Session Report for February 10, 2005

by Susan Rozmiarek
It was the second and final week of “C” games and we even snuck in an early “D.” There were two tables of games going on tonight, one with heavier, head-thumpers and the other with lighter fare. I was feeling a bit tired, so I stuck with the easier and shorter stuff tonight.

 

Fairy Tale

This is the second Japanese game we own now, the first being Mermaid Rain. Fairy Tale is a card game, with a theme I don’t understand at all. The fantasy art on the cards is really nice, though. It’s basically a set collecting game. You are initially dealt five cards. Then starts a furious drafting round where you take a card from your hand and pass the rest to your neighbor. You keep repeating until all hands have been passed around, shrinking by a card each pass. You end up with a hand of five cards again. Now players simultaneously select three cards, one at a time, to play in front of them on the table. Some cards have actions that are performed when they are played, usually causing cards of certain suits to be turned over or turned up, sometimes including those of other players.

This whole sequence of dealing, drafting and playing cards is repeated four times. Players will end up with a total of twelve cards played before them. The cards that are turned up will score points for the owner. The various cards, however, interact with each other, sp that certain sets and combinations will score more points. This makes for all kinds of decisions in the drafting round, as you have to consider not only what cards you need, but also what cards the other players need. Often you have to decide between a card you really want and one you don’t want another player to have.

All in all, this game was very well received. It’s obvious that we need to play it again, as we were all just learning the game and the cards. We let Doug collect a nice set of multipliers and matching cards that handed him a resounding victory. We certainly won’t let that happen again!

Results: Doug 58, Susan 48, Ed 47, Mark 43, Adam 40

Some of the Fairy Tale cards.

Colossal Arena

This is a remake of the old Knizia classic, Titan: The Arena. I had played another version of it, Galaxy: The Dark Ages, but I remember it as being much more complicated and fussy. Plus, I didn’t really care for the space theme. Since so many people rave about Titan: The Arena though, I was eager to play this new version that was supposedly faithful to the original one.

I was not disappointed. This is a rather fun game of bluffing and betting on different creatures fighting in arena battles. On your turn, you either place a bet on a creature or play a matching combat card on a creature. Combat cards determine a creature’s strength for that round and are played over any current card on that creature. A round is over when all creatures have at least one card and there is a single creature with the lowest combat strength. That creature is eliminated. A neat twist is that each creature has a special power. If you play a combat card on that creature and you have the most bets on it, you get to use the power.

At the end of five rounds, you get points for each bet token on surviving creatures. Bets placed in earlier rounds are worth more. You can also place one secret bet in the first round of play that is worth the most. Each player only has five bet tokens so you must choose wisely where to place them.

I got dealt three high cards for the Wyrm, so I placed my secret bet on him, thinking I could keep him alive. The funny thing was that he lasted the entire game without anyone placing a single open bet on him. I was careful not to seem too interested in him, lest the others get suspicious. I also got an early bet on Colossus. His special ability allowed me to pick up bet tokens placed on eliminated creatures. I was able to use the ability at least once before Mark and Doug eliminated him. The rest of my bets I tried to spread out between creatures on which either Doug or Mark had a bet. The game ended up being pretty close. I thought the game was quite good and certainly more enjoyable than Galaxy. There is a fair bit of luck with the cards you draw, but I like the angst of deciding where and when to place bets and when to play a card to try and save or eliminate a particular creature.

Results: Mark 10, Susan/Doug 8

Dancing Dice

We needed a quick game to play while waiting for the other table to finish up. Dancing Dice is rapidly becoming a game of choice for this situation despite its early ho-hum reception in our group. I’m finding this game seems to fill the same niche as Trendy in our group. There doesn’t seem to be much “game” there, but with the right group it can be quite fun with lots of laughs. It has the potential to be tedious and repetitive, but it isn’t because it plays so quickly.

As usual, there was a lot of moaning and groaning over hideous dice rolls. Mark, with his two left feet, was the first to go out, followed by me. Doug proved to have the most stamina. If I’d only switched my two dances in the last round, I would have been victorious instead.

Mark, Doug and Susan filling time with some Dancing Dice.

Cluzzle

I’m actually starting to thaw a little bit toward party games. With the addition of Cluzzle, we now own three I like, the others being Moods and Thingamajig. I’m finding that at long as the game doesn’t involve pop culture or singing, I’m okay. Cluzzle involves creating clay sculptures, invoking those warm fuzzy memories of playing with Play-doh as a kid. In each session in Cluzzle, each player gets dealt a card with a list of things. He chooses one and makes a sculpture of it. After everyone is done sculpting, players try to guess the identity of each sculpture. Players are allowed to ask two yes or no questions to other players each round. Then players write down their guesses and reveal them. A correct guess give points to both the sculptor and the player making the correct guess. The twist is that the session lasts for three rounds of questions and guessing. More points are awarded for correct guesses each consecutive round. So, you want to make your sculpture easy enough to get guessed correctly eventually, but not so easy that it gets guessed early.

After getting all the rude comments about the brown clay out of the way, we got down to sculpting. I was able to guess Marks first sculpture, The Great Wall of China, in the second round, after thinking it was a guard rail in the first. He then moved on to flat things, which I couldn’t guess for the life of me. One was a golf course, which I thought was a footprint, and the other one was a surfboard. I almost guessed Mike’s cotton candy, thinking it was an ice cream cone and then a snow cone and finally a tootsie roll because Mike said it had something in the middle. Ed’s cornflakes were easy, but I thought his blackboard was a billboard. Incredibly, Mike guessed it right away. He also guessed my lumpy vase correctly, which was stumping everyone else. As a matter of fact, Mike pretty much steamrolled over us in this game. It wasn’t even a contest. Poor Ed was not able to make heads or tails of any of our masterpieces. He was so disgusted that I’m not at all sure we’ll ever get him to play the game again.

I doubt that I’ll ever be really good at this game, but it felt like more of a fun group activity than a competitive game so it doesn’t really matter. Even Mark liked it. (Did you hear that, Ed?)

Results: Mike 18 (yowsa!), Susan 9, Mark 7, Ed 3

Cluzzle, round three.

Money

We ended the evening with a quick hand of this Knizia set-collecting game. Fortunately, Ed, Mike and Mark were all competing for the same denominations while I was able to collect a big set of the unwanted currency. Ed started off insisting he was totally hosed, but managed to come in second. Afterwards, a furious argument ensued between Mark and Mike, with each blaming the other for allowing Ed to sneak ahead of them.

Results: Susan 760, Ed 540, Mark/Mike 510

Other games played: Capitol and La Citta

Early in a Capitol game with Marty, Mike, Adam and Ed.

Apparently you must stand to play La Cittá or at least it helps you think better

For more pictures from this gaming session and others, see our Gaming Picture Gallery.

New Reviews

by Susan Rozmiarek
I've posted a review of Oceania, a light, two-player game by Klaus Teuber and published by Mayfair.

I also did a short review of an older game, Chessington. Since I didn't give it the royal treatment with pictures, I only posted it on BoardgameGeek.

I C Unplayed Games

by Susan Rozmiarek
This past week, I finished up with the “B” games and started in on “C.” I actually have seven unplayed “C” games in our collection, but several of them were grabbed off of prize tables and were things we probably would not have purchased. I managed to knock off two of them this week.

Backgammon

I hadn’t played this classic in over ten years. I guess that qualifies it as a game that hasn’t seen recent table time. Ed used to be a big fan of it and would coerce me into a game every now and then back in my non-gamer days. He’d always win and I hated it. I had no idea what to do other than shuffle my little discs forward. Now, as a seasoned gamer and midway through our first game of the evening, I couldn’t understand how I’d missed the obvious little strategies is the game. This is EASY. Of course, Ed then proceeded to beat me soundly three times in a row. The man who can’t roll a six or an eight to save his life in Settlers of Catan was rolling double sixes at the exact moment he needed them to get out of my little traps. Grrr. I still hate it. I least I got to try out my nice little game table that I got for my birthday.

My new, little game table is perfect for two-player games while watching tv. It has board inserts for Monopoly, Chess/Checkers, Backgammon, and Scrabble, as well as a plain top. The table came with all the playing pieces, which are stored in the drawer.

Chessington

Ed discovered a nifty racing game called Winchester a few years ago at Gulf Games. It’s an obscure, self-published game that proved to be hard to find. He finally tracked down a used copy in England, and it came packaged with another, similar racing game, Chessington.

The Chessington board is comprised of a rectangular race track with a grid on it. Each player has four chess pieces, a King, a Knight, a Bishop, and a Rook that move just as they do in chess. Each starts the race in a different section of the track with the pieces capable of moving the farthest on a single turn starting further back. On player’s turn he chooses one of his pieces and moves it. He cannot move the same type of piece as the previous player. Pieces can capture other pieces as long as they are of a different type. When captured, the captured piece switches places with the capturing piece. Of course, pieces can be blocked by other pieces as well as by tiles that are randomly distributed at the beginning of the game. As pieces move over the finish line, they are awarded points, with more going to the earlier finishers. After all the pieces have crossed the finished line, points are tallied and the player with the most wins.

This is a nice, light tactical game that makes a good lunchtime game. The components aren’t the greatest – the game looks basically homemade with very bland, simple art and laminated pieces stuck in a plastic stand. I’m thinking about getting some cheap wooden chess pieces and painting them.

RR Gamers session for 2-02-05:

Cityscape

This game gets rather lukewarm reviews, but I couldn’t resist picking it up off the Gulf Games prize table. I like the two other Pin International games we own, Octiles and Fire and Ice, and they all look so pretty. And heavy. Very heavy. These games are solid wood. I ended up lugging Cityscape home in my carry-on, because I was afraid it would push our already stuffed luggage over the airline’s weight limits.

This is a light game of bluffing and hidden goals. You are trying to build a city of skyscrapers so that it meets four goals that you secretly pick from a list at the beginning of the game. The goals are all related to the height of the buildings in the rows as you look down them from the side. The harder goals to achieve will earn more points at the end of the game. There are several different sizes of wooden blocks and on your turn you take one and stack it on any building spot or any building on the board. After all blocks have been placed, players reveal their goals and get points for each successful achievement. The player with the most points wins. That’s it. The game is very simple and it’s not going to set the world on fire, but it was short and enjoyable.

Results: Susan 50, Ed/Mark 40, Marty 0

Citadels

Next up was one of my favorite Bruno Faduitti games. The game combines several of my favorite mechanisms - resource management, building, and outguessing your opponent - all rolled into a simple card game. The mechanism of choosing a different role each turn and how those roles interact is just brilliant. The art on the cards is gorgeous, but I wish the cardstock quality was as good as that of the German version.

I was pretty lousy at guessing which role people would take. I usually do better. I kept trying to destroy Peter’s buildings with my soldier, but he kept choosing the protection of the Bishop. I wasn’t able to get many buildings down, but I did manage to bring my score up by building one of each color.

Results: Peter 31, Marty 23, Francesca/Susan 22, Mark 21

Niagara

Well, after a hefty helping of alphabet soup, I was ready to abandon the “C” games. This new acquisition was being played by the others while I was playing Citadels and they seemed to be having a great time with it. It has to be one of the coolest looking games we own. The board depicts a river and drapes over the upturned box and lid to form a waterfall at one end. Wooden canoes travel up and down the river collecting brightly covered gems from caves along the sides. Players need to collect a certain number of jewels to win and can steal from each other, making it a rather vicious game. Each round, players simultaneous select how many movement points they are going to spend or whether they want to affect the river movement By far the neatest mechanism is the movement of the river. At the end of a round, the river moves, using big, clear, plastic disks, a number of spaces based on a simple chart and the lowest movement token played. Canoes caught downstream in a fast-moving river are swept over the waterfall, losing a jewel, if they are carrying one. Players must also spend a jewel to get their canoe back. Brutal!

Apparently our game played out differently than that of the group before us. Their game was dominated by an unforgiving, rapidly moving river with plenty of canoes hurtling over the edge. We were more cautious in our game, but much more evil with plenty of thieving from our fellow treasure hunters. Despite us all going after him, Jon was able to pick up the necessary seven jewels for the victory right ahead of Peter.

Clark, Mike, Rick, Doug and Ed go canoeing on the Niagara river.

Paddle faster!!!

Other games played: Caribbean, which was not well received, ensuring that I’ll never get a chance to try it, Cloud 9, Carolus Magnus, and the much loved filler, 6 Nimmt!

For more pictures from this gaming session and others, see our Gaming Picture Gallery.