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 EnglandYou 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 FluxxFluxx 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 BeansSpace 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
Major Allen, the team leader, gave the word and volleys of gunfire and grenades ensued, with Jaffa going down, more Jaffa appearing, and then more Jaffa joining the first waves lying dead or seriously wounded on the sand or in the riverbank. This is reflected in the third picture. 
SG-21, meanwhile, engages all the Jaffa from the front section of the ruin plus those moving in from nearby patrols. They find themselves attacked by a swarm of Jaffa accompanying a Goa'uld (fourth picture). At this time, things look a little tight for SG-21 with team members narrowly avoiding staff blasts, using up their luck, and being faced by the arrival of a staff cannon on a tripod.
The angry Russian slapped his bayonet on his AK-74, reasoning that if bullets moved to fast and were stopped by the Goa'uld's Personal Shield, then perhaps a simply spearing would prove sufficient! Motivated by rage and well-endowed with liquid courage, the Russian sprinted right up to the Goa'uld and engaged him in melee, jamming his bayonet into the neck of the Goa'uld and putting his whole substantive body weight behind it to see it lodged there. The Goa'uld's host was instantly killed, despite the powerful healing powers of the Goa'uld symbiote. See the sixth image for the shot of this climactic melee. 
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