7 adults this week. In the absence of Dave C, the youngsters in attendance also played board/card games, I don't have records for these but there was a strange Dominion game going on at the end of the evening.
The rest of us split 4 & 3. On one table the first game was Stone Age, which I don't like, followed by San Juan, which I do.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Gordon | 152 |
2 | Donald | 110 |
3 | Mike | 103 |
4 | Andy | 97 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Gordon | 35 |
2 | Andy | 32 |
3 | Mike | 26 |
4 | Donald | 21 |
Over on the other table Steve, Dave F & I played Arkham Horror. This being the first time the game has appeared at the club, although I did get to try it out with Dave C the Saturday previously. Since March I have been playing online games of Battlestar Galactica in the forums of Board Game Geek and many of the players in those games enjoy this one, on this basis, combined with the fact that I increasingly am seeming to prefer highly themed American games such as this plus the afore mentioned Battlestar Galactica and Fury of Dracula (compared with many of the more recent Euros (e.g. Le Havre, Comuni) which have left me cold) I decided to get the game.
The problem just diving in to a game like this is that there are really no strategy hints in the rules, so we spent much of the unfinished game wandering aimlessly closing gates as they appeared. We had no idea of things like how to get money and the importance of sealing, rather than simply closing gates.
There was also the odd rules mistake, but despite everything the game was an enjoyable experience and one that I look forward to exploring further. There is a great amount of material on the geek and I have been reading some of it, hopefully the money issues that Steve particularly had problems with should not be issues in future.
Posn. | Player |
1= | Dave D |
1= | Dave F |
1= | Steve H |
My thoughts after my first playing of Stone Age are reasonably positive - nothing particularly striking or original about it but I'd certainly play it again and I could certainly begin to see strategies forming (rather too late to stop me getting thrashed). One misgiving I have is that I'm sure going later in the turn order on Turn 1 is a disadvantage - this is an annoyingly common feature of Eurogames (even ones I love like Industrial Waste) and I sometimes wonder if designers shy away from considering a more balanced 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1 turn order, like the start-up of Settlers, for fear of it being branded a rip-off of the idea.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mike that going later in the turn order on the first round of Stone Age is a disadvantage. Maybe one less starting food should go to the first player and one more to the last. I can’t say it bothers me much. Let the least experienced player go first or the guy who won the last game go last would be all the balancing I would look to apply.
ReplyDeleteDave I can see you are getting increasingly disinterested by Euro games. I personally see the big themed, American, semi cooperative, games that you are currently into (Dracula, Arkham Horror, Battlestar Galactica) as being as far removed from euro boardgames as playing a game of pool in the bar downstairs.
I am missing the competitive confrontations we used to experience, the battle of wits and the thrill of implementing just the right strategy to take the win. If we were just trying to make me happy then the club would simply play from a pool of no more than a dozen Euro games giving a new game a go on average once a month. I tend to be the densest player round the table when taking on new rules but I kick ass once I have my head around the mechanics. Unfortunately I don’t play a given game often enough so I get at one with the rules and enter my kick ass stage. Maybe my grey cells are going and I am chasing a thrill that will from now on elude me.
Mike, I can't see why designers should worry about thinking that starting turn order mechanic would be ripping off Settlers, its not as if there has ever been any notable reluctance to rip off other games in the past. As an example Klaus Teuber when he ripped that mechanic off.
ReplyDeleteGordon, you are right to a certain extent, but I don't think its really an increasing disinterest in Euro games, the euros I like (such as Power Grid) I still like, but it seems that the number of that type of games are getting fewer and we seeing more and more heavy economic engine building games with pseudo historical themes (see Caylus, Comuni, Le Havre and many others) which are of no interest to me. I could maybe become quite good at them if I persevered, but I think I would probably lapse into a coma before reaching that stage. Then again there are games that are lighter but take longer than their theme plus randomness justifies (see Stone Age).
So what I want is a game where either the theme is engaging enough to overcome randomness or length or the length is short enough to overcome randomness or lack of theme. There will be exceptions to that of course, but in recent times, the only euros that have tended to appeal have been relatively quick card games.
All that said, my recent favourites have tended perhaps to indicate that I am returning to the themes of Science Fiction and Horror, that I have always liked in Books/TV/Films going as far back as my childhood. I have also tended to favour Industrial/Modern themes over Historical(excepting British history).