Six Degrees of Tom Lehmann

Tags

bgg, boardgame, card game, dice, race for the galaxy, redesign, tom lehmann, yucata.de

If you play a variety of boardgames then there is likely to be one style of game you prefer over others – whether this be “economic”, “worker placement”, “card drafting”, etc. Similarly there is likely to be games designers you prefer over others, usually by the fact that you have played one of their previous creations. It goes along the line “Oh they did _________ that I love to play, so I’ll probably like this new one by them”. It doesn’t always follow true and you will get a game designer trying something completely different that might just not be “your cup of tea” but more often than not you’ll like the new game if you like their previous ones.

There are several Games Designers who’s games I enjoy playing and would pull an unknown game from a pile if I saw their name on it, but for now I’m briefly discussing Tom Lehmann. Tom wasn’t one of those designers (oh that sounds bad after “bigging it up”, so I’d best elaborate). The game, or family of games,  that Tom is mainly known for is Race for the Galaxy and its expansions – his other games are not as well known. I’m a RftG fan, but hadn’t played any of his other games until 2010 when I pulled Phoenicia out of a pile of mostly unplayed games at a club to give a try and liked it. It was only after the first play (where we actually got the rules wrong!) that I twigged the designer was the same as that for RftG. I was then keen to give it another go, to get the rules correct, and ended up getting my own copy so I didn’t have to rely on the club’s.

Another of Tom’s games is To Court the King, which was published in 2006 the year before both RftG and Phoenicia. I discovered this in 2009, though not as you may have thought from playing it, but because I was into re-theming games. One day browsing on BoardGameGeek I discovered a forum thread saying the theme was “pretty pasted on” and wondering if anyone had considered a retheme. There were a few suggestions but after reading the games theme background where “the players are petitioners at the royal court, trying to gain the King’s favor” it occurred to me that The Godfather might be a choice for a retheme. I’m not saying that my theme suited the game any better, just thought it was a good alternative. I got screenshots from the computer game (and got permission from the publisher for non-commercial use – I was just doing it for fun) did the graphics for a full deck of cards, including new iconography to make them relatively language independent. I made my own copy (via Artscow) put it away before moving on to something else. Did I play it? No, not at that time – lots of reviews said it was Yahtzee with added cards, and whilst I like dice rolling games wasn’t sure, there was much of a game. I have played it since and its a good short game that plays differently depending on the number of players. It has recently been implemented on Yucata board gaming site and become very popular there, so I’ll post about that later.

Finally, to come full circle, I bought another game a few months ago, Starship Merchants, because (a) it was on offer (half price) on Amazon, (b) it sounded like a game I’d like, and last but not least (c) because Tom was a designer for it. So whilst I wasn’t initially aware of many of Tom’s games it does seem that he does design games I like, so in future it will be one of the names that may sway me towards trying an unknown game.

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Jaipur – the latest game in Beta on Yucata

Tags

beta, bgg, boardgame, card game, yucata.de

I do seem to be spending a lot of time on Yucata, but then they do keep implementing more games. The latest game to enter Beta stage is Jaipur a 2-player hand management card game about becoming the Maharaja’s personal trader. It seems a fairly light game and I’m playing a few games so should be able to give a review in a week or so.

Jaipur on Yucata

Although it sounds like a “matter of fact” statement, announcing a game has reached Beta stage is quite an achievement. Firstly lets remember that Yucata is a free games playing site – free to join, free to play and free from adverts! Secondly the games developers are doing it in their spare time, unpaid, so they have the dedication. The process, I believe is something along the lines of this: Games are identified as suitable for asynchronous play-by-web and make a good addition to the games on offer. The publishers are then approached to seek a license, and if granted the game is given to a developer, who is someone who’s offered their services to Yucata for free. Some time later (I think the developer goes off and eventually comes back with something they are happy to progress to beta) it is implemented onto the site, marked at “in beta” and announced on the site to members and all. Most games I’ve tried in Beta are usually bug-free, though the occasional one pops up, what seems to happen is the implementation is tweaked after user suggestions to improve game play. Just the same as having a document proof-read by someone before final submission. After the game has been played a while and people seem to be happy with it, the beta flag is removed.

 

All Too Quiet

Tags

boardgame, ticket to ride, train

This blog has been very quiet, apologies, but it sort of fell off the radar as I was in a new relationship. Still, it’s still here so I can always post again.

I’ve been introducing Michelle to boardgames, although a regular Scrabble player, she hadn’t heard of any of the games I play. The game that has been a big success in Ticket To Ride and we play several games in an evening. I had owned the standard game and 1910 expansion, but none of the others. As we’d played a lot of games on the US map, I decided to buy the India-Switzerland map collection in May – specifically for the 2-player Switzerland map.

The Switzerland map gives some changes to the rules, especially changing how locomotive cards are used. Rather than they simply being a wild-card as in the standard game, they now are only used for tunnel routes. To compensate for this change you now can pick up a locomotive just like any other card (i.e. one of two choices when picked from the face up cards). This change has caused me a frustrated latter game in many plays because you have no wild cards for non-tunnel routes meaning that you can spend a lot of time collecting cards to get the right colour. That said, its just a matter of changing game-play. The number of tickets held is crucial in determining the winner, more so than the standard map where completing longer intercity links can compensate very well for going for less tickets.

Definitely a collection worth buying – even though I haven’t played the India side yet, so lots more play left in the game.

Bargain boardgames in the UK

Tags

bargain, boardgame

Those of you interested in picking up boardgames for a bargain price probably know about T K Maxx and their sporadically stocking of Queen Games boardgames. Well now there is another chain store to check – The Works has just started a promotion on several boardgames, available at £7.99 each. There are several flavours of Scene-it that you might expect in a UK “games sale” from a non-boardgame chain but there is also

• Albion
• Batavia
• Cir-Kis
• Cuba
• Eketorp
• Highland Clans
• Ming Dynasty
• Montego Bay
• Notra Dame
• Royal Palace

Plus others. Not sure if its a one off or regular promotion.

Games display at The Works

Anything goes in Chinatown

Tags

boardgame, negotiation, session, tiles

I played Chinatown last night and came 2nd in a four player game, and although I thought I did okay at the time would probably have done better had I known all the ins and outs – there would have been less “oh you can do that” moments!

Chinatown is a negotiation game played over six rounds where the goal is to end up with the most money. The game comes with a large board depicting Chinatown consisting of 85 plot spaces, numbered plot cards, building tiles, and colour markers for each player. Each round has four phases: “draw”, “negotiation”, “build”, and “income”. In the draw phase you draw plot cards (then discard two of them) and building tiles. You place markers of your colours on the board corresponding to the cards you kept and place the building tiles in front of you. Next comes the negotiation phase and the source of many of my “oh you can do that” moments. Literally everything is up for trade – your counters on the plots, the building tiles in front of you, and your money. In the build phase you may place any building tiles you have on the board spaces where you have your counters. The building tiles are sets of 3, 4, 5, or 6 (there are 3 more tiles than needed for the full set in the game), and you want to place tiles from the same set together (A building is a set of the same type tiles placed orthogonally adjacent to each other with no roads in between) . In the income phase you get paid for the buildings on the board you own depending on their size. A single tile gets you $10K, and two orthogonally connected nets $20k, but larger collections net you more than $10k per tile! You also get a bonus if the building is complete. So if your size 3 building is comprised of Laundry tiles (that are 4 to be complete) you get $30K, but if they were Tea Shop tiles (that need 3 to be complete) you’d get $40k. The income increases greater on larger buildings (a size 5 “incomplete six-type” nets $80k, but a complete five-type nets $110k).

Chinatown is an enjoyable game. Last night the rules were explained to me and seemed fairly straight forward. In the first round I negotiated swapping buildings for buildings and sites for sites, and in the second I realised you could interchange these or add as sweeteners – “I’ll offer you $20K for that Dim Sum” or “swap that marker with that and I’ll give you this tea shop tile”. Then in the third round I realised you could simply buy a plot marker off someone. If I was explaining it to someone else I would really emphasize that everything is negotiable – you can swap similar (e.g. plot markers), swap different (marked spaces for tiles), or simply buy something outright – or any combination. 3-way deals can be quite good too. The game had some sweet moments, like when I agreed a marker swap with Hugo that included buying a tile from Hugo for $50k that gained me the $50k back in come that turn (and as it was turn three I had 3 more incomes at the increased level too). In the end I came a very credible second with $350k, only a few thousand (I think $20k) behind first place and over $100K in front of 3rd place.

Islas Canarias

Tags

boardgame, canary islands, pirates, settlers, spain

A boardgame about the Canary Islands? Ooo sounds intriguing, and as a gamer who does holiday there, I was intrigued as to whether it would possibly make an apt travel game? After all it can be fun playing boardgames in their themed locations: Carcassonne, Alhambra, and Puerto Rico are games that people have done (see boardgamegeek for photographic evidence).

Islas Canarias is a game about the settlement of the Canary Islands – each player takes one island playing board, which are differently shaped but containing the same number of land plot spaces. The boards each contain a set of features adjacent to the landplots: mountain, coast, river, road, village, and a farm, which vary in the number of plots adjacent to it (so an island will have 5 spaces next to one feature and other islands will have 4 or 3), with each island being strong at something. new players seem to want the bigger islands or moan if they’ve got a small island, but each has its strengths.

Look at the islands and you will see each has 5 spaces next to 2 features, 4 next to another 2, and 3 next to the final 2.

There is a deck of settler cards, of which each player starts with a hand of five. Each card depicts a settler with their occupation in Spanish and depicting the colour house they want to live in and a priority preference of where they want to live. On your turn you can do one of two things and then compulsory do a final action – you can either play a settler card to place a house on your island (of the colour stated on the card, and its placed according to the priority depicted on the card e.g. next to the mountain, if there’s no free space there then next to a red house, otherwise …) or pick up three cards; the final action of your turn is to place a card on the settlement ship (so if you start your turn with one card you must choose to pick up to be able to place a card in the ship). At the end of each round the cards placed on the ship by everyone are shuffled and one placed aside (so the card you put in may not come out this time), they are then “settled” according to the priority i.e. given to the player who has most free spaces next to the settlers priority, with ties going down to the next order of priority. Of course you have to place the settler in a highest available space, so meaning you now have less spaces. Your spaces this way can quickly fill, luckily there is a way to free up spaces. Houses are worth 1 point, but if you have 2 houses in the same colour you can exchange these for 1 palace (that has to go on one of the spaces vacated by the houses) worth 3 points (or 2 points if you already have 1 in that colour). You can also upgrade to Town settlements, worth 5 points, by converting 3 houses of that colour. A rule I missed on first couple of plays is you cannot upgrade a palace and a house into a town, which is quite important as it makes you more vulnerable to pirates in the meantime!

So this is a game about using cards to place houses on your island directly and hopefully via the ship (if you have the most favourable space). There is more to this game though in the terms of privileges and pirates. The first player in each colour to build a palace gets the privilege card for that colour (other players may take these later if they get more points in that colour) that gives you a special power. these are

• Win all ties
• Draw 5 cards when not building
• Use houses of different colours when building a palace
• Build wherever you want
• Take extra card every turn
• Protected from pirate attacks

The settler deck consists of 54 settlers and 6 pirates (one in each colour). A player may not play a pirate on their island, but can place it in the ship. When a pirate comes out they attack the owner of that colours privilege, who then has to place a house (of any colour) back into supply (if they have the pirate protection privilege they can determine another player to be attacked). If the privilege isn’t out its the player with most points in that colour with ties meaning all tied players put one house back.

The game carries on until one player reaches 19 points and then the game ends at the end of that round (so it is possible for someone else to win with more points or even the player who reached 19 to then lose points via the pirates!).

This game was described to me by one friend as just a puzzle solving game, but I don’t see it that way. It is about being aware of which features you are strong in each round (to hopefully get settlers via the ship) and deciding when to upgrade to palaces or go for towns. It is quite a short game, playing in about 45 minutes, though this can be longer if players are deliberating far too much each turn. The mechanics are quite simple to pick up but with more to it than a quick filler. Maybe I will take it on holiday next time.

Is it a train … game, or book

Tags

boardgame, book, catastrophe, english, environmental, german, swarm

On Sunday I went to play some boardgames, which often includes games I have never played before. One of the games we played was Der Schwarm by Kosmos, which was carefully unwrapped by Jon as all looked on.
Kosmos is book publishing company so amongst the games they publish is a line of literature-based games of which The Swarm, to give it it’s name in English, is one. Based on the novel by Frank Schätzing where the world is facing an ecological catastrophe caused by previously unknown marine life forms. Each player represents a nation sending their scientists out to confront the threat. Although we played the German version, you may be pleased to know that Z-Man games have now published an English edition (the game itself is fairly language neutral, its only the rules and player quick-ref boards that were in German).

The game has a central player board on which shuffled tiles are placed face-down to form uncharted sea surrounded by land squares (where players may start from and form new bases on). The tiles show either 2, 3, or 4 connection swarm patterns and in the game you collect these then place them down to form connected networks. Around the edge of the board is a score track and each player starts on 20 research points, so obviously meaning they can go down when spent. Hmm this sounds like a train game. Around the edge of the board are placed Action Cards, and players rotate in player order selecting a card, the first available card costs zero, opting to take the second instead costs you one research point, the third instead two points and so on. Cards are shifted to close gaps after one has been chosen. So that’s why a positive point balance is needed at the start. The Action card line consists of 13 cards (which are shuffled and randomly placed each round) as we were playing 4 players, 3 or 3 player games have less, followed by two blue special action cards (the game has 6, 2 used each round), a green research station action,  finally followed by a stack of turn-order cards where you choose what order you want to play the turn at and select a special power for the turn. The action cards allow specific actions such as build research station (where you place a station and a researcher on that station), place/move a ship (so you can pick up undiscovered sea tiles into your hand), utilise a researcher (place additional researcher on a base, or place down network tiles upto the total number of researchers you have on the board), and monster moves.

The game consists of three turns, on each you take turns selecting action cards (paying the requisite research points if you opt to not take the first one available), once all action and turn order cards have gone you then (in the new turn order) take turns performing an action card. Each player also has a Joker card to give them an additional action that can be used so long as action cards are left to be played, which is nice as it allows any action to be carried out even if you don’t manage to grab the required card. Once all actions ave been carried out each player has their largest network scored. Then onto the next round. After the final round there are bonus points scored for having bases on 2,3, or all 4 sides and another if you have connected those bases to the central Swarm Queen square.

If you have played railway games I’m sure there are some aspects of the above that sound awfully familiar to you. It does have some nice aspects like the monster attack actions where points are deducted from whoever the monster attacks and added to your score, the number of points is dependent on how far they are along the track (and if they have chosen the special turn-order ability of reducing attacked scores by one). Mike, who won the game, decided it was best to keep his score down to avoid attraction of monster attacks but ultimately ignore their threat and concentrate on building a network.

On the initial reading of the rules, I wasn’t the only one who thought “hmm sounds like a train game” and Mike who I don’t mind admitting is better at train games than me got a winning strategy sussed. It was an enjoyable game, though I came third only because Richard who ended in 4th as the last action of the game did a monster attack on two  of my bases. That probably sounds bitter, and it isn’t meant to – I knew I hadn’t won and hadn’t done enough to secure 2nd, but it sounds dramatic if I say “oh if it wasn’t for that last action of the game by the player in last place”.

Having played the game once I would play it again, especially as I would now say “don’t be afraid to spend research points”.  I have played several economic train games where “money is tight” and a bad choice or two can lose you the game so I was over cautious on paying more than one or two points for an action. On hindsight it is worth doing if it allows you to complete what you need to do in the round. In the final round if I had spent 4 instead of 1 point to grab a researcher instead of a ship I would have been able to score 30 for 3 bases instead of 10 for 2 (plus  an additional 4-7 points dependent on which space it was placed) and been 2nd or even first if I’d denied Mike. Of course if Jon, who ended as second had done similar (he mentioned at the end he should have got another researcher as he ended with an under utilised ship action), then he could have won. Mike had said he’d gambled on a last round dash to win, and it paid off because he ignored monster attacks whilst others hadn’t (Jon stated he expected me to use a crab attack action to bypass my two bases, so he ensured he got the monster defence turn-order privilege, though I opted to use my joker to increase my network size).