2/14/15 Hobby Day Report

I managed to get out to the monthly hobby day put on by the St. Crispin's Irregulars this month. It was slightly down in turn out than usual. But I had a good time nevertheless. I played several board games over the course of the day all of which I have never played before.

The first was Nautilus (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3154/nautilus)

The game consisted of a building phase where each player placed down a tile(s) in order to construct more of the underwater base. The game is a balance of building up an economy by sending down different modules to the floor, and exploration of the surrounding area in order to unearth treasures, and ultimately pieces of the lost city of Atlantis. It was an enjoyable game with a definite shift in strategy once the end game began.

The second was Caverna (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102794/caverna-cave-farmers)

Since I was familiar with Agricola the basics of the game were similar. The game adds weaponry which you can equip to your people, and send them on quests to obtain loot. This additional level of complexity gives it a different challenge. The food seemed to be much more easy to obtain in this game. It had enough variety in the buildings you could acquire which were similar to the improvement cards in Agricola. I did enjoy the way that the harvests are unknown and change every time you play. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, it took several hours to play through. It had enough complexity and differences from Agricola to have an entirely different feel to the game, despite having the same worker placement mechanic. In my book it is a winner.

Here is a photo of our game in progress.

Another game I enjoyed that day was The Princess Bride: Prepare to Die (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/137348/princess-bride-prepare-die)

This game is a variation on the familiar apples-to-apples game. In it you place down a black card which is a reason for the character to "prepare to die." And then going around the table the "non-readers" of the black card play their red cards which have character names on it that relate (or don't) to the black theme card. It led to some hilarious comparisons, and an enjoyable variant on apples-to-apples.

A game that I tried later in the day was Save Doctor Lucky (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1157/save-doctor-lucky)

This game was a variant on the original Kill Doctor Lucky. Instead of trying to kill him in the reverse-Clue style of the first game. In this edition the players are trying to rescue Doctor Lucky off of the Titanic as it goes down. All the mechanics of the game are identical except that when you make a save attempt, another player MUST be able to see you and the doctor. The game-board also sinks beneath you as the draw piles are exhausted. It was a nice twist on the Doctor Lucky games, although in my opinion I think Kill Doctor Lucky was a bit more fun since it was the first one released. But that's just my two cents.

All in all it was an enjoyable day gaming with friends.

Enjoy!

Keep those dice rolling!

Kevin

Gaming Goodness 04: Letters From Whitechapel

Hello readers. After a bit of a hiatus, I've returned to the blogging sphere, posts will be infrequent as of late, since I have now began a new job within the last two months, and have gone back to school at DeVry to get my Master's degree in Netcom Management. I won't even try to keep this on a regular schedule, but I'll be posting when I have new and interesting items to post for your perusal.

In another edition of Gaming Goodness, I'll be covering the game Letters from Whitechapel. Letters is a board game which was revised by Fantasy Flight Games in 2013 from a version originally published in 2010. It is similar in game-play to Scotland Yard. Letters is a deductive game with a strong cat and mouse feel.




Gameplay:
This game plays similarly to another deductive game, Scotland Yard. Although in it you as the players are trying to find "Mister X" as he moves across London. In that one you only know where he is by the methods of transportation used, and when he has to reveal himself at strategic points. The hidden movement mechanic is where the similarity ends with these two games.
Letters gives the players an especially nerve wracking game play experience.
One player takes the role of Jack the Ripper. It is his goal to select a hideout on the board. The white pawns are Jack's targets. Jack will place out white round tokens of which a few are dummies to denote possible targets. The police players then put out their patrol tokens, as directed by the head of the investigation. Like Jack's wretched tokens, the police patrol tokens also have some dummy blanks.
The round is ready to begin. The waiting game is more important in the play because it gives Jack the opportunity to determine where the patrols actually are, but it gives the police players the opportunity to move the wretched pawns onto another adjacent number in a way that might make it harder for Jack.
The heart of the game really begins after Jack strikes and then he is trying to maneuver from the crime scene to the location of his hideout. The trick is that he only has a certain amount of moves available each round. Although they are enough to get across the entire length of the board, if he is forced to detour a lot, then it would reduce the amount of flexibility that he has.

Components:
1 Rulebook, Game Board, and Jack Screen
6 Reference Sheets
4 Jack's Letter Pieces
5 Head of the Investigation Tiles (the oval ones)
5 Special Movement Tokens (Coach and Alleyway)
16 Wooden Tokens (Black for police patrols and white for the targets)
12 Wooden Pawns (2 Jack Figures, 5 Police Figures, 5 White Wretched Pawns)
27 Plastic Markers (Red crime scene markers, and yellow clue markers)

What I thought of it:
I've had a chance now to play it several times. Both playing as Jack, and as the police. It is a totally different experience based upon which side you play. Jack is the harder of the two to play. Firstly because he is never actually on the board and you must keep track of him, without giving away your location based upon how you look at the board. The police are in essence a team of players, who can confer as to where best to place the tokens on the board. Although it is easy for Jack the first few nights, don't allow that to fool you. I've been caught before on the final night, and I've also managed to throw the game by making an illegal move as Jack, which would have lead to me getting captured. If you are looking for a good cognitive game of deduction, then you have found it in Letters From Whitechapel.

I rate it 5 meeples out of 5.

Gaming Goodness 03: Pandemic

Pandemic is a game originally released in 2008 by z-man games. The 2013 version of the game is the version which I have. And for this installment of gaming goodness this review can also apply to the older one, since the addition was two new characters and some minor tweaks. Having now played both versions, they both play the same. There are just some additional bells and whistles in the revised edition.

The Components of the Game

What's in the box? There are seven role cards in this edition. The contingency planner and quarantine specialist are the two new roles in this edition. What do the roles do? The quarantine specialist stops outbreaks in whatever city they are in. One of my friends had this role in a game I played a few months back. It was highly effective. The other new card, the contingency planner allows the player to look through the event discards (using an action) and place that card beneath the role card. The card can then be used once and is removed from the game afterwards. It can be quite powerful when used appropriately.

Gameplay

Outbreak cards are inserted into the infection deck depending on how difficult you want the game to be. More outbreak cards make for a more difficult game. Infection cards are randomly drawn and those cities are infected in the beginning.

The players begin in Atlanta after the roles have been dealt out. They perform 4 actions. Draw 2 player cards. And then infect cities at the current infection rate.

Movement

Move between interconnected cities (Car or ferry).  To a city that player holds (direct flight) discard the card. To any city if current city is played (charter flight). From research lab to research lab (shuttle flight).

Treat disease

Players remove disease cubes at the rate of one per action.

Find a cure

Discard 5 city cards of a color to cure the corresponding disease. (4 if scientist).

Build a Research Station

 Discard the matching city card you are in to place a Research Station there.

Share information

Give or take the matching city card from another player that matches the city both of you are in currently. Very difficult to do, in the game I played last Friday this did not come up.

Rating

5 out of 5 Meeples

If you are looking for a game which the players can easily win, I'd rate this one lower. But as a cooperative game goes, its one of the best. Every move counts, and the difficulty ramps up in the end, as with any cooperative game. In last Friday's game we played the players almost won it, and then the game took us. It might have been easier had we been using the newer edition. Seeing as how the quarantine specialist would have been a very valuable team member to have.

Hobby Day May 10 2014

Hobby day is put on by the St. Crispin's Irregulars on the second Saturday of each month at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Anaheim. They have recently started having themes for hobby day. This means that ideally they want the games played during that day to be in some way related to the theme. This month's theme was "Adventure on the High Seas." I arrived in the morning and stayed until the early afternoon. I usually stay the entire day, but I had a family birthday to attend in the evening. It was a good day of gaming despite the low numbers of people who showed up for the event.

I managed to get some board games on the table that day with my friend Eric. We played "Dread Pirate: Buccaneers Revenge," "Agricola," "Pirate Fluxx," and "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock."

"Dread Pirate: Buccaneers Revenge" is a game where the players maneuver their pirate ship around the map, completing quests. The quests are in the form of mission cards which have a start location and and objective. The game was good with two players, although its a lot more cutthroat when played with four people. The bag of loot and gold coins are a nice addition to the game. It feels like a euro-game in simplicity and ease of play, with some depth in the abilities that the completed quests give you. All in all it is a nice family game. I would recommend this game to anyone of any age who likes pirates.

 

I have previously blogged a review of this game, so I won't go in depth here. I had a fun time playing this game on Saturday and adding some of the expansions as well. Eric and I got in two games of this. It was his first time playing this, and by the second game, he had already grasped the concept extremely well to the point that we added several decks of cards in the second play. It was my second time playing with the "Legen*dary forest deck" which is the second non-serious expansion for the game. I had a great time teaching the game to Eric, and look forward to getting Agricola back on the table more often.

 

In keeping with the theme of Hobby Day "Adventure on the High Seas," I also got this game on the table. Pirate Fluxx. As with the other Fluxx games the game is never the same twice. It begins with the mechanic of "draw 1 card, play 1 card." As cards are played however, that changes rapidly. Many of the cards are new rules, or meta rules. After several hands the rule might be "Draw 5 cards" "Play All." The goal of the game is to have "keeper cards" in play that match the goal. And when that occurs, you win!

 

This fast paced dice game worked alright with two players, but would be better in a larger group. You are trying to defeat the black die with a roll of the three red dice. If the black die defeats your red dice, then you lose a chip, placing it back in the center. If a red die matches the black die, you pass a chip to the right. If you roll a "pass left" result, you pass a chip to the left. The object of the game is to be the only one left with chips at the end. It was a quick and simple game to play.

Gaming Goodness 02: Agricola

If you've ever wanted to own a farm but not the hassle of working on it, then this is the game for you. Set in Germany during the twelfth century, this game gives you the freedom to do what you like with your farm. If you want a vast array of fields teeming with crops, you can. If animals are more your thing, then you can raise sheep, boar, and cows and cook them later for food (mmm! Hamburger).

I've played several games of Agricola now ranging from the family game, to adding multiple decks. I've come to the conclusion that the cards can be a major hindrance to the growth of the farm. They do give you good bonuses at times, but it costs an action to get a card into play, and many times your actions will consist of obtaining enough food to not starve during the harvests. If you happen to have extra actions however, then by all means play a card.

For example, a game I played the other night, I was focusing on getting pottery, and the potter cards into play. The end result would yield me four food from two clay. That means feeding my family of three would not be difficult. But it took me ten rounds to get it implemented. Which meant that the expansion of my farm suffered. In the same amount of time my opponents had burgeoning farms. One player focused on fields while another focused on breeding animals. They focused very little on the occupation and minor improvement cards.

In the end of the game the begging cards hurt my score, the first few rounds I couldn't get enough food. The other players had more points than myself. The player with a lot of fields did the best, taking first with no begging cards. The player who took second had large pastures filled with many animals. What hurt me was that I really didn't have a good food engine going, while the other two players did. That's something for me to think about the next time I play.

The re-playability of the game is a debated topic online. Some see that there is only one clear way to win, that of expanding your house and family as early as possibly and establishing a food engine to support the family growth. If you take that route every single time you play then the cards will not mean as much to your strategy, since it takes an action to play a card which could be better utilizes expanding your house, or filling your farmyard. Some critics online might say that it is broken, but I think that it is just strong play if a player goes this route.

Creating more family members is essential to this worker placement game. The most important thing in the game is more actions. But this comes at a cost of having to feed the family. I enjoy the variety of the different cards which can sometimes lead to great combos being played. Although the cards are more like the icing on the cake, whereas the real substance to the cake is getting a food engine going, and procreating to obtain more actions.

The components to the game are top notch. The wooden meeples fit their role great. The animeeples give the game a lot of character since now you can see all the animals on the farm, and you get a good feeling when you have to cook them.

The game play can be a little confusing for someone who has never played a worker placement game before. But they get the hang of it after one game. The learning curve is gentle at first, but can sharply increase when a lot of cards are on the table. Then it becomes a brain burning exercise to remember what cards activate with what actions.

This one is up there in my top 10 games because of the re-playability and I can usually manage to get it out on the table.

Rating 5 Meeples out of 5!

Gaming Goodness 01: Forbidden Island

This will be a new segment on my blog entitled "Gaming Goodness" where I will review board games which I have played, among other things. For the first post of this new series I wanted to review a favorite game of mine. Forbidden Island a 2010 released game.

As you may be aware, this game falls into the category of co-op games in the vein of Pandemic. You and your fellow players either win or lose together. In the game's theme, you and your fellow players are adventurers on an island which is rapidly being reclaimed by the sea (global warming anyone?) and your task is to unearth four treasures and bring them back to civilization.

What's in the box?
In this case its a tin for a box. There is a flood gauge and marker, 6 pawns, 24 double sided tiles with flooded and non flooded locations respectfully, four plastic treasure markers. One deck of 28 treasure cards (5 of each treasure, 3 waters rise, 3 helicopter lift, and 2 sandbags) and one deck of flood cards matching the 24 locations on the board.

How to play?
The object of the game is to collect all four treasures and return to Fools Landing to escape before the island sinks under you (This is easiet said then done I might add). The players are dealt a random adventurer card, each having a specific unique ability. Each player begins with two treasure cards.
The order of play is simple
1. Take up to three actions
2. Draw 2 treasure cards
3. Draw flood cards to current level

What are actions?
Actions are what your player can do during the turn.
-- Move to one tile
-- Shore up (which is to flip a flooded tile to its unflooded side)
-- Give a treasure card if you are on the same tile, unless you're the messenger.
-- Capture a treasure. Turn in four identical treasure cards on one of the two matching locations and take the plastic token.

What I thought?
This game scales wonderfully in relation to the number of players. I must stress that every move in this game is important. If the players think that they can squander their moves in the beginning of the game to set up for a better end-game, they will be sorely mistaken as the island will sink beneath them. A redeeming fact is that the tiles that flood are always placed on top of the deck, so the players always know what will flood if their memory is good. Its a simple to play game with somewhat of a deep strategy.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 meeples