Recently in Session reports Category

I arrived in a bad time this week: two games had just started. I sat watching and discussing playing cards with Hannu (he had bought a rather entertaining German pack of cards, it's a reproduction of 19th century Saxony pack or something like that, very funny). It turned out their Arkadia was moving slowly, so Hannu suggested playing Strohmann-Tarock on the side. Suits me!

There's a very good page on Strohmandeln, with rules and strategy. It's a two-player Tarock variant, where players have 15-card hands and three four-card draw piles. The top cards are visible and part of player's hand. Very clever, and it works well. Part of your hand is a mystery, but you see part of opponent's hand and can use that information. Suit cards are much more important than in most Tarot games.

We played three rounds. Hannu won the first as declarer, I got the second and in the third one, Hannu declared and made Uhu (won second-to-last trick with trump 2), but I got the game, so I won 7-4. It was fun, and Hannu enjoyed it as well. I'm fairly sure we'll get the cards out in a second next time we're playing something with just the two of us...

Next up was Thief of Baghdad. Players move their thieves between palaces to collect treasure chests. To get in, you must have your own bribed guard in front of the palace and an opponent's guard (to take the blame for the thieves, of course!). There's some pretty nice maneuvering, but also plenty of luck with the cards - getting stuck with bad cards can hurt you a lot.

Occasionally the game was fun, when you were able to pull off some neat move. Most of the time it wasn't very interesting, rather boring really. The game looks pretty cool, but it is one of those rather spiritless euro games, with nifty mechanics but very little attraction otherwise. I would play again, but the situation would have to be fairly desperate... We played twice, with the new Dutch guy Pieter winning both games. The first one was a massacre, but the second was good and exciting, with everybody having three chests when you need four to win. That was nice.

We finished off the evening with two games of Die Dolmengötter. We played with three and four players, and after these games I'd say four is better. The game is based on player interaction and providing incentives to other players and I feel it loses something when there are just three players. That doesn't mean five would be even better - I haven't tried it, but the game is short that with five it would probably be way too short. In any case, I love the game, it's a gem.

My mother and Ismo were visiting to see Nooa. Well, Nooa didn't want to sleep before they arrived and we had to put him to bed while they were here, so we entertained ourselves with games while Nooa was napping. I got to clear one game from my "I need to play this list", that is Russian Preference. I even had Russian cards to play it with.

Preference is a three-player card game where one player is a declarer and the other two play against him. The defenders also have a trick quota to make. In most variations of the game the declarer's quota is six tricks (out of ten) and the declarer only chooses the trumps, but in Russian Preference the number of tricks to make is a part of the bidding. If declarer bids more than six tricks, the quote for the defenders is smaller.

That's simple enough. Everybody who has ever played a trick-taking game with bidding will understand Russian Preference right away, and even if bidding is a strange concept, it still is fairly easy. The scoring is slightly complicated, though: in three-player game every player has four different scores. Pulja (bullet) points are scored for making declared games, heap points are scored when player fails to make a contract (or a defender's quota) and whist points are scored when defending. Whist points are counted separately against both opponents.

So, if you make a contract, you score 2-10 pulja points depending on the contract. Number of tricks made doesn't matter once you make the limit, so one needs to choose a high enough contract to ensure the maximum number of points. If you fail, you gain the same number of heap points for each missing trick. That's very painful, if you miss more than one trick in a valuable contract.

If the defenders make their trick quota, they get whist points against the declarer, once again the same amount as the declarer would get pulja points for each trick made. If declarer is missing tricks, the defenders get more points for those. If defenders fail, they too score heap points - but only the defender who made less tricks.

The defenders don't have to play - they can pass. If both pass, the declarer wins automatically. If one passes, the other can either play alone against the declarer or request the other player to play too. In that case the forced player has no risk, he or she won't get any heap points if they fail - but no whist points either, if there's a success.

The game is over when everybody has ten pulja points. That's the maximum one can have. If the points flow over, the extra points are given to the player with the second most pulja points. In exchange, the giver gets ten whist points against that player for each pulja point given. This is a nice mechanism, as it makes sure the game actually ends, even when someone can't play. The game can be as short as three deals (if each deal is bid to ten and made), but if the players can't make contracts, the game can take longer. In practise our game took something between 60 and 90 minutes.

In the end the points are counted. Pulja points don't count, because everybody has ten anyway. Heap points are converted to whist points. They're each worth ten whist points (as are pulja points). If someone has lots of heap points, everybody else will get plenty of whist points against him, that's the basic idea.

Then you just compare the whist points. In our game Ismo had 209 whist points against me, while I had 68 whist points against him. The difference is 141, so Ismo scored 141 whist points while I lost the same amount. This is done for each pair of players and finally the scores are summed. It's a complicated process, but once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard, and it works pretty well.

In our game Ismo dominated, he made many contracts, one at nine tricks, even. Of the 30 pulja points in the game, I think he made about 25. This meant, of course, plenty of whist points. Unfortunately I experiented with collecting heap points: I made a whopping 34 them, giving both my mother and Ismo 93 whist points against me in the end. My mother didn't make any contracts, but she didn't fail many, either.

So, in the end, Ismo scored 193 points, my mother got 87 and I paid it all by scoring -280. I think I need some practise...

But I liked the game. It's simple, challenging and fun. It's no Skat, but then again, it's much easier to learn and enjoy. There's enough challenge in the bidding and the play to keep things interesting.

(The pictures for this entry are from Piatnik's Great Russia Standard Playing Cards pack, catalog number 1133. Pretty standard pack, just with Russian indices.)

Another Thursday session, this time on Tuesday because the Vappu festivities on Thursday mean the university is closed.

After a quick round of Coloretto we bit into Eketorp. Whether to play this or not was a bit of a question, since from reading the rules I knew I would not enjoy the game. However, I decided there is some value having played the game - at least I can now write a review of it, since it's coming out in Finnish.

The reason why I don't like the game lies in the main mechanics: double-guessing and blind bidding. That's it. First players allocate their viking warriors on different fields. If you're lucky and choose fields nobody else is taking, you get good rewards. If you fail to do that, you'll have to fight and win to get anything. Fighting is done by playing battle cards with values from 1 to 6: bigger card wins, then players exchange cards.

This is repeated for ten rounds. It's a long session of rather tedious repetition. The box says 45-60 minutes, our game took 90 minutes. I could tolerate a game like this for 30 minutes. It'll take some convincing to get me play this one again. It's not a bad game if you like this sort of thing: one person in our game enjoyed it a lot.

After Eketorp we played one quick round of Die Dolmengötter, this time with all newbies except me. The Ollis offered tough opposition: the top three had scores of 73, 72 and 70. Tapani took the fourth place 20 points behind... Dolmengötter gets better every time. This time I made some blunders, didn't play my druids well, but managed to survive anyhow. I did one teleport jump without leaving a stone, that was a critical move which ensured my win even though I had to pay a point there. Interesting, interesting...

I organized a game of 1825 Unit 3 today at the local library. We ended up playing Unit 3, because Olli was the only one who came... Rest were busy or not willing to travel all the way to the suburbs. It's not a big deal, though, as Unit 3 is made for two players.

Unit 3 covers Scotland and Northern England, from Maryport in South to Aberdeen in North (a regional kit covering the Highlands was planned, but hasn't been published yet - I wonder if it's ever coming). Glasgow stands in the middle and is a central point, as all three major railroads (Caledonian, Northern British and Glasgow and South West) start there. Of the three minors, two (Highlands and Great North of Scotland) start in the northern edge and one (Maryport & Carlisle) starts in the south.

In the beginning one of the players will take NBR and the other takes CR, so Olli got NBR and I got CR. NBR started heading north, while CR aimed towards Edinburgh. NBR didn't pay dividends like CR, so eventually NBR's share value dropped while CR climbed to 100 pounds per share. I was able to sell few shares to invest in GSWR, the third major. In retrospect, that's something the NBR player probably shouldn't allow, as CR and GSWR can play really well together. They have excellent synergy.

So, CR and GSWR built the south and east side of Glasgow full of cities. Very effective! Meanwhile NBR connected to Aberdeen, where GNS started, operated by Olli alone. GNS was pretty good for Olli: it has very little room for expansion, because it can only run one train (Olli would've bought a train from NBR otherwise), but it kept running constant dividends to Olli, raising the share value while doing that.

In the end CR and GSWR were running few trains each. CR made 320 £ and GSWR 440 £ per run - not bad at all. NBR was very mediocre (losing the 2 trains hurt it pretty bad, even though it bought a 3 train for 200 £ from GSWR - thus helping GSWR to get a 5 train). Olli started the M&C in the south, but it didn't do much as the game was soon over.

So, in the end, I won. We thought that was obvious, but the final scores were 5294 - 4993, much closer than we expected. While I had the two heavy hitters, Olli had shares for both of them. I had no shares of GNS, which was pretty effective money-maker for Olli.

In retrospect few mistakes were obvious. Of course Olli should've started HR instead of M&C - he would've won had he done that. Then again, I should've built more stations with CR and GSWR, blocking GNS at Perth, for example. So, I could've lost but I also might've won with a wider margin as well. It was a learning game for both of us, so no wonder we didn't play the sharpest game possible.

But it was fun! It took us about 30 minutes to do the setup and go through the rules (Olli had played another 18xx once before) and then two and half hours to play the game. Not bad. Instead of paper money or poker chips we used pen and paper bookkeeping, which worked well. There's a lot of calculation, though, and counting the bank was a bit of a pain. Still, it's a fairly nice method and I would use it again. The best way would still be a computer spreadsheet (this was basically an analog version of spreadsheet).

It was pretty smooth sailing, but promoting tiles gave us some headache. We played it correctly in the end: when promoting tiles, you need to maintain all the connections leaving the hex, but you don't have to create all the connections entering the tile. That is, you can place a tile so that tracks run to an empty side of the tile. That's fairly critical for Glasgow on this map. There's a bit of a confusion in the rules, as they say you can't run rails to a blank side of a brown hex - to figure it out one must realize that the brown tiles players play aren't actually brown, they're russet. Brown means the brown tiles that are printed on the board. Slightly confusing, I'd say!

We finished off the afternoon with a quick match of Schotten-Totten, which I also won - and it was a close game as well, 5-4. Rather excellent session in general.

Yesterday's game session was mostly about Shogun, the Dirk Henn game of warring Japanese daimyos in the 16th century. It's a redevelopment of Wallenstein, which I've played once as play-by-web (and I didn't like it). Now most complex games are better learnt by the board, so I was willing to give Shogun a go.

Shogun is a pretty neat game, but not my favourite. It does several things right: there's a nice economy of scarcity, the simultaneous planning phase is very nice, I like the way the battle tower works (battles are resolved with a clever cube tower device), the whole structure of the game just works pretty well in my opinion.

However, while the game is rather good at what it tries to be, I just don't like the genre. It's a multi-player war game, where players struggle for the different provinces of Japan. You win some, you lose some and in the end you try to win more you lose. Nothing is permanent, anything can be taken from you... it's just not my cup of tea.

There's plenty of interaction and with a midpoint scoring, this is one those games where being in the lead after the first scoring is not a game-winning strategy. Standing out means getting beaten. Of course, one must not hang too far behind: I was dead last after the first scoring and while I played a good second half, I was able to rise one step to third. Petri, who was leading by few points after the first scoring dropped last, mostly because I beat him senseless. That's not nice, but it was the best thing for me: I was able to score quite a few points with the provinces I stole from Petri.

Shogun is a highly chaotic game: there are small inputs of chaos all around the system. The battle tower is chaotic, the actions are resolved in random order, the combinations of player order and special cards are random, there's a random event every round... So planning anything long-term is really, really difficult. That is something one needs to accept when playing Shogun.

So, Shogun is a good game, but not for me. I would play again, but given an opportunity to play something else I would probably skip Shogun.

We didn't have much time after Shogun, but enough for a game of Die Dolmengötter. Everybody had played before, which is always a bonus. It quickly turned out to be my game: I was getting quite a few dolmens on top of the piles. However, Hannu was doing the same, just few steps behind me. Petri and Tero were building their dolmens on the bottoms.

In the end I won, but I had only five points more than Hannu. Tero and Petri were able to catch up a bit, too, Tero lost just five points to Hannu and Petri was two points behind Tero. So, it wasn't quite the slaughter it seemed to be. Hannu still claimed to be completely lost about the game, and I suppose it's no wonder: Dolmengötter is a clever game. I started to feel in control of the game, now that I've played four games.

In any case, I'm seriously fond of the game. It's very quick, but very meaty for a 20-minute game. I upped my rating to nine, because this gem certainly deserves it.

Tomorrow I'm meeting at least Olli for some 1825 action. Expect reports on Sunday!

We were planning to play cards this time to celebrate my book, which was finally released last Friday. Well, that didn't happen, thanks to rather diminished number of players (four), including one particular person who doesn't fancy traditional card games. So, card games were restricted to Flix Mix.

So, we started with Airships (aka Giganten der Lüfte), a die game from Andreas Seyfarth. Players collect cards by rolling dice and hoping to roll high enough. Cards provide more dice and various bonuses and eventually points. It's all fun and games like any dice game, but fell flat for the same reasons.

Basically, die rolling just isn't that much fun. Especially when someone else is having the dice. Our game took 60 minutes, so with four players you spend 15 minutes playing and 45 minutes watching something that isn't very interesting. Talk about fixed fun. This is probably better with just two.

In our game, Hannu realized the value (high) and scarcity of point-producing points best and sailed to an easy victory.

Next we played something much better: Die Dolmengötter. The more I play this one, the more I like it. I was able to use my experience to actually win the game, too. This is such a clever and a swift-moving game, ours took just 20 minutes or so. And it's alll good, pure fun. My current rating is eight, and I'm seriously considering upping this to a nine. A rare gem. I'm rather glad this fell flat in the Leppävaara game club and I was able to buy Tommy's copy for a low price.

Vegas Showdown closed the evening. We played with a variant where start player rotates, except when someone chooses to renovate or publicize, in which case the first player to do that each turn gets the button. I'm not sure I like the change, but it's not a huge deal, I can play either way.

I still like this, the economics in this game are rather interesting and mellow in a good way.

Oops. I noticed I had missed blogging our previous Thursday game session. You see, I got sick (stomach flu, fortunately Johanna and Nooa avoided the same bug) the night after that, so I had something else to think about for a while... But here it is, just in time before our next session!

After a quick San Juan, it was time for Wabash Cannonball. I played a bad, bad game, losing to both Hannu and Riku... I did beat the newbie in the table, but that's not a major achievement. I blame Hannu, of course, whose whole purpose was to crush me down right away. Ok, so maybe I screwed up when I wasted all my money in the initial auction. I won't do that again, I promise. Tough game, and it certainly proved that it's possible to take someone down if you want to. Then again, at the same time it's pretty hard to take a leader down once he's in the lead, or at least I never succeed when I try that.

I wanted to revisit Canal Mania. You know, the last time I said "in the future, I'll probably prefer four - or five, if everybody plays fast." Let's make that "I'll prefer three, or four if everybody plays fast." We had four this time, and the downtime was too much for my (short) nerves.

We were able to finish the game in 90 minutes, but it took some pushing in the end when time started to run out. I was able to win the game pretty easy, as I got lucky with contracts and built a nice, large contiguous network around Oxford. It worked really well, I was constantly making excellent shipments and also receiving few points per turn from other players goods movement. Of course, in Canal Mania it's pretty hard to plan something like that, you need to be lucky with the contracts, but if you can make it work, you'll do well.

So, I still like the game, but I also think it's a tad long for what it is. Even 90 minutes feels like a bit too much, to be honest. I'm going to give it few more chances and when Ropecon is in August, I'm selling the game if it doesn't thrill me by then.

Tommy and Stefu came over to spend a day playing games. Johanna was very kind to take Nooa to her parents so we could have our place for us. A chance to play longer, meatier games in such a great company is rare and something to cherish.

We did start with some actual meat, though. In order to save precious gaming time, I had prepared us a meal so the time spent cooking wouldn't be out of game time. I'd rate my sour cream chicken fillet in feta cream sauce with mashed potatoes at least a nine... Very good, very good. Of course it's best to start heavy intellectual exercise with a heavy meal, right?

Our first game was Wabash Cannonball. It was the first time for Tommy and Stefu - and Stefu had even missed the hype altogether - as well as my first game with three. I'm glad to report the game works really well with three. Some of the alliance structures are lost, but otherwise it's just fine.

I was able to give the boys a beating. Tommy showed good eye for the game when he fenced Stefu's B&O in, stumping its expansion. I lead NYC to Chicago, continued by running the Wabash to Chicago as well (well, Tommy and Stefu thought only one company could run to Chicago, but at least I had to pay 12 to buy both Wabash shares as Tommy was ending the game as fast as he could). All in all they both played well for newbies, but at the same time I'm glad my experience paid off.

Wabash will be Tommy's 500th rated game in Geek, by the way - a good game for a nice achievement. I'm at 498 after the weekend.

Advanced game of Agricola was on my wishlist, so that's what we played next. This was my second game with cards, this time using all three decks at once. And guess what? This game reinforced my view that playing family game is a good idea.

I suppose it's a question of practise, but my game was pretty bad. I was missing all the basics, while focusing too much on the cards. I had cards that supported wheat strategy, but I failed to take care of my fields. I want to play the game more with cards and learn to play it well, but in order to give newbies a better game experience, I really think the cards should wait until all players are experienced. At least so far I've had better time with the family game, as I've been able to do much better without the cards.

Tommy ruled our game: he played an excellent game, scoring 51 points. Stefu went begging and ended up with just 11 points, while I had 24. Shameful, shameful...

We wanted some 18xx on the schedule as well. Our game of choice was 1825 Unit 2, armed with the minor companies. Because of the added companies, we adjusted the bank to £6000. That was a good amount, the game was starting to become stale in the end.

1825 is pretty mellow for an 18xx game. The stock market is two-dimensional and only affected by the performance of the companies: no dividends and the share value falls, dividends paid and the share value goes up, the amount of steps depending on how good dividends were paid. The train rush is really slow, as only the 5 trains make the 2s obsolete. Even then, the company director never has to buy new trains, he can just dump the company and put it in receivership.

The first stock round was hectic, we bought bunch of shares. Both LNWR and MR started and other shares were sold as well. LNWR - that would be me - made some track-building mistakes and lost growth potential for a long time. The share value got to 180, at which point I decided I was cashing out. That was nice, except it allowed Tommy to take hold of the company, steal its money and only 3 train to MR and then dump it. That was the very point where the winner of the game was decided. My inexperience shows, I suppose. Lesson learnt.

Tommy run MR well, in the end it had runs of 320 so it just kept making money and gaining value. No reason to abandon ship, really. Both GCR and GNR started and ran pretty well... At least GNR did, as Tommy was able to work it together with MR to help them both. Stefu ran GCR with slightly less success, it was a tad stuck for a while.

Everybody avoided NER as its position seemed bad. It got started later when the situation got better, but it's certainly one of the least attractive companies in the game. The North Staffordshire minor wasn't very attractive either, and it was never opened. I got L&Y, since it had pretty good prospects and I was able to buy most of the shares myself. I also started Furness, since it seemed like there was some good potential for cooperation with those companies. I screwed up L&Y, though - but it was fun. You see, I was able to buy a 5 train with the starting money. I decided I would buy a 6 train for the company. So I kept running the train, keeping the money while the share value plunged down.

In the end I was able to buy the 6 train, but at that point the game was already hopelessly over. In the last OR I was able to make a run for 360. The share value was pretty low at that point, so it jumped up the maximum of four steps easily (and would've jumped another 3-4 steps next time, I think). Unfortunately the large dividend payment emptied the bank. In most 18xx games it wouldn't have been that bad, since it was the first OR of three, but in 1825 the game is over immediately after the OR when bank ends, period.

Too bad, and I would've been much better off just running the 5 train and collecting dividends, but I had a dream and I wanted to pursue it, no matter the cost. Silly me, but it was fun, making that huge run in the end, so I suppose it was worth it.

In the end the final scores were Tommy £5373, Stefu £5077 and me £4448. Share portfolios were worth £3184 for Tommy, £2941 for Stefu and £2575 for me, rest of it was cash in hand. Our game took three hours to play, and quite a bit to setup, explain and clean away.

I paid a rather hefty sum of money for my 1825 set and I'm glad to say I enjoyed it. I think this is what I want from an 18xx game, really: route building and some financial planning. I don't miss stock manipulation or other complicated trickery. 1825 has quite enough meat for a three-hour game, and since it's so short, it's much easier to play than the six-hour behemoths.

Unit 2 is a good three-player game. The map is small and tight and seems to offer interesting challenges and possibilities for cooperation. The supplementary tiles were a small help. Not absolutely necessary, I'd say based on this one game, but nice to have. I liked the minors, or at least Furness, and maybe the North Staffordshire works too if the tracks are laid some other way. I will probably include them in future as well.

After the game it was a food break. I made some pizza. Once again, to optimize the use of time, I had made the dough earlier, before Tommy and Stefu arrived, and now I just had to turn it to a pizza. I've been doing pizza about once a week for a long time and I've got a method. The secrets of a good pizza are simple: not too much fillings (just few slices of good peppered ham and two small tomatoes), way too much mozzarella on top and a sprinkle of basil-flavoured olive oil as a final touch.

While waiting for the pizza, we played a quick game of Jungle Speed with the expansion. The expansion is particularly nasty: many of the cards are nearly identical - but not quite enough. I'm fairly sure we had more mistakes than successful duels.

Anyway, the expansion makes the game rather evil. That's always nice. There's particularly nice card to give the poor little brains a final twist. Usually in Jungle Speed, you must grab the totem pole on the middle of the table if the card in front of you matches the card in front of someone else. Well, after that one card is played, you must grab the totem if the card in front of your left-hand neighbour matches. That's surprisingly difficult.

Jungle Speed isn't a very good three-player game, though, and the new cards made the problem worse. There were rather few matches during the game, which was another reason for few successful duels. I won the game in the end, fortunately. I'd rather eat pizza.

After pizza it was time for another game we had decided to play in advance: Through the Ages, full game of course. This is a favourite for all three of us. Going in, my goal was not to win, but to play better than before. I knew I wasn't a likely winner, considering both Tommy and Stefu had previous experience of full game, while I had only played two games of advanced game, and both of them rather weakly as well.

I made it! I was last, no doubt about that, but I was really satisfied in my game. Instead of putting too much energy to building up my basic production, I focused on things that actually helped my game. I had the most light bulbs and a decent culture production early in the game. Of course, in the end things got too expensive for my production, but I was doing pretty well to the early era III or so.

Stefu got a huge lead with Michelangelo, so Tommy focused on throwing wars and aggressions at Stefu. Our game was fairly low on military otherwise, just one territory and few confrontations between Tommy and Stefu. Tommy did win the game, as even though he was badly behind early in the game, he worked his culture production to over 20 per turn and in the end passed Stefu: 230-204-182.

This really shows the meaning of full game. In advanced game, Stefu's Michelangelo would've been an unstoppable monster. In the full game, Tommy's stronger but slower engine had enough time to churn enough culture to win. So full game is the way to go. On the positive side: we played the full game in three hours! Not bad, not bad at all! The downtime was rather tolerable, except at times in the end.

Through the Ages is an excellent game in the right circumstances, but in the wrong situation it's a disaster. Throw in just one slow player and the game experience becomes a lot worse. Playing two-player games is probably the safest way to go, if time is an issue, or at least one needs to pick the players well.

After a long game like that one needs some relaxation. Besides, it was already quite late. So, Race for the Galaxy it was. We played two swift rounds, with close scores. Good way to relax!

Final game of the evening was In the Year of the Dragon, the new and popular Alea title from Stefan Feld. This is not a feel-good game: players are Chinese whatevers trying to survive a year filled with disasters. Mongols attack, plague hits, drought comes, emperor wants taxes, all sorts of unpleasant activities.

Players build houses and fill them with all sorts of professionals. The people you hire help with the resource collection. Every turn you take an action and hire a person, then event happens. You can avoid the bad stuff by taking the right precautions, but the catch is that you simply don't have the time or the resources to do that every time (especially since everybody else will be wanting to do the same things), so you have to bite the bullett few times.

The bad events (not all of them are evil, and some are more evil than others) kill off your people you so painstakingly collect. If you make mistakes, you might end up losing most of your helpful little people (that happened to me). There are quite a few ways to score points, either during the game or in the end.

It's fairly interesting and the whole theme of living in interesting times is kind of fun. Still, I found the game lacking, in some respect. It's hard to say exactly what's wrong, but some way this game just didn't do it for me. Sure, I got hit pretty badly by the events, but I'm not just whining because I lost... It's just that I didn't have much fun playing the game.

I suppose I should give the game another chance, but it's certainly not high on my list of games to play.

At this point we went to bed, satisfied of a good day of gaming. We didn't expect to play any more games in the morning, but there was a change of plans and the boys didn't have to leave right after breakfast. I knew what I wanted to play!

I had recently read The Design and Development of Age of Steam Expansion: Montréal Métro. So, I took my collection of AoS stuff and dug until I found the Montréal Métro expansion.

It's a three-player map, with some very interesting rules. All track must form a single network. Government builds a neutral link each turn, and special engines may run extra neutral links. The auction is slightly tighter and the actions are more balanced than usual.

It was fun. We soon made quite a maze of tracks in Montréal, as me and Stefu focused on the middle part of the map. I made the best use of neutral tracks, while Tommy used them least. I found them highly useful. With my 3+2 and 4+2 engines I was able to run 5-link and 6-link runs (using a maximum of 3 and 4 player links, respectively) for 3 or 4 profit, collecting cubes from a large area. Using neutral links doesn't increase income, but it sure gives lots of flexibility.

Our game was close until the end. During the last three or so rounds I was able to do constant 4-link runs. I could've updated my engines to 5+2, but I found it more effective to run several 4-link runs instead of one or two fives... This because you can only upgrade the critical first number of your engines by skipping goods movement, using Locomotive only gives you extra government links power.

In the end I won clearly 69-55-42. Funny enough, the order me-Stefu-Tommy was the same as our use of government links: I had +2 engines, Stefu had +1 engines and Tommy used the basic +0 engines. Everybody enjoyed the expansion, and why not? It's well-balanced, offers very interesting challenges and some pretty tight money management. Highly recommended, if you're looking for a great three-player Age of Steam experience.

And that's it! Hours of excellent games in excellent company, what more can you expect?

I visited my mom at Jyväskylä with Nooa. Thanks to Easter, we stayed for three days, which - of course! - presented us with more opportunities for games (two evenings and Nooa's nap time on Saturday). That in mind, I brought some new games to try.

Black Vienna was a major hit. It went down so well I'm surprised I haven't tried it before. We ended up playing ten games during the weekend, averaging about 20-30 minutes per round I think, so it was a rather huge chunk of time, too.

It's just that good. Iain played it recently and was disappointed, but I don't have a problem with the game. We didn't make a single mistake, and to be honest, I think Black Vienna is not particularly prone for these kinds of mistakes. There are other deduction games where information mistakes are easier to make.

What Black Vienna has is a healthy dose of luck: the question cards (each lists three suspects, and player who receives the card must mark how many of the suspects she knows are innocent) limit your play and there are times when you don't have a good question to ask (and the game will break down soon if the three members of the Black Vienna criminal gang appear on single question card, but that's fortunately very rare). However, the question cards make the note-taking a lot easier, making Black Vienna a pleasantly challenging game - not too hard, not too easy.

So yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. It was fun to have some actual repeat plays: in five years or so, I've played Black Vienna four times. Now I got ten plays in two days. That was very nice, especially as I won six or so... It actually takes some gambling to play Black Vienna. In one of the games, I had sorted out two of the criminals and had some clue who the third one might be. When I realized none of the questions available would increase the amount of information I had and the game was coming to a close, I decided to make a guess. If I remember it correctly, I even got it right.

This weekend certainly increased my appreciation of Black Vienna. Oh, and Iain - The Third Man was shown on Finnish TV yesterday and I got my wife to record it.

Cuba was another new game I introduced last weekend. I was pretty sure about this one and indeed, they enjoyed it. We played two games and I'm glad to report both were quite fast. First one took us 80 minutes - sure, not particularly quick but much faster than 2.5 hours - and the second one took just 50 minutes.

Ismo was particularly good in this one, he beat us in both games. In the first one, he crushed us with the water subsidy, hoarding the water and collecting tons of points each round (we initially missed the rule that limits the points to seven per round, but that didn't matter much). In the second game... I don't know exactly what he did, but it was a success. I'm not very good in this game, all I see is the get sugar/tobacco, produce rum/cigars, convert them to points strategy.

Anyway, it was decent fun, even though Cuba is definitely not my favourite game. I still rate it as eight. I recently went through my ratings at Geek and dropped quite a few nines to eights and eights to sevens, but with these two games, Cuba stays as an eight. It is a very good game, but not something I'd list as a personal favourite of mine. However, I'm interested in exploring the game a bit more, preferably with three quick players to keep the play time around one hour.

Agricola is a regular favourite at Jyväskylä nowadays and of course I brought it with me. However, with the new games, we only played one game. Since I've noticed Raija and Ismo take one game to warm up after taking a break from the game, I was able to win the game pretty easily (I played a good game myself). Once the English-language edition comes out, I should probably either buy them the game or push them to buy it...

Anyway, what's interesting about the game is the new updates I tried for the first time. As we played family game with three, we had the new day labourer (one food and either stone, wood, clay or reed), the new bake bread and/or build stables action and the three-player card "get one stone" changed to "get one stone, wood, clay or reed".

The card wasn't used, because the day labourer is obviously better. However, having at least one of them is good, because the extra reed is necessary in three-player games. The day labourer was used often. The new baking action was good, too, there was at least one or two rounds where both baking actions were used. That's one part of the game that could use opening up. So, I'd say both are good additions.

I played an interesting game of Flix Mix with my brother: we got the game to lock up. In the first round, I got to one card left faster than he did, but then lost because I couldn't place the card anywhere. In the second round, we both were left holding one card we couldn't play (the cards were as identical as they come, which explains a lot). Funny thing, and certainly something I didn't expect! Lesson learnt: Flix Mix is probably best with at least three players.

Thanks to Easter, we had to reschedule our Thursday games to Wednesday. I started the session with Don. It's been a while since I last played this little filler. Too long, actually, as I was already getting hazy with the rules. That's unconvenient, as I only have the German rules... Well, we did play it right in the end.

It's nothing spectacular, but perhaps I should play it a tad more often? It's pretty cool for a small auction game. Few people seem to like it, my rating of seven stands pretty high amongst my GeekBuddies (but Iain likes the game).

Then we played Wabash Cannonball. Two games this time, both with same group of experienced players. That's nice and effective, though Wabash is pretty easy to explain.

Hannu got the first one, dominated it, really. I was stuck with a pretty weak portfolio. Hannu ran the NYC with great success. I was doing fine with shared Pennsylvania, but when Hannu snatched the third share, it kind of lost the point. Hannu was basically involved in every good deal on the board, which is a no-brainer. I don't actually know what went wrong here.

The second one was all mine. I got Pennsylvania, but instead of the standard expansion, I capitalized NYC. NYC expanded twice and B&O once, blocking Pennsylvania in. That suited me, I just let it rot there - hey, I'm getting $7 in dividends every round doing nothing, suits me fine! NYC had some good prospects, but when the share distribution went 1-1-1-1, it kind of lost momentum. Nobody bought the fifth one, even though NYC was, what, four hexes from Chicago (that fourth hex was probably critical, one hex closer and it would've been different thing).

Riku got stuck, he had the same shares as Hannu but paid more for them. Hannu also made a bit of a blunder when he let me have a share of B&O for five bucks. I must've made about $30 with that share, and I was able to develop B&O with Petri leaving Hannu out of the equation (I knew Hannu was my biggest enemy). Hannu got the final nail in the coffin, when he bought Wabash for eight when the line to Chicago cost ten. Ouch.

Really interesting, once again. The two games were quite different! First one took 50 minutes, second just 40 minutes, which was rather effective. Wabash is a devious game, and I love it more and more. It's also breaking records: no big game has ever been played three weeks in a row in our game evenings. In general we do repeat plays rarely. It's just that good...

After Wabash we played Great Wall of China. This game by Reiner Knizia is kind of like Samurai, but quite different. It's supposed to be a 30-minute semifiller, but for me, it's more like 40-45 minutes. Tad too long, that is.

I had learnt something from my previous games. I drew cards quickly to get a strong hand and then picked my battles carefully, avoiding the big slugfests. That was successfull, I was able to win with a safe enough margin. It's a nice game, but perhaps not my cup of tea. I think I'll try to sell it...

Quick game of Set finished off the evening. Well, not that quick, we sucked and had to draw the extra cards quite a few times...