Family Gaming for September

by Susan Rozmiarek
I’m going to start off this entry by throwing myself a pity party. Any blogger worth his/her salt indulges in a little whining now and then. It’s expected. Just peruse MySpace or Blogspot and you’ll see what I mean. Oh, wait. Make that a LOT of whining!

So, what is there to whine about in my almost perfect life? Three words – Not Enough Gaming. You probably are thinking that I’m now going to follow with how I can’t find anyone to play with and how hard it is to organize a group but you’ll have to go somewhere like BGG to read those sad tales. We are wallowing in opportunities to game here in the Austin area with numerous groups at both game stores and private homes. I’ve also got a gamer husband and two gamer kids over the age of ten. I should be able to play games every night of the week but can’t because of one simple reason: soccer. Both kids are playing now and that means up to five practices a week and three games with many of Kevin’s requiring travel. No weekends + no weeknights = no gaming. Sigh. I can hardly wait for the holidays. That is, if there’s not a Thanksgiving tournament. Double sigh.

Fortunately, I did manage to squeeze in a few games during the past month. Ever the optimist, I hope to play even more this coming month as we think we might be able to host a game day.

Shear Panic

I’ll just get the required gushing over right away and be done with it. Those sculpted, resin sheep are cute. Ridiculously cute. As in, straight-out-of-Wallace-and-Gromit cute. They look like one of those Danbury Mint collectible figurine series that you see advertised in magazines. Mayfair has upgraded the scoring track and players mats to larger, nicely illustrated, and mounted cardstock. All-in-all, this game is quite the attractive package. Being female, I’m quite the sucker for cute animals. If it had been bunnies or puppies instead of sheep, I probably would have been totally overcome and not able to play the game at all.

The box claims that this is “the best game ewe ever heard.” At least it doesn’t take a lifetime to master as well! This was my second playing, the first being at BGG.con almost a year ago. Shea, Ed and I sat down to a three-player game of it after which I’m still not certain what to think. Perhaps I’m feeling a taste of sour grapes as Shea (unknowingly, but knowing would not have stopped him) set both my sheep up to be sheared in one fell swoop by Ed who gleefully apologized with a grin. This of course, guaranteed me last place. Now, I’m not one to fume and sulk when this sort of thing happens to me. But, I had been taking a lot of time and analyzing my moves with chess-like intensity only to lose control of my fate. Chaos in a “think-y” game is not a good thing in my book. Then again, perhaps it was my own stupidity for not seeing the possibilities. More plays will be necessary to determine which one is the case. There are some clever things in this game, such as how the flock marker advances through the various fields depending on the actions players choose. I am greatly looking forward to playing it yet a third time, despite my reservations, which says something positive about the game.

The ewes are all clamoring to get a better view of the handsome Roger in Shear Panic.

Blue Moon City

I have stayed far away from the Blue Moon two-player card game due to its comparisons to a CCG. I usually don’t have the patience to learn dozens and dozens of special abilities and card interactions and then use my knowledge to construct the killer deck. I start fidgeting even thinking about it. This board game only shares the theme and has gotten mixed reviews. After hearing a few magical words over and over like “tactical” and “card management” it piqued my interest enough to buy it.

Upon opening the box and rummaging around, I was once again bedazzled by beautiful bits. I know, I know, you are tired of hearing that. I’m so shallow. The art work is simply gorgeous and I love the fantastical buildings. It has plastic dragon figures and player colors that include purple and baby blue. Very pretty. Shea was busy with homework so Ed and I decided to play a two-player game of it even though we suspected that this was not going to be the optimal number. Our hunch proved to be correct. I romped ahead of Ed from the get-go, always drawing the right cards at the right time. I drew multitudes of dragon cards and was able to win the race for scales several times with ease. He really didn’t have much of a chance and competition and pressure from more players would have made for a much more interesting game, I think. My choices were pretty obvious and the game was rather boring for me and frustrating for Ed. I did really like how many of the cards have a dual purpose to choose between and I liked the cooperative aspect of the game as well. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance soon to try it out with more players.

Blue Moon City in progress

Besides these two games, I’ve also had a chance to play a few old favorites, Flower Power, and Rosenkönig with Shea. Whichever one of us is not taking Kevin to soccer practice that night is subjected to Shea’s begging to play a quick game before bedtime. So, a lot of our shorter, simpler two-player games are being dusted off and revisited, which is nice. I think Ed played Hive and Schotten-Totten with him.

Side note: For those of you who know our family personally, you might be wondering why there isn’t any mention of Son the Elder, Kevin, in this report. Kevin currently has a brutal schedule of schoolwork, soccer and cross-country running. When he has a little downtime, he is likely to be found online playing his addiction, World of Warcraft. Most Saturday nights he is too busy going on “raids” with his “guild” to take the time out to play a mere board game. Since I have a pretty big pile of games to review, I might have to resort to a little parental bullying soon to get a fourth player. :-)

Figaro review

by Susan Rozmiarek
I have posted a review of a new light family card game, Figaro, designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Mayfair Games. I had a few minor issues with it, but overall it is a decent, short filler game. Our ten year old son, Shea, really enjoyed it.

Game Day Report for August 19, 2006

by Susan Rozmiarek
With a month’s worth of weekends taken up by Kevin’s soccer games coming up, Ed and I decided to squeeze in a game day at the last minute. Circumstances were not the best, as Ed has been very ill. (shingles – I don’t recommend it). However, it went pretty well and I think the gaming took Ed’s mind off the pain for a little while.

 

Figaro

This was my third playing of this and it is turning out to be a decent family game or filler with a little bit of strategy to it that becomes more obvious after playing it a few times. I am still not sure I like the method of scoring with the road segments and I definitely don’t like the rule that the winner of the last road gets to exchange their longest road for the shortest one. This seems so powerful and has thrown the game to that person in all three of my games. I might try the game without that rule next time. Shea, our ten year old son, played with Marty, Ed and I and really liked the game. I hope to play this a few more times with my family soon and get a review out.

Hansa

It was off to play Tempus for most of the newly- arrived, leaving Paul, Ed and me looking for a game that plays well with three. Paul suggested Hansa, having only played it online and Ed and I were happy to oblige. After all the new games we’ve been learning lately, it was very nice to sit down and play a familiar game that needed only a quick rules refresher. The idea of this game is to collect some nice goodies for yourself while leaving the ship in a bad spot to deny the next player of the same. Unfortunately, Ed has played this game many times and understands that all too well and I was that next player. Paul did a great job placing markets and it always seemed like we were always paying him to buy goods. I came in last but enjoyed the game as I always do. This is a very simple yet clever game that takes some practice in order to do well.

Susan, Paul and Ed pick up and deliver goods in Hansa.

Emira

I really, really want to like this game, but it just didn’t impress me this first time out of the gate. It has a pretty original theme of sheiks attracting women to their harem, or rather princesses to their palace. The publishers actually did a great job of making the theme not offensive, at least to me. The rules showed a lot of promise of it being a nice “gamer’s game” with hidden goals and shades of Princes of Florence with the auctioning of items to enhance your sheik. The reason you want to enhance your sheik is that your goal is to attract a certain number of princesses to your palace that include a certain combination of skills (cooking, housekeeping, intelligence and romance) as depicted on your secret goal card that you are given at the start of the game. A princess card is turned up each round, and at the end of it, she will go to the sheik that has space in his palace and the highest value in the attribute she prefers. Desirable attributes include appearance, money, status, and a big palace. Everything costs money in this game – the auctions, the items and the upkeep of spoiled princesses - so managing and keeping a steady stream of gold is important. Thrown in are a few other things like event cards and unique princesses.

Sounds neat, right? Well, this is how our game played:

We had a few hotly contested auctions, but for the most part everyone focused on keeping the lead in one or two preferences that included the preference that their sheik had an advantage in at the start of the game. Although it happened once or twice, we found it difficult to overtake somebody in a particular preference once they got ahead. So, especially toward the latter part of the game, it seemed you were just sitting back and hoping to get lucky and have the right princesses turn up.

Plus, some of the princesses have bad effects on them and there was no way to avoid them if you had their preference and they turned up at the wrong time. I REALLY got stung with this bad luck. My sheik's starting preference advantage was an extra palace. The first princess turned up was Suleika, whose preference is the sheik with the biggest palace. Unfortunately, she is also very jealous and requires a payment of a 100 gold any time another princess joins the palace. This is a lot of money at the beginning of the game and sure enough, another palace-loving princess got turned up soon thereafter and I had to take her as well. Besides the extra 100 gold, princesses also require upkeep every turn and I had to suddenly put all my effort into obtaining spice caravans to barely keep afloat. I was hoping to grow my income to the point where I could win the princesses who went to the richest sheik but by that time most had come up and gone to somebody else. I was way too behind in the other preferences to overtake anyone in them. I could only sit back at that point and hope my game winning princess came up. She didn't. She was near the bottom of the deck.

I’m told this game has a high learning curve and I really want to give it the benefit of the doubt because it did win the prestigious Hippodice contest. So, I’m waiting until it becomes more widely available and more people get a chance to play it and comment. Oh, did I mention that the game took over 2.5 hours? That didn’t help bolster our opinion either.

Emira central board.

Mama Mia

Who wouldn’t like a game about pizza that practically requires you to speak with a bad Italian accent? It is so easy to get caught up in all the new releases that one forgets all about the “classics” that now sit invisible on the shelves. This is one of the few memory games that I really enjoy, even though I am pretty lousy at it. As usual, I waited too long to plop down order cards before somebody else did. Toward the end of the game, I got a bit bolder, making some riskier plays and finally fulfilled a few orders. I still ended up in last place.

Ticket to Ride: Märklin

After coming in last place for three straight games, I finally had my revenge. With Marty and Jon slugging it out over the eastern side of the board and Paul and Ed working on the center, I quietly built a long route from top to bottom along the western side of the board. I was able to collect passengers three times along most of this route as well as fulfill several nice destination tickets. I won easily with 158 points, over 20 points ahead of second place. I can’t believe I was left alone but I’m not complaining!

Susan, Jon, Marty, Paul and Ed finishing the night with a game of Ticket to Ride: Märklin.

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