The Tao of Gaming

... since I don't have time for a full review.

• Time's Square -- Fun tug-of-war where you sometimes push the rope. Part of the Kosmos 2-player line, by Knizia. Suprisingly strong theme, at least for me. Review later.
• Jumpin Monkeys -- Fling things. Leaping Monkey Style! Something to cleanse the palate before ...
• Thurm und Taxis -- Played again, won handily with the 'play five routes and end the game'. Inoffensive game, but I suspect that strategy executed efficiently will dominate. Others have had the same thought, tested it, and found otherwise.
• Um Krone und Kragen -- I like Tom's new dice game (which I had saw several years ago) and have played ~10 times. Not with the right rules, mind you.
• Guns 'N Cash -- Another palate cleanser, oozing theme. And styrofoam guns.
• Blue Moon City -- We hit an endgame problem, which seems odd for a Knizia. Perhaps it works if everyone's at the same level. On the other hand, I have no strong urge to play again.

More later? Probably not. I'll start writing full reviews after I get home and recover. (I'll also look over my notes, which I don't have with me).

• Times Square, the latest 2 player game in the Kosmos line (I believe), is a weird two-player tug-of-war card game where you are tugging five people (towards your bar), but the people are all special. I only got to play once, but it was intriguing. Have to try again.
• The Architects of Cleopatra -- looks stunning, plays average. Now, we had played with five players and I've heard that four is best. I personally think three would be better. It's not quite a fixed-fun game, but it's probably better with fewer players.
• California played well, but we only played with three, which I think helped. I hadn't heard of this, and not sure how to describe it. But it has a novel theme. You furnish your houses to impress your guests & neighbors. Apparently California has a higher class of guests and neighbors.
• We got in a teaching game of Here I Stand. Despite the clean looking rulebook, we did get a few questions that we had to just shrug and move on. My opinion of the game is dropping, but I'd like to try again (possibly the shorter 3-turn game that starts with people in a more advanced position) to see if my suspicions about this are confirmed.

In any case, this is all single playings. I'd play all again and I'd consider buying any of them (for different reasons).

Since Doug asked, the Roma house rules (from Mark Delano & Mike Fitzgerald, although I don't know if they developed them).

1. The second player gets an extra VP at start (to compensate for attacks they may suffer on the first turn).
2. No player may place more earn more than $6 or draw more than 6 cards per turn.

I've played ten games (and watched several more) and we usually see losses from lack of VPs, instead of running out (via the Forum). The forum is certainly powerful, but there are 6 of them out of 52 cards.

As for yesterday's games, I forgot to mention Mauer Bauer, described as "A Colovini game you won't hate." And what do you know, I don't hate it! [I find most of his games cold and dry]. Players take turns dividing a triangular grid by placing walls, then rolling dice to indicate what color tower you place, and what two colors of buildings you place. But if you have two open tower spots (at the intersection between walls) you pick which space the obligatory tower goes, and can pick the other space. You also get to decide which side of the wall to place each building (they must be on seperate sides). When the walls form a city (via a closed loop), each player scores.

The trick here is that each player has a hand of cards that indicate how you score. These run the gamut, for example:

• Score two points for each white tower in the recently completed city,
• Score 6 points if the city is only one triangle big,
• Score based on the number of colors in the city,
• Score for each [wall/ white tower /etc] that is not part of a city,
• Score houses [of a certain color/in a certain region] not in cities

And, each time there is scoring, you can play one or two cards, but you only draw one, decreasing your hand size for the game. Or you can decline to score, and discard a card to draw two. When a city finishes, before scoring the player who closed it can merge it with an adjacent city, too.

And there are a few other complications, but that's it.

Overall, Mauer Bauer has enough randomness (via dice, and scoring cards) to keep it from registering as an abstract. And it fills the 'mid-length' niche fairly well (I think our game took 45-60 minutes, but it was everyone's first game). I played with four, and I think it would be better with three. Is it a great game? No, but I'd certainly play it again. Of his thirty odd games (listed on the geek), I've played exactly one game multiple times (Europa 1945-2030, two or three plays). I doubt I'll play it again. No other game got a repeat play. It's safe to say that I'm not Colovini's biggest fan. After one play, I consider Mauer Bauer a cute 45 minute game. Not mindless, but not too heavy.

Nothing new today (other than TTR: Marklin, which I already discussed). However, I have cast stones, read the stars, and generally asked around. And I see Here I Stand in the future.

A few new games:

Ticket to Ride Marklin -- Alan Moon has described Ticket to Ride as a game of chicken. 'Everyone wants to keep drawing cards to get to long routes, but wait too long and you get cut off.' I certainly see that with Marklin. Whenever you place a route, you can place a passenger. And you have a fourth turn type ... move a passenger along the board, picking up scoring chits. You also have a card that lets your passenger take one leg on an opponents train. So now you want to build a nice long route with lots of stops (since the tokens are based on stations), but if you wait too long other passengers can swoop in and take the better tokens. Tickets are split into long and short routes, several destinations are foreign countries, that have several stations (but serve as endpoints) that are equivalent from a ticket standpoint. And a very interesting board, with half the map being small grey routes. It's still Ticket to Ride, but didn't add the randomness of Europe. It may not be to everyone's tastes, but my gut feeling says that those who like TTR but thought it was a bit light may like this. I may buy it.

Yesterdays long game was Indonesia, which I loved at the three hour mark and merely liked when it ended at five hours. Our game had a two turn pause that most games won't, so I suspect that it was an oddity. One player has now played roughly a dozen times, and said all the games felt different. An amazing accomplishment, if true. (As with Caylus, all the luck is in setup).

Roma adds another filler to my growing arsenal. After my initial few plays, I think I've played ~8 more times. So it's already on the 10+ list. We do play with house rules, but I'll almost certainly be getting this.

Thurm und Taxis appears very popular. I got to play yesterday and I can respect that opinion. One player compared it to showmanager (with respect to drafting cards), but you pick up locations and have to build a long chain of routes, with lots of different scoring constraints. That's a good description, but here's what I'm thinking -- in showmanager (et al) you don't have much forward planning. But here you have quite a bit of planning ... what routes you want, how you are going to get scoring chits (which you can earn for filling areas with houses, putting at least one house in each area, making long deliveries (which take time but don't necessarily give more houses), and optimally handling the timing of routes. A planning game, but you have the showmanager card drawing mechanic. I think there's a dissonance there, but it was enjoyable enough. I think this will eventually trigger my Tikal reaction and I'll stop playing after my 3rd or 4th game. [Tikal Reaction -- a game that I think has strategy but that doesn't hold my interest when it's not my turn.]

More later ...

And the answer is -- yes, they do have a business center! Anyway, it's hours aren't as convenient as I'd like (closed from 11pm to 6am? What gives?), so I'll keep this brief.

Played my first game of Hacienda, which seemed fine. There are apparently multiple rule-sets (basic, advanced, and it sounds like plenty of options that people can mix and match ... possibly at their peril). Anyway, played the basic game and it seemed fine. I'd like to try it again, but I wonder if this game isn't fundamentally too Tikal-like for my long term tastes. Arguing for Tikal is the three action points per turn, arguing against is card and money management. I think that the cards (and cash) move this game far enough away from Tikal-ness for my tastes. But I liked all of those games well enough after one play, too.

Played two games of Roma (with a variant rule). It's a nice, short- to middlin- game. Players take turns rolling three dice, and have a card (building or character) that they've assigned to each number, some numbers being empty. You spend dice activating those cards, or earning money, or drawing cards, but you can only keep one card per turn.

You lose a VP for each number you don't have covered, but many of the cards force your opponent to remove their cards. You win when either player runs out of VP or the bank breaks (most VP wins). Seemed nice, although I have plenty of short games. One hint for future game designers. When you have the reference section of cards that explain all their semi-obscure symbols: Alphabetical order.

I know, I know, random order seemed like a good idea at the time. But trust me.

Another dice game -- Um Krage or Kronen (that's not exact). Her you start with three dice, and have to roll certain combinations to get you more people. For example, a roll of a pair gets the bauer, a total of 15+ gets the schnitzengruben, etc. These people provide powers (like more dice and dice manipulation). These let you get better people (like the guy you need a five of a kind to get). Eventually someone gets the king (who needs 7 of a kind). Then you enter an elimination round where you are just trying to make the best X-of a kind, and whoever makes it wins.

Krage is a mid-length game. Perhaps 30-45 minutes. Although with fewer players (we played five) it comes down I imagine.

And, of course, I played that game I won't mention. Three times. And Caylus. And even a quick game of Twilight Struggle.

If you want a full report, Rick Thornquist is typing next to me. He was here when I got in. He's still here now that I've finished published. So I guess he has more to say. And pictures!