Game Reviews: Space Beans, New England, Monty Python Fluxx and Wettstreit der Baumeister

Wettstreit der Baumeister (Contest of the Master Builders)

This german (and I mean including the rules and game aids, but translations are available on the net) boardgame accomodates 3-4 players.

In this game, you auction for tiles (visible or sight unseen) and build up a hand of them (to a minimum 3), then lay them down to build your city.

The objective is to build a complete, tower-bookended city with good high value tiles, a symetry (by tile count on either side) around the city center, and a church on either side of the city center. There is also a bonus for having both your book-end towers with the same valuation (both 2s for instance).

Scoring is based on the sum of your tile values plus bonuses if you qualify. The church distribution bonus is 5 points and the symetry bonus is 10 points. Individual tiles vary in worth from 1 to I think 9, but common values seem to be in the 3-6 range. I'm not sure what the tower match bonus was as I never qualified when we played it (and I blew symetry because apparently I can't count).

Some of the tiles have coin icons on them (1 or 2). That increases your income each turn. The normal income is 2-5 per turn from a D6 with a 'kapow' result. The 'kapow' is interesting as it yields no money, but does give you one use of 'The Saboteur'.

In place of your per-turn build action, you may use a Saboteur to attempt to destroy an enemy tile in his city (or pilage one from his hand if the hand is too thick). If you destroy his tile, you can (if done at the right time) doom his symetry bonuses and create an unfinished city, which also somehow affects your score (forget how). In the variant we played, you could bribe the Saboteur to leave you alone.

Your success with the Saboteur depended somewhat on your die rolling ('kapow' is always successful, 2-5 values have to beat the number of shield icons in your city, which are provided at a ration of 1 or 2 per tower segment).

The game ends when either the unknown tile or known tile stack runs out.

Having played this once, we didn't know the tilesets. There was a lot of 'unknown' tile bidding, but if it makes it around once to the auctioneer (who may bid), he has to then disclose the type of tile. This means you have to risk bidding at least once before seeing the tile and try to guess whether his pricing is exploitive or if he's trying to get something critical (or just something cheaply). The Saboteurs didn't come up that much, although we did see one used and bribed away. Another appeared, but late in the game your builds might be more important than nuking another guy's tile (maybe).

It was generally fun and we all agreed we'd like to see it again.

Fun: 3.5 of 5
Strategy: 3 of 5 (I think there was more than we saw, so I'm giving it a 3)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (other than auctions, which are as fast or slow as your players, it played quickly enough)

New England

You have 4 families of new world colonists vying for having the best developed system of farms and settlements. Initially, each player places their three double-width tiles (a farm, a settlement, and a field). There is track that is a mixture of resource tiles and development cards (the mix varies at the whim of first player each round). There is a track where bid tokens are selected (which determine initiative but inversely the cost of the tiles and cards you'll buy).

You can buy 0-2 tiles/cards per round, they must generally be put down immediately, and resources must be deployed by similar coloured double-width tile (sheep with the green one, corn and tomatos with the black one, bricks with the brown one).

Development cards allow you to develop these resources which start face down if you match a geometry of layout that conforms to the development card. This is the major source of VPs.

Extra VPs are collected for those that have the most barns (function of barn is to hold a dev card unplayed for later) or most settlers (a dev card can contain a settler instead of a geometry for development and these are worth 1 VP and 1 cash unit/turn).

There are also some ships you can get and having the most of them (or being tied) lets you add to the purchase track when your turn in the initiative rolls around. That can be handy if you've got the low cost, late acting initiative as the selection can be rather picked over by then.

Note that there is an asymetry of development cards - brown has some really high value ones (6 and 10 value, 3 and 4 tile geometries) whereas black and green are 3 and 6 values with 2 and 3 tile geometries. If you did like I did and wait for the 4 tile green for 10 points, you'll find IT IS NOT THERE. Not that I'm bitter.... :)

We enjoyed this game. Post-facto understanding of the increased value of brown geometries would probably shape a different strategy as to which enemy tiles you tried to impede growth of (and which of your tiles you tried to defend more). Brown is important to impede and cashing quickly (with 2 geometries) in black and green isn't a bad plan.

Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 4 of 5 (lots of elements to manipulate - board control, resource control, turn order)
Speed of Play: 3 of 5 (might get faster once you become more familiar with it)

Monty Python Fluxx

Fluxx is a fast card collecting game. In essence, you try to collect a set of 'keeper' cards that match a victory condition to win. That sounds simple, but then we get to the fun part - the rules are pretty dynamic, including the victory conditions.

You start with (I think) 5 cards and a rule in play that is draw 1 play 1. As people are forced to play, draw 1 play 1 may get replaced or augmented by other cards that impose higher draw counts, higher play counts, hand limits, and so on. I've actually played original Fluxx and seen draw 7, play all, hand limit 0.

There are keepers (which you mostly want as you tend to have to match particular sets to win), creepers (in this Monty Python variant, which you don't want and often block winning), and rules and goal (victory condition) cards. Most of the time you have to collect a combination of goal cards (some victory conditions can be 'empty hand, no keepers' for instance). I saw one come out in our game of this Monty Python variant that required you to have the unladen swallow and the coconuts keeper cards so that you could have cocunut-laden swallows (the victory condition).

The fun is that when you work towards a particular condition in play, somebody is likely to yank the rug out from under you. It's fun to make others throw away half their huge hand when you have a small one, for instance.

The Monty Python version has a lot of really, really silly cards that are hilarious if you've seen Holy Grail or the Life of Brian. One we all enjoyed was 'set aside your cards, draw 5, recite 0 to 5 lines of contiguous script dialogue from the Holy Grail involving at least two characters, play a number of cards equal to the number of lines you can play'. Another was 'the number of the counting shall be 3'. All 5s were, of course, right out and any 5 on any other card was treated as a 3.

Lightweight, fast, and hilariously good at bringing back memories of the movies and evoking a sense of the silliness and humour the movies brought. Most of us would gladly play this again.

Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5

Space Beans

Space Beans is a 'bean' game (Bohnanza and others are from this line). It has space themed cards (caricature Aliens, Star Wars, and Babylon 5 art is seen on cards), but it essentially has the same mechanics as the other bean games.

The cards have the space art, a colour (I recall seeing yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple and grey cards), and a number from 1 to 9. Value distribution is not even with there being more 4-6s than 1-3s or 7-9s.

You have two collections - one public, one private. You will be handed some cards by the player after you when he's done his turn. There are initially 3 hands of cards if there are 4 players, for instance (in this instance, the first player has cards and passes off when he is done). The card hand you could be handed could be anywhere from a handful of cards to zero.

If you play against my friend Jean-Pierre, you can pretty much bank on either zero or several of the same colour that are useless to you.

You may augment this hand of zero or more cards on your turn by drawing 0 or 2 cards. Not 1.

Then, you play a card into one of your two collections (must play a card, may be able to do so). Assuming you can, you're okay and pass remaining cards on to the player who precedes you in turn order. The game takes some getting used to in this aspect as you are passing cards one way while the turn order goes the other.

If you can't play a card, you have to 'cash in' a collection (you can do this of your own accord or when forced to). When you cash in a collection, the value of the collection is the highest card value which matches the number of cards in the collection you are laying down. So, if you have 3, 4, 7 down, the value is 3 because you have 3 cards. If you had 3, 4, 7, 8, 1 down, you have 5 cards and no 5 value card, so the collection is worth ZERO. You keep the card matching the collection value (if it wasn't zero value) and this removes it from th game and adds it to your score pile.

You can play as many cards as you are able in a turn, but you are restricted to ONLY contributing to a single collection in a round.

When you cash, you have to cash your public collection. That then makes your private collection public (flip over cards face up). You can cash it too. As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of collections you could cash in a turn, but you can only ever contribute to one so a maximum of 3 cashings seems unavoidable (and the third collection won't be worth more than 1).

The trick to the game is passing as little useful stuff to the person you pass to as humanly possible. Forcing them to cash in collections before they get big, when they will either be worth little or nothing, is intensely satisfying to you and frustrating to them. Passing them zero cards is funny. I know because JP did this to me about every second round while laughing. The rest of the time, he handed me two or more cards of the same colour and not one I'm collecting - the other strategy issue here is trying to figure out from what you hand the other player and what he plays what his private collection colour is. Then using that knowledge to their detriment!

The objective is to form long, valuable collections and then cash them. It sometimes works out that way. The other approach is to cash many short collections, which might be more practical.

Great fun, allows you to mess with your friend's minds, good value for the money I think.

Fun: 4 of 5
Strategy: 2.5 of 5
Speed of Play: 5 of 5

Session Report: Doug is in town!

Doug came up to Ottawa so we could attend the Ottawa Woodworking Show (Nov 27th, 2009). I can happily say we both saw a lot of cool stuff, including some stuff made by one of the instructor-assistants at Rosewood Studios where we took a good course in hand tools in September. We also managed to escape without purchasing any equipment beyond the budget, although it was a close-run thing at times. I did really like the look of the 68" long, 115/230V, 6" Jointer from Steel City ($800) and their 13" helical cutter planer ($770).

This led into a night of gaming at bitHeads with my friends there. This time it was Lorry. There was no Shane, no Chris W, no Ax, and no Slobo, Dan, Louis or Richard. For some reason, I think Slobodan might have showed up, but I'm vague on that (they say the memory goes when you get old). Lorry was pretty exhausted due to some crazy work on debit/credit stuff on Canada Post's new Point-of-Sale system.

It ended up that we played games with Lorry and hung out until about 2 am chatting. Again, the memory fails me as to the games, but I seem to recall Lorry particularly sucking. We showed Doug a new game he'd never played and he owned us, then we played something else and I was in good form.

Session Report: Busy Weekend Of Gaming, Gary Turns 44

This weekend was a busy weekend of gaming.

Game 1: Ticket To Ride Europe with Dice (Doug, Lorry, Tom - Winner Doug by 1 pt. over Tom)

Game 2: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Virulent Disease/5 diseases): Human win, Field Operative curing two diseases.

Game 3: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human loss - very fast and nasty combination of outbreaks, little mobility of characters or cards, fast mutation.

Game 4: Pandemic (Doug, Lorry, Tomb - Mutation/5 diseases): Human win - retask of epidemiologist to medic part way through helped a lot in containment of serious situation. (Note: Intersection of sets of 'Players who have seen epidemiologist card' and 'Players who have said boy is she ugly!' = 100% overlap)

Game 5: Mystery of the Abbey (Gary, Doug, Shelly, Tomb - Victory was for Tomb): Find out who killed Brother Adelmo by visiting crypts, libraries, scriptorum, chapel, the Abbot, interrogating other players, visiting confession and attending Mass regularly.

Try to glean more info about other people's eliminated suspects, from a list of 24, while keeping your own information close to the chest. Suspects have 5-factor identification (Beard/Clean Shaven, Hood/No Hood, Fat/Thin, Order (Benedictine, Franciscan, Templar), and Rank (Father, Brother, Novice)).

Go to the Abbot to make revelations about one of the factors or make an accusation, but being wrong is minus points.

Each Mass, cards change hands. Scriptorum visits produce cards that can allow filching from other players. Crypt cards (from the crypt) allow extra moves. When you run into other monks, you can query them and they you, but you can plead a vow of silence if queried (making the finger to lips motion).

Build up an intelligence picture on the perpetrator, but note that you can ask two other players the same question and think you've gotten two bits of data, but due to card thefts and passing, you might be obtaining data about the same target from both due to the interval in between (think submarine warfare and 'contacts').

Like Clue, only a bit more engaging. Good for wives and non-hardcore gamers.

Game 6: Lost Cities (Doug, Tomb) - Victor Tomb on the strength of a good final hand and screwing Doug in a colour he'd laid down two multipliers on.

Game 7: Galaxy Trucker (Doug, Tomb) - Doug won, but he had not been held to construction timings and I had helped him build his ship optimally (his first time). Next time, the gloves are off.

Boardgame Review: Descent - Journeys in the Dark

 

Boardgame Geek Link

This game is a cross between and RPG and a boardgame about dungeon delving. One player takes the GM role and the others are the party adventuring into the dungeon. The GM attempts to thwart the players with his cards and his action tokens and the players attempt to stay coordinated, stay alive, pulverize monsters, and achieve a dungeon-specific scenario (in the one I played, it was kill the giant at the end of the dungeon).

This sort of game would be familiar to anyone who has played dungeon-crawl board games or RPGs. Someone opens a door, someone goes through the door, monsters are seen, fights ensue, treasure is looted from the room, traps go off, more monsters are fought, etc.

There seems to be a variety of monster quality levels and special abilities and that makes for some interesting decisions. The Ogre, for instance, possesses formidable knockback as well as good damage dealing. The hell-hounds had area-effect conic firebreath.

Combat is by means of customized dice. You roll dice, which differ in face values by their colour. On the dice, you can get hearts (wound points), numbers (range for effects), lightning bolts (special power activators), nothing (blank!), and probably some other icons I forget. A typical roll for a character with a sword might be three dice of differing colours and might generate 6 damage points, 1 range, and 1 power activator. The power activators can be used to trigger powers on items your character is carrying (such as +1 damage or the like).

Of course, being a dungeon delve, it comes with gear you buy at the start and magical and loot you find along the way (plus money). These items take the form of armour, weapons (ranged or melee) with bonuses to damage, magic items which increase magical attacks, and other special ability items. One example of the later was a magic item that let me spend a fatigue to heal two life for another player.

Characters have some skills which let their characters do extra things or have bonuss. In our run through, one character could spend fatigue points to charge and do more damage. My character had bonuses to defense from parrying and from willpower.

Each character also has variable statistics for fatigue, life points, natural armour/defense, and for what dice they use in melee, ranged combat, or magical combat. They also have special powers - my character was sort of a whirling dervish who could trade fatigue for wounds or wounds for fatigue on my turn.

The characters try not to get killed, try to efficiently kill the monsters and limit the DMs respawn locations by keeping line-of-sight to as much of the explored area as possible. The DM in turn tries to find out of the way spots to spawn in monsters and throws traps to slow down and attrit the party.

The players have control of their tactics, their character's gear distribution, and where they want to go at junctions in the dungeon. The GM has control over which of his cards he plays or discards and whether he spends his action tokens piecemeal to bleed the party along the way or saves up for crushing waves at more distributed intervals.

The game also has a campaign system and this apparently lets you run an entire campaign with the same (barring dying) characters. Even more like an RPG, but on the light side and with very sort of simple dice mechanics and a focus on "open door, whack monster, get loot".

Not sure if the game would sustain my interest over the long haul - different monsters, powers, items would help (and there are a lot of expansions). But it isn't a full fledged RPG and its rather one dimensional play (dungeon crawl, shoot-n-loot) would probably get tiring after a time. Still, as a one off or short campaign, it might make for some excellent fun.

Fun: 3 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5 (there are tactics, not much strategy)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (for games of its ilk)

Session Report:: [Olostin's Hold] Bugbears and Body Bags

 

The party stood before the stone door to the bugbear lair. The mage was tired and a bit mentally fuzzy; Being up all night takes a toll.

The warriors Dhallon, Hagis and Reagan put their shoulders into the surprisingly well-crafted stone door, but to no avail despite their best efforts. This led to a discussion and a search for other entrances, while Hagis and Dhallon went back to the building with the tools to acquire some pick-axes.

Just as the two warriors arrived back, distracting everyone, a Bugbear opened the door and stuck its head out. Hagis raced up to jam the door with Dhallon right with him. Jastra and Reagan moved up behind but could do nothing with the Bugbear in the way.

The Bugbear tried to flee, and Jastra chased him down and skewered him, striking deep into the major artery in his leg and finishing him off as he tried to get through a door to a room full of his cohorts.

The fight was on! Three Bugbears hurled Javelins, swung morningstars, and grappled with Hagis, Dhallon and Jastra, with Murklane adding fire support. Reagan watched the party's rear with Sturv, only to find himself being overrun by another four Bugbears!

Sturv and Reagan fought a holding action against the four Bugbears, while Dhallon, Hagis and Jastra finished off those in the sitting room. Hagis joined the fight in the hallway, wrestling with the last of the Bugbears until it was put down by a bolt from Reagan's crossbow.

Exploring further, the party found various small bits of treasure including a nice table with a map of the Calling Horns area upon it as well as some small amounts of loot found on the individual foes.

Pushing on, the party discovered a cloak room with a few odds and ends and another passage, leading to a room with a Hill Giant!

Hagis talked his way past the Hill Giant, convincing him to let Hagis pass through to the secret door. When Dhallon went to follow, the Giant started to wind up for a swing and Jastra leapt upon him, blades flashing and slashing. The Giant howled and the fight was on.

A brutal battle was joined in the small space, with Reagan sinking multiple bolts into the angry Giant, and Hagis, Dhallon, and Jastra all swinging and dodging, trying to avoid the wrath of the lumbering creature. Soon, the giant was bloodied, but he would not go down quietly!

With one big swing, he connected solidly with Dhallon. Moments later, the backswing smashed Dhallon's ribs, cracking obsidian armour plate and knocking the warrior into the far wall of the room, lifeless - slain by the massive blunt trauma!

Hagis, in a fit of rage, hacked down the badly wounded Giant to avenge his comrade.

The party looked to aid their comrade, but quickly realized Dhallon was beyond any aid, slain outright. The party endured a period of shock and grief, then sought out a way to transport Dhallon's body for a twilight burial outside under the auspices of Lathander as soon as this was feasible. A wheelbarrow was fetched to help bear the body.

A somber group contemplated their next step - leave the current locale with the intent of burying Dhallon and returning or press on and finish cleaning out this den of brigands and monsters. The feeling was that Dhallon would have wanted the group to press on, to carry the fight to the foe, and to win a victory in his name.

Pushing on one room further, a huge store of high-quality spoils were found, although little of the collection easily portable - statues, saddles, armoires, carpets, and such like. A suit of magical full plate was discovered, complete with a skeleton. Magical everburning torches were discovered, handy if they don't start fires! And another door to a side passage was discovered...

Down the side passage, two more doors were found, one replete with sound of Bugbears chatting animatedly, the other as silent as death. The Hagis, Jastra and Murlane, healed by Sturv, prepare to take the Bugbears unaware, with Regan in support and Sturv holding the rear.

Jastra spent the moments following the tragedy by beginning working on an epic poem about the life and death of Dhallon Thores. Dhallon had been a good and true companion, if with a somewhat flexible idea of equitable division of spoils. Jastra had enjoyed Dhallon's pragmatic sensibilities and lovely knitted goods as well. Dhallon would be missed....