Sea Monsters, 17th Century Farming and Citadels

Well, once again we had our weekly Tuesday night gaming.  This week there was 5 of us - Brian G., Mike R., Tracy, Tom and myself.

That sea monster in the lower right just ate my ship  :(

Tom was running late, so we started - like last week - with a game of Tsuro of the Seas.  Tracy had seen us finish up our game last week, but had not played.  Once again, we opted to not play with the Sea Monsters, so it was just "regular" Tsuro.  With only 4 players, and a 7x7 grid...I'm not sure that the game is terribly exciting.  We all spent the first 75% of the game away from each other until of course the tiles forced us together.  I was the first one out, followed by Tracy, and Brian finally won...and once again we nearly filled the board with tiles.  Tom arrived near the end, and we decided to play another game, and this time we added the monsters.  It's certainly a more tense game, with the random luck factor added in.  We played it correctly this time around (I think), so there was less fiddleness, but I have to say that I'm still not sold on the monsters.  It just seems like too much luck.  Maybe if we took out one or two...we started with 5 in our 5 player game.  On the other hand, as I mentioned, it does create some tense moments.  Brian was surrounded by two monsters at one point, and had to survive everyone's dice rolling until it came to his turn again.  Not only did he survive...he went on to win the game...again.

Little sheep...where are your boar and cattle buddies?

I had brought a few games that hadn't made it to the table in a while...and when Tom got there, he immediately zeroed in on my copy of Agricola.  This, of course, is one of the classics of the eurogame genre, but it's not necessarily for beginners.  Tom had heard about the game, but had yet to play it.  Tracy also had never played it.  Bearing that in mind, we opted for the "family game" where we played without occupations and minor improvements.  I immediately went down the path of expanding my home, in preparation for later family growth.  At one point, I noticed that the fireplaces and ovens were going fast, so I grabbed one before there were none left to be had.  I had also gathered enough clay to upgrade my house.  I was gathering a lot of resources, but I wasn't actually putting anything on my farm.  No animals, wheat or veggies.  I managed to fence in a nice 3X2 pasture at one point and got some sheep going, and also managed to purchase the well.  I never got my food engine going so that I was comfortable adding another family member.  I made a terrible mistake at one point with wood, passing on building more fences because I wanted to gather more wood to build an even larger pasture.  I completely missed the fact that I didn't have enough fence pieces left to build that larger pasture...and had to resort to filling squares with stables.  Brian was the only person to perform family growth fairly early in the game, but he also missed the opportunity to get anything that could cook animals...so he had feeding problems, and had to take a begging card.  I thought this would hurt him...but in the end he won by 9 points.  He had 28, Mike had 19, I was at 18 and Tom and Tracy were in the 11-12 area.  That extra worker really made the difference for Brian, even though he had to feed him.

I've been torn in the past about occupations and minor improvements.  In some respects I feel like it's too much.  But I have also been in the position many times of teaching the game to new players, so we default to the family game.  I now wonder if that's the smart thing to do.  I am wondering if the family game is harder than the regular game, in the sense that you don't have those extra cards to help get your production engine going.  In the family game, it's hard to keep your family fed each turn, and actually do things on your farm.  So, in the future, I think I may lean towards playing with the cards, even with new players.

I'm the Warlord.  Or I would be, if I hadn't been assassinated.

Last but not least was a game of Citadels.  This game has become our go-to for the last year or two as a end-of-the-night game.  Especially at conventions, where it's not unknown to be playing Citadels at 1 or 2 AM.  Somehow we didn't break it out at Prezcon, though, and it's been a while since we've played it after work.  I had been sitting between Tom and Tracy, and I had the uncomfortable moment where Tom insisted that they had played this game before, and Tracy absolutely denied it.  However, it got a lot more uncomfortable when we started playing, as I kept getting assassinated.  Four times, I believe, three of them in a row.  There's a number of people that don't like this game because of the fact that you can get assassinated or robbed quite a bit.  On Tuesday, it was my turn in the barrel.  I really like this game as a 3-player, because you get two roles to play each turn, but I like it even with only one role each.  The people that tend not to like it seem to think that it's very random, but I disagree.  This game is all about getting in your opponents heads...and figuring out which role they've picked, and making them think you've picked a different role than you really have.  Unfortunately, we did miss one rule in the game, as Tom declared victory, we noticed that he had 3 of the same buildings in his "citadel"...but hey...we should have caught that when he played the first duplicate.

Dueling Blogs

Who thought I'd ever use this picture in the blog?

Cue the "Dueling Banjos" music....oh here you go...There's only 1 banjo!  Well, we had our weekly game night on Tuesday, and my buddy Paul Owen was there...and already blogged about it over at Man Overboard.  So two blogs about the same exact event...that's not too many is it?  In any case, Paul already beat me to the punch (I think he "Crenshawed" me...)...but I'm happy to report on the night as well, and offer my opinions on the games played.  (For the record, I'm the guitar player in that clip, and Paul is the banjo player.  Wait, bad things happened to the guitar player later...)

Watch out for the Daikaiju!

We were expecting a large crowd, possibly up to 8 players, but we got impatient waiting for the late arrivals, and 5 of us played Tsuro of the Seas.  This is the sequel to Tsuro, which I had first seen on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop.  The original Tsuro is a tile laying game, where the objective is simple...be the last person on the board.  Tsuro of the Seas takes the exact same mechanic, gives the players boats instead of stones, and adds in "Daikaiju"- sea monsters which can gobble up your ship, and also erase tiles that have already been played, which can potentially change routes on the board.  I picked TotS a few months ago when they had a copy on the shelf at my FLGS, Game Parlor Chantilly.  The great thing about TotS, is that if you want to...you can leave out the sea monsters and play it just like regular Tsuro.  Which is exactly what we did on Tuesday.  When we first broke out TotS several months ago, it left us all a little disappointed...while luck of the tile draws is part of the original game, the sea monster element seemed to totally override any kind of strategy decisions and make the game entirely luck based.  No fun!  Now, as it happens, we had been playing it incorrectly those first few times.  We were rolling individual dice for each monster, which lent itself to a lot of fiddliness, and the crazy luck factor...particularly, it gave a bunch of extra chances for additional monsters to enter the game.  In reality, you roll ONE die per turn, and apply that result to all the monsters.  I have played it correctly as a 2-player with my wife, and it's MUCH better than our original plays.  But still, on this night we decided to play it as "regular" Tsuro...partly because we wanted a fast game as we knew we had more people slated to arrive.  We had a tense game, with the entire board actually filling with tiles, and Paul managed to hang on and be the last survivor. 


 

Here at Ad Astra, we prefer "Rocket Fuel"

With 2 more players arriving, for 7 total, we broke out VivaJava: The Coffee Game.  As Paul mentions in his banjo blog, we first ran across VivaJava when the designer, T.C. Petty III, was demoing his playtest version at the 2011 WBC.  I believe Paul had a few chances to sit in on further playtests, but that was my one and only game, before I picked it up this year at Prezcon (I'm sorry that I somehow missed the kickstarter compaign).  So, why, 1.5 years removed from my one play, did I pick it up.  Well, a couple of reasons.  First, I've met TC, and Chris Kirkman (head honcho and namesake of DiceHateMe games) and Chris' wife (and partner in DHM Games) Cherilyn (I bet I botched that spelling) several times since then...and quite frankly, I really like what they're doing as a new game company.  So, I want to support them.  Second, VivaJava is a non-coop (sort of) game that holds up to 8 players, and does it well...that's rare.  Third - and most important - that one gameplay at WBC had really stuck with me...it was a game that I was dubious of at first (I'm not a coffee drinker, so the theme holds no great appeal) - but really surprised me with the innovative game play.

Note how far the red token is ahead...how'd that happen?

So, what is VivaJava?  Well, it's a game about brewing coffee, naturally!  In this game, you're competing against the other players to gain the most "prestige points", mainly by brewing the "best" brands of coffee.  The "innovative mechanic" here is that on each turn you will likely have to team up with 1 or 2 other players in order to advance your goals.  At the beginning of each turn, you place your pawn on a map of the world.  This accomplishes 3 things - you collect a bean that was assigned to your space, you get positive or negative effects based on tokens on the board, and you are grouped with other players in a team for that round.  As a team, you have to decide to "blend" or "research" that round.  Research grants you 3 research points in order to advance along a number of research tracks, which will gain you benefits such as extra bean collection, being able to weed out your beans, investing in other brews, etc.  If you choose to blend, the team must cooperate to pull beans blindly out their "roasters" (cloth bags), to create "poker hands" of colored beans.  The better the poker hand, the higher that brew will rate, and the more prestige points are awarded to those players.  Players must discuss among their team a strategy on how to draw beans...judging the probability that certain players will draw favored beans.  Score also determines turn order each round.  Keep doing this round after round (likely teaming with different players each round) until one of several end conditions are met.

End game scoring...I'm the "natural" token  :(

In our game, Paul and I managed to explain the game well enough to get everyone else going, and once we playing, the initial confusion gave way to understanding.  The Youtube video I had watched the night before helped a lot!  As Paul mentioned in his blog, we had a variety of play styles in our game, including folks going long on research, but in the end the slow and steady pace of Paul's coworker Stacy won the game for her.  My first play of the published version convinced me I made a good decision in picking this one up - this is great for a larger group, with very unique play mechanics.  I really like the competitive/coop yin-yang of the game.  Other reviews have stated they think gameplay with lower numbers of players isn't as good, and I can see the logic there, but I need to try myself before passing judgement.

After VivaJava, we broke into two smaller groups, of 3 and 4.  One group played Navegador, which was my pleasant surprise at WBC this past year.  I realize now that I never heard how their game went.  Instead, I taught Paul, Tracy, and Tracy's husband Tom how to play Spartacus.  I've been talking a lot about Spartacus in the last few entries, so I won't do much of a recap here.  See "Man Overboard" for Paul's impressions - one of the reasons we played is that Paul had been really itching to learn it.  I will say this...Paul got right into the spirit of the bribery and backstabbing element of the game.  That aspect was definitely kicked up a notch over our last few sessions, and I think it made the game better.  We played the "normal" length game, where all started with 4 influence, and we ran a bit long, and ended early.  When Paul went for the win, he discarded all his gladiators, slaves and guards to get to 12 influence, but we were able to knock him back down.  In the final auction, I bid all of my money to be host...specifically so I could get the influence point for being host, and so I could invite Paul, who with no gladiators or slaves had to decline, thus losing an influence point.  I won via tiebreaker (which is supposed to be combat...but again, Paul had no gladiators...).  Really glad I picked this one up, and I'm looking forward to the expansion which will add more houses, and allow for combat larger than one on one. 

One last note...I had mentioned that last week I had played Castle Panic with my kids.  It's  fun little coop for what it is - a family game.  However, I had discovered that there was an expansion - The Wizards Tower.  I promptly ordered it from Amazon, and it arrived on Wednesday, and my son immediately wanted to play.  Wizards Tower adds, well...a wizards tower - which replaces a standard
tower, and allows you to trade in regular castle cards for wizard cards.  The wizard cards can have very lethal consequences for the monsters...which you need, because there's new monsters included in the expansion, many of which are doozies...particularly the "mega bosses", which can have up to 5 hitpoints, and possibly set your castle on fire.  Among new "normal" monsters, there are flying creatures such as gargoyles that can only be hit by archers and heroes, goblin cavalry which move 2 spaces, climbing trolls that ignore walls, and others.  I really think this expansion improves the base game by quite a bit.  I still doubt I'd break it out with my gaming buddies, but it's definitely a step up in complexity and decision making for kids that have gotten used to the base game.  So, I definitely recommend it if you have the base game and enjoy playing that.

Well, weekend plans are a little in flux, but I still hope to get to a Tabletop Day event...likely at the new game store I just discovered opened literally down the street from my house (OK, down and over...).  Until then...game on!