Right, so we had a quick gaming session yesterday, quick meaning two games and we ended at 4am.
impatient imps waiting to be deployed into dungeons while rhyen undergoes dungeon lord training
jack208 dropped by at 8.30pm while rhyen reached at 10pm. I did a trial explanation of the Dungeon Lords rules to jack208 and stumbled here and there but by the time I taught it to rhyen, I was going at a rapid clip.
one of the training scenarios
The rules explanation was easier than I thought but it was helped no doubt by jack208 and rhyen’s fascination with the puzzle-solving aspect of the training scenarios. I think casual gamers might be turned off immediately with the training. However it is of paramount importance as I observed that in all four training missions, jack208 and rhyen had numerous questions, either one of which could turned out to be game breakers if went unexplained.
Explaining Dungeon Lords
jack208’s starting dungeon
imps mining and working the dungeon rooms
invading adventurers
So what did we think of this game? I thought it was fantastic, it went at a fast pace and there were only twelve actions to be taken before the adventurers start pillaging through your dungeon. The actions selection was less crowded than anticipated and the game wasn’t as tough as some claimed.
individual dungeon lords action selection
The main game action selection board
one of the monsters for hire. the kiddy artwork is misleading, the game IS complicated.
Of course there’s a caveat that we did two rules wrong, one was that we did not paid the monster’s hiring costs as we thought it applied only on Pay Day. Hence we were quite low on our Evil-o-meter and the Evil Reduction action did not have to be taken often. We also failed to attract the Paladin due to our failure to pay for the monster’s hiring cost with the Evil-o-meter. It could have posted a challenge for us.
We scored low on the Evil-o-meter
The wizards also got powered down in our game as I thought erroneously that 3 magic points were needed at all times to cast spells. turns out the total magic points needed corresponds to the rounds number eg. Round 1 require 1 magic point, Round 2 require 2 magic points, etc. As it were, we all scored in the 20s.
captured adventurers
jack208 and rhyen professed to like this game more than Galaxy Trucker due to the less random nature of the adventurers pillaging step. There’s control over the type of adventurers to attract, the monsters and traps to employ. Overall a thumbs up.
using jedi mind tricks to find out the next trap card…
Next we did Agricola: Farmers of the Moor. Briefly, this expansion introduced fuel as a additional resource and houses require heating every harvesting phase. The idea is that house expansion will be reined in by this additional requirement.
There is also a novel addition where every player’s board has a pre-determined setup of woods and moors. This does much to differentiate each player’s subsequent development.
The new initial setup
The new free actions is another novel approach as they are useful enough to warrant obtaining at times but taking it it could mean giving up lucrative first picks of the traditional Agricola actions.
Horses are a mixed bag as they could be high point scorers but have low food value. Personally I did not take any horses in my game so I can’t say its impact on the overall game.
I would give this expansion a thumbs up as well as it introduces new niggles to an old game which felt natural and smooth. There’s more things to take care of and to me can be overwhelming at times. Those Minor Improvements and Occupation cards still give me the analysis paralysis.
In our game, I did the traditional farming of grain and vegetables and trying to combo the fishing space with my minor improvements to net me reed and clays along with the action. The braggart come out last and saved me with my multitude of improvements. I have no idea what jack208 and rhyen did as I had my head full just trying to juggle my own farm.
Both Hiew and Jeff Au have written excellent reviews on Greed Inc and 18EU respectively so I won’t write another but instead redirect the readings there:
I quite like Greed Inc and agree with Jeff that the timing aspect is what elevates the game above the ‘mundane’ resource management/optimisation. Looking forward to try this again.
me, crabzai, blownfreaks and hecose listening to jack208’s explanation
blownfreaks flashing his devious smile saying ‘it’s all the CEO’s fault!’. Hiew is just confused as to why it was the CEO’s fault…
me to blownfreaks: ‘hey I just fired myself, how would you like the CEO’s post?’
rhyen: ‘heng you gave away your CEO position too cheaply…’
18EU
I have to say my 2nd game of 18EU is way much better than the first. Our first game either had the problem of too many players or of public companies not starting up fast enough. (check out initial play review here)
In our three player game, we had enough cash to start our 1st public company in the 2nd stock round. I made the decision to start my company at par $100 and to inject 2 companies in while jack208 injected one to start at par $75 and rhyen did not start any. In hind sight this could have been a bad move as the public company could not generate as much earnings as two minor companies it was injected with.
On the other hand, I had came out of the ‘bidding of minor companies round’ before that quite well with 6 minors while jack208 had 5 and rhyen got 4. This as jack208 said, could have contributed to my coming out with guns a blazing with my generous public company startup.
The second operation round however I lagged a little as my neglect of the southern routes meant that they were locked in with no way to turn. Again looking back I could have started a public company in the south instead of the middle to help unlock my southern routes.
I took three companies in mid game but was caught short when the 4th or 5th train rusted quickly without enough return on investment. In my haste to extend the lead with my 1st company, I had opened up my 2nd and 3rd company to the dangers of having their trains rusted prematurely.
The final part of the game I gambled by trying to push up my share value at the expense of expansion into another train to boost my dividends. Clearly this had an effect on my final score as I still ended second.
Overall a great game and I’ve elevated this game up to be one of, if not the best, 18xx game.
Today saw some Essen games hitting the table and we start the night with Long Shot.
This is a light game of horse racing/gambling
There are options to buy horses or to bet on horses
There are also special power cards to mix things up!
Best of all it takes up to 8 players
me, friedricetheman, rhyen
waiyan, crabzai, blownfreaks. Not in pix: jack208, laiwah
I would give this game two thumbs up, way up, with the caveat to play it like a casual game and not make too much of its randomness. There are cards to mitigate this, notably the cards that affect horse movements, but those turn the game more into a collusion/negotiation game. Just make sure others have place bets on your horse or it might not finish the race!
Next we did Factory Manager
This is a brain burning game about managing and factory and earning the most money
me, rhyen, david, blownfreaks and jack208 did this game
The game has production machines, automation, stores, capacitors, power control, seasonal workers… in short, just like a factory
The comparison with the designer’s previous game, Power Grid, is inevitable but quite misleading. The production machines can be thought of as power plants and the storage as connections but the escalating electricity costs and additional resource in the form of workers makes Factory Manager vastly different in experience.
The game however retains the requirement of optimising resources to produce the most money
I would reserve my final ratings for this game as I have not decided whether the mechanics are overly complicated or just that my head have not wrap itself around the mechanics. I probably finished last or close to last in this game.
Next we did Rise of Empires
After having our brain blown off by Factory Manager, this game came in a bit heavy for us.
The theme of the rise of european empires mirror the theme in Age of Empires III
The war now is not limited to the americas but to europe and the far east as well.
The vaunted innovation in this game is the action selection where the players are forced to replay their choices in the decline of their empire, according to their choices made during the rise of their empire
This game however came off as more clunky than its Age of Empires III and Endeavour rivals. I would give this game an average rating for now as I much prefer its rivals. It might also be because I got screwed by food and came in dead last. It might have affected my judgement because I got food screw as a result of the game’s generous ‘whack-the-leader’ interactions.
Edit 18/1/10 - added thoughts and ratings on games.
After being away for awhile, I managed to return to OTK for boardgames. Due to most people being away, it was just jack208, aanemesis
and myself playing.
At aanemesis’ request, we did 18Scan (Scandinavia).
I played this game only once before and a quick search turns out I’d done it during Gamecon 1.5 with jack208, ceternal and rhyen. Previously, I thought the game was the fastest of the 18-series and had a favorable impression of it. See report of previous game by jack208 here. http://boardgamecafe.net/community/forums/thread/17620.aspx
After a refresher of rules, we start the game at about 8.30pm. The game started with the following winning bids:
jack208: Minor Company no# 3 + Private Company that gives ferry tokens and a share in NSB (Norwegian State Rail)
aanemesis: Minor Company no#2 + Private Company that gives the President share to DSB (Danish State Rail)
myself: Minor Company no#1 + Private Company that gives a mining token and a share in SNJ (Swedish-Norwegian Rail)
Keep in mind that one of us had never played the game before and the other two of us played the game a long while ago. We have absolutely no idea which company to bid for! Nevertheless, as with all 18-series game, our first game will have to ‘go with the flow’ or ‘use the force, luke’.
The 3 minors started off relatively well and they start generating 50% dividends and 50% retained profits immediately. One thing I like about this version is that the two Operation rounds from the get go makes the early game go much faster. Due to the tile mix and the counter limit, the minors are unable to execute the ‘train rush’ as it would not make sense to buy more than one train. The train rush will have to be left to the Public Companies that floated.
I’m not sure if we bid too low for the Minor Companies and the Private Companies but all of us had enough cash to start a Public Company each:
aanemesis: DSB
jack208: NSB
myself: SNJ
Here I made a major strategic decision to float SNJ at the lowest par value with the intent of siphoning money out of the company pronto. I assume that SNJ can acquire the mining token from my Private Company and start its meteoric dividend bonanza. It could have been a key play but as we can see later, the large holdings in SNJ actually prevented me from getting shares in other late-blossoming, but lucrative companies.
jack208, in getting first dibs on the Minor and Private Companies, made a good call in grabbing Minor Company no#2 as it synergizes with his other pick - the ferry company.
aanemesis did a contrarian method and went for Minor Company no#3, instead of Minor Company no#1, which could not synergize whatsoever with DSB and affected myself as well because I could not synergize my SNJ with Minor Company no#1. This could have been a major strategic blunder as well as DSB was locked and unable to expand quickly due to competition with Minor Company no#1.
The middle part of the game saw jack208 made the key decision of floating VR before I had the chance. My play of floating SNJ cheap meant that I could and did the last share purchase of the round. Jack208, who sat after me took the priority deal as a result and went for VR the next round.
After doing some calculation, I went for the gambit of buying SJ (The State Railways) in hoping that phase 5 can trigger soon, thereby activating SJ to try and catch up to VR. However jack208 caught this play and did train shuffling between his VR and NSB in order to postpone the triggering phase.
Aanemesis, seeing that both the last two public companies were bought, was so demoralized that he did not dare to buy any shares in fear of the dreaded money laundering and junking of any cannibalized train companies to him later. This proved to be another major decision as the later scores show that he lost out by a few hundred dollars, money he could have easily earned if he invested earlier.
The end game saw jack208 and aanemesis keeping back some dividend to buy a second train while I took my companies up the share price track by declaring dividends every round. The final tally come too close to call with jack208 squeaking out a win, followed by myself and then aanemesis.
In the end, the share ‘double jumping’ action helped to mitigate some of the effects of withholding dividends. It helped jack208 surpassed me and aanemesis to catch up to me. This is probably one of the key mechanics that I will watch out for in the future. In this game, my companies simply ran out of gas and had its did not had a stellar share price to compensate for the lower dividend payout.
