2008 Game of the Year

Here we are at the end of 2008. 12 short months ago, my goal was simply to play five new games in the coming year. It was a modest goal, but back then I didn't play board games very much.

I played the first new game of the year on January 18. The game was Kings Keep and the venue was Paul & Narelle's house. Joining us that evening was a friend of theirs by the name of Bernd. It turned out Bernd hosted regular games nights at his place. He called this little gathering HoGS - the Hobart Games Society.

Discovering HoGS changed everything. The Giggling One and I rocked up to our first HoGS night on February 1st. That night we played four new games, and my goal was achieved. Just like that.

A rethink was in order, and after a quick calculation, I reset the bar at 25.

I reached game 25 on October 18, and went on to play a further six new games, bringing the total to 31 for the year. Admittedly, three of the games I included on the list were expansions, so it's 28 if you don't count expansions as "new".

So looking at those 28 games, I figured I'd make a good old Top Ten list of my favourite games of 2008.

So here it is. It wasn't the easiest of lists as I enjoyed almost all of the games. And that was the key factor: enjoyment. These our the games I liked the most.

To simplify the task somewhat, I went through the list of games and short-listed those that I enjoyed the most. That short-list contained 11 games. Through a process of elimination (or inclusion) I settled on my top 10 before ranking them. Incidentally, the honourable mention for the unlucky 11th game goes to Wits & Wagers. On to the Top 10...


#10 - The Princes of Florence


What I said: [We] thoroughly enjoyed the game. I imagine having 5 players instead of 3 makes the Auction phase a whole new ball game.

Justify yourself: While deserving its place in the Top 10, having a deeper underlying strategy than it may first appear, The Princes of Florence wasn't quite engaging enough to rank higher. I'm not the greatest fan of auction mechanics in games, but it was made easier with only three of us playing. The design-your-own-principality aspect of the game was fun - a sort of game within a game. Planning and modifying your strategy to maximise your points is the key to winning, and with multiple ways of earning points limited by the seven game turns, the result is a pleasing strategic mix.


#9 - Ca$h 'n Gun$


What I said: I have to say that I've never had so much fun pointing a foam gun at someone else's head.

Justify yourself: Foam guns are where it's at. This game is all about the fun you get from pointing orange guns at other people, and the ensuing laughter when someone discovers that everyone else has chosen to target them. A deeply strategic game this is not. There is a little strategy but ultimately Ca$h 'n Gun$ is a short, fun diversion that you have to play at least two or three times each time you pull it out.


#8 - Carcassonne


What I said: You know what? It wasn't as good as I thought it would be. I never expected Carcassonne to be so..simple.

Justify yourself: Carcassonne is known as a gateway game for a reason. It's very easy to pick up and is light on strategy. It's fun and clever, which is why it has spawned so many expansions. Discounting "The River" (which adds a few tiles but doesn't change the gameplay), the lone expansion I've played - "The Tower" - adds a level of vindictiveness to an otherwise friendly game, and the jury is out on that one. If light is your cup of tea, then Carcassonne is a worthy game.


#7 - Power Grid


What I said: 'Twas a good game...[I] came away with a positive view.

Justify yourself: Not particularly useful comments there, but as I said in my review, I was in two minds about Power Grid before playing it. From reviews that I have read, it tends to be a game you either love or hate. I wouldn't say I "love" it, but I'm definitely lying towards that end of the spectrum. The clever use of the resource market, coupled with the power plant auctions and map placements makes for a cunning game.


#6 - Zombie Fluxx


What I said: Groooooooaaaannnn!

Justify yourself: Well, I said that during a game. I haven't blogged about it yet, which is very slack of me. Zombie Fluxx is the highest rated "light and fun" game on my list. It ranks this high due to the sheer amount of fun to be found in the 99 card deck. I promise to review it next year, but all you need to know in the meantime is Zombies + Everchanging Rules = Max fun.


#5 - Tigris & Euphrates


What I said: [I thought] I wasn't going to enjoy it. It looked too chess like. I'm happy to report that I was wrong. I really enjoyed the game.

Justify yourself: T&E makes it all the way to #5 courtesy of the surprisingly enjoyable mechanics. After reading about the game, and finding out it involved placing tiles on a board, I was worried. I shouldn't have been. It is nothing like Chess or Othello. Instead T&E is its own breed of simple tile laying mixed with a complex underlying strategy that results in a beguiling and intriguing game.


#4 - Agricola


What I said: n/a

Justify yourself: I'm waiting until I play a game with 3 or more players before I blog about Agricola. I've mentioned more than once that it is the new number #1 on Board Game Geek, and from my lone play through I can see the attraction. With so many cards available, Agricola lends itself to a slightly different experience each time. The key is combing the cards you are dealt with the known actions available throughout the game. I must admit, the anticipation of playing Agricola, and the ensuing enjoyment of the two-player game is what shoots it to number 4 on my list. And that's without animeeples. Will it manage to stay this high on the list over the coming 12 months? I have a sneaking suspicion it might.


#3 - Puerto Rico


What I said: I almost feel like a real gamer now. Everyone really enjoyed the game. One more to add to the ever growing must-play-again list.

Justify yourself: No other game was as eagerly anticipated this year as Puerto Rico. It has been the benchmark for all other games for the last few years, and my gaming quest would never have been truly complete without playing it. Like Agricola, I've only played it once (a five player game), and all I can say is that the genius mechanics and player interaction make this a must-play for anyone who considers themselves a gamer.


#2 - Catan Card Game


What I said: If you're a Settlers fan and have that special someone who enjoys the game as well, then this is a worthy consideration of your hard earned moolah.

Justify yourself: I was surprised as anyone that a two player card game made it to #2. However, I couldn't deny it this position. While I still think it could make a fun three or four player game with a couple of tweaks, it is nonetheless a very enjoyable game with just two. The Giggling One and I played the Catan Card Game many times this year, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it. Aided by the expansion sets, it is easy to learn, simple to set up, and allows for some cunning strategies. It's great for fans of the Catan series and newcomers alike, and is perfect for a lazy afternoon with that special someone.


#1 - The Pillars of the Earth


What I said: It was a joy to play a game that made reference to the events and characters within [the novel]. If you enjoy board games, then this is a great game to play. Easy enough for board game novices to understand and enjoy, and deep enough for veterans to have fun with as well. It rocks!

Justify yourself: No surprises here. "Pillars" was always going to be my game of the year. While I um'd and ah'd about the make up and order of this Top 10, it was only spots 2 to 10 that I debated. Pillars has a great balance of strategy accompanied by a dabble of luck. Despite only lasting six rounds, what it packs into those rounds is fun, exciting, and sometimes frustrating. Never frustrating enough to break the game mind you - just to curse your opponents. Awesome mechanics and a fantastically illustrated board set Pillars well above any other game I played this year. The expansion added that little bit extra to share the cathedral-building love with another two players, and there's nothing better than sharing this game with as many gamers as you can. Read the novel and play the game. Then read the sequel. You won't regret it.
 

A Christmas Hoard

Do I have the greatest girlfriend or do I have the greatest girlfriend?

Not only did The Giggling One give me the game I really wanted for Christmas, she also bought me two other games as well!

I am now the very proud and grateful owner of Agricola, Carcassonne, and Carcassonne - the Tower.

And my thoughtful step-sister Michelle also gave us Acquire.

What better Christmas could a gamer ask for?

The Giggling One and I have already had a 2 player game of Agricola. Sooo many options with sooo few available moves. This game is huge, and is definitely getting a look in at the next Hobart Gamers night.

Look for an Agricola-centric blog entry once I've played it with more players. Hopefully it's only a week or so away.

Spoiled for choice I am.
 

Ticket to Ride

I can now proudly say I have played what I regard as the triumvirate of gateway games: Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Ticket to Ride.

I'm not so proud to say I got my arse whipped on Friday night, finishing stone cold motherless last against three other Ticket to Ride beginners.


Ticket to Ride was first published in 2004, and has gone on to spawn a slew of sequels (3 expansions, and 4 re-implementations (expansions add to the original game, while re-implementations create a whole new game based on the original)).

The concept of Ticket to Ride is very simple: place trains on a board to link up cities and score points.

Here's the board:


As you can see there are routes of various colours linking the cities on the map. In fact, there are nine different coloured routes: black, white, red, orange, yellow, pink, green, blue and grey (or "gray" if you want that authentic US feel).

In order to place trains along a route, you need to collect Train Car cards of the corresponding colour.


The number of Train Car cards you need to collect is equal to the number of spaces between the cities.

For example, to link Seattle and Helena, you require 6 yellow Train Cars. To link between Salt Lake City and Denver you need either 3 red carriages, or 3 yellow carriages.

Things can be helped along by a Locomotive card (the bottom card in the image above) which acts as a wildcard and can be used to make up a set if you don't have enough cards of the right colour.

Additionally, grey routes can be completed with any set of cards, as long as they are all of the same colour.

On each turn, you can take one (and only one) of three actions:

1. Draw Train Car cards, or
2. Claim a route, or
3. Draw Destination Tickets

We'll start, as is customary, with number 1.

There are 110 Train Car cards all up (12 of each colour, and 14 Locomotives). Each player gets 4 to start with. The remaining cards are shuffled and placed face-down. The top five cards are then placed face-up next to the board.

There will always be five Train Car Cards face-up. Whenever a face up card is taken, the top card of the deck replaces it.

Your choice for drawing Train Car Cards is simple: you can draw a maximum of 2 cards on your turn. You can either take a face-up card, or take pot luck by drawing the top card from the deck.

If you take a face-up card with your first pick, the top card is turned over to replace it. You can then either take another face-up card (including the replacement just turned over) or take the top card from the deck with your second pick.

The only exception is that if you choose to take a face-up Locomotive card, that is the only card you may take this turn. If you take a face-up card, and a Locomotive replaces it, you can't then nab the Locomotive. Of course, if probability favours you, and you draw a Locomotive from the top of the deck, then there's nothing stopping you from taking a second card.

Alrighty, so you've drawn a few cards and you think it's time you staked your claim to a route. That's action number 2.

All you do is take a set of cards that match the colour of the route (or any old colour you like for a grey route) and play them face-up so that the other players can see you're not cheating (not that you would cheat of course).

As I mentioned earlier, the number of cards you play is equal to the number of spaces along the route. You can only claim one route per turn.

You then place the cards in the discard pile and place your own trains on the spaces of that route. Like so:


Every player gets 45 trains, and you need to take care where you play them for two reasons.

Firstly, you score points based on the length of each route you claim. the longer the route, the more points it is worth.

A route one space long will only get you 1 point, while completing a route six spaces long will get you 15 points. It's therefore worth collecting/hoarding cards for a while (something I didn't do which cost me dearly) to claim the longer routes.

The second reason you want to take care with your train placements takes us to the final action you can perform on your turn: drawing Destination Tickets.


Destination Tickets are cards with two cities printed on them. Everyone gets three of these at the start of the game (though you discard one of them if you wish).

On your turn you can draw more Destination Tickets if you wish. You simply take the top three cards from the face-down deck of Ticket cards (there are 30 cards all up), and keep 1, 2, or all 3 of them.

You keep your Destination Tickets secret until the end of the game at which time you score bonus points equal to the number on the card if you have a continuous train network connecting the two cities on that card.

The longer the route required to link the two cities, the more points you will get if you link the cities.

It's therefore important to play strategically and efficiently so as best to complete routes between the cities on your Destination Ticket cards. Having two cards where you can share routes is generally a good idea.

It may also pay to claim a route that blocks an opponent from linking up his or her trains in one long route. This will make it harder for them to link two particular cities.

The downside for not linking the cities on a Destination Ticket is that instead of gaining those points at the end of the game, you lose the points. I made the mistake of taking a new, high scoring Destination Ticket towards the end of the game only to have the game finish before I could complete the route.

In case you're wondering how the game ends, it's when one player has 0, 1 or 2 of his or her trains remaining. All players then have one more turn and the game finishes.

Everyone then adds the successful Destination Tickets to their score and subtracts any failed Destination Tickets from their score.

The player with the longest continuous route also scores a bonus 10 points.


And that's it. If you've played well, you'll score over 100 points. If you've played poorly, you...er...won't.

Reporting briefly on the game played on Friday night at HoGS, all four of us were new to the game (though I believe David may have played once a few years ago).

At the start of the game I made the rookie decision of ditching the high scoring, long distance Destination Ticket in favour of two low scoring, easy to connect cards. With hindsight I would have kept all three cards.

The game started out with everyone grabbing the short routes in the middle of the board, before Cathy (I apologise if her name is spelled incorrectly) began amassing a large hand of Train Car cards and began to grab the long routes one by one.

Not only that, but she managed to link all 45 of her trains in one long route to claim the longest path bonus at the end.

Despite only having two relatively low scoring Tickets, the long routes were enough to give Cathy the win with 107 points.

The Giggling One successfully completed four Tickets and came second on 99 points.

David and I were left in their dust. David managed 70 points, while I scored a paltry *cough* 53 *cough* points.

Here's the final board (Cathy was red, David was green, The Giggling One was blue, and I was black):


It was quite fun, but also frustrating to finish with such a low score. I'd love to play again and apply the lessons I've learned (claim more long routes, keep higher scoring Destination Tickets).

In fact I think that will be my next New Year's Resolution: of the new games I only played once this year, play as many as I can again next year. I shall endeavour to make Ticket to Ride, or one of its sequels, one of those games. It's worth it.
 

Tigris & Euphrates

Two more milestones were achieved here up the vacuum thingy this week.

Firstly, the lads over at The Spiel have added a link to this blog on their site (and I finally joined their site after listening to Stephen and Dave for over a year). If you like your board games (and let's face it, if you're reading my blog then you probably do) I highly recommend giving The Spiel podcast a listen to on your mp3 player of choice.

The second milestone was that after purchasing the bundle of goodies I keep harping on about, last Friday I finally played Tigris & Euphrates, meaning I've now played all five games. Woohoo!


I bought Tigris & Euphrates (T&E) knowing nothing about it other than it was one of the top rated games on Board Game Geek (it's currently sitting at number 5 (out of 4845 (and if you're at all interested, the lowest rated game is tic-tac-toe))).

It's fair to say, in fact, that of the five-game bundle, I deliberately left T&E until last thinking I wasn't going to enjoy it. It looked too chess like, what with all the strategic placing of tiles on a board.

I'm happy to report that I was wrong. Sure, there's strategy involved but it's not as taxing as you might think. There are enough avenues to collecting victory points that no one is going to be completely shut out of the game. Certainly there are ways to build and defend strong positions, but there's always a way to exploit another player's weakness.

In short, I really enjoyed the game. I made some decisions that were, in hindsight, poor, and that I probably wouldn't do again. Then again, all four players were rookies so there was no advantage of experience for any of us.

OK, let's get into the game play and then, as usual, I'll finish with a quick summary of the game we played on Friday night.

T&E is played on a board. Said board looks like this (as usual, click on any image for the full size picture):


The board has nice artwork depicting the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flowing through the ancient civilisation of Mesopotamia.

As a side note, the game keeps reminding The Giggling One and me of one of our favourite songs: The Mesopotamians by They Might Be Giants (from their album The Else).

The board is divided into a grid of 176 squares (16 x 11) in which players take turns placing tiles and leader disks.

Civilization tiles (there are other tile types I'll get to in due course) and leaders, come in four colours: blue, black, green and red. Each of those colours is representative of a different "sphere" in which players try to win victory points.

Blues tiles represent farms, with the blue leaders being farmers.

Black tiles are settlements, with the black leaders known as kings.

Green tiles are markets, while green leaders are traders.

Red tiles are temples, with red leaders being, not surprisingly, priests.

The leader disks themselves look something like this:


Unlike most other games, players are not differentiated by colours. Instead, each player chooses a "dynasty" which is represented by a symbol: the lion, the archer, the bull or the potter.

As tiles and leaders are placed on the board, they create "regions" and "kingdoms". A region is any area of the board covered by one or more linked tiles. If a region also contains one or more leaders then it is a kingdom.

The basic idea of the game is that when a civilization tile is placed on the board, if you have a leader of that colour in the same kingdom then you score a victory point in that colour.

Yes, that's right, victory points also come in the four colours. You'll need to win VPs in every colour if you want to win the game, because it's the colour you have the least of at the end of the game (your weakest sphere) that determines your score.

Before we get there, though, we need to know how the placement of tiles and leaders work.

In order to look at that, we should look at how a turn works.

But before we look at how a turn works, we need to know how the initial setup works.

And before that, we...actually, let's just go with the setup.

Let's take another look at the board:


See those 10 spaces with winged beasts? To get the game rolling, 10 red civilization tiles (remember, they're the temples) are placed on those spaces.

Not only that, but each of these temple tiles has a treasure placed on it. Oooh! Treasures are simply small uncoloured wooden cubes that act as wildcards. If you claim a treasure during the game, you keep it until the end of the game and use it to shore up your weakest colour (or use multiple treasures to boost the VPs of one or more colours).

Additionally, all players are given 3 special tiles: 2 catastrophe tiles, and 1 unification tile (technically there are also dynasty tiles with each player's chosen symbol on them, but as far as I can see they play no part in the game other than being used to randomly select a starting player).


Now, here comes the cool, sneaky part. Each player is also given a screen with their dynasty symbol on it. These screens are used to hide stuff behind so your opponents don't know the secret stuff you've got. Unless they cheat and sneak a peak of course.


The secret stuff you hide behind your screen includes your stash of civilization tiles (you can have up to 6 at any one time) and the victory point and treasure cubes you collect during the game.

Once everyone has their screen set up, players take it in turn to draw 6 tiles out of a cloth bag. There are 153 tiles (57 red, 36 blue, 30 green and 30 black) in the bag, minus the 10 reds already placed on the board.

Then, the game starts in earnest.

On your turn, you get to take two actions. There are a total of four types of actions you can take, and you can take any combination you like, including the same action twice.

1. Position a leader: You place one of your leaders on to the board, you move one of your leaders from one space to another space, or you remove one of your leaders from the board. Pretty straight forward really.
   
   The whole point of positioning leaders is so that they earn victory points when tiles of the same colour are placed in the same kingdom, or when monuments are located in the same kingdom. "Monuments?" you ask. Let's not get ahead of ourselves - we'll talk about monuments later.
   
   When it comes to positioning a leader, they can only be placed on empty spaces adjacent to a temple (adjacent in T&E means orthogonally adjacent (sharing a common edge), not diagonal). Additionally, leaders can't swim, or don't like getting their tootsies wet, so they can't be placed on a river space.
   
   Leaders aren't great diplomats either so the final restriction is that they can't be placed on a space whereby they would unite two kingdoms.
   
   
2. Place a tile: You take one of the 6 civilization tiles behind your screen and place it on the board.
   
   You'll generally want to place the tile somewhere where you're going to earn a victory point - that is in a kingdom where you have a leader of the same colour.
   
   These tiles can go on pretty much any empty space on the board. The major restriction is that only blue tiles may go on river spaces, and indeed they are the only spaces on which blue tiles can be placed.
   
   Unlike leaders, you can unite two kingdoms with a tile placement, though you're not permitted to unite more than two kingdoms.
   
   Tiles don't have to be placed adjacent to an existing region. If you wish you can place a tile all on its lonesome.
   
   Once a tile is placed, if there is a leader of that colour in the kingdom then the player who owns that leader takes a victory point cube of that colour.
   
   If no leader matches the tile, but there is a black leader (king) in the kingdom, then the player with the black leader gets the VP matching the colour of the tile.
   
   If there is no matching or black leader in the region in which a tile is played, then no VP is awarded. Keeping up? Good.
   
   
3. Play a catastrophe tile: You place one of your two catastrophe tiles on the board.
   
   Catastrophe tiles are used to permanently occupy a space on the board. They can be played on top of an existing tile (as long as it doesn't have a treasure or monument sitting on it) or on an empty space.
   
   The main purpose of catastrophe tiles is to split a kingdom in two (or more), thereby severing leaders from certain lucrative parts of their former kingdom.
   
   
4. Swap tiles: You discard (face down) any number of tiles from behind your screen and draw replacements from the bag.
   
   You'll do this if there are certain colours you don't have that you'd like to get, and/or you have some tiles you don't want. Of course there's no guarantee you won't just draw the same colours from the bag.

OK, so I've been mentioning victory points and treasures a bit so I guess I'd better include a pretty picture I took with The Giggling One's digital camera (no poor quality mobile phone pics this time):


The little cubes are worth one victory point, while the big ones are worth 5. See how much you can intimidate your opponents by saving up the little cubes then trading them in for big ones.

The little white-looking ones (they are actually a light tan colour) are the treasure cubes.

Treasures can be claimed when two kingdoms with a treasure become united. Whoever has the green leader (trader) in that larger kingdom (or whoever is the first to place a green leader in that kingdom) gets to take one of the treasures.

Now at this point, you might be thinking "What if there are two green leaders in the kingdom?"

Well that's a good question, and I'm glad I asked it for you.

No kingdom can have more than one leader of any colour. If two like-coloured leaders do end up in the same kingdom then there will be a battle for supremacy, ending with one of the leaders being withdrawn from the board.

This is the meat of the game where strategy really comes to the fore. Knowing where and when to cause a conflict, and planning one carefully in advance, is the key to success.

There are two types of conflict: internal and external.

To cause an internal conflict, all you have to do is place a leader in a kingdom which already contains a leader of that colour. You'll then duke it out by counting the number of red tiles adjacent to each leader, plus any number of red tiles you want to add from behind your screen (those tiles are then removed from the game). The winner gets to stay and receives a reward of one red VP, while the losing leader goes home in a huff (ie. gets taken off the board).

An external conflict occurs where two kingdoms are united by the placement of a tile, and there are now leaders of the same colour in the new, larger kingdom. Battle lines are drawn over the uniting tile. The active player places his or her unification tile over the joining tile then the players with the matching leaders count the number of tiles on their side of the divide that match the colour of the feuding leaders. The combatants can then add to this if they wish with matching tiles from behind their screen.

Once again, the winning leader stays and gets a VP of the same colour, while the losing leader is removed from the board. External conflicts have one extra casualty: all matching tiles in the loser's side of the kingdom are also removed.

Unfortunately, in the game we played, while I remembered this rule while I was explaining the rules at the start of the game, I forgot about it as the game went on. This meant that after external conflicts, no tiles were removed along with the defeated leader. Additionally, I forgot all about the rule of the winning player in a conflict receiving a VP. Major oops!

External conflicts won't necessarily involve the player who places the unification tile. Sometimes you might just want to be a bastard and cause two other players to fight.

Oh, and have no fear; losing leaders can always be placed back on the board later. Also, any players in a conflict who added tiles from behind their screen get to replenish their hand at the end of the turn.

By the way, if there is a tie in a conflict, the defender wins.

Alrighty, we're almost done. Hoorah!

I promised we'd have a chat about monuments, so let's do that before we finish up.

Monuments are large, er, monumenty things that look like this:


As you can see, there are 6 monuments, each made up of two colours.

If you think you might like to build a monument, all you have to do is place a tile such that it creates a square of four like-coloured tiles. You then flip the tiles upside down and whack on a monument.

Like this:


The monument must contain the same colour as the four tiles you flipped over. If there aren't any monuments with that colour left, then you can't flip the tiles.

Monuments have a pretty funky purpose in the game: they are an ongoing source of victory points.

At the end of your turn, if you have a leader in the same kingdom as a monument, and that leader shares a colour with the monument, then you get a victory point of that colour. For example, if you had a green leader in the same kingdom as the green & black monument pictured above, you'd get yourself a green victory point.

If you had both a green and a black leader in that kingdom, you'd get two VP cubes, one in each colour. If there were a green & blue monument in the same kingdom, that monument would also generate a green VP for your green leader. Nice!

So now you know how the game works. You place leaders and tiles in order to maximise your VP scores across all four colours. VPs are earned from tile placements, monuments, and from winning conflicts.

The game ends when at least 8 of the treasures have been taken, or there aren't enough tiles left in the bag to replenish a player's hand back up to 6 tiles.

Screens are then removed, and players count the number of VPs of each colour (with treasures added where necessary). The player with the most VPs in their weakest sphere (the colour in which they have the least VPs) wins.

If there is a tie, the next weakest sphere is compared, and so on.

It's definitely a juggling act to try and collect all four colours. It's often easy to have a strong position with which you can collect VPs of one particular colour, but it's how you collect the other VPs that determines how well you do.

Nevertheless, you still need to be in a position to win VPs, which is exactly where Splat put himself right from the start during our game.

After creating two monuments very early on, Splat started the VPs rolling in. When he was finally knocked off his perch in that kingdom, he'd made himself a nice little earner in the opposite corner of the board.

Despite our best efforts, neither Bernd, Carl nor I could gain a strong enough position to be any real threat to Splat.

As for myself, I had one or two ad hoc plans that worked OK, but any long term strategy always managed to be scuppered by the actions of someone else before it got off the ground.

Also, I used my two catastrophe tiles fairly early to block Bernd's black leader from reuniting with a kingdom containing two black monuments and my black leader. It may have been more prudent to sacrifice that kingdom and use the catastrophe tiles later to split other kingdoms.

It's all about adjusting and readjusting to the goings on around you. If you think you have a position of strength in one kingdom, be prepared to see that undermined with a catastrophe tile or two.

Here's the board as it was at the end of our game (I was the archer, Splat was the bull, Bernd was the potter, and Carl was the lion):


Final scores:

Splat: 13

Jeremy: 10

Bernd: 9

Carl: 4

All four of us collected two treasures each, with Carl's treasures doubling the size of his blue VP stack, a colour he found particularly difficult to come by.

And for good measure, here's Splat's winning VP stack:


Unfortunately, he didn't quite reach his goal of building his stacks as high as his Tic-Tac box.

It was good fun, and with more people coming along to HoGS nights, I'm sure I'll get a chance to play this and my other games again. Next time I'll try and remember the rules!
 

Puerto Rico

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies...

Wait...no, that's not right. Let's try again...

Picture yourself on a Caribbean island, with tropical rainforests and azure skies.

There, that's better.

But what about the boat? Well that's at the docks and you're loading it with goods to ship back to the motherland.

This, is Puerto Rico.


I've been dying to try Puerto Rico for quite a few months. It was on my "must buy" list for a long time, simply on reputation alone, and when I discovered it in a bundle with four other top rated games at GatePlay.com, well the rest is history.

How I've quite managed to own the game from the beginning of July to the end of October without playing this beauty amazes me. Nevertheless it wasn't until Saturday 25 October 2008 (coincidentally the same date I first became an uncle), that I finally played my first game of Puerto Rico.

I almost feel like a real gamer now.

Before I get into the nitty gritty, I should point out that I generally like to throw a splash of colour in to my posts in the way of images I've shamelessly pilfered from Board Game Geek. But do you think I could find any decent images of the various game components on the 18 pages worth of pictures?

No. So instead I took some pictures of my own. Using my mobile phone. The end results were, to put it mildly, less than stellar, but I'm not going to get all the bits & pieces out again just for the sake of this blog, so please forgive my shoddy camera work.

Enough of the bollocks. On with the show.

Once again, picture yourself on a Caribbean island. Specifically, the island of Puerto Rico.

You are an entrepreneur of sorts, and your job is to manage the production of goods, and see those goods shipped back to the old world.

You have a choice of what goods to produce. There are five different types of goods: corn (yellow), indigo (blue), sugar (white), tobacco (brown), and coffee (black). You can end up producing all five if you wish, though it's more likely you'll be concentrating on two or three.


Producing these goods is a two-step process (well, except for corn but I'll get to that shortly).

Firstly, you're going to need a plantation. The more plantations you have (and you can have a maximum of 12), the more raw goods you can produce.


As well as plantations for each of the five goods, you can also build quarries that don't produce any goods per se, but simply help you reduce the cost of purchasing buildings.

Speaking (blogging?) of buildings, there are two types of buildings, and you're going to need the first type - known as production buildings - for the second part of the production process. Indigo, sugar, tobacco and coffee produced at your plantations need to be processed further in order to end up with the finished product.

Corn is a finished product straight away so you won't need a production building.

So, for example, to convert raw sugar into the finished product that is actually useful to you, you'll need a Sugar Mill.

The remaining buildings are called violet buildings because they are, get this, coloured violet.


Violet buildings give you bonuses during or at the end of the game that help you towards your goal.

Now, having plantations and buildings is all well and good, but they're not going to get things done by themselves. You're certainly not going to get your own hands dirty, so you're going to need colonists to do all the hard labour for you.


Colonists (or, as Brian likes to call them, sultanas) sail in on the Colonist Ship every so often and are allocated to you and your rivals.

Where you set your colonists to work is up to you. You'll often not have enough colonists to fill all the vacancies in your colony so you'll need to decide what is more important to you. Without a colonist on a plantation or in a building, it simply won't function.

Before you know it you'll have your own little empire working away, so that this:


...becomes something like this:


Note: this is the one image I did nab from Board Game Geek.

You'll notice that, along with goods, the top right corner of the board pictured above contains doubloons (used to purchase buildings) and upside-down victory point chips (because you don't want other players knowing exactly what you have). Here's what the victory point chips look like upside-up:


"Hmmm," you think, "Those doubloons and victory point chips look quite handy. How can I get my hands on some of that doubloony and chippy goodness?"

We'll deal with the victory point chips first. These you obtain when you ship your goods. For every good you ship you get one victory point.

The catch is that there are only three cargo ships available at any one time, and each only takes one kind of good. When to load ships, and what to load them with is key to getting yourself ahead, especially as each ship has a limited number of goods it can store in its hold.

Which three ships are used in the game is dependent upon the number of players.


Other than the five cargo ships and the colonist ship (remember that's the ship the colonists arrive on), the picture above also shows the trading house.

The trading house is one of the ways you can make money. Instead of shipping goods, you can instead choose to trade them. The amount of money you receive depends on the type of good you sell. Corn, for example, has a trade price of 0 doubloons (though with certain violet buildings or a privilege you can actually get some doubloons for it) while coffee sells for the relatively princely sum of 4 doubloons.

So now you've got an idea of what's what, you may be wondering how on earth this all fits together. That, my friends, is where the roles come in.

During the game each player gets to choose roles to undertake that allow everyone to take certain actions.

There are seven different roles to choose from: settler, mayor, builder, craftsman, trader, captain, and prospector.

Settler allows you to choose a plantation for your colony.

Mayor gives you more colonists from the colonist ship.

Builder allows you to purchase buildings.

Craftsman means you can produce goods (as long as you have a plantation and matching production building, both with colonists)

Trader gives you the option to trade goods for doubloons at the trading house.

Captain means everyone must, if possible, load goods on to the cargo ships and receive victory points for each good loaded.

Prospector (of which there are two in the five player game) simply gives the player who chooses that role 1 doubloon from the bank.

Other than the prospector, when you choose one of the roles, all players get to take that action. The benefit of being the player to choose that role is that you get a privilege. For example, if you choose mayor you receive an extra colonist, or if you choose craftsman you are allowed to produce one more good than everyone else.

Once someone has selected a role, no one else can choose that role for the remainder of the round. The round finishes once everyone has chosen a role and all actions associated with each role have been taken.

There will always be three more roles than there are players, so not every role will be played every round. Those roles that aren't selected in a round get 1 doubloon placed on them to make them more attractive next time.

The governor card you may have noticed with the role cards in the picture above is simply used to designate the first player for each round.

And that's the core to the game. There are, as you might suspect, other rules to do with the various actions that I haven't covered, but you should have an idea of how the game plays at least.

The game ends when you run out of victory point chips, or you run out of colonists, or one player fills all 12 building spots in their city.

Amusingly enough, the game we played did not end with any of these conditions. Instead, as it was getting late, we agreed to end at a predetermined time (11:40pm I believe).

We were nearing a conclusion anyway, so the game wasn't affected too much by the early finish. With five complete novices, it was taking longer to play than the time it would take a group of more experienced players, but we enjoyed ourselves.

Having read that money is more valuable early in the game, I decided that I would focus on this from the start. Unfortunately I did possibly the dumbest thing anyone can do in Puerto Rico. In the first builder phase, I bought a large market for all my doubloons. My thinking was that the market would gain me extra doubloons from the trading house. Unfortunately, because I'd spent all my money I couldn't afford a production building to produce goods that I could then sell, so the market was useless.

I finally managed to use the the benefit of the large market late in the game, but by then it was a two way battle between The Giggling One and Paul.

Final scores:
1st: Paul...20 (VP chips) + 15 (buildings) + 7 (bonus from residence) = 42
2nd: The Giggling One...29 (VP chips) + 7 (buildings) = 36
3rd: Jeremy...11 (VP chips) + 17 (buildings) + 5 (bonus from fortress) = 33
4th: Brian...14 (VP chips) + 15 (buildings) = 29
5th: Narelle...16 (VP chips) + 12 (buildings) = 28

Everyone really enjoyed the game. Paul and The Giggling One in particular said they liked it better than The Pillars of the Earth. As for, me I still rate Pillars as my favourite game this year.

I've read that Puerto Rico plays quite differently with fewer players, and I fully intend to put that to the test. One more to add to the ever growing must-play-again list...
 

Löwenherz

25!

Two five.

That's the number of new games I've now played in 2008!

Target achieved!

I can stop now, right?

Ha! As if.

So, as the congratulatory cheers die down, it's time to reflect on the game that took my tally to the magic quarter century.

Fittingly, it was a game designed by the same man who designed the game that started this whole board game obsession malarky for me: Klaus Teuber.

I still remember with great fondness the time I first played The Settlers of Catan. Not just because I was a first up winner, but because it started me down this road of board game geekdom. They don't call it a gateway drug game for nothing.

So via Settlers and Hoity Toity, the third game I've played by Klaus Teuber, and my 25th new game of the year, is...Löwenherz!


Translated into English, Löwenherz means Lionheart. However, as the game was only ever released as Löwenherz, even in the English language version, that is how it shall remain, even if it means having to either copy-paste or use alt+148 every time I want to type "ö".

Löwenherz works best as a four player game, which is the reason Bernd chose it on Saturday night when I, The Giggling One and Ian joined him for the evening.

Ultimately, the game is about Power Points. Each player takes the role of a prince vying for the right to take control of the kingdom when the dying king finally carks it. The player who amasses the most Power Points during the game wins.

The game is played on a modular board, with the kingdom made up of six large square pieces, each subdivided into 25 spaces. Here's a look at two of the six pieces to give you an idea:




The basic game sets out a specific pattern for the pieces to be placed in, but we, being anything but basic, went for a random layout.

Once the pieces are in place, you end up with a playing area 15 spaces long by 10 spaces wide.

Each space on the board will either be blank or contain forest, a hill or a town.

These are important because placement of pieces in this game is everything.

At the start of the game (and I'm describing the random variant here, not the basic setup which has a set configuration to begin with) everyone gets to place 3 castles and 3 knights on the board.

Castles may only be played on blank spaces, and no player may place two castles within 6 spaces of another of their own castles.

Generally, placing castles next to or near a town is a good idea. Why? Because during the game you're going to be creating regions by placing walls around your castles, and for every town inside any of your regions, you get an extra 5 Power Points.

In fact it's fighting over ownership of towns that tends to decide the outcome of the game. At least it did in our battle.

Once everyone's placed their castles and knights (knights have to be placed immediately adjacent to castles to begin with) then the turns begin.

Each turn, an action card is turned over. Most of the action cards show three pictures designating the three actions that can be played this turn. Three or so of the action cards drawn during the game show silver mines (you get 1 point for each silver mine in your regions), and one card (which will be one of the last 4 cards drawn) reads "The King is dead!" - or it's equivalent in German which I can't recall (we were playing the German version).


When the action card with the three pictures gets drawn, everyone bids for a particular action to play that turn. With four players this creates something of a dilemma, because well, 4 just doesn't fit into 3.

Someone's going to miss out and not get to take any of the actions. But don't fret, because there's usually some sort of compensation involved.

So who chooses what? Well, one at a time starting with the starting player (duh!) players put down a card signifying which action they want to take - either 1, 2 or 3.


Actions are then taken in order from top to bottom with the person who chose that action taking it.

If two people choose the same action then a battle to the death dressed in full armour with nasty sharp swords and pointy lances takes place. Either that or a peaceful negotiation.

Basically, the two players who want to take the same action try and come to a deal where one player gives the other player a sum of money in return for being able to take the action.

If they can't come to a deal, or three or more players choose the same action, then it's a battle to the death dressed in full armour with nasty sharp swords and pointy lances. Or, maybe, a "duel" where players secretly make a bid, and the player who bids the most takes the action and gives his or her ducats to the bank. Whichever you prefer really.

So what are these actions you can take?

Well, if we glance back up at the pretty picture with the action cards, we'll use the two appropriate cards (the first and third cards in the picture) as examples.

In fact, we'll start with the third card in the picture - with a money bag at the top.

A money bag simply means you take that many ducats from the bank. Simple. Theoretically this can be split if more people choose that action, but that's just silly.

Wall pieces mean you can build that number of wall pieces on the map. The card pictured shows 2 wall pieces, but others could show 1 or 3.

Walls can be built pretty much anywhere except between castles and knights of the same colour, and not within a completed region. A region comes into existence when one, and only one, castle is completely separated from all other castles on the board by walls.

So in the early game what you're aiming to do is build yourself regions, preferably containing at least one town and some silver mines, and then reinforce and expand your territories.

The sword and shield action is what allows you to do this reinforcing and expanding. With this action you can either place one knight in one of your regions, or expand one region by two spaces.

Herein lies the key to winning the game. Once you have regions up and running, if you have more knights in one of your regions than your neighbour has in his or her region, you can expand your region by 2 spaces (thus reducing your opponent's region by 2 spaces). If said spaces contain a town (and let's face it, that's pretty much what you'll be going for) then you gain a bonus 5 Power Points (plus 2 points for taking 2 spaces) and your opponent loses them.

The key to winning is when to do this. Do it too early and your opponent may be able to win the territory back later. Do it late enough, and it could well win you the game.

Continuing with the actions, and on top of the first card in the picture above you'll see a crown and sceptre. This signifies a politics action. Basically you get to choose one of the two piles of shuffled face down politics card, rummage through it, and take the card you want (though in our game, Bernd (who was the owner of the game and thus responsible for keeping we new players (fresh princes?) in the loop rules wise (especially as the rules were in German), and who shall now be dubbed "Bernd the Forgetful") forgot we got to look through the piles, so we just got pot luck with whatever card was on top of our chosen pile - oops!).

Politics cards give you various benefits during the game, like forcing an alliance between one of your regions and one of its neighbours, or giving you extra power points at the end of the game, or allowing you to steal a night from a neighbour and add one of your own, or just give you a nice weighty sack of ducats.


Back to the action types, and you may have noticed that along with the single sword and shield, there is an action with two swords and shields.

This action means you have a choice: either add 2 knights to the board, or add 1 knight and expand 1 region.

This very action decided our game. Bernd the Forgetful and The Giggling One both fought over what turned out to be the final action of the game. Eventually Bernd the Forgetful gave in and took The Giggling One's cash, only to have her play a knight in one of her regions, then expand that territory one space into one of Bernd the Forgetful's regions and one space into one of mine.

As both of these spaces contained towns, she picked up a total of 12 Power Points, with Bernd the Forgetful and I both losing 6. Ultimately it made little difference to me as I was dead last anyway, but it was enough for The Giggling One to jump ahead of both Ian and Bernd the Forgetful.

When the "The King is dead!" was the next card drawn the game was over. The Giggling One pulled 3 more points ahead with a parchment card she picked up earlier for a total of 56 points, 4 ahead of Bernd the Forgetful and Ian on 52. Even with the 5 point parchment I held at the end, I could only muster a measly 43 points. Boo.

Here's how the board looked at the end of the game. The Giggling One was, appropriately, rose; I was gold; Ian was grey; and Bernd the Forgetful was purple.



Löwenherz was a fun game, even if I found it very difficult to form a coherent strategy. I think playing the correct rule with the politics cards would make a difference to how the game plays out, so (and I know I say this with pretty much every game I play) I'd like to give this one another go. If only for the sharp swords and pointy lances.
 

Power Grid

I was in two minds over Power Grid before I played it, having heard some negative reviews from certain game afficianados, while also taking into account that it was the number two ranked game on Board Game Geek for a reason. At least it was number two, but it's slipped one spot (as has the former number one Puerto Rico) after the rise and rise of Agricola - a game more eagerly anticipated and hyped in the board game community than the 7th Harry Potter novel was by children, book stores and Giggling Ones everywhere. My doubt wasn't helped when Bernd said he'd played it before and wasn't keen. Still, we gave it a crack and came away thinking...well read on and see!

I've owned Power Grid since July when I purchased it in a great little bundle from GatePlay.com but last night at HoGS was the first time it's been on the table.

OK, now that I've set a record for the number of links in the first two paragraphs, it's time to look at what went down, or was powered up, last night.


The first thing you notice about the game when you pull out the board is that it is double-sided. One side is a map of Germany while the other shows the USA. We - that is Bernd, Ian and I - decided to play our 3 player game on the German map.

Incidentally, there are also expansion boards you can buy with Italy/France, Benelux/Central Europe, or Korea/China, not to mention a few custom made boards of other locations made by fans if you go hunting on BGG.

Let's take a gander at the German board (you might want to click the picture for a closer look)...


The board (as with the USA map) is divided into 6 regions. The reason for the divide is that you only play with the same number of regions as players. We chose to play with the three central regions coloured red, blue and yellow.

Each region contains seven cities, meaning a total of 21 cities were available to play on in our game. With the game ending when one player reaches 17 cities, this might seem a little too crowded, but up to three players can build in each city - quite handy when there were only three of us playing.

The object of the game is to build a "house" of your colour in the cities of your choice, and then power those cities using power plants that you buy along the way.

You may notice that each city has a "10", a "15" and a "20" printed on it. This signifies the cost (in the game's currency of Elektro) to build in that city. The first player to build in that city pays 10 Elektro, the second 15 Elektro, and if a third person wishes to build in that city, he or she must pay 20 Elektro. Simple.

Now you can't have everyone building in one city right from the word go. In fact, until at least one player has built in 7 cities, you can't have more than one player in a city.

This is where strategy kicks in, because placement is important. After you've built in your first city (for 10 Elektro remember) your next city must be connected to that first one. And if you look at the map again, you'll see that there are connection costs that have to be paid to connect most cities. For example, if you've built in Essen and you want to build in Dortmund, it'll cost you 4 Elektro for the connection plus the 10 Elektro to build in the city, meaning you'll fork out 14 Elektro altogether.

Dortmund was my first placement of the game, with Bernd having taken Essen. This is where I screwed myself in the early part of the game. As Bernd was building first for the initial few turns, he took the cheapest connections, while I was limited to the next best. Ian, on the other hand, having been shut out of the cheap zone, took Fulda in the yellow zone and branched north, south and west, effectively cutting Bernd and I off from expanding.

You don't have to build in two adjacent cities. You can skip cities in between as long as you pay the total connection cost between them. So with Ian blocking us from adjacent cities, the only way Bernd or I could expand was to pay at least two connection costs to get to a city on the other side of Ian.

Of course we couldn't afford this to start with, so I was stuck with four cities, Bernd with five, and Ian with six. Of course Ian wasn't really stuck, but it served his purpose not to expand to seven cities, because this would have allowed Bernd and myself to build in each other's cities. This is what's known in Power Grid lingo as the "Step 2 stall" (Step 2 being the stage of the game where the maximum number of players allowed to build in each city is two). As the amount of money you get each turn is dependendent upon how many cities you can power, and I had the last cities, I was earning the least amount of cash each turn and falling further behind.

Now one might be tempted to ask how this whole powering of cities thing works. Assuming you've given in to temptation, here's the deal:

Each turn, players take it in turns to auction a power plant from the power plant market. Basically, four power plants are always on offer (pedants take note that, yes, this increases to six power plants in Step 3) and players can bid on a maximum of one power plant each turn.

As the game goes on, better and more efficent (and more expensive) power plants come into play. Let's take a butcher's shall we?


Here we can see six examples of power plants. The number on the top left indicates the value of the plant. This is the minimum amount of Elektro that can be bid for that plant, and gives a good indication of how good it is; the larger the number, the better the power plant.

Along the bottom of each card are the resources required to power that plant, and the number of cities you can power. Number 4 is a coal power plant. You need to burn 2 units of coal to power 1 city. Number 7 allows you to burn 3 units of oil to power 2 cities. Number 13 is a wind turbine and, handily, allows you to power 1 city for no resource cost.

In the mid-range you have the Number 23 power plant which uses 1 unit of uranium to power 3 cities. At the upper end of the scale you have Number 30 which uses 3 units of garbage to power 6 cities, and Number 46 which, being a hybrid, gives you the choice of using 3 units of either oil or coal (or 2 of one and 1 of the other) to power 7 cities.

As fate would have it, those six examples show all types of power plants available: coal, oil, garbage, uranium, hybrid coal/oil, and "free" energy (wind or fusion).

Requiring resources to burn in most plants means there must be some way of getting your electric little hands on the stuff. And so there is.

Each turn players get an opportunity to purchase resources from the resource market. The resource market is an area along the bottom of the board where resources are placed:


The above snapshot is of the "7 Elektro" section of the resource market. Each unit on this section costs 7 Elektro to purchase. Of course, you're only going to want to pay 7 Elektro for something if the cheaper stuff has already been snapped up.

In the game, the brown cubes represent coal, the black cylinders represent oil, the yellow octagonal cylinders represent garbage, and the smaller red octagonal cylinders are uranium.

So now you should have a basic idea of the how the game works. You buy power plants (you can have a maximum of three), buy resources to use with those plants (a set number of resources are replenished in the resource market at the end of each turn), build in cities on the map, then burn your resources to power your cities.

You don't have to power all your cities every turn, and in some cases you won't be able to if your power plants don't have enough capacity. Powering more cities is generally better though, because the more cities you power on your turn, the more Elektro you get. And the more Elektro you get, the better the plants you can buy and the more cities you can expand to.

So it's a happy circle of growth, but how does the game end?

Well, the game ends when, at the end of the building phase, at least one player has built in 17 cities. At that point, all players then power as many cities as they can with their current power plants and resources. Whoever powers the most cities wins. This may not necessarily be the player with the most cities.

In our game, with my lousy start it appeared to be a two horse race between Bernd and Ian. Bernd took a solid lead in the mid game after he eschewed fossil fuels for wind, and was able to power 10 cities simply with the power of wind.

Towards the end, as we started vying for the best power plants, I started to catch up. I'd been the only one using coal and oil for a few turns, and as a result was picking it up very cheaply. As no one had been using garbage since the start of the game, it also became very cheap, and after I picked up the best garbage power plant (and three units of garbage for the whopping total of 4 Elektro) I had the capacity to power 18 cities.

Ian also had the capacity to power 18 cities, but didn't have the cash to build in that many cities before Bernd or myself. Bernd had more cash than he knew what to do with, but his power plants could only power 17 cities.

So, with my carefully managed savings (actually there wasn't that much planning involved), on the final turn I rose from the dead and trumped the other two by building no fewer than six more houses to take my total from 12 to 18 cities, thus forcing the end of the game. Bernd could have built more cities than me, but as he could only power 17, that was the end of the game and I was victorious.

Huzzah!

'Twas a good game, with three strong strategic players who all had an enjoyable time. I do believe Bernd's view of the game was turned around, and first time players Ian and myself both came away with a positive view of Power Grid.

Next time (and that is the true joy and desire of a gamer: for there always to be a next time) I'd like to see how Power Grid goes with more players. I imagine a six player game will be a substantially different beast with increased competition for power plants and resources. Can't wait.