Games Played - 11 November 2015, featuring Favor of the Pharoah

Yesterday, Mike asked Dave D to write a blog post. I thinks that's because Mike can't log in to write one (he's forgotten his password - a common affliction these days), but he can reply to one that someone else has written. As I've got some time free, I thought I'd start it off myself. This week we had only 9 people attending. The two Marks and Steve K promptly decided on Agricola as their game for the evening. I was keen to join them, as Agricola is at the number 4 spot on my bgg top 10 list. However, I held back as it wasn't clear how the numbers would work out. Mike subsequently kidnapped a couple of the attendees - Rob L and James S -  for a game of Caylus Magna Carta, something that I very much want to try out, as I like Caylus but haven't tried the card version before. That meant that the remaining three of us - Stan, Dave D and I - were left to form a third table.

Fortunately, another new game was calling out to be played: Favor of the Pharoah, which I'd noticed that Dave had been bringing along for a few weeks. Favor is one of two reworkings of Tom Lehmann's 2006 game To Court the King (the other reworking being Ciub). Tom is one of that rare breed, a professional board game designer, and is the mastermind behind Race for the Galaxy, Roll the Galaxy and a number of Pandemic expansions. Favor is a game that uses dice as a key mechanism other than as random number generators - something that is increasingly fashionable these days, with the aforementioned Roll for the Galaxy and The Voyages of Marco Polo being just two recent, high-profile examples. At first glance, Favor seems as though it is going to be a relatively simple game. On your turn you roll a number of dice and use the results to purchase a tile. Each purchased tile provides you either with an additional die or two to roll on subsequent turns, or some type of modifier that you can apply to one or more dice. I initially though that the game might be something like Machi Koro or Artifacts Inc., but it plays quite differently. Favor might start out being quite simple, but as you accrue extra dice - some of them with special attributes - and various die-modifying abilities the possibilities for the die-rolling element of your turn multiply exponentially. The price for any given tile is either a number of dice with the same value, or a run of values, or some other combination, such as three pairs or a triple and a pair. The aim of the game is to purchase the Queen, who costs 7 dice of the same value. Her purchase triggers the final round of the game, with players then aiming to beat the score obtained to buy the Queen, either with the same number of dice but with a higher value, or with a higher number of dice.

During our game, all three of us occasionally neglected to use some of our die-modifying abilities or even dice themselves, so we were certainly playing sub-optimally, a sign that there is more to this game than first meets the eye. Dave accrued a higher number of dice than Stan or I, and was the first to purchase the Queen tile, with eight 2s. Stan and I had focused more on buying die-modifying tiles, and this stood me in good stead on my very final turn when I was able to achieve ten 3s. Dave had the very last turn, but wasn't quite able to beat the score I had just set. I would be very keen to try Favor of the Pharoah again. We only used a fraction of the available tiles - a different set is used each time, so there will be a certain degree of variability between games.

We finished Favor in under an hour, leaving us time for a longer game. Dave suggested World Without End, which Stan was keen to play. I have played it a few times before and always enjoyed it, though I keep forgetting just how good a game it is. Dave won, though the end result was fairly close, leaving me to think about how I could have played a little better to get those extra few points. I've now upped my rating of the game on bgg to a '9'!

Game design news: This Cursed Rock

This time I'm presenting an early preview of a game by another budding designer, Jim Falkus, who you may have met when he came to the club in August. You can find some details about the game on his blog. In brief, it is a 2-player game recreating the Great Siege of Malta by the Ottomans in 1565. Despite the theme, it is not a wargame, as witnessed by the lack of hexes or defined areas on the game board, which was designed by me! The game takes place over about 20 turns. At the start of every turn each player draws an event card, most of which can be retained for later use. Then each player selects four action cards from their deck of 12 to use during the subsequent Action Phase. There are four types of card: Move, Build, Morale and Combat. Finally there is an Assault Phase, during which the Turkish player may attempt to seize one of the fortified areas on the board. Wooden cubes are used to represent the various types of military pieces: gun batteries, Janissary units, Turkish infantry units, Knights of St John and Spanish infantry units. There are also wooden Personality Discs and various types of markers for gun platforms, additional fortifications, siege equipment and divine intervention!

The game is still under design with early playtesting likely to start later this year. I would hope that it can make an appearance in Halesowen early in 2016.

Game design news

Cromwell is still very much in active playtesting, especially as I have redesigned the cards (each player now has a deck) and created a scenario starting in 1644. However, many years ago I designed a Lord of the Rings-themed block wargame which I may resurrect if there is any interest...

Given the theme and associated copyright issues, it is a game that is extremely unlikely to ever be published, so it is destined to be no more than a very limited edition "fan game". It did receive some playtesting back in the day and showed some potential, but definitely needs a spruce-up in terms of graphics as well as streamlining of the rules - probably a few dozen hours of my time - and the purchase of new blocks. Based on a short passage in Lord of the Rings Appendix A, it is called "The Long Winter" and is set during the Third Age 2758. For scale and complexity it is comparable to the Columbia block games East Front or Victory in Europe. It features 160 blocks, 5 nationalities (Gondorians, Rohirrim, Corsairs, Dunlendings, Easterlings) which can be played by 2-5 players, both land and naval battles, siege combat, supply trains, weather. There is no magic and it is strictly humans, but there is personal combat between leaders to give it a bit of high fantasy feeling.

Games Played - 9 September 2015 featuring The Capitals

We had 11 people last Wednesday and split over 4 tables with 6 games played, Agricola, Acquire, China, San Juan together with 2 new games to the club, The Capitals and Scott's prototype civil war game, currently known as Cromwell. More details follow

Games Played - 2 September 2015

Moving into September, we had 17 people at this meeting including 5 newcomers - Keith, Carl, Justin, Zoe & Vicki. Games played were Power Grid deluxe, Voyages of Marco Polo, Carcassonne, Santiago de Cuba, Dead of Winter, Love Letter (The Hobbit) and 3 new games Siberia, Ora et Labora & Traders of Osaka. That's more new games in one week this month than in the entire 4 weeks of August. A few more details follow.

Call for playtester

It might seem like a modest proposal to call for a single playtester, but I already have an interested party (Steve H) and the game is 2-player! The game is called Cromwell and I have been developing it on and off for more than 3 years now. It is a block wargame very much in the mould of other Columbia Games titles such as Hammer of the Scots, Crusader Rex, Richard III, Texas Glory and Julius Caesar.  In its current form it has already undergone 10 playtest sessions and everyone who had played it has enjoyed it. I have recently resubmitted it to Columbia Games, but it is likely to be a month or two before they get round to considering it and in the meantime, the more playtests it undergoes the better.

I'll bring it to a Wednesday session and, while I could play it myself with Steve H, it would be better for him to face an opponent who is also new to the game. Please let me know if you are interested. Ideally you'll already have played another block wargame or, at the very least, be familiar with some board wargames. I'd say it is low-to-mid complexity for a wargame - which would put it in heavy Euro game territory - being a little more complex than the other Columbia titles mentioned above and certainly a step up from the likes of Command & Colors.

More information about the game can be found on my bgg profile and the game map, block label graphics and some photos in my gallery.  

August 2015 Recap

This is a recap of what was played during the month of August 2015. There were 4 sessions in the month and the average attendance was 14 with 21 different people over the month including 2 new visitors Nick & Peter O and also Jim F who came once before (back in November 2006, if I've got the right person). 30 games were played of 25 different titles (as last month I suppose that should really be 26 counting the 2 different Love Letter versions) and I include the list of these at the end of this post.