Call My Bluff

Gamers abhor standing around. So a quick filler game was brought to the table. I like this game. Especially when there are abnormal rolls. For example, on four dice, I rolled all stars. So I put the bid on 4 stars even though the odds said that it was likely that there was another one out there. I was called and it turned out that there were 6 out there. The picture shows another unlikely occurrence. Everyone rolled a five or a star! When it was stated that 5 of the six dice were fives, someone naturally called it. And lost!

Imperial

Next up on the table was Imperial. This time we finally used the advanced start rules where there is a once around process where you buy shares in a country. I definitely like that version better. But this game still needs another tweak. You should be able to buy shares in a country when that country is done with its turn. It just takes too long for the investor marker to make its way around to you. I had money in my pocket that was just not utilized. Especially when Adam ended the game just before I was able to improve the multiplier in my country.

Lost Valley

Next up on the table was Lost Valley. And I definitely wanted to play it. It has been a while since I last played it. This time, I decided to buy a boat and a sieve and run along the river while exploring for river-gold. Sadly, I didn’t find that much of it. I was able to get ten chips for a total of 12 gold. And at that point I had a decision to make. I could end the game, but it was likely that Curt had more gold than I did. I would be playing for second place. So I decided against that and decided to start mining some mountain-gold. My river exploration had turned up a nice pile of it at the end of the river.

But the game turned into a version that I really hate. And that is the fact that you cannot complete getting victory points in one operation. You must first open up a mine. And then spend actions to mine the gold. However, other people can take advantage of the work that you did to mine the gold on their turn. Due to the load of supplies that I was carrying, I could not open a mine and then mine for gold immediately. If I opened the mine, then Curt and Adam could mine out all of the gold before I would be able to get some.

It turned into a Mexican standoff. Unfortunately, Curt was in the lead at this point and I needed Curt to open up the mine first. It was in Curt’s best interest to just wait. But eventually he succumbed and went off to start a mine. Adam chased after him and I was able to start another one myself.

And at the end of the game, the score was close. I had scored 18 gold and Curt and Adam scored 17!

When John and I drove home, we came across an accident that had still not cleared after 6 hours! Apparently the rain had caused an 18-wheeler to run up the side of an overpass.

My Adam Spielt order finally arrived from Germany. It was shipped out on 12/08 and arrived on 1/12. Five weeks is longer than average for them. I guess the various postal carriers took a lot of holidays during that time.

But the disincentive to order from them is building. Most of the German games are coming out quicker than ever here in the states. Yspahan, Imperial, and Space Dealor were all orderable from U.S. before my games arrived. But perhaps the biggest problem is the dollar is falling against the Euro. The conversion rate was 1.3626320196645147348802031279544. Ouch!

Augsburg 1520

I tried another playing of Augsburg. I played it in the last week of December, so I thought that I remembered the rules. But I did get one rule completely wrong and some other rules slightly wrong. Sigh. People love to catch and report those issues. Kinda makes you want to never try out a new game…

Sticheln

Susan wanted to try out Sticheln next. As a three player game, I must say that Sticheln is at its best. And it is a good game for giving you the feeling of impending doom. But I was dealt some rather painful hands. When I pick 4 of a color as my initial pain card, you know I had some rather hard choices. So I spent most of the game looking over my collection of games and thinking “I would rather be playing this game…”.

Tichu

To end out the night, a game of Tichu was called for. On my first hand, I called Tichu. I was a little worried when Doug over-bombed my point-grabbing bomb. However, not only did I make it out first, but my partner, Jon, made it out second. It was a good start to the game.

And then we ran out of steam. The other side was catching up. Fortunately, we crossed the finish-line first.

The 42 group is the only group still active during lunch at work. So I play with them unless it is Tuesday and Tichu makes. Our team was down 0/4. Then we slowly fought our way to 4/4. And I get the following hand: 6:6 5:5 2:2 0:0 6:4 and two low tiles (maybe one was 5:1). I think about for for a while. And then I decide to plunge. This is a three mark bid where you have four or more doubles and your partner calls trump and leads. My partner perks up and bumps the bid up to four marks because he has the remaining 3 doubles and something to transfer the lead to me. Kinda flawed in a way since the game is played to seven marks.

I have also seen people overbid when they are behind just to determine the trump suit. And then get set because they have a poor hand.

Shogun

Mike brought Shogun with him. Which is the re-themed Wallenstein game. Instead of the theme of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), it is set in feudal Japan during the Sengoku period (approx 1467-1573). A much better theme in my opinion. And the artwork is much better as well. The only change to the game is the introduction of bidding for turn order and special power cards. The special powers are not too outrageous. They are +1 money, +1 rice, +1 attack, +1 defense, or buy 6 armies for 3 dollars. Definitely a better game than Wallenstein. And one that I am thinking of trading up. Now if I could only convince Dan to paint me some samurai miniatures…

Tichu

While we waited for Rehana to pick Adam up, we play some Tichu. And boy what a blow-out it was. We had all of the honors. On the first hand, I had the Mahjong and random-wished Adam’s four bomb out. Luckily, I did not guess Jon’s three-bomb.

To Court the King

After disc golf, we showed up at Tim’s house. He was cooking chili which smelled really good. Unfortunately, I think I experienced a shock to my system when I was outside at disc golf. The Juniper trees were visibly pollinating and our discs knocked some off that pollen down. So when I was at Tim’s house, my eyes were watering badly. At first I blamed the onions. But it was probably the cedar pollen. And maybe some cat dander as well. Who knows… but I was miserable.

We started off with a light game. One that I wanted to try out. It is like Easy Come, Easy Go where you are rolling dice to achieve a goal. However in this game, there are many intermediate goals. These goals give you special abilities which you can “tap” during your turn. Some cards give you extra dice while others let you modify the dice that you do roll. Your goal is to roll seven of a kind. This gets you the King and Queen card and puts the game into a final round. Everyone now tries to better your roll. If you rolled send 3s, then they need to roll seven of a higher number or eight (or more) of any number. When it comes back to you, you get one last try to beat whoever had the best roll. And thats it. It seems like a light and quick game.

Space Dealer

Next up was space dealer. The rules were simple but there was a nagging question that I was unable to answer. This consumed a lot of time and we finally just made a house rule and started playing. I will have to look up the answer on the geek sometime…

Imperial

Yeah, someone in our game group bought Imperial. My copy is somewhere over the Atlantic ocean… In this game, I started out as Russia. I was a little worried at first since it seemed like a hard country to start. But I made a good jump with it. My secondary stock was in France and my next purchase was to take over controlling interest in France. Which was a mistake.

This is definitely a return on investment game where your initial investment needs to pay you money. Which you then use to buy more stocks which pay you even more money. If your investments don’t pay you money, you are definitely hurting to win. Also, you should only invest in countries that will have high multipliers at the end of the game.

Battlelore

This time Adam joined me in Battlelore. He too was new to the game but he picked it up quickly. We started out with a slightly more complex scenario with Goblins in it. Still no lore yet. I thought that my side was the better off because I had one more card in my hand and Goblins can flee twice as much. But Adam definitely had the terrain to his advantage. He raced to the hill in the middle of the board giving a good defensive bonus. So I decided to focus on the left flank and the possibly weak Goblins. The river really hampered me. It weakened some of my troops. But what really depressed me was when I tried to use the Battlelore card. I had a poor rolling of the dice and could not activate 6 units. For the units that I did activate, none of them did any damage, let alone kill anything! Gah!

Battlelore

I convinced John to play Battlelore with me and since he hadn’t played it before, he gave it a try. When I arrived at Gravitt’s house, he still had same gamers from his day games. They convinced me to go to Chuy’s with them to eat (sadly I had already eaten before coming over).

Finally after dinner was over, we started playing. Since John was new to this game system, I explained the rules to him. And then we started out playing a basic scenario. Too bad he didn’t like it. Shockingly enough, he compared it to Titan by saying it was just as bad. Sigh.

Antiquity

Ed and Susan held another gaming day and the group made the long trek up north. Susan wanted to play Antiquity. Jon and myself eagerly jumped in. Paul volunteered to play as well. After explaining the rules, we jumped in. I started out strong but then bogged down. I was playing a little too conservatively and not pushing my economy. In this game, if you do not have enough food, you take graves. These graves take up spots and can disable buildings. But you can man a hospital to remove the graves. So it is only temporarily punishing once you bring enough food to meet the demand. It is definitely a balancing act where you want to efficiently use your workers. I tried out the forced labor building. But I wasn’t that efficient in using that building either. When Jon announced that he could win the game in two turns, I scrambled madly. And it was at that point that I realized that I could use the market to get the goods I needed to also win the game. Doh! I already had one winning condition with Santa Maria. It then came down to a tie breaker. So we carefully counted unpolluted areas in our control. And I pipped Jon for the win.

Paul was definitely having problems in this game. He wasn’t bringing in enough food to keep ahead of the famine level. So he started taking graves. When it was clear that he was going to lose the game, we allowed him to remove all of his graves and ignore further ones. Next, he realized that he was out of wood. In this game, it takes wood to make more wood. So we gave him a couple of freebies. Unfortunately for this game, the first game that you play is a learning experience. Your goal is to stay alive during the game. And you can’t hope to win your first game unless everyone is is a newbie too.

Die Säulen von Venedig

Ed brought another new game to the table. This one looks like it has interesting bits and a bit of theme. But it also has some problems. There are cards that give you abilities and, from a hand of five, you select one, simultaneously reveal it, execute it in turn order, and then pass it to the player on your left. You do this until you run out of pylons. The cards are (generally):

• Take control of the gondolier. If a building is built on the river, then you score points.
• Take pylons and mark some of them as owned. Buildings are built on pylons. If you build on a pylon that is owned by another player, you still score all of your points, but, the other player scores three points for each of their pylons that you use.
• Take buildings from the stock. The builds come in different shapes and victory points that they generate.
• Perform the action that someone else has performed during this turn.
• If someone plays a certain type of card, then you get six points. There are three types of cards that correspond to three of the above actions.
• You can pick a person and spy on them. Take one of their cards and give them something else.
• You can cover marked pylons and not give those people any victory points. Ouch.

The problems in this game is the simultaneous reveal and guessing what others will do. Since you must build your buildings on pylons that someone has placed, another person can take up the only spot on the board if they build before you. Another problem is the power of the start player. They get to pick a person and randomly take a card from them. Another card from your hand is given back to them. Ugh. Also, your actions are limited to what cards you have in your hand. So if people upstream play cards that are not beneficial to you, then those cards are going into your hand. You must keep an eye on this during the game.

I made a couple of mistakes during this game (after post game analysis, of course). I got second place though so I wasn’t too upset. Ed probably hates me because I picked on him once during the game (there was a choice of two places to cover and not give any victory points to players).

Perikles

Ahhh, I have been dying to try this game out. And Jon was nice enough to enable me. Susan also wanted to play it to decide if she wanted to buy it.

The only problem was that I played this game past my bed time. So I made a major mistake in the final round. Ugh! And when I got home and went to be at 12am, I woke up four hours later and couldn’t get back to sleep. Major ugh!! I have noticed that my sleep cycle is highly fragile… Still, I had fun playing it. And want to play it again.

Another sad thing is that our gaming group do not like many Wallace games. They like Age of Steam, Volldampf, maybe Tempus, and possibly Liberté, but do not like Struggle of Empires, Byzantium, Empires of the Ancient World, Perikles, or Princes of the Renaissance.

Formidable Foes

I received Formidable Foes on a game order and had to play it. It is the third in a series of Friedemann Friese games (Fische Fluppen Frikadellen and Fearsome Floors being the first two). You have bartered with Prince Fieso and have escaped his monster, Furunkulus. Now you must fight in a dungeon!

There are 46 monsters, Prince Fieso, Furunkulus, and two treasure chests. Fighting is really simple, just roll two dice (one for the monster (2,3,3,4,4,4) and one for the player (1,1,1,2,2,3)) and subtract the player from the monster. You pay the difference in power chips and with a -1 difference you instead get one gold. Both you and the monsters have wisdom. You cannot fight wiser monsters than you. For less wise monsters that you can fight, you advance to the wisdom of the monsters level + a constant modifier (different based on the number of players). If the monster is too dumb (where you cannot get any wiser), then the monster dies of fright.

Most of the dungeon is hidden and is only revealed when you beat a monster in front of you and you can now see past it. Intersections in this dungeon are randomly determined when you can see them. So there is a little bit of variability in this game.

Because you can sometimes loose up to three power chips when you fight monsters and usually loose at least one, you must sometimes choose not to fight and rather grab some more power chips. This has the effect of stalling your progress in the game. You do not keep pace in the wisdom department. And other people are killing the monsters that you are able to kill. So there is another way to gain wisdom. And that way is to follow people and learn from them. The problem with this approach is that you only gain one wisdom point per turn.

Another equalizing mechanic is the dumbest player. Whoever has the least wisdom is the dumbest player. This mechanic is enabled after the 23rd monster enters the dungeon. The dumbest player is not in contention for winning the game. And therefore can control the dumbest monster to possibly hose other players. At the start of your turn, you can move the dumbest monster up to three chambers. As the monster walks to the new location, it can pick up a player. If the carried player passes another monster, that person is dropped off.

The game ends when both the prince and Furunkulus are killed. Your victory points are the total of the gold coins on the monsters that you have killed. This game had a lack luster first impression. It was definitely not as fun as Fearsome Floors. I will have to play it another time to see if it is worth keeping.

Himalaya

John brought Himalaya to the house and suggested it. I definitely wanted to try it out. Adam countered with Zepter. Himalaya is a simultaneous path traversal game. You program six moves during a round and then reveal it. Everyone then executes their moves in turn order. This mechanic creates a lot of conflict in this game. The two main types of conflict are in picking up resources and fulfilling resource demands. There are five resources that are ordered by priority. You always pick up one of the goods in priority order. So, if someone arrived at a spot and picked up the only good before you could, you are hosed. If they picked up a good of a color that you wanted, you are hosed. Each location on the map might possibly demand goods. The demand can be from one to three goods. The first person to arrive at the spot and drop the goods off get some choices. Other people are screwed. The choices can be to place the only statue at the spot (giving from 1 to 3 points), place men in a region (for an majority win in influence), or take some number of herds that were represented on the chit.

Three times during the game, you score for majorities in goods collected (gaining 3 victory points for each majority). And at the end of the game you compete in three contests: most points in statues, most number of herds, and most influence in the regions. The winner of the game is the person that does the best in these contests.

Unfortunately for me, this is a guessing game. And Doug was able to get to spots that I was planning on going to before me and hose me. A lot. This is essentially a guessing game where, if you guess differently than other people, you will win. Not the type of game that appeals to me.