Hi – this is my first go at updating the blog so please excuse any serious faux pas. Also please excuse any muddled English – hopefully the plain English course I’m booked to go on next week will improve it in future!
This week we welcomed back Julian who had been on a long hiatus from the group.
Again there were 8 of us this week (edit by DaveD, just to note that in addition to our 8, Dave C was downstairs with younger members running Paranoia, although I gather this didn't go as well as hoped and I'm not sure whether Dave will post on his blog). Gordon and Steve P (and I assume Julian seeing as he had a game that is not released yet) had just returned from Essen bringing with them an assortment of new games – many of which, those who had been unable to go to Essen due to Work, Money and Other-half commitments etc had been reading up about in the Essen coverage.
We split into two groups of four. Our table played Martin Wallace’s new game Steel Driver. This is a train (track) game – and is similar to the 18xx games in that you don’t own a company/colour per se but purchase shares in these companies. The game is essentially split into two phases. In the first phase a share in each of the companies is auctioned off, and then track is built – earning the players connection fees in addition to the shares they won. The second phase is pick-up-game – as players try and gain sets of goods for the companies they have the most shares in.
I played quite badly in this game – which inspired me to write my first session report on BGG http://www.boardgamegeek.com/
Steel Driver 70 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
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Steve H
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1
|
1530
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Dave D
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2
|
1290
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Julian
|
3
|
1270
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Andy
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4
|
1220
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The second game we played was Yspahan by Ystari (who-else with that name!). To those who haven’t played it, it basically involves you rolling a bucket of dice, distributing these dice over the 6 available actions and then picking an action. Points are earned through purchasing buildings (which convey additional benefits) and placing goods into sets of market stalls. Points can also be earned for placing goods on camels – although this aspect was most definitely on the periphery in our game. The game was pretty tight, with Dave D nipping away at the end thanks to some bonus points earned through a building he purchased. Also I’m sure Steve H would’ve been a lot closer to the top of the scoreboard if he hadn’t misunderstood the rules – cashed in gold coins for points early and dropped in the turn order on the final turn.
I really enjoyed playing this game but would agree with Julian’s comments that the game has too many interesting mechanics that don’t gel particularly well.
Yspahan 50 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
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Dave D
|
1
|
74
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Andy
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2
|
70
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Steve H
|
3
|
62
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Julian
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4
|
55
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The other table played Princes of Machu Pichu – one of Steve P’s new games which he had brought back from Essen. There was a lot of odd language coming from this table with much talk of ‘virgins’ and ‘condors’ – questions I felt were best left unanswered! This game was one of the ‘stars of the show’ at Essen – and judging from the noise made it sounded like a lot of fun.
Princes of Macchu Pichu 160 mins
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Player
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Posn.
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Points
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Gordon
|
1
|
36
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Steve P
|
2
|
24
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Mike
|
3
|
20
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Steve Pe
|
4
|
14
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Session report - 22 October 2008
There were 8 of us this week so we split into two groups of four.
On our table we played Mike’s new game Mykerinos. This is an area-control / set-collection game. You attempt to gain control of tiles, which have a 3x2 grid on one side and one of five colours/patrons of the museum on the other. At the end of the game you earn points for the number of patrons which are adjusted by the multipliers you gain from cubes you have managed to place in the patrons’ rooms in the museum.
The patrons’ cards have special abilities during the game and there was some debate over their relative powers. We played a BGG-inspired house rule which limits the use of the Brown card to once per game instead of every turn – however my patron of choice; blue gave me an extra cube every time I used it which enabled me to gain control of more tiles. However I have a nagging doubt regarding whether I should’ve been allowed those extra turns granted by my bounteous cube supply after reading some comments on BGG. Will have to investigate before playing next time.
Mykerinos 60 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
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Andy
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1
|
48
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Mike
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2
|
36
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Ben
|
3
|
33
|
Dave C
|
4
|
27
|
The second game our table played was Big City – an older Rio Grande Game. This remained pretty tight all through the game until the very end. Despite the high score, the only thing that separated first place from last place was the placement of one building. I managed to fulfil the onerous conditions to build a Shopping Centre and placed a park on my next turn to prevent Mike doing likewise.
Big City 70 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Andy
|
1
|
91
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Mike
|
2
|
65
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Dave C
|
3
|
63
|
Ben
|
4
|
61
|
The other table played Saint Petersburg – a game I know very little about other than it can sharply divide opinions! And from a quick glance at the wide spread of the scores I can see one possible reason why!
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Gordon
|
1
|
214
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Dave D
|
2
|
160
|
Steve H
|
3
|
158
|
Steve P
|
4
|
114
|
Session report - 15 October 2008
This week there was only 4 of us and we played two games with a broadly similar theme but very different mechanic.
The first up was Manhattan. Each player has a number of different sized buildings to start with, and has to select which ones to use before each turn begins. Each player also has a hand of cards which govern where they may place a building within a city block. Players then take it in turn to place a building in a block – attempting to either control a block (player has the most buildings) or build the tallest building on the board a the end of each turn.
As there were a number of city blocks up for grabs – it became a game of carefully choosing what fights to pick. Going gung-ho in one city block meant giving up control in another so efficient use of buildings was key – as was hand management – holding back a card or two that would allow you to take control back of a block if someone else decided to disenfranchise you.
Final scores were:
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Andy
|
1
|
48
|
Mike
|
2
|
43
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Dave D
|
3
|
40
|
Steve H
|
4
|
33
|
The second game was Metropolys. Due to the positive write-up in Counter Magazine combined with an odd but interesting mechanic I decided to buy it unseen and give it a whirl. Each player has 13 buildings labelled 1 to 13, with 13 being the most prestigious and 1 being the least. A player starts the bidding by placing a building in an empty area and then players may then outbid each other by placing a higher numbered building into an accessible empty adjacent area. The player who has placed the highest numbered building gets to build it. Points are scored for building in areas where there are Metro or Trendy area (‘Flapper’) tokens and lost for building where there are Archaeological site tokens. Bonus points are awarded at the end via your secret objective cards – each player has 1 area card and another card for fulfilling certain conditions.
We all guessed early on that Steve had the Park area card but none of us realised he got bonus points for building either side of bridges which allowed him to pick up many bonus points. Despite it being my game I really didn’t get to grips with the odd but fun mechanic and there was a complete reversal of fortunes compared to Manhattan when points were added up at the end:
Metropolys 70 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Steve H
|
1
|
40
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Dave D
|
2
|
29
|
Mike
|
3
|
28
|
Andy
|
4
|
25
|
Thanks for the report Andy. It was easy to get fed up waiting for Dave to update the blog. Saint Petersburg is one of my favourite games of 2004 though you are right about it dividing opinion. It is a game, more than most, that benefits from repeat plays but once enlightenment is reached the game feels solved in so much as rather than multiple choices on your turn, after some pondering, there is usually only one option. Note that I have played way more than the other players and even though I have not played for at least 2 years I felt I had a huge advantage. I also noticed that I spent more time on my goes than the others (sorry guys). This is one of the few games where you can become the “perfect” player. We were using the expansion cards and these mix things up a bit.
ReplyDeleteHere is a big St P tip from Mr Perfect – In the first round you will buy 2 workers, in the second round many of the blue building cards from the first round will be blocking spaces so only a few workers come out, manipulate things right and you will still probably only get one. In the 3rd round all those blue buildings not picked up in the first round have fallen out of play and chances are there will be nearly a full rack of workers. Here comes the tip – it is easy to be spent up by now with all your starting cash gone and your hand limit filled, don’t let this happen, you have to be able to buy or at least hold as many workers from that third round as you can. Tip over.
I'll echo Gordon's thanks for this Andy. I've been having difficulty recently working up the enthusiasm to write the kind of reports I like to write. We've been playing some games that although they are thoroughly enjoyable to play, don't tend to inspire a story like others do. I could just write a few lines, which is often what I've ended up doing, but I don't really like that. Any way I still intend to write some reports.
ReplyDeleteOn games played, it was good to get Manhattan out again, it's a nice half session game that should be played every so often. Metropolys is a game I've been interested in for some time and downloaded the rules a couple of months back, but wanted to try before buying. It's an enjoyable game, but not one I think I'll buy with another copy in the club.
Saint Petersburg I renewed my acquaintance with a couple of months back with another group and is a game I always liked, but due to strong opinions from a couple of other members has not seen play here for a few years. I don't think the game is solved as Gordon suggests (I don't think that can be true of any game where the random order of card appearance has any significant impact) although it is certainly true that there are things you can do to help as Gordon rightly indicates. I agree with everything said about hand management, although Gordon had a big advantage from the start here by being able to grab the Warehouse right at the beginning. I can't really say I particularly noticed Gordon taking more time than others of us, but I do think in general we spent far too much time on this one, it should not be a full session game even with the expansion. While I didn't get as far as writing a session report, I did write an article about the expansion and posted that on the geek the following day.
Moving on to last week, we had an influx of Essen games, courtesy of Gordon, Steve and Julian. I have to say that this year's selection seems to be the least inspiring Essen crop I remember for a few years. The only one that really interested me was Steel Driver, although Dominion sounds vaguely interesting and I hope to give that a try at some time. On the subject of Steel Driver, this is an interesting game, but is a game of 2 parts and I have to say that the first half of the game I found much more interesting than the second, for one thing a player without a company to run is left with nothing to do (this was me) and I found that part to be very fiddly although I did think a way to limit some of that as mentioned in my reply to Andy's Geek session report. This is a lighter game than Martin Wallace's major train games and can be played in a quicker time, I don't really think on the evidence of this play that it is as good, but it probably can't be expected to be.
Yspahan is a game that Gordon picked up at Essen last year and this was my second play, having tried it at Dave's the previous Saturday. Opinions seem to be fairly consistent that it is an OK game that is nothing spectacular, certainly from my point of view I'll certainly be happy to play again, but there are many games I'd play in preference.
Over on the other table, the one game was Princes of Machu Pichu, as I said this year's Essen crop hasn't inspired me and this one went completely under the radar. Having done a bit of reading 2 things stand out for me. 1. apparently this by the Rondel guy but has no rondel which is followed by 2. but in this case the whole game is a rondel. It is my view that the rondel is the single most pointless "innovation" ever in gaming so #2 makes me shudder, this does not sound promising.
I am a subscriber of your boardgame blog. Quite nice. But I am not sure why the scores of Saint Petersburg will go up to more than 100, for all 4 players? I have not played the expansion, but ususally it is around 40-80 when we played. Just a question.
ReplyDeleteWe have a subscriber! This is great news. The StP scores were rather high probably because the game ran a round or 2 longer than normal. I think this was due to the expansion adding extras cards meaning it takes longer to trigger the game end. I did get 11 Nobles which piles on a chunk of points at the end.
ReplyDeleteI’ll take this opportunity to inform all that I will be coming to the club next Wednesday with Steve P. I imagine we will be proposing to play another of the new Essen releases. I have Chicago Express (look Mr Dudley… trains). Steve has plenty of new releases to work through. Once I have got these out of my system perhaps I will finally get to play Mike’s copy of Colosseum.
Hi forrest, it's nice to know that other people are reading this. On the subject of St. Petersburg, these scores were indeed high and I think the use of the expansion has a lot to do with this for 2 reasons, first there are more aristocrat types so people will tend to have bigger collections at the end, second the game lasted longer and I suspect that it was rather more than an extra turns, which will lead to your cards scoring more often, particularly significant in the case of big buildings.
ReplyDeleteAll that said 40-80 does sound a bit low, I've just been looking back at some previous game scores and scores close to and above 100 are not uncommon even without the expansion.
Thanks Gordon and Dave.
ReplyDeleteActually I am a big power grid fan and learnt that you are a "power grid" club, so I am here. You and other guys have very good session reports.
For SP,we did have 40-80 ususally when playing without expansion. I will try expansion later.
my boardgamegeek id is tickwang, you can add me as geekbuddy and let's keep in touch.
Long live the Power Grid.
Cheers
I enjoyed the return of Big City to the table, after a long gap, but it followed the trend I seem to recall from when it was more popular - you're very unlikely to win without a Shopping Centre, and there are only 2 available. I was so close to building the 2nd one, which would have given me the game, but Andy played very cleverly to deny it me just as I was poised to do so, and so deservedly got the victory.
ReplyDeleteYour descripion of Yspahan as a number of components which don't gel just about sums up my attitude to their new game Sylla, which I played at MidCon. Mykerinos, with or without the expansion, is a far more focussed and worthwhile gaming experience, so I'm glad that's the game I've got.
ReplyDelete