1870

Mike convinced us all to try the “lite” version of this game. And it really, really sucks. It was completely unbalanced. And, thankfully, we finally stopped playing it. It was so painful, in fact, that I am placing it on my permanent ban list.

Why is it so unbalanced? Take a look at the picture and keep in mind that you can only place two track segments per turn. John (lower left) goes first. Mike (upper left) goes second and cuts John off. He also cuts me (upper middle) off as well. I cannot reach Houston or Galveston before Mike does. So I decide to go for Alexandria. However, as I draw near, I realize that everyone else will be able to use up the remaining city markers before I can use one to connect to Alexandria. I was only able to, in fact, because John skipped connecting to Galveston. It is only in the next stage of the game that you can connect up the tracks with other tiles.

The other flawed aspect of this “game” was that there are only a limited number of train engines. Once all of the 4 engines are bought, all number 2 engines are removed. So when Mike was able to buy a second number 4 engine before I could buy my first, I lost my number 2 engine and only had a number 3 engine left. This effectively takes you out of the running for the game.

Mu

At least we were able to play Mu. Its an okay trick taking game for five people. Although I must admit that the strategy is not as crystal clear for me as it is with Tichu.

Byzantium

Mike bought a new game that I was itching to try out. Martin Wallace’s new game Byzantium. In it, all players can controll the three sides that are fighting (the Byzantines, the Arabs, and the Bulgars). You score victory points based on your actions on one of two main sides (the Bulgars score victory points on the Arab track if they take out Byzantine cities or vice versa). If your two scores are “close” (the lesser is at least or more than 1/2 of the greater) then your scores are added together. Otherwise the lesser score is ignored. However, there is an alternate win of only the Arab’s score if Constantinople is taken over. This is remaniscant of Liberte.

Unfortunately, after the rules were explained, we realized that we were taking too long to play the game (aka Ashley-rollmaning). So we stopped after one round (out of three). I certinally would like to play this game again. And I think that this game can be played faster. The problem was that it was not obvious what the strategy was after the rules were explained.

Tichu

An interesting situation came up in Tichu today. It had been discussed briefly but today I experienced its full force. My partner, Mike, likes to make random wishes. By that, I mean that he does not wish for the card that he passed. And instead tries to use some intelligence on what card to wish for. But it basically boils down to a guess that this person has the card and needs it versus my partner having the card and needing it. Since this is really a partner game, anything that hurts your team is a bad thing (in my opinion).

So, previously in the game he wished for a five and played a straight. Thankfully Adam could fufill the wish and play over it because I could as well and it would hurt my Tichu call. Now Adam calls Grand Tichu. Mike plays the Mah Jong, wishes for an Ace, immediately bombs it, and then leads two sequential pairs. Adam passes. Unfortunately, I can fufill this wish with my AAKK. And now Adam easilly makes his GT call. Our team has wasted a bomb and AAKK.

In a perfect world, Mike would always have the lead and work down the possibilities of Ace combinations and Adam would have to fill one of them. However, Adam’s team-mate would recognize what Mike is trying to do and try to stop it. If I passed on the sequential pairs, then Jon, if possible, would want to take control of the lead and lead a single if he has no Ace since that is the least destructive choice. The question always is, how likely is the Tichu caller able to fufill the wish compared to your partner.

And to leave you with an idea of just how desperate the last hand Grand Tichu’s can be. Here is Adam’s hand:

Mike’s hand:

Jon’s hand:

and my hand (for the GT call):

Ys

Another playing of Ys for me and I still like playing it. Yes, there is an aspect to it where you need to control an area by blind bidding. However, as the turn progresses, you begin to get more information. This somewhat is analagous to a “fog of war” where information slowly resolves itself.

Attila

This is a older game that I like and that we rarely play. So I was glad that it was brought to the table. Unfortunately for me, I had both good and bad luck in this game. The good luck was that I was able to control and initiate the scoring. However, my card draws were really bad and I could not draw the colors that I wanted to control. Sigh.

Flea Circus

To end out the night, we played this light game. I was able to make a lot of melds and it was enough for me to overcome Ed’s 6 different 7 cards that he was collecting for the win!

Fettnapf

Another Ed & Susan game day was today. And we started off with Fettnapf. Which is a simple memory game where you try and avoid numbers that other players own. You play a card to increase the running total. If the new total is owned by a player (they have that card), then you get a splat card. When you have 4, the game ends. Once the total moves past 30, then a new card is given to the player to the right and new cards will decrease the total. And once the total goes below 10, the total starts to increase. Each new card reduces the safe numbers by one since someone now owns that card. Susan was doing a good acting job during the game by saying “I think this number is safe…”

This game does not give you much choices when it is your turn. You can only play one of three cards that will increase your total. And one obvious strategy is to try and force the player on your left to be the one that moves the total above 30 or below 10 which will give you a new safe number (and dangerous for others). This game basically boils down to how well you can remember which numbers are safe. So even if you are able to keep track of that information, you may not have any choice in the matter and must take a splat card. I would not recommend this game.

Die Macher

Jon’s game of Die Macher finally arrived and Mike and I were really looking forward to playing it. Mike considers it a rating of 10 and I think Jon would as well. Fortunately for me, we played this game rather quickly in less than four hours. My initial impression of this game was certinally not a 10. However, it is probably too early to make a more final decision in ranking this game. I will definately play it again.

Three-Dragon Ante

For our next game, Mary brought this poker like game to the table. You are given some cards that have values to them. And the first thing that everyone does is to discard one. Out of the discarded cards, the highest number will determine the ante. After that, players play one card at a time until three cards are down. Usually the highest total will win the pot (one card will change that to the lowest table — to the surprise of others). The other thing about the cards is they have special powers like take cards or chips from the ante/pot or from other players. If the card that you play is numbered less than or equal to the card that was played previously for this round then the powers activate. And that is that. Not much to this game and one I would not recommend buying.

Tichu

For the last game of the night, Jon and I introduced Tichu to Mary and Tim who had not played much before. Mary was a little confused in who her partner was at first. Thankfully, Jon noticed that Mary had passed him an Ace and gave it to me. But after that, she was good. My first Tichu call was luckly made. Mary had played a King on singles and I had to pass. But singles were led again and I was able to play my Queen which allowed me to be able to go out eventually. My brain was a little fried from playing Die Macher apparently, as my for last Tichu hand I did not notice that I had a long straight. I instead played a Queen-high straight and a pair of Aces (Ace + Phoenix). Ed was a little confused by my actions ;0. But it didn’t matter really, the other team could not go over the smaller straight.

Poison

This was my first playing of Knizia’s trick-avoidance game called Poison. The package is extremely over produced. All that you really need is a deck of cards. However there are three large cardboard cauldrens and one big game box. You try and avoid taking cards. However, if you take the most cards in a suit then it doesn’t count. Doug seemed to rule in this game. He came late so we gave him an average score and then took no cards for the next two rounds.

Louis XIV

And this is my first playing of Louis XIV. What really soured me for this game was the amount of Analysis Paralysis that was going on. The other group played La Citta before we finished this game! There are four rounds where you try to fulfil victory conditions that you draw randomly. For each round, you play all but one of your action cards that you draw. There are wildcards and cards numbered from one to twelve. You can place up to three tokens and may move orthagonnaly while you drop them. Majority of tokens will win you tokens that you need for the victory cards. So, another problem is that you might draw cards that do not suit where you need to go.

But perhaps the biggest problem with this game is the rules for determining area control and what actions your may receive for this game. John printed out a player aid that contained a table with five columns and five rows!! Thats twenty five possible combinations of things that you do for each of the twelve areas! Ugggh…

Tichu

Still trying to get Doug to become one with this game. He has no choice really since everyone else loves this game. And tonight was his night to stretch his legs so to speak. He kept getting all of the good cards but did not call Tichu. Finally, after deciding for a long while, he called and made it. On my Tichu call, both my partner and Adam had one card left. I called Tichu and played trip fives. Fortunately Dog could not go over it. After that I was good, for I had two Aces, the Dragon, the Phoenix, and a long King-high straight.

Doug did make one mistake though at the end. He did not realize that he had to stop a one-two. He should of split his pair of Kings in order to stop me from going out second.

Sticheln

While we waited for Rehana to come, we played a hand of Sticheln. And during the play I was in a position that reminded one of the reasons why I don’t like this game. Jon had already taken negative points. So I am fighting with Adam for first place. A trick comes around and it is my turn to play (I will be the last one playing). Jon is currently winning another negative points trick for him. I have the option to “duck it” and give him more negative points (besides what is currently there). Or I can take it and get three positive points for myself. So, back to what I hate, in this game it is too easy to keep punishing people who are out of contention. You need to balance taking points with your only competition. Unfortunately, I chose the punish Jon approach…

Indonesia

Since we had 8 people tonight, I scheduled a long game of Indonesia. After going through all the effort of ordering this game, I definately want to play it. So I was happy tonight. And we played the game rather quickly (3 hours). I did not research mergers in this game and instead concentrated on slots (5) and hull size. Unfortunately, my shipping company was not as good as Adam’s. In the middle of the game, Marty merged all of the Siap Faji (spicy-rice) and won the resultant bid. As was later demonstrated, this gave him the game. I tried to catch up with some oil production but that only gave me second place. I think in the futute having a large expansion technology would be good.

Lexio

Another game of Lexio for us. It is a game with a good “feel” factor. The tiles are large and attractive. And today the luck was with me. I finished in 2nd.

Hacienda

And another game of Hacienda for us. This time, I decided to try and connect as many markets as possible. What was amusing was that I had complained about always playing this game as the start player. So when Mike pulls out my blue score marker when determining the start player, I seriously thought that he “fixed” it (still do in fact :-).

Tihcu

Ahh, such a one sided game. But I can’t complain since I was on the winning side. 😉 The only mistake that I made was not calling Tichu after Marty called Tichu before the pass. In my hand was a number of winners (Aces, Phoenix, etc). So I figure he must of had a bomb. It turned out that he did have one but broke it up to play over my straight.

Lexio

Since today was a holiday and the stock markets were closed, Marty had the day off. So he called a game day. And since, over the weekend we had freezing rain and I didn’t want to drive in that environment (400+ wrecks in Austin) so I worked instead. Therefore, I decided to take today off and game.

We started out with Lexio. After the rules explination (with one hiccup that I didn’t catch when Marty explained the rules), we played. Lauren had all the luck in this game. On one hand, she had all of the twos! Another odity that I noticed was that no one was caught with a two in their hand when the round ended. So no one was really rushing to play 2’s.

Hacienda

The next game out on the table was Hacienda. And what was amusing was that Ed had stopped by during his lunch hour and was roped into explaining the rules to this game. This game was fustrating in that Lauren asked questions during every play that she made. And at the end of the game, everyone else performed a group-think and advised her on how to score the most points. Sigh!

Susan seems to be a natural at this game and used lakes and haciendas to get her the win. An amusing quote that she made was that she wanted to eel her bull first before she sent it to the market.

Ostia

Susan brought out a new game that I had wanted to try before possibly buying it. This game has some interesting mechanisms that turn out to be annoying. The first is that people can make any bid amount for cards in a one around bidding. The person who put the cards up for auction can then take any bid or overbid and keep the cards. So you may bid the highest amount and yet loose the auction because the person gave it to someone else. The second mechanism that I didnt like was the blind allocation of cards. You can group your cards into three areas. One gets you money, the other gets you victory points and the third is for the next round. Everyone reveals their selections at the same time. So you might get hosed if you guess wrong. Not a game that I would buy. Or probably play again either.

Get the goods

This is the first time that I played this particular Alan Moon game. Although I have played the mechanics a lot. It feels exactly like a condensed card version of Union Pacific.

Antiquity

Only four tonight as two people cancelled out (because of work even). And I only played one game tonight. But it is a game that I like to play even though I haven;t won yet. But I have an excuse. Two of them are human computers. 😉

This was Doug’s first playing and he did well. By well, I meant that he kept his culture alive. Although he was flirting with death. He was always low on food and we had high famine levels. He was barely able to keep up with the incomming graves. Take a look at his necropolis…

I think that one of my problems is that I play it too safe. I should take some graves if it means that I can get more production going. This game does have a snow-ball effect on production.

Antike

Mike and I planned on playing Antike and then Indonesia for Ed’s long game day. So I was looking forward to the trip up north. And this game was different than the other playing was. (Besides the fact that the red tide was not present). There was very little fighting during the game. However, there was a massive military build up. Jon would be the first to build troops. And the rest of us, fearing an invasion from Jon, would build up as well. Towards the end of the game, I built up all of my ships and all but 4 of my armies. I was the first to fight when I needed 1 more city for another card (by attacking Roxana). Jon messed up by missing an opportunity to take out one of Ed’s temples for the win. And instead, Mike built another temple for the win.

Kubb

Unfortunately, Mike hosed me by not playing Indonesia. Clark, who we had not seen in a while, brought a Viking throwing sticks game. And he set it up outside and taught us the rules. I braved the cold winds to play with Jon. And we did very well and were in the lead for the whole game. After knocking down the opponent’s sticks, I had one shot to knock down the king for the win. Which I did!

Hacienda

Another playing for me, and this is the third time that I have started this game! Which I think is a disadvantage, but anyways… I taught this game to two new people. We used the symmetrical board but I didn’t concentrate on building a large land area. Instead, I tried to connect to as many markets as I could. So I played a lot of animals. This probably speeded up the game. At the end of the first scoring I was behind. But during the final scoring I was in the lead. Until Susan’s water scored for 20+ points which vaulted her into first! Good first game win Susan!

Jambo

While we were waiting for the others to finish their games, Susan and I started a game of Jambo. This is a game of buying and selling goods. However there are an awful lot of special event cards (items, animals, or people) for my tastes. I had trouble finding the cards that you actually need to win the game. Namely the buy or sell cards. And of the few that I did find, only a couple were usefull to me. Probably a game that I would not play again…

Intrigue

Ed suggested we play this game of backstabing and treachery. And I acquiessed reluctantly. You have a house that has four positions in in that pay 1K, 3K, 6K, and 10K per turn. And you have two each of four types of workers that you send out. And once one category of worker is in a position in a house, only that category can work there. So, you first collect income. And then you make deals with applicants sitting in front of your house. And then send two applicants in front of other people’s houses. The meat of the game is in the deal making part. You can make deals with people but they are not honor bound to follow them on their turns.

On the first turn, I sent two people to Ed’s house since he was going next and there would be no conflict. I made an agreement for a 6K position and I hoped that he would place the other in at least a 3K position. But Ed put him in the 1K spot. However, I was at least able to maintain parity with Ed during the game since I kept his person in my 6K spot as long as he kept mine in his 6K spot. On my next turn, I sent a person to Mike and gave him 5K to put him in a good spot. However he choose to put him in the worst spot (1K). This effectively burned any future deals with Mike for the rest of the game. Which was surprising that he did that so early in the game.

It was clear that Mike was winning the game. However, only Ed and I saw that and tried to make deals to avoid that. The other players were not so concerned with that and allowed Mike to get paying positions. Ed’s workers were decimated towards the end. He had only one worker in a paying position. However, the surprise ending was that Roxana pipped Mike by one 1K for the win! We were definately giving her too much money in our deals with her…