essentially lose your turn.
4) There are also Stations in the game. Each player gets three stations to start and any unused stations are worth four points each at the end of the game so you don't want to use them unless you have to. But there are times when you have to because Stations allow you to use one connection from another player as if it were your own. You play stations onto cities (only one station per city) and any track going out of that city you may use as if it were part of your network (except for purposes of longest train). Stations are very handy when you get cutoff or blocked out of one of your destination cities.
Those are all the differences I can think of. Other than that it uses the same core mechanics as the original Ticket to Ride. Here's a picture of Friday night's game in progress:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20811109@N00/108514299/
This is the store's copy of the game which Tim was nice enough to open and let us use. That's really fantastic when we can try out games like that and I think Richard and Marie liked it so much that they picked up their own copy.
If you like the Ticket to Ride games note that a third one is due out this year called Ticket to Ride: Marklin. This game is set entirely in Germany and introduces the concept of passengers to the game. I think it looks very exciting, more information can be found here:
http://www.ticket2ridegame.com/?t=marklin&rid=&S=ce4605d1a5868f3be21a919385ca64e9
Poison
(Scott, Kevin K., Patrick, Chris)
San Juan
(Mike, Marshall, Stephanie, August)
MarshallPhilips -
This was my first four player game of San Juan, it was new to Stephanie and August. It's abundantly clear that you really need to know the function of each card to appreciate this game, and there are a lot of different cards. We spent most of this game playing with open hands so that we could understand which cards were best to use at any given time.
Ra
(Chris, Scott, Kevin K., Patrick)
Alhambra
(Chris, Scott, Kevin K.)
MarshallPhilips -
Here's picture of three guys playing Alhambra:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/20811109@N00/108514298/
That's Stephanie in the background.
Poison
(Marshall, Mike, August, Stephanie)
MarshallPhilips -
So this time my strategy was to try and get the most cards in one of the colors (which isn't that hard to do if you concentrate on it). This strategy seems to work out pretty well as long as you choose a color that you don't have many cards in. The reason is that if you have a lot of cards in a color that means the other players have fewer cards which means they're going to be dropping poison on that color as soon as they dump their potion cards.
I definitely noticed in this game that players were holding onto their poison until they had cleared a color from their hand then they would dump as much poison as they could into that color's cauldron. Seems like a pretty good strategy.
Guillotine
(Chris, Kevin K., Scott, Shelly)
Polarity
(Kevin L., Marshall)
I finally got to try out Polarity and it is a neat game. Basically it's a dexterity game where you are trying to balance magnetic disks against the magnetic fields of other disks. If you aren't careful and the disks touch then you give points to your opponent.
We basically were just fooling around practicing placing disks but I could definitely see there'd be a lot of strategy in this game when contested between skilled opponents.
Here's a picture of the game in progress though not our particular game:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/109476
Don't bump the table!!!
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