I'm back from my first Gathering of Friends, and it's almost mandatory that I do a writeup, right? I'll give an account of the games I played now. Later I hope to post more personal comments about my experience overall. It's caused some interesting self-reflection. Interesting to me, anyway. I'm still figuring it out. Whether it belongs on a public weblog is another matter, I suppose. At one time I thought I might contribute such a writeup to The Games Journal, but now I realize that my thoughts are too specific to myself, not of broad applicability to the reader. In fact, I realize now that much of my account of my trip to Essen last year is in a similar vein, just less fully realized.
(The paragraph I just finished is a taste of the kind of introspective tripe I plan to type up soon, so you're all warned to steer clear when the time comes. :-)
In contrast, this entry will be just about the games themselves. I'll leave it to others to describe the game mechanics or components. Good places to look are Boardgamegeek, Rick Thornquist's reports at Gamefest.com, and Angela Gaalema's photolog.
New Games
St. Petersburg
Great little game. I heard a story that it had been in development for years. If so, that was time well spent. Some games come out and reveal an immediate need for tweaks or house rules. Worse is when the physical production of a game's components has a problem. I don't mean a typo on the board--those are easy enough to correct, if annoying. I'm talking about pieces that fall over, symbols that are too small or obscured in play, necessary-but-nonexistant reference cards, etc. (I guess worst of all could be fundamental errors in the game's design, such as imbalances in the scoring. Even these might be corrected easier than a bad production error, though.)
The point of all this that St. Petersburg has none of those problems. It was designed, produced--and, in between, developed with skill. We can thank publisher Hans im Gluck for that, I'd expect. Though they occasionally have their struggles, too, more often than not the talent and quality of this publisher shines through.
There's a modest learning curve, which suits me just fine. I don't want a game's winning strategy to be obvious immediately, but neither do I want to struggle with it for many plays. Although it may be stretching things a bit to call the mechanics original, it's refreshing not to have an auction for a change! Cards are obtained through a purchase-draft, though with some situational discounts to shake things up. It clicks right along, and if the strategies become a little routine after a few plays (I got in three), it's still enjoyable and never automatic.
I lost all three times, sometimes coming in dead last. Obviously, don't take my word on the strategies. I think the reason I lost is that I'm too cheap. Ryan in my local group loves to point out how I so often take the cheapest option in auction & investment games. In St. Petersburg I think that attitude can really hurt you, as you've got to spend money to make money. (You may also spend money on victory point investments that can leave you in even worse financial shape, though you'll be winning the game for a while.)
Since the game end is driven by a timer mechanism in the card decks, I'm curious whether skillful players can use that to significant advantage. My guess is that they can't, not alone. There aren't enough turns or money in the game to allow that much flexibility. I think.
A bit about the components... There were two copies at the Gathering, and they differed slightly. One was a pre-production copy, the other the real deal. I never found out which was which, but I hope the published version is the one with Russian names on the cards. I don't know if it used the real Cyrillic alphabet, but I did notice backwards R's and such that I found nicely thematic. Not that the game itself is thematic, but the Russian names were just more fun than the German equivalents.
Goa
I wrote some about this in a previous weblog entry, so I won't add much here. With a few more days (but no more plays) to ponder it, I think this becomes a game I'll gladly play but don't need to own. Keep in mind, I don't own Princes of Florence, either. That's probably the best game to compare it with. Dave Arnott questioned whether Goa really has the strategic choices and consequences of Princes. This may be one of those games where all moves are pretty good, perhaps too balanced, and that diminishes the decisions you have to make over the course of the game. (He wonders the same about New England, by the way.)
What's the difference between criticizing a game because all moves are roughly equal, and praising another game because it allows newbies to compete with (if not beat) the experienced players? That's a fine line. It comes down to a game's intended audience. A lighter game that the experienced hobbyist may want to share with his nongamer friends & family should allow the inexperienced players to stay in the game. On the other hand, a real gamer's game should noticeably reward skillful play and punish mistakes. Goa is definitely aiming itself at the gamer market, so it needs to be demanding in its victory point payouts. I'm not sure that it is.
Sunken City
Ugh. This weirdly themed game has some spiffy bits, but the word of mouth was bad. Still, I welcomed the chance to see for myself, and also play with some folks I'd otherwise been missing all weekend. Although I never understood those bits (their lavish production doesn't really add much to the game experience, in contrast to other deluxe games), for a while I thought the game was better than its reputation. That feeling passed, however, while the game just went on and on. There's a timer mechanism that could be shortened (and we could've played faster), but it's a moot point. Why play this one when there are so many better options?
Oh Pharoah!
This is the only one of the smallbox Uberplay games I tried. It was a 3-player game, and though it worked okay, we all agreed it lasted too long for what it is. Trouble is, I fear that if you shorten the game by making fewer passes through the deck, you may find players bothered by the luck of the draw. That gives the game a feeling of needing a bit more development to work out these little kinks. There's a reasonably fun little game in there--the design isn't quite finished.
Motorchamp
A local player bought this one when it first came out a few years ago, but we've never played the expensive sucker. I'd heard mostly bad things, but a few very good things. Sort of a hot/cold reaction. To me that's worth exploring, and I was glad for the chance to try it. First of all, the game looks fantastic, as you might expect from the publisher best known for Turfmaster. A nice multi-section board giving several racetrack options, large plastic race cars, and matching dice make up the components. Gameplay is unusual, since you roll dice and conform to speed limits based on the space you're in when the turn starts, nothing else. So you can scream through a tight curve, rolling several dice if you happen to start on the right space. Putting yourself on that right space the turn before is much of the strategy, then, but with (mostly) normal six-sided dice it's hard to really predict where you'll end up. (As opposed to Pitstop, where the six siders are 0,1,1,1,1,1, giving a much more deterministic result.) It was okay, but longer than it needed to be. Six laps takes a while--why not just go four laps and require a pitstop after 1-3 laps?
Hansa
I was predisposed to like this, and like it I did. The theme, designer, playing time, and strategic heft of the game are all right up my alley. That doesn't mean it was an automatic success. It could've been screwed up, in other words, but happily it wasn't. The components are simple but nice enough, the map is clear & attractive. I've heard the complaints that you can't plan enough for your next turn, but I don't entirely agree. It's mostly tactical, yes, but there are longer range opportunities you set for yourself. Mostly I like the simplified economic model which isn't as abstract as it first appears. The only trouble could come from players who feel compelled to fully optimize each of their moves, a la Elfenland. That would suck the fun right out of the game, that's for sure.
Power Grid
I was very late to try Funkenschlag. It was a year after the buzz started, and though I really enjoyed it we've never gotten it back on the table. I think that all changes with Power Grid. This is another example of the difference between quality game design (which Funkenschlag has) and game development (which Power Grid has). The latter just magnifies the former. We played just a 3-player game, which went pleasantly fast but probably could've used a 4th to open up the map a bit. Or maybe we just needed to choose our three active map regions better. As it was, one player was able to bottle up the other two. Of course, you don't get completely bottled up, but it can be expensive to break out of a confining space, at least until Phase 2 arrives. Great components, except for paper money. What is it with paper money in all of these new games? I guess it's to reduce production costs, but I sure miss the wooden or plastic coins of older games. (At least St. Petersburg's paper money is of better quality, but these would all be nicer with some substitute money chips.)
San Juan
I'd played this a fair bit online at BSW, and it was nice to finally play it in person. Yeah, you play the cards you're dealt--going in with a fixed strategy can be a big mistake. But it's all pleasant and quick. I prefer it to Puerto Rico, but then I never quite took to PR like almost everyone else. I'm looking forward to getting my own set and wearing it out. :-) (There's a lot of card handling & shuffling.)
Einfach Genial
Just my luck that I'm becoming more interested in abstracts just as Reiner has a beautiful one published. (I only wish it was in wood like those classy Gigamic games.) The geometric relationships aren't hard, but it still threw some people to "see" the scoring. Best of all, it's an abstract without much lookahead, thanks to the draw bag for tiles. I can imagine lots of similar abstract games that expect this all to be played with perfect information. Ugh, no thanks! Give me tactical, seat-of-the-pants play any day. Our first game had some high scores, but by the second we were playing much more offensively, cutting each other off. I would expect that trend to continue, which I enjoy but others might not.
Employee of the Month
I hope I don't have a bias against American games from small publishers, but I make no apologies for a bias against silly ones. It's just not my style. So I almost overlooked this one--probably would've if not for the people sitting down to play. I wanted to play with them! Ironically, they were all just so-so on the game, but I was pleasantly surprised. Surprisingly enough, it reminds me of High Society. That's because there are "obviously" good and bad cards up for bid, but you have to be careful because the final scoring is heavily modified by whoever spent the most in two categories. Those two categories (sucking up to the boss, or goofing off to impress your coworkers) interplay nicely, and it's all perfectly thematic. Maybe there's some issues with the luck of the draw, but I'm not yet sure of that. You'll have fun along the way, in any case.
Dos Rios
Hmm, I have to be careful with this one. I liked it, but I can sense in myself an "underdog complex." This is a game I somewhat expected to like (from the designer, theme, and production), then was greeted with lukewarm-to-unfavorable reaction by early players. In that situation, I know my capability to like a game anyway. But like it I did. The most common complaint was the degree of chaos in the game, which here means the players ahead of you can completely change the game-state before your turn. This makes it hard to set yourself up or even do much planning ahead for your turn, and with that some downtime as you have to start over. Yes, well, those are all qualities I strongly dislike. However, I didn't observe them to the same degree, and all of us were playing with four players. I bet it would work better with three, just like the designer's earlier Big City. Even as it was, I managed to plan ahead on several turns. Also nice is that the game was shorter than some folks expected (less than 90 minutes).
Ticket to Ride
Another winner for me. While some people may be comparing TtR to Union Pacific, I like to think of it as a boardgame version of Get The Goods/Reibach & Co. Not because you're aiming for majorities in anything, but because the mechanics and decisions of drafting cards and deciding when to lay them down remind me of the card game. That's also an encouraging comparison since GtG is one of the few games my wife enjoys. I'm hoping she'll like this as well, and that it will work okay with just two players. I have to admit I'm curious about possible tweaks that would encourage shorter routes to be made first, leading up to biggies at the end. This would be more like a historic or accurate expansion of rail networks, and might be affected by some simple tweaks (e.g. may hold only two route cards, and can only get new ones when the original routes are scored on your turn). However, the best approach is probably to leave well enough alone. The game is light, attractive, and enjoyable. Why would I want to mess with it?
New-to-me Games
Kogge
I welcomed the chance to play this, but can't say that I really enjoyed it. It took way too long, and the board positions changed too much on other players' turns. (Another game that might be better with 3 players rather than 4, in that case.) It could also use a better production (yes, I understand this is a self-published game). Those number chits really should be cards. Just making the thematic placenames more prominent on the chits/cards, (with numbers strictly secondary in appearance) would help make it more enjoyable.
Zoff in Buffalo
For a long time I thought I'd like this game, and I sure did. It would be even better with little wooden cows, but the counters are okay, too. Nice, light gameplay that still rewards experience (as Stven proved...). Gotta get me one.
Santiago
Hey, now this was really clever. I'd not bothered to try this one at or around Essen, expecting it to be too dry and gamer-y for my tastes. Although it is dry & gamer-y, it's also shorter than I expected, with some very interesting bidding situations. This stands up to any of the hot new games above.
Magna Grecia
Oof. While I enjoyed the game okay, I played it horribly. Just couldn't ever remember when the color of roads & cities mattered, and when they didn't. It's good for a substantial game like this to reward skill and punish mistakes, but I'm bothered that the rules, reference card, and similarly-colored components don't help the newbie keep it all straight. I bet it didn't have to be that way. (Proper game development and well-designed components are a big deal for me as I morph into a curmudgeon!)
Scoozie
I asked Steffan O'Sullivan to bring this odd game, an abstract so strongly themed it's almost a light simulation. That's an oxymoron, right? A strongly themed abstract? But that's exactly what it is! An abstract representation of American football. You face off with a line of scrimmage, two opposing forces that move to set up blocks, open holes, make tackles, run and even pass the ball. I tried it solo a couple times to see how it worked, and then Greg Aleknevicus sat down to try it with me. It's not for everyone, clearly. Even my newfound interest in wooden abstracts doesn't really encompass these perfect information movement games. As far as I'm concerned, these are in the same broad family as Fox & Geese or even Checkers/Draughts. But there's enough unusual features in this game, and I'm such a fan of football, that I definitely enjoyed seeing ways to "run plays." The hole opened, my receiver went upfield, the "safety" moved over to cover... it's all recognizable to football fans, even if it looks like a weird sort of chess.
Other Games
Besides all of those, I also got to play Cronberg, Crokinole, Tichu, and Wyatt Earp. To tell you the truth, I was surprised how few older games I managed to play. I went to the Gathering with no special desire to play the new games--I mostly wanted to meet people. However, most of the people I met were most interested in the new games, so that's what I played. No complaints, just a little surprise. I brought just a few games of my own, and didn't manage to get any of them on the table. That was Pitstop, Die Schatzinsel, and Kings & Castles, plus some smaller stuff. I almost managed a K&C game, and noticed that the other two games were played by other folks at other times, using someone else's copies. I didn't see a single copy of good ol' Entdecker, though there were a few copies of the newer version. If oldies but goodies like E&T, El Grande, or Medici were played, it must've been when I wasn't around (perhaps earlier in the week). Again, not a disappointment, but I was surprised by that.
What was disappointing was the lack of Spinball. Rats, I really wanted to try that, and this may have been my only chance. Oh well, I shouldn't really complain. Not when I got in all those other games with so many fun people. If there's a next time, I'll know to bring more of my own "comfort games" (Stven Carlberg's term, which is exactly right). Dave thinks I could've played those easily, as long as they're good games. I'm not so sure. Then again, I'm not as comfortable in a room of semi-strangers, getting a game started or joining others. But that's a later weblog entry. :-)