Descent Beastmen

Beastmen ready to battle

A Beastmen squad

You can see all of the Descent miniatures I have painted in the picture gallery.

I've posted a review of Toledo here recently as well as Chicago Poker a while back. They are both also posted on Boardgamegeek so you may have already seen them if you care.

We are off to Gulf Games next week, a small, private gaming get-together we go to every summer. I have no particular agenda this time around as far as what games I'd like to play. I'm mostly looking forward to spending time with old friends. Hopefully, I'll have a lot to blog about when I get home. I actually have a backlog of things to write about, including a comparison between Descent: Road to Legend and D&D 4e as I've been playing a lot of both lately.

And yet even more Wallace...........

Runebound is not a game that most people associate with Martin Wallace, including me, but his name is right there on the box as a co-designer (along with Darrell Hardy). I wonder how much of the design is his. My younger son, Shea (age 12) and I have been making our way through the expansions. So far, we have played two of the big box ones and thoroughly enjoyed them both. Mind you, Shea and I don't exactly play like the game is intended to be played. Rather than a competitive race, we play it more like a cooperative RPG. There is no PvP and we take our time leveling up until we are pretty much strolling across the board, crushing every challenge in our path. :-) This makes the game even more slow and plodding than it already is but we just leave it set up to be played over several evenings.

Sands of Al-Kalim

This expansion changes the base game quite a bit, all in good ways that contribute to a good narrative, something I'm always looking for in an adventure game. Your goal is to complete four different types of quests, each giving you a nice reward when completed that is often a powerful item or ally. Most of the quests involve going to specific locations and defeating challenges or succeeding at skill tests.

The terrain on this board is different and you now have to consider whether you are traveling during the day or night. Being mostly desert, traveling by day is tiring and costs fatigue, especially if you end up chasing mirages. Traveling by night is easier, but the monsters you encounter are often stronger at night. There's a big sandstorm that moves around the board, hindering movement and covering towns and adventure locations making them unavailable. There are three lost cities and one can suddenly appear at an adventurer's location. Later on, they may disappear again, but while on the board, each has a huge benefit that can be used by a visiting hero. One allows a player to discard all heart tokens from his hero and allies, another allows a hero to teleport to any space on the board, and the third allows a player to draw five cards from the market deck and choose the one to add to the market there.

The biggest new mechanism in this expansion and the one that drives many of the changes mentioned above is the addition of the story step. If you choose not to adventure, explore a market at a city, or choose a new quest (which is done at this time), you roll a "story die" which is simply a movement die. You look up the symbols rolled on a chart and resolve the effect(s) in any order you like. Some are simple ones like getting a gold or discarding a fatigue token, but others move the sandstorm, cause a lost city to appear (or all of them to disappear) or the hero is ambushed (only if traveling at night) and he has to then draw and resolve an adventure card. This story element creates some new decisions for heroes. As an example, you may not want to end your turn on a blank terrain tile because you will then have to roll the story die and might cause the lost city you are desperately trying to reach to disappear. Or you may not want to risk getting ambushed because you or traveling at night in order to avoid taking fatigue.

Besides an emphasis on fatigue, another thing that I noticed about this expansion is that it seems to place a lot of emphasis on skill checks. Many of the encounters and the quests require skill checks. Fortunately, there are some new items in the city markets available for purchase that help heroes out with the new challenges. Pack camels, assist in movement, water skins discard heart and fatigue counters as well as ignoring mirages, and adventuring kits give bonuses to skill checks. These are limited to the number of counters of each provided with the game, but are available at every city market.

In the base game, encounters are sorted based on difficulty from green being the easiest, then yellow, blue and finally red which includes the enemy players are trying to defeat to win the game. Heroes progress through the levels of encounters, as they increase their abilities with experience. In Sands of Al-Kalim, players are trying to complete four quests to win the game. However, the quests all seem roughly the same difficulty. But, you are still forced to level up and progress through th higher encounters as you are only allowed to hold as many quests as the highest level of encounter you have turned in as experience points. You will have to have defeated a red encounter in order to complete your fourth quest. I though this was a rather clever.

There are also six new characters for use with this expansion or the base game.

This expansion brings a lot to Runebound. The additions I've discussed above create more decisions for the heroes. The quests are fun and they weave a nice story. This is a fabulous addition to an already good game.

The following week, we played:

The Island of Dread

Playing this on the heels of Sands of Al-Kalim was a bit of a disappointment but it should not have been. This is a rather nice expansion as well. It just doesn't change the game quite as much as Sands.

The first big difference is a gorgeous, gorgeous new map with islands connected by sea routes between towns. The routes are interrupted with sea encounters that replace the blue encounters present in the base game. The green, yellow, and red encounters have new decks and occur on designated land locations, just as in the base game. In addition, there is a deck of silver encounters. These occur on the Island of Dread, for which there is a separate tile set off to the side of the main board. The goal of the game is to find this island and defeat the evil god there, drawing and defeating the silver challenges until you draw and defeat him.

The biggest change in this expansion by far is sea travel. There aren't enough encounters on a single island to keep everyone busy for long, so you'll soon be wanting to voyage on to greener pastures. There is now a new deck of captains. In order to travel by sea, you must hire a captain at the market of the town from which you are departing. Captains vary in cost and have special abilities. They act like an ally but don't count against your ally limit. However, if your captain dies in battle with a sea encounter (or the hero does) you will be shipwrecked and the player on your left will choose an adjacent land space. You'll lose your gold and most valuable item just as in the base game when you are knocked out. You don't roll movement dice to travel by sea; instead you just move to the next sea encounter space (or town), draw the encounter card and resolve it. When you do reach a town, your captain immediately goes back into the market stack. You can never have more than one captain and it you don't set out to sea on the next turn after hiring one, you lose him. Also, if you don't have the money, you can still get a captain and head out to sea, you just don't get any of the rewards or experience for defeating sea encounters for that voyage.

Another big addition to this game is the map tiles. Map tiles are used in matched sets of one green and one blue tile. You'll earn these by defeating sea encounters as well as in a few other places during the game. You'll draw them form a facedown pile, so you can't depend on always getting a set. Sets are discarded during your experience step while voyaging to do one of two things. You can discard a set to "discover" the Island of Dread" and take on the final challenge. I don't recommend this until you are leveled up and good and ready, however. :-) More often, you'll be discarding a set to find a legendary item. There are eight of these, all different, that you can choose from as long as they are still available. These each have a unique, powerful ability that you can use at the appropriate time by discarding the item and placing it back into the pool to be found again. These marvelous abilities include things like automatically winning combat rolls of certain types, starting the combat phase of an encounter in any phase you like, having fatigue dealt to you instead of health in a round, replenishing encounters on the board, etc. It is strongly advised to get a few of these items to help defeat some of the harder sea encounters before you have leveled up and before you take on the final challenge.

There is one final change in this expansion although it is not quite so dramatic. These are tiles that are placed on the board due to an event that is drawn. They include things such as turning sea encounter locations into regular sea channels, making it easier to travel, or causing several cities to sink into the sea and disappear.

Finally, there are eight new characters to use in the expansion or the base game.

While this expansion did not change the game as radically as the Sands the Al-Kalim, it still provides a nice change of pace from the base game and I really enjoyed it.

We have playing a lot a Descent lately, three sessions in the last couple of months, one normal Descent game and the first two sessions of our Road to Legend campaign. But those three sessions total about 15 or 16 hours of game play. Spurred on by all this playing and the desire to do a non computer related project, I decided to dig out my paints and paint the Descent miniatures.

Descent skeletons, primed
and ready for some paint

So, a couple weeks ago I dug out my mini paints and went through them to see which ones had dried out. Luckily, I only had to toss 4 or 5 of them. These were replaced and a few new colors were picked up at our FLGS.

I figured that painting the monsters in groups by type would be the most efficient. So I decided to start with the skeletons since they seem to get a lot of use and would see a lot of board time. These guys had a lot more detail on them than I first noticed. They may not have been the easiest to start with, but they were fun to work on.

Painted and ready for
the "Magic Dip" finish.

For finishing the skeletons, I wanted to try "washing" them with the "magic dip" I had read about on a few web sites. What is the "magic dip"? It's Minwax Polyshades stain in a Tudor color. This is a very dark, nearly black, stain mixed with polyurethane. Basically you dip the painted mini in the stain, remove the excess and let it dry. The stain will settle into the groves and low spots and bring out the details. The polyurethane also gives the mini a protective shell.

Completed Descent skeletons

Now, on to the beastmen.

(You can find more pictures in the photo gallery.)

While adding some new pictures to our photo gallery I stumbled across some comment spam. After looking around a bit I found a bunch more in several of the gaming photos albums. I believe I have cleaned them all out, but if you see any, let me know.

Since I'm running a fairly old version of the Gallery software, the only way to fight the spammers is to turn off comments. Sigh. I guess I will have to look into upgrading to the latest version and see what kind of protection it has for comments. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to do that right now, so photo comments will be disabled for a while.

For the previous ramblings of the Mad Overlord see this post.

<Week 1. Starfall Forest dungeon, level 3, "Web of Lives">
Dear Diary,
I heard from my minions that these new adventurers from Tamalir have decided to push on in the Starfall Forest dungeon. Little do they know what lurks at the base of that dungeon. The Bane Spider Queen and her children are always looking for tasty treats to hang up in their cave and season for a while. I shall summon a goodly number of my minions there to see to these adventurers. I shall make sure they are discouraged from their new hobby. I must get back to my research.

Dear Diary,
I might as well make an update since Brum has interrupted my work with an update from Starfall Forest. The adventurers quickly removed the Queen's children guarding the northern part of her realm. However the two squads of Beastmen I sent down kept them from rescuing a couple of the villagers that were still alive.

The Runemaster was forced to drop the villagers to help deal with my Dark Priests blocking the transport glyph. This left the Kirga creature standing all alone by the door to the Queen's throne room. Kirga quickly found out this was a mistake as the Queen's guard, assisted by a couple of my Sorcerers, made mincemeat of Kirga.

With one of their party out and the others facing great odds, I expect them to flee to the safety of their home. I have instructed Brum to give me additional news when he gets it.

Dear Diary,
I see these adventurers did not take the hint. The final report from Starfall has arrived. It appears that the adventurers were eventually able to recover the captured villagers from the Queen, but it was not without great losses.

My razorwings arrived just after Kirga was killed. They quickly surrounded the dwarf Corbin and completed the task started by the dark priests. That stubborn Steelhorns creature did not learn from Kirga's death and tried to get close to the Queen's chamber. Again the guards flowed out of the room and sent Steelhorns packing.

Unfortunately the guards could not get the door closed again before the newly regenerated Kirga and Corbin were able to slay the spider guarding the door. A fierce battle ensued in the Queen's chamber. Additional beastmen and dark priest reinforcements were able to come up from behind the group and kill Runemaster Thorn while the Queen's guards were able to kill Corbin.

The adventurers were finally able to pick up the original two villagers after clearing out several kobolds who showed up late to the party. However, the little beasts were able to bring down Corbin again (who didn't have the decency to stay dead). The adventurers finally fled with several skeletons taking pot shots on the way.

(For those keeping score at home, conquest for this level: Overlord 27, Heroes 11).

Dear Diary,
This second week was much quieter than the first. I received my first report from Sir Alric in Nerekhall. The local populous does not seem to believe that the comet is coming. He has started to build siege engines to help them see the light.

My own magical research has proven profitable. I have been successful in developing stronger spells for creating my Eldritch creatures. They now glow with a silver luminescence. Very lovely.

And I heard that those pesky adventurers returned to Tamalir to lick their wounds. I suspect they have had enough of this adventuring.

All in all, a good week.

Dear Diary,
The third week of my Ascension and things are going smoothly. After much persuasion, I have convinced the Demon Prince to bring forth his personal lieutenant, Kar-Amag-Atoth. He is a fearsome beast. I have given him instructions and sent him south to confer with Sir Alric. Speaking of Alric, his siege of Nerekhall continues. He believes that it will be at least two more weeks before he has enough siege engines to take on the city walls.

No real word from Tamalir concerning those adventurers. Rumor has it they are running around town spending their ill gotten funds, buying drinks at the tavern and resting. I don't expect to hear from them again.

The Descent Heroes

The heroes battle the queen spider and her guards

Continuing ever onward with our Wallace lovefest, we tried out Tinners' Trail at Mark's Thursday group. Tinners' Trail is about mining ore in Cornwall, England during the 1800s. You are bidding against the other players to place your mines in regions on the board so you can mine the tin and copper ore there. Apparently one of the biggest challenges miners faced was water filling the mines. Much of your energy in this game goes toward dealing with the ever annoying water that makes it pricier to mine the ore. Several developments are available in the game to deal with this in varying degrees - ports, adits (a new word for me!), trains and pumps. Adits also add additional ore to the mine and miners, trains and ports allow you mine more ore at once.

Money is tight in this game which is no surprise given its designer. You get a chance to buy victory points with the cash you earn each round but you'll have to decide how much to save in order to buy mines and extract ore in the following round. To make that decision even more agonizing, you get more VPs for your money in the earlier rounds, but that is also when you want the bidding power to grab the juicier regions on the board, particularly since it is advantageous to have your mines adjacent to each other for adits and on the coast for ports. Selling ore that you have extracted is the primary way to make money in the game but there is one more that gets you a tiny amount - selling pasties. This seems to be primarily a default action when you have nothing better to do or you are really short of cash.

An aspect about mining that you have to consider is that every time you take ore out of a mine, a water cube is added to it, making it more expensive to mine ore the next time. There is a limit to how much ore can be taken out with a single mining action, but you can increase this with a few of the developments, making it more efficient. Of course, you'll also want to add developments that take away the water added. Each mine can only hold one each of the various developments so you have to time their addition wisely.

There is some luck in the game which can have a big impact. This will give some people fits. You have to speculate how much each type of ore will be worth as you are required to sell any ore you've extracted at the end of a round. At the beginning of each round, the selling prices for each type will be determined with a die roll. So, if you say, leave the copper in your mines for the following round in the hopes that the price will go up and it goes down instead, you're hosed. There is a ceiling and floor for the prices, though, and a modifier applied if it is at the top or bottom. Another bit of luck is how much ore is available to be mined in each region. The amount of ore and water in a single, unexplored region will be determined at the end of each round with dice rolls. However, you can speculate and put up an unexplored region for auction. The winner pays and places his mine before the dice rolls to determine what's there. A bad roll and you've wasted your money on a mine full of water and little ore. These lucky elements fit well with the theme and I enjoy the uncertainty they bring to the game. But, some people are going to be quite bothered. You have been warned!

The turn order mechanism also makes for some tense decision making as well. It is very similar to the game Thebes. During a round, players take turns doing a single action that can be either building a mine, building one of the improvements listed above, mining ore from a single mine, or selling pasties. Each action costs a varying amount of time which is tracked on the board. After each player has taken a single action, a new turn order for the next series of actions is established starting with the player who has taken the least amount of time so far. In addition, you can drop out of the round entirely at any time and not do any more actions. Turn order for the start of next round will be in order from the player who passed first to the player who passed last. A limited number of improvements are put out for grabs each round, so if you really, really want something, you might have to pass early and forgo some precious actions in order to get first choice in the next round.

Tinners' Trail is another excellent game from Martin Wallace. It's a little leaner than many of his games, rule-wise, but the game play still has a lot of heft to it with a little luck thrown in to keep you guessing. It is very thematic with a unique, historical theme. I like Brass a little better, but I'm very fond of train/connection games so that isn't surprising. I'm looking forward to the next game in the Treefrog line although I'm not looking forward to the hefty price of a game that has to be ordered and shipped directly from the U. K. I'm happy that Tinners' Trail has been worth that price so far.

Dear Diary,

It is a glorious day. After many long days of research and a couple of, shall we say, "educational" efforts, I have been successful in summoning and controlling the Demon Prince. This was the last piece I needed to start the overthrow, I mean, conversion of the land of Terrinoth. The signs in the heavens continue to guide my path. The great comet is coming and I must prepare the land for the changes to come. Just this morning I sent my faithful servant, Sir Alric, to the nearby town of Nerekhall. There he will begin educating the inhabitants of the heavenly signs. I have instructed him to start construction of the first of the needed new temples as soon as he can. I must look into sending him help when I find another trustworthy servant.

Dear Diary,

I have heard from my sources near Tamalir that there is a new group of foolish "heroes" causing trouble. The Lawlessness I have spread though out the land should slow these fools down if they wander around outside the city for long.

Dear Diary,

These adventurers have already started to cause trouble at the dungeon near the Starfall Forest. Legion, my skeleton master there, was able to send a report of these fools. They appear to be led by a large, goat like creature that goes by the name, now get this, "Steelhorns". There is a dwarf that went by the name of "Corbin" and another short hooded creature they called "Kirga". The last of the group was identified by Legion as Thorn, the Runemaster from northern Terrinoth.

The last message from Legion said he had the situation under control. He was able to take down the goat creature but needed the help of some Beastmasters and Kobolds. It seems the skeleton warriors that Legion was always bragging he could summon at will did not slow down these adventurers.

Dear Diary,

I have not heard from Legion since that final report, and I found out why. I have recently received a report from the staff of the Arena at Starfall that this same group was foolish enough to challenge the Ogre Champion. This means that Legion failed to stop them and they were able to figure out how to open the door to the portal. Ah, so long fools. Taking on the undefeated Champion. Fools indeed.

Dear Diary,

Two of my Dark Priests who were at the Arena were able report back on this new group of trouble makers. Although the priests did not see the beginning of the day's battle, they heard that the adventurers were able to quickly take out a couple of skeletons and a sorcerer. That roused the Ogre Champion who took matters into his own hands. The fools quickly learned why he was the Champion. The ogre was able to fling the goat creature and the dwarf around the arena at will, but they appeared to be tougher than they looked. But, they quickly found out that the Ogre Champion was tougher than he looked. Even after taking many hits and seeming to fall unconscious, he quickly got back up appearing fully fresh. Ah, how I love Undying creatures.

The keepers of the arena were able to bring up some Hell Hounds to guard the exit and then sent in a group of kobolds in the entrance. The kobolds were able to get through the dwarf's armor and sent him packing. The Dark Priests also got into the spirit of the battle even from the stands on the west side of the arena. They were able to take a few pot shots at the goat man and sent him to the Temple.

Little was seen of the wizard who apparently was running from bone heap to bone heap looking for treasure. He was able to find many potions that had been dropped by the previous combatants of the Arena. These adventures needed these potions to stay on their feet as long as they did.

Sadly, my priests ended their report with the fall of the Champion. With the door unlocked, the adventurers quickly ran to the exit. The revived goat man was able to remove one of the Hell Hounds. The other hound had the weakened dwarf in his sights but must have coughed up a hair ball because no flame ensued. Useless hounds. The priests jumped down from the stands and chased the adventurers toward the exit. They report that they were able to damage the "Kirga" character, but could not bring him down before they ran to the portal.

Dear Diary,

I have been thinking. This new group is becoming a distraction to my work. If they show up in the last part of the Starfall Forest dungeon, I will send some of my personal army down there to deal with them. I must be rid of these fools once and for all, for the comet is coming...

The next few days are packed with gaming. Tonight we are planning to give Mark's new copy of Tinners' Trail a whirl. Our own copy is still somewhere between Texas and England. Given that I've recently played Brass and I'm about post a review of Toledo after several plays, Martin Wallace seems to be a popular guy around here lately.

What I'm really excited about, though, is all the dungeon-crawly goodness planned. Tomorrow night a few of us are trying the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition with Mike Chapel at the helm as the DM. I'm not quite as enthused about RPGs as the others, but it should be a fun evening and there's no way I'm going to turn down a chance to try it. The next day, Saturday, we will be kicking off our Descent: Road to Legend campaign. It will be interesting to play that right after D&D 4e and compare the two games. I just hope I can keep the rules separate in my head, which is in danger of exploding right now from reading up on all these different games.

Well, our Memorial Day was not exactly the gaming bonanza that I was expecting. We had a huge crowd and it was fun, but I only played two games! They both ran a little long and I also got caught up in cooking duties. Still, I'd have thought I could manage more gaming in ten hours. Also, for some reason, Ed neglected (forgot?) to take pictures.

Fortunately, those hours that I did spend playing were definitely of the highest quality gaming time - Brass and the new Pillars of the Earth expansion. I'm just going to talk about Brass in this post.

Brass

Martin Wallace games were once automatic purchases for us, but we now proceed with caution, especially after Perikles which I did not enjoy at all. Even his much touted masterpiece, Age of Steam, is a design I admire but can't stand to play as its unforgiving economic system and brutal competition makes it feel like too much work. It's one of those games that practically reduces me to tears of frustration. Brass, however, fixes these problems for me yet remains highly competitive, boosting Martin Wallace back up on his pedestal for the time being.

Brass is about the Industrial Revolution in Lancashire, England. Players will be building industries like coal mines, iron works, and cotton mills in the various towns and building connections between them to move the resulting goods, either selling them at ports or using them to do more building. The game is played in two periods - a canal period and a rail period. Building is done through card play. The board shows which industries can be built in each town. Right here are two game attributes that I dearly love - route building and hand management.

There is a bit of a cooperative aspect that is really nice. When you build a coal mine or iron works, the resulting products can be used by anybody for free. The advantage for you is that once they are used up, the tile is flipped and you get an increase in income and the victory points. Thus, you'll want to build coal mines in towns that other players are connected to so they can use it. The same goes with the ports. Another player can use your port to sell their cotton, but it then flips and you'll get victory points and an income boost. A good strategy here is to not be cooperative and build your ports such that you use them yourself to ship cotton.

Victory points are awarded after each period for flipped industry tiles and connections between towns. Leftover money also earns VPs at the end of the second period.

There are several mechanisms that make Brass less painful and more enjoyable for me:

- It's much harder to get blocked in on the board as often happens in Age of Steam. You can play an industry card to build off your network, but you can also play a location card to build in a particular town even if you aren't connected to it. This allows you to jump to another part of the board and start building another network. There is a bit of luck here in drawing a location card that you want.

- If resources are scarce on the board, you can buy them for a price if you are connected to a port. Since this includes flipped (used) ports and ones that are fixed on the board, it is not that hard to do.

- Player order is determined in a very clever fashion. Players take turns based on how much money they spent in the previous turn from least spent to most. So, if you have a "big" turn, you will likely be going last in the next one and vice versus. This means that you have some control over the turn order which often drives your decisions on a given turn.

- Money is quite tight, but a loan can be taken as one of your actions on your turn. This causes a decrease in your income but can sometimes be timed so that there is less of an impact. Like Age of Steam, you get income every turn and are continually increasing how much you'll get. However, in Brass it seems easier to increase it due to these other things that I mention above.

There are a few other things in the game that I'm not going to describe but will just say that there is plenty to worry about and deal with in this game, making it quite strategic. I wasn't really sure what I was doing until I saw the scoring at the end of the first period. After that, things fell into place and I at least understood the flow of the game. The rules aren't that hard except for some niggly rules that are easy to forget. There appear to be several different strategies and I'm looking forward to exploring them.

My biggest worry is a comment from a player in our group who has played it a few times and seems to think that the few shipyards are too powerful and will determine the winner. I hope that this is not the case as this game has so many things in it that I like.

Before I wrap this up, I have to comment on the theme. I am really enjoying heavily themed games lately. Most games with a historical theme seem to be either Eurogames where the theme feels like it was merely tacked on for flavor or wargames, an entirely different beast. Brass breaks out of this mold with a strong non-war historical theme that plays like a heavier Eurogame. I'm hoping Wallace's new game, Tinners' Trail, is of the same type. I'm reminded of the Ragnar Brothers, also British, who have given us this same sort of game with Fire & Axe and Canal Mania. I'd definitely like to see more of these types of games.

One more bit of praise - I love the clean, attractive art and overall look of the game which is very evocative of the time period in which Brass takes place.

I was mindlessly surfing Craigslist and noticed someone with a bunch of old games from the 1970s and early 80s for sale at almost thrift store prices. Most of them were old kiddie roll-and-move games, but we managed to score some MB classics - King Oil (a childhood favorite of Ed's), Domination, Conspiracy, and Pathfinder. Domination (Focus) fills one of two holes in our Spiel des Jahres collection so that was a nice find. Despite the huge collection of glitzy German games, I still get a thrill from finding treasures in old battered boxes. Now to find people willing to look beyond the flimsy bits and cheesy covers and play them with me....

Speaking of the Spiel des Jahres, the nomination list is newly out and confirms how I'm not keeping up with the gaming world these days. I have played none on the nominees and I haven't even heard of one of them - Blox. Of the others, I only have a real interest in playing Stone Age and maybe Keltis. So, no prediction from me as to who will win. I do only slightly better with the recommended list, having played 3/12 with plans to play several of the others. It was nice to see Agricola given a special award. Yes, I've actually played it and it's even preordered.

One of those recommended games is Hanging Gardens, a recent impulse purchase from our FLGS. Ed and I gave it a whirl last night and quite liked it. It's a spatial, puzzle-type game of the sort we both enjoy. There's not much player interaction though, other than grabbing a card or scoring tile before the other player gets it. I have a hunch that this is going to be much more strategic with two. I can't see that there is going to be much looking ahead with more players.

Tomorrow is our big Memorial Day cookout and game day so I should have pictures and something to talk about here next week. I'm hoping to try out Brass and the new expansion to Pillars of the Earth.

Oh, one more thing - Monastery by the Ragnar Brothers is now up for preorder at Boulder Games. w00t! You can bet I was one of the first in line. I hope it arrives ashore soon.

I twisted my brain into knot this past week learning King of Siam. The rules are quite simple. Trying to foresee the ramifications of your moves is not. I sat down to play this expecting another dull, dry exercise of pushing cubes around to achieve area majorities and instead was fully engaged and intrigued for about an hour. Given my propensities for dice-laden games full of plastic these days, it is quite a feat for a game of this type to captivate me like this. Is it ever D-R-Y.

What I like:

- Nobody owns the various factions vying for control for regions on the board. Instead, you are trying to manipulate them in your favor. I know there are other games like this (Imperial, which I haven't played yet) but this is a fresh and fascinating mechanism for me.

- Everyone has the exact same set of eight different actions to do in the game and there are eight rounds. You can do as many as you want in a given round but that's all you have for the entire game. So if you get sucked into a particular battle early on and spend too many actions, you'll find yourself short of things to do later. Figuring out when it's worth it makes for tough decisions. I found myself in a powerful position during the last few rounds because I had the most actions left.

- I said there are eight rounds but that is not exactly true. There is a sudden death condition that, if it occurs, ends the game immediately with a game winning condition that is contrary to the winning condition if it ends the normal way. It wasn't a threat in this one game but if it is in others, it'll be very interesting. I wonder if driving for this end is a viable strategy? If you were planning for it and it didn't happen, you might be hosed.

- The heart of the game is a clever, clever paradox. At the end of the game, you want to have the most influence of the faction that has won the most regions on the board. But in collecting this influence during the course of the game, you are weakening that faction's position on the board. This can be a tough balancing act.

I was pretty flummoxed with how the game progressed. Some of my actions became pretty useless and I didn't see it coming at all. It'll be interesting to play it again and see if I can get a handle on it. It sure packs a punch in under an hour and players who like games with no luck should love it. We played with three, but the four-player game is with partners. That might be pretty interesting as well.

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Dang. Apologies to Mark Gim. The spam filter snared your comment on the previous post and I only just noticed. Sorry! Thanks for your comment.

We've been going "retro" lately and pulling out some of the lunchtime golden oldies from our collection. How do these light-to-middleweight games that play in under an hour hold up now? Fairly well, actually, although that may be nostalgia talking. All four of these games were popular in my group around the year 2000 and 2001, when we were overtaken with the eurogaming craze. They have all come out sporadically since then, but not much (if at all) in recent years.

Today's offering was Rheinlander, a Knizia game from 1999. We were happy when Face2Face Games decided to republish this as we'd never managed to get a copy of the older Hasbro version. It's an area control game in which you play numbered cards to place knights in the corresponding regions along the Rhine River in order to form duchies. The game still holds up well today and I still like it quite a bit. It's very tactical in nature but you can do some planning and hope you get the right cards. Luck dependent to be sure, but the deck will most likely get shuffled a couple of times, making played cards possibly available again. A feature that I really like is that the rules for expanding allow you to use any card in your hand, often giving you something useful to do even if you don't pull the cards you really want.

Manhattan is another game with teeth that can be played in under an hour and proves that Andreas Seyfarth had at least one solid design in him long before Puerto Rico. This is also an area majority game but this time players are competing to own the most floors of individual skyscrapers and the most floors in an entire city. The board depicts several cities, each a 3X3 grid of building locations. Players have sets of building pieces that have differing numbers of floors. Before each round, they get to decide what pieces they are going to build that round. Cards are played to place the pieces, stacking them on the building site. The cards show on which building spot the piece must be placed, but the player gets to choose the city. This game can get pretty tense with a lot of direct head-butting. I can't believe that I once thought that this game was too mean. I rather enjoy it now. I still haven't played with the Godzilla variant.

Samarkand is a Sid Sackson game about traveling through the desert and buying and trading goods at nomad camps and oases. You are trying to collect sets of goods and then sell them at designated locations on the board. Movement is often determined by a dice roll, but you usually have a choice of direction. You'll have to do the action of the spot on which you land and this will require constant hand and money management. That and the route planning involved makes this still a rather fun, light game.

Café International is perhaps the weakest of this bunch. This is a tile-laying game of seating restaurant patrons at tables and scoring points as you do. Apparently, these people all prefer to sit at tables with others of their nationality and in equal numbers of each gender. This is purely a tactical game of drawing tiles and trying to spot your optimal moves. I loved this easy, gentle sort of game back when first discovering German games but it feels a bit lacking now. The art is quite a hoot though, with its stereotyping, and it is a pleasant game in which to socialize over lunch.

Looking over our shelves, we still have quite a number of older games to return to and see if they still have that spark. Hopefully, I'll have some more of these posts soon.

Due to the previously mentioned burnout and springtime demands on my time, this poor blog has been very quiet. It's time to wake it up again, perhaps with smaller postings more in line with my busy lifestyle. (edit: This did not turn out to be a "smaller" posting but I couldn't stop once I started to the detriment of the chores that I should be doing instead. Oh, well)

In News of the Blogosphere, let me say that I'm glad that I'm lazy and don't clean up things like out-of-date subscriptions in my newsreader. If I did, I would have never seen the new post on Chris Farrell's long abandoned blog pointing people to his new one. Chris' critical game reviews are some of the best I've ever read. I don't always agree with him but he often sees a game in a totally different way than I do which makes for very entertaining and thought provoking reading.

My gaming time has also taken a hit lately as well, which I hope to rectify in the coming summer as things quiet down. Hopefully, Ed and I can start attending our old, regular Thursday group again. We have been going to the monthly, local Meetup group which continues to grow quite large and diverse. I am often torn between hand-holding the noobs through their first game of Ticket to Ride or getting up a game of what I really want to be playing with the seasoned gamers. Fortunately, I still adore Ticket to Ride so it's all good. This group is on hiatus through the summer but to fill its place there is now the.....

Settlers of Catan Meetup group. It seems that there is a wave of newbies here being sucked into the vortex of eurogaming through the magic of Settlers and they've organized a dedicated group. Does that game have some invisible aura around it that I just can't see? I'm simply amazed at its gateway powers. I will admit that the card game version is partially responsible for sucking me into the hobby, but by the time I got around to playing the basic game, I'd already cut my teeth on the likes of Euphrat & Tigris, Elfenland, and El Grande and they excited me a lot more. BUT, I do start to realize the magic of Settlers with the addition of new twists and chrome like those in the historical scenarios and major overhauls like in Settlers of the Stone Age. There are still so many that I haven't played yet and I'm hoping that with this group I'll be able to work my way through them. Shoot, I still have the entire Das Buch to explore. We also hope to introduce people to a few other games besides Settlers.

The first meeting of the Settlers group went well. There was a lot of interest but unfortunately, attendance was limited due to the small venue. There were two tables going and Ed and I played a basic game with the group's organizers. They had been trying to play the game with just two and were quite enthused to be playing it for the first time with more. We felt that it would be rude to foist our house rule on our host's first game so we did not play with the Food Stamp Variant. I have said over and over how I refuse to play Settlers without this variant and once again proved that I need to live by my convictions.

After a dismal, resource-scarce game, Ed abandoned Settlers and broke out our copy of Pandemic that we had smuggled in and taught it to our hosts. It went over very well. I joined the other table to play Cities & Knights at the urging of a seasoned Settlers player who insisted that this was the only way to play and that I would never go back. Well, I wouldn't say that, but I did like this expansion quite a bit. Believe it or not, I had never played it despite the fact it has been on our shelves for years. What I liked in particular was the city development and the way it is tied into city resource production. Development cards are now much more a part of the game. I could have done without some of the added bits but on the whole I though they all added more decisions and flavor to the game. I do have one big caveat, though. I had to leave early and we only played about half the game. One of the biggest criticisms I've heard leveled at Cities & Knights is the increased length and I didn't get to experience that to judge for myself.

The organizers have secured a bigger place and the second meeting is next weekend on a day we can actually make it. Will our interest in Settlers hold? Will we be able to introduce them to other games and expand our gaming opportunities? Stay tuned.

I guess I've been experiencing a bit of burnout writing about games. Every time I sit down to write, I feel like a third grader writing an essay. "I like Pandemic because it is a really fun game." It doesn't make for very interesting reading, that's for sure. I need to shake it and get busy on reviews as I've got a pile to do thanks to the prolific Mayfair publishing schedule. I've almost completed a review of Chicago Poker. (It was fun; I liked it. Review done :-)) Actually, it isn't a bad little game but it doesn't really stand out in a crowd. It's sort of a multiplayer Schotten Totten. I've recently played their newest release, Bacchus' Banquet, and kind of liked it as a sort of cousin to Bang! It has a neat central mechanism but I have a niggling concern that one of the assigned hidden victory goals is harder to achieve than the others. Obviously a few more plays are in order.

So far, nothing really excites me from the early reports out of the Gathering of Friends, which is going on right now. The hit of the show seems to be Stone Age but the descriptions just make it sound like a rehash of familiar mechanisms dressed up in a new theme. Yawn. A lot of the excitement seems to be coming from prototypes. From this side of the fence though, it's hard to get excited over a few teasers for games that may or may not be coming out months and months from now.

I continue to find more ways to waste time on the computer. I am now on Twitter (as SusanRoz) and Facebook. I am not sure if this makes me cooler or even more of a nerd. Perhaps I should ask my teenage son who always feels it is his duty to inform me in which direction I am heading. I need to fill out my profile on Facebook but I keep getting distracted looking at all the apps available. It all seems rather silly and yet here I've been, constantly fiddling with it for the past few days. However, let me just say this now - if this leads to a MySpace page complete with tacky wallpaper and an obnoxious soundtrack, just go ahead and shoot me!