2 new games up to bat!

BasketBoss is a Cwali game – which unfortunately means it is to be viewed with some suspicion.  I adore StreetSoccer from this publisher/game author, but no other games have ever worked out for me from Cwali.  BasketBoss looks cute, simple and speedy.  I’m hoping to break the streak of let downs.

Tobago – is a strategy game from Zoch.  I’ve really been having fun with the Chili Spiele games of late.  Chili Spiele has published 3 games so far – 2 of which I have tried – and both of which I liked a lot.  Why mention them?  Because Chili Spilele is the game arm of Zoch for games that are too complicated for his main game company.  Tobago is a Zoch game, but clearly not just one of his children’s games, nor a dexterity game.  When I heard it compared to Old Town, I knew I needed to try it.  Old Town was a game I tried in 2004, and while it was exploring some interesting game space (inductive reasoning) I never felt like I was able to apply much skill to the game.  Tobago is supposed to be a smoother implementation, so I wanted to give it a whirl.

I’m hoping to play these this week.

Alex introduced me to his latest acquisition, War of the Roses, recently.  I have found myself thinking about it, which is an indication that I would probably like to buy a copy for myself.  But so far, I have been dragging my feet. 

You can read about the game of BGG, so I won’t try to detail all of the features.  But broadly this is a game that updates Kingmaker.  Kingmaker is an older game about the war for the English throne between the House of York and the House of Lancaster.  I don’t know that it was really a great game, but it definitely was a great theme.  I actually played a lot more of Warrior Knights (Games Workshop, 1st edition) which took the concepts in Kingmaker and made them into a more playable game.  But neither Kingmaker or 1st edition Warrior Knights have enjoyed much attention in years.

So I have been considering if it is time to sell/trade my copies of these games, and go ahead and own a copy of War of the Roses instead.  But I paused in this thinking after Tuesday night, when Chester after playing War of the Roses for the first time, gave it a rather weak rating – and offered a remark that he didn’t like blind bidding games.  My concern is that with a military theme, and a 2-3 hour duration, my expected audience is rather limited.  So will this game really get played?

And I will admit, I had not really considered that War of the Roses is a blind bidding game.  Oh, sure, the competition for the Captain of Calais is – but is the rest?  I was somehow swept away by the theme, and hadn’t really felt like I was blind bidding.  Instead I felt like I was planning, like you do in a game of Wallenstein.  I want to play again, and put out my critical receptors…  Is this game more luck and less strategy?

I was given Nibelungen by a friend.  He told me the game had come back to him in a turkey swap, but I was still glad to get it.  Beautiful big box game from Amigo, authored by Wolfgang Kramer, tied to a theme that I find attractive…

Well, I had basically translated the game during the commercials of the Olympics, and last night I finally finished translating the cards.  I turned in the translation to BGG, in case anyone else ever cares about this game.  But I fear I’ve already found the fun inside the box. 

The game features random movement and direct player confrontation.  It would seem there is not too much room for clever play, and I am not too excited to get it on the table after all.

Oh, and I have somehow mislaid the German rules, so any questions about my translation will be unresolvable unless I find them again.

And then there is Shipyard.  I’ve now played 3 times.  The first play was wrong and as a result rather tedious.  The second play was better.  But the third play felt very similar to the second play.  Sadly, I’m not convinced by this game.

Shipyard’s theme is attractive.  But the over burden of rules makes this a demanding game to teach and to learn.  Fortunately the actual play is pretty good.  Turns tend to be short and sweet – unless your opponent is prone to analysis paralysis.  In the 3 or 4 player games you have one worker pawn. 

Worker Placement:  After the first turn there are always some actions you can never take, due to other pawns residing on those actions.  Somehow this feature of the game is annoying to me.  In another game that features worker placement, Agricola, at the end of a turn all of the workers go home – clearing the board and giving you a fresh slate to work upon for the next turn.  I like this design decision in Agricola - it’s like a palette-clensing taste of ginger.  But in Shipyard, you are always going to be restricted by 2 or 3 previously taken actions.  Bothersome.

Fortunately the design does allow you to spend 6 coins and take another action – any action – which lessens the restrictive situation just described.  But this creates a different dynamic, especially in a 3-player game it may prove especially difficult to earn the 6 coins.  In my 3-player game I was constantly short of cash because the other players were carefully selecting cash-awarding actions in the rear of the queue.  I could force an opportunity to get cash, but that was frequently a two turn effort.

Building ships is a fun theme, and quite different from anything else in my collection.  So Shipyard does have some allure.  But the game is not destined to become one of my all-time favorites.

Metagaming and Steve Jackson Games Microgames/Pocket Games – By my count there are 29 of them.  That pulls me down to 294 games.

Classic Games and vintage “Game Art” pieces – 13 games that I don’t generally count as part of the playing collection.  (Classic games like Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Cribbage, Dominoes and Mahjong; or vintage games I own to display such as Contack, Flinch, Hendrik Van Loon’s Wide World Game, Huggin’ the Rail, Risk, Stampede, and Swastika).  Omitting these drops my playing collection down to 281 games.

Of the 281 games, the 2-player only games are a breed apart.  I have been looking more critically at them of late as almost 100% of my gaming is multiplayer.   Not counting the microgames mentioned above I come up with 34 games in my collection that are straight-up 2-player games.

So that leaves 247 games that are the heart of the library for social gaming.  Until I buy something else, of course…

Player Aids:  I enjoy making these.  So do lots of other game fans.  Cruise the files on BGG for your favorite games.  You are bound to find something wonderful.  Just today Rob sent me a link to a flash utility for playing the game Time Agent. 

Translations:  The need is not as great as it was ten years ago.  Nowadays most games come with English rules.  But I still enjoy sifting through the back catalog of German games, and seem to frequently need to do some translation work.  My current translation project is Nibelungen, a game that was given to me by a friend.  Apparently the game has passed through a few sets of hands prior to landing with me.  The fact that it was unpunched and untranslated may be a telling point.  But Nibelungen is based on Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and since I just toured Neuschwannstein Castle last fall, the theme is appealing.  I also hold some hope in the fact that Wolfgang Kramer is the designer.

Rules Reads:  I’ve fallen behind on this front.  New games to my collection that I still need to read the rules t include:  Shipyard, Rise of Empires, and Dodge City (early Hans im Glueck game).  This activity can be fun or it can be difficult.  Often I have good facility at reading rules and making sense of what is intended.  Other times, the rules bounce off and I struggle to make sense of it.

 Statistics:  I don’t warm to this the way some of my friends do (cough… Joe…cough), but I do enjoy maintaining a spreadsheet tracking which games the Tuesday night game club plays.  I have devised a system that rewards games for getting played, for the # of players it entertained, and the average rating the game achieves over time.  My players are given an option of rating the game in the following scale:

• Poor – Not so good, you would avoid it.
• OK – Decent game.  You would play, but probably never request it.
• Good – Nice game.  You might suggest it once in a while.
• Excellent – Tremendous game that you anticipate wanting to play frequently.
• Personal Endorsement – A game perfectly suited to your tastes.

I have been amused by how many players have requested that I allow them to have a “Very Good” rating.  But I have steadfastly refused to modify the scale, pointing out that a Very Good = Good in the statistics.  If it ain’t quite excellent, it is Good!  I’ve also recently started giving a time adjustment to games that run longer than 90 minutes.  This helps prevent all the shorter filler games from soaking up the top positions in the rankings.

BGG:  And perhaps the biggest non-gaming activity tied to this hobby is simply cruising BGG.  I update the club lists most every week, and I track changes to the collection, and even try to log my plays in their tracking system.  Of course reading articles and lists from other game fans is some of the best fun.  I have even started to learn about RSS feeds and notifications to help me track the content most likely to be of interest.

I’d guess only 20% of my hobby time is actually spent playing games.  The bulk of the time is devoted to the activities I’ve just described.

Friday night was a late arrival and even so I squeezed in a few games.

Tante Tarantel – Gave my gifts to Rob and to Kyle and Terry.  So we of course played it.  A very pleasant escape game!

Piece ‘o Cake- Rob introduced us to this charming game.  While quite fun, I don’t anticipate getting one for my collection.

Tanz der Hornochsen - Terry R. was kind enough to bring her unpunched copy of this chaotic but fun game.  We didn’t have the English rules handy, but fortunately between Rob and I we were able to teach the game nicely.  I continue to be pleased with this fun boardgame version of 6 nimmt.

Saturday was chocked full of games:

Zapp Zerapp – I taught this to Peggy, Terry H. and Kyle.  This was a fun game, and very well received by both the players and the onlookers.

Neue Heimat - I was pleased to receive this game literally the day we left for the game con.  I read the rules while most folks were busy in a Time’s Up game.  I then got a small group to play Neue Heimat.  Based on some remarks on BGG I removed the rooftops with no value from the game.  This was appreciated by Zack, who dislikes random screwage in games.  It played extremely well, and I saw Zack teaching it later on to a new group. 

Minos- Zack had brought Minos at my request, and I was pleased to finally try it out.  Pretty good, but it has fallen off my wish list.  I thought the turns tended to drag a bit, with nothing much to do while you waited.  I also felt like there was nothing but the competitors to hold back the leader from leaping further ahead each turn.  But this sounds harsh.  It was fun and didn’t really take all that long to play.  I would play again.

Cosa Nostra - I was keen to play a game with Lawrence’s daughters.  I had told Lindsey about Cosa Nostra a few months ago, so she recruited her sister and we enjoyed a fast and furious game of Cosa Nostra.

Stronghold - Alex and I were the only ones not in a game, so Alex asked me to play Stronghold.  I guess this game can take up to 4 players, but it is basically a 2p game.  I enjoyed it.  Seems like a rather busy game, with lots of different activities to pursue.  I would happily play it again, but considering it is basicallya  wargame, I will not buy a copy.  But if Alex asks I will play more of this!

Shipyard – Alex taught us Shipyard next and Chris and TG joined in.  This turned out to be a slow game.  But as it turned out, we got a couple key rules wrong.  I played this again on Tuesday night, and the game worked rather well.

Maestro - I taught Peggy and Rowan the game of Maestro.  Innocuous, it’s a game with a fun theme and lots of little decisions that add up to a bit more import than you initially guess.

Neue Heimat - I then taught Rowan, Terry H and TG the game that had been so well received earlier in the day.  This did not go over nearly as well.  I think Neue Heimat is a bit of a demanding game.  This coupled with the late hour and our general fatigue meant we stopped after one round.

Midnight Party – So what do you do when you are tired, but unwilling to go to bed?  Midnight Party!  Hugo romped through the house for 4 times, before we all made our good nights and retired to our respective rooms.

Sunday was the last day of gaming for Peggy and I:

Unspeakable Words - This is a simple word game that ties to the Cthulhu Mythos.  Fun, and quick.

Golfprofi – Ian, Rob, Chris and I swung through 18 holes.  Once again, Ian demonstrated his amazing skill at this game.  I was pleased to improve my handicap too.

Agricola (2x) – Peggy surprised me by wanting to play a heavier game, and agreed to give Agricola a whirl.  She liked it enough to ask that we play it again after dinner. 

Power Grid – In between the 2 Agricola games we played Power Grid.  Good old Germany map.  A tight contest that was won by Kyle, although TG gave him a good run for the money.

Time’s Up – I really do like this game.  But 16 players is just too much.

With a longish drive ahead of us, we simply packed up and departed Monday morning.  A great game con and much fun had.

But for me, and about another dozen or so, this is the high-water mark for gaming.  A few of us spend far too much time listing what games to bring in a database, and somehow convincing ourselves we will play all the games we bring.  Of course we never do – we play perhaps 20% of the games we bring.  So for fun, I will share my packing list:

Tante Tarantel/Igel Ärgern - A duo of children’s games that I recently imported.  I will bring two copies and leave with none.  Gifts to Kyle (belated Xmas gift) and my co-host Rob (just ‘cuz).  Of course I will still have one more copy back at home!

Little Amadeus Maestro - Another light game, and one I used to own in an earlier edition.  I’m hoping it will offer some fun.

An den Ufern des Nils - (On the Banks of the Nile) – An older game that Rob once showed me.  It had niggled at me, and so I decided I needed to get a copy for deeper inspection.  Not really a heavy game, but a bit more substantial than some.

Zapp Zerapp – Silly shaker fun.  I played this once in 2000, and agin recently.  I had more fun this last time than I did the first go.  I’m hoping to play this with some of the children.

Cosa Nostra - This is Parcheesi with drive by shootings.  I also hope to play this with some of the kids.

Golfprofi – Our traditional golf game.  I have gotten a lot of pleasure out of this game over the years, and it is great to see it requested by the other “golfers”.

El Grande – A favorite, and requested by Chris.  So it comes too.

Agricola - Another favorite, and also requested.  I don’t have the expansion, so I suspect my copy will be redundant and we will play another copy with their expansion.

Time’s Up – Requested by Peggy, so it’s gotta come!

Unspeakable Words - Another word game that the wordsmiths may not have yet discovered…  I had to buy it for the Cthulhu Mythos tie in.

Journey to the Center of the Earth – I’m actually bringing this to give back to its owner.  I would be happy to play it, but the reading of the rules was not overly inspiring.

à la carte – the beautiful new edition!  I’m excited to give it a try.  My old edition is now retired.

Strand Cup – 2 packs, actually.  Beach Volleyball in February in the mountains of New Mexico.  Why not?

Vom Kap bis Kairo – A nice little train race game that needs playing again.

Mu - I’m not too keen on Tichu, so I thought I’d pack the other card game people seem to like.

Dia de los Muertos - Being so close to Mexico, we have adopted the artwork style used in this game for our own motif.  Regardless this is an interesting game, and one I would like to play more of.

Giro Italia: The Cardgame – Leader 1 as a cad game.  I need to play this.

These last few are games I tossed in since I had some small room left.  There are a couple other games I am considering bringing:

Box of Golf - I was considering bring ing this until someone requested Golfprofi.  I may skip it.

Neue Heimat - Expected delivery tomorrow!  So if it is here when we leave, I will likely toss it in.  A Klaus Zoch game that is too complicated for his main game company…  But still a Zoch game, so surely it isn’t TOO complicated.  I have printed out the English rules, and will be ready to roll with it…

So I’m bringing 17-19 games.  Quite silly, as I have already talked about playing several other games that others are bringing:

Minos - A game I am curious about.  A Ravensburger game with nice graphic quality standards, and an appealing theme.  From the author of Shark (good) and Sindbab (eh).

Pond Hockey - Rob’s attempt to lead me away from StreetSoccer.  I bet I will like it.  I also bet I will stick with StreetSoccer.

Toledo – A Martin Wallace game I would enjoy trying.

Shipyard – Another game that Alex and I have bought at about the same time.  I will play on his copy and leave my new edition here at home.

Generally I play a lot of heavy games, and recently I have craved lighter games.  So I am not really looking for an 18xx this time around.  But we’ll see what happens.  I also want to play a few silly games with the non-hardcore gamers and children.

As fun as the event will be, the anticipation is also quite good!

When I ordered the games from Milan Spiele, I saw they were to be shipped by DHL.  As it turned out Milan Spiele needed to wait on some stock, which was fine, and they handed off the parcel to DHL on Dec. 14th.  By the 16th, it appeared as if the parcel was ready to leave the country, and I began to get my hopes up that the games would be delivered before Christmas.

Of course they did not arrive, and I philosophically decided the process through DHL wasn’t as speedy as I had imagined.  Finally at the end of December the DHL web site was updated to show the parcel was departing Germany!  Ah-ha.  I was delayed by a Christmas holiday.  Oh well.

When the parcel had not arrived by mid January, I finally started seeking additional information.  This had to be the slowest delivery company service ever!  I chatted with a DHL rep, who then told me that although I had a DHL tracking number, he was unable to track it!  Turns out this is a service sold by DHL but executed by the German and USA post offices!

Once I learned this, I knew a 6-9 week delivery window was most likely.  Sure enough, about six weeks after Milan Spiele turned over the package for delivery, I received it.  I don’t really mind the longer wait.  But having DHL listed as the service company certainly threw me into a loop.  I will now regard DHL as a slow package processor just like the official post offices.

So the games…

I purchased 3 copies of Igel Ärgern/Tante Tarantel and 2 copies of a la carte.  I bought the extra copies as gifts, and foolishly promised one of them as a Christmas gift.  That didn’t work out so well!  But I am pleased to add these to my collection.  A la carte is a beautiful new edition, and will replace my 1st edition.  Igel/Tante is an upgrade for me, as I have never owned Tante.  But as it turns out I will still keep my 2nd edition of Igel as it has an extra different 5-column board.  At least that is the plan for now.

All of these games are very light.  I am seemingly needing a break from the heavier games.  My collecting of late is running more towards the lighter fare.  This month I have really enjoyed playing  Titan: The Arena, Snow Tails, Beowulf and Zapp Zerapp.  I have also added Maestro, Greyhounds,  And soon… Box of Golf and Dodge City to my collection.  Gaming at the Bistro has tended towards the heavy side in recent months.  But I think there are enough players who are happy to play these lighter games too.  I intend to find out!

So the following games have left my collection:

Automobile – a game I somewhat like, but not enough to continue owning.  Martin Wallace’s limited edition games are generally coveted by collectors, and I am pleased that this one sold for $150.

Tempus – Another Martin Wallace game that I sort of like, but won’t miss having in the collection.  Tempus sold for $50.

Eastfront – I was surprised by how little I enjoyed this game.  Tim and I tried it a couple times, but it never got a good flow going for us.  I remain a fan of Napoleon, and own and wish to play two other block games, Crusader Rex and Hammer of the Scots.  Eastfront sold for $60.

House of Whack – The designer of this game, André, played with our Game Bistro group for a year or so before moving away from Albuquerque.  When André published this game, I automatically purchased one.  Sadly it isn’t my sort of game, so auctioning it off for charity seemed a thoughtful way of having it leave my collection.  House of Whack sold for $27.

18EZ – Alex became very interested in this game while it was still in prototype.  He and I played a couple times, hopefully helping it become a better product.  When Drew finally published it, I was pleased to purchase a copy in support of any company releasing new 18xx type games.  But honestly, I will always prefer to play a few other 18xx games before this one, so auctioning it off for charity was a good plan for this game.  18EZ sold for $100.

History of the World – I have a lot of great memories from playing this game.  But the designers recently released a shortened version called A Brief History of the World, and I cannot see me going back to the older version.  If I do, I will be happy to play on someone else’s copy.  HotW sold for $37.

Troisdorf – This is a special limited edition of the game Alhambra.  Jay Tummelson gave it to me years ago, and we never did get around to playing it.  I was pleased to turn Jay’s gift into a $100 for Haitian relief.

Cleopatra - This is a game that I liked well enough, but no one ever requested to play it.  So it was destined to leave the collection.  Cleopatra sold for $30.

In the process of auctioning my 8 games, I had several other BGG members ask to, and then list, several other games to auction for charity.  The site admins agreed to give an incentive to the bidders, and posted the auction at the top of the news section for a few days.  When the dust had cleared, the entire auction list had raised $1,622.50.  Pretty cool!  In addition some of the donors mentioned they would be giving to charity programs where their employer would match their gift!

So this little effort probably resulted in $2000 of aid given to various Haitian relief charities.

All the games are en route to their new owners, and I am also awaiting a game I purchased from one of the other donors.  Box of Golf will be arriving sometime in the future.  I will write about it in a future post.

This past week had me playing Travel Ingenious (4 times), Endeavor, and God’s Playground.  Ingenious was a diversion while I kept a friend distracted in the waiting room of a hospital.  Great game that is easy to teach.  I bought this copy of the game when recently in NYC.  It was nice to get it into action so quickly, albeit due to a surgery upon a friend’s wife.  (She is recovering nicely, thank goodness.)  Endeavor continues to kick my butt.  I keep getting lost in the swirl of options.  As this is a low luck game, I need to make some basic decisions about what I am trying to accomplish and rigidly hold myself to that strategy.  In some ways Endeavor is starting to remind my of Prices of Florence, in that you need to adopt a strategy and apply it with discipline.

Last night was my first effort at teaching God’s Playground.  I am still impressed, and was very pleased that Chester and Chris both expressed pleasure with the game.  This is not an elegant game.  Tons of phases, lots of chrome, but a very fun romp through Poland’s history.  Since I know nothing about Poland’s history, it seems wonderfully immersive, and any gaps or errors do not trouble me.  It is a gamey game, and a few things are starting to emerge that bother me about the game.  I will tell you my complaints in just a moment.  But I first want to re-stress that this game is hitting a sweet spot.  Fun. Fun. Fun.  But only for serious gamers, who won’t rue spending three hours on a game with significant doses of luck leavened with heavy strategy.

I will not attempt to summarize the rules.  They are long and convoluted.  Fortunately game play is reasonably intuitive, and the rules generally make sense within the great theme.  But there are a couple points that seem too gamey.

1.  Why is the cube pool so tight?  Should a player actually be successful in retaining a good presence of noble cubes on the board, that same player will sometimes find it is impossible to record enough hits on the enemy he is attacking to vanquish them.  You only have 20 cubes per player.  If most cubes are on the board, that means you have, perhaps, such a small number of them to mark “hits” that you may not be able to record all of your hits.

2.  Why is King’s cube pool so tight?  In one of our turns, the King’s army was mighty.  We naturally used him to push back some of the bigger threats to Poland, having him campaign with our baronial forces.  We quickly ran out of King’s cubes, which meant the King’s army ceased to be helpful in our campaign phase.

3.  The Hapsburgs and Ottoman special rules are murky.  We believe we sorted our way through them.  But starting turn 4 with Hapsburg political influence markers on the board, with Hapsburg military forces coming behind them, left us wondering… If a Hapsburg military cube came in contact with a Hapsburg political pawn, would the political pawn depart, (as it would with any other enemy cube)?

4.  I cannot understand how you are supposed to hold on to Little Poland.  The Hapsburg political pawns murder the Polish noble cubes at a prodigious rate.  If you manage to fend them off your reward is either 9 Hapsburg military cubes or 8 Ottoman cubes on the final turn.  So far, both games I’ve played has had Little Poland burned to the ground.  I would hope building estates in any province would be a reasonable decision.

Some complain Martin Wallace games sometimes have needless complexity.  I don’t know.  The # of rules involved in God’s Playground does imbue a certain amount of overhead.  But as we played, I kept going “a- ha” as I constantly saw a move I should have made.  A better understanding of the ramifications of some of the previous game phases would have allowed for a much better decision – allowing a clever move in the later game phase.

This game probably does have a certain “sameness” from session to session.  So far I am loving it.  But I recognize it might be played out.  However, as it is a 3-hour game strictly for 3 players.  I cannot imagine this is a game that will ever get played often enough in such a short amount of time for this niggle to trouble me.

It was interesting to note that while three of us played God’s Playground on Tuesday night, the next table over had 5 gamer’s playing their first rendition of Rise of Empires.  Clearly a Martin Wallace game night at the Bistro.