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!

More Gladiators...and building Kingdoms

What to do with all those gladiators?

Well, we had our regular Tuesday night "After School Special", and out came Spartacus again.  Brian had yet to play, so we broke it out with Mike R. and Carson.  We played the "standard" game this time, with each house starting at 4 influence.  This made the early game a little slower, as more negotiating needed to be done to play those mid-level intrigue cards.  The others had gone to 6 or 7 influence be the time I got around to gaining some.  I had 2 cards called "Sate Roman Appetites", which gave +1 influence to a Dominus with at least 4 ready gladiators.  I went a on a spending spree, at one point having 5 gladiators.  The stars of my stable were Gannicus and Varro.  Varro never fought a match, but his special ability gave me a gold anytime - during any combat - where 3 hits were scored.  He must have earned me 10-12 gold over the course of the game.

Gannicus vs. Theokeles

Gannicus was my star in the arena...or so I thought.  With stats of 4-4-4, he's the equal to Spartacus himself, and his special ability is that he wins ties as an attacker.  However, when brought to battle, he had to face Theokeles, from Carson's stable.  Theokeles is one of the promo cards I picked up at Prezcon, and has stats of 5-5-2 (but no special ability).  I had armed Gannicus with a net, which allowed  him to automatically win initiative once during the match...but I hardly needed it, rolling 4 dice to Theokeles 2.  However, the dice gods were not kinds to me...I don't think I rolled over a 3 the whole match.  Most bets were placed on me, and I still think Gannicus has the edge, being able to win ties.  But it was not to be, as Theokeles absolutely dominated.  Gannicus was lucky to escape with just an injury, and not be decapitated.  I was able to heal him, and he later triumphed in the arena.

Carson started to pull away, and with the help of Brian and Mike, I was able to knock him down a few pegs with an intrigue card.  However, a turn later, he was able to play 4 cards to shoot from 8 to 12 influence and win the game.  I was able to block one of his cards, but he had yet another.  Brian and I both has other cards that could have likely blocked the win, but we didn't get them out quickly enough.  Note to self...the end game can occur quickly. 

After Spartacus, we tried out Kingdom Builder.  This is an interesting game, in which there's a ton of randomization...including some of the rules!  The board is assembled using several random "sectors".  Several tokens are placed on the board, according to pre-printed images.  The board consists of 5 types of playable terrain (prairie, flowers, forest, crevasse, desert), and 2 impassable types (mountains, water).  On your turn, you draw a card, which will be one of the 5 playable types, and then you have to play 3 houses on that terrain...but you have to play them adjacent to previously played pieces, if possible.

Building Kingdoms

If you ever play next to a token, you get to keep that token and use it's special ability for the rest of the game.  The special abilities are randomized.  In our game, we could add a 4th house, move a house from one location to another, play on the board edge, or add a house to the end of a straight line.  The other thing that is randomized are the scoring rules.  These are randomly drawn cards.  In our game, we scored by having long horizontal rows of houses, a point per grouping of houses, and a point per house in the sector with the least amount of houses. 

I finished 2nd, behind Mike R.  It's an interesting game, a bit of an abstract brain-burner.  My first impression was "meh"...but I have found myself thinking about it somewhat.  It's not on my "must own" list by any stretch...but I'd definitely play again if it came out.

A few odds and ends...

I always pay my debts

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to drop in the Game Parlor when I dropped off the boy at a birthday party across the street in Chantilly.  I found Mike R. and his buddy Paul in there, setting up Triumph of Chaos, themed to the Russian Civil War.  That looked like a meaty game, with a lots of cardboard counters and a rulebook printed in size 8 font.  While he continued to set up, Mike encouraged me to teach Paul Battles of Westeros.  This game is kinda sorta related to the "Command and Color" series of games - Memoir '44, Battle Cry, Battlelore, etc.  However, I maintain that it's a step up in complexity, doing away with the left/center/right system of card play, replacing it with command and order tokens, used to issue cards from your leaders.  I taught Paul using the opening scenario, with Lannisters attacking Starks across a river.  We had to leave it after 3 of 5 rounds, and the outcome was still in dispute.  I don't think I (as the Lannisters) would have been able to achieve victory (capturing 2 specific hexes) in the 2 turns left to me.  In 3 turns, yes, my cavalry would have mowed him down...but 2 turns didn't leave me enough time to cross the river, I don't think.  BoW is yet another game I really really need to play more.  I think all but 1 time I've played, I've played that same opening scenario.

Jumpin to hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy!

On Tuesday, a very special package arrived...my wave 2 ships for X-Wing that I had ordered some months ago.  Yes, the Falcon is as sweet as she looks.  I had ordered all the wave 2 ships (Falcon, Slave I, A-Wings and TIE Interceptors)...but when I was at GP on Saturday, I broke down and bought their last remaining Slave I as well.  Hey...the Battlefoam I ordered has space for 2 Slave I's, so I can't do anything less than use those spaces, right?  Of course, now I need more of the small ships to fill all those spaces as well....

Lastly...congratulations to Ben Rosset, who officially announced that Dice Hate Me games will be publishing Brew Crafters, which I reviewed the prototype of in my Prezcon blogs (known then as "BrewMasters".  Also congrats to TC Petty III, who is following Viva Java with a dice version. 

PREZCON - Part 5

Well, this should be the last installment of my recap of PREZCON 2013.  And I thought I was going to do this in 2 blog posts.  Ha!

Sunday is always bittersweet at Prezcon...it seems to arrive too fast, and well...wait, I'm not sure there's anything "sweet" about it....just bitter.  There's kind of a frantic-ness to it as you try and squeeze in a few more games before you check out and hit the road.  There's several finals on Sunday morning, but there are typically a few heats left for some late starting game.  There's traditionally the last heat of Settlers of Catan before the head right into quarter/semi/finals.  But that's at 0800 - for God's sake, don't they know people have been up playing 2R1B the night before?!?!  There's usually RoboRally that morning, which I always seem to miss.  Brian swore he was playing that this year...didn't happen.  Lastly, there's a few heats of 7 Wonders on Sunday morning.  Two years ago, when 7W was the new hotness, I learned it on one day, and then advanced all the way to the finals (where, sadly I finished 4th.)  My luck hasn't been quite the same since, but I figured that's how I would spend my Sunday morning.  Instead, I talked a little to Ben Rosset during our Pitchcar session the night before, and spent Sunday morning having him demo his new design for me....

Brewmasters

I first heard about this prototype game when Paul Owen returned from UnPub and raved about it in this blog post.  To quote Paul from that entry, "I am convinced that "Brewmasters" stands to outshine Agricola in the worker-placement genre".

Now, I work with a lot of military personnel, and if there's one thing you need to know about the military...it's that they love their acronyms.  One that has been popping up recently is BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front, where they will give the "bottom line" of a briefing at the beginning, and then dive into the details.  So, let me give you the BLUF on Brewmasters - I agree with Paul's assessment 100%, I loved this game almost immediately, and I would pick it in a heartbeat over Agricola. 

Now, I apologized to Ben while we were playing, and I'll apologize again now for all the comparisons to Agricola, as I'm sure every designer wants their game to stand alone.  But I think a compare and contrast is very appropriate in this case.  I like Agricola quite a bit, but there a few bugaboos for me.  The minor improvement and profession cards can create an unfair advantage for a player depending on the random draw, and while blocking players from certain action spaces and having to always feed your family creates a certain tension...sometimes that tension crosses the line to outright annoyance.

But, how about Brewmasters?  In this game, you are the owner/manager of a small independent craft brewery.  Get out of here, Budweiser and Coors with your mass-produced watered down dreck!  Your brewery starts out pretty basic, with limited capacity to store ingredients and a modest production line.  You have two workers or actions (not sure what these disks represented - me, as the owner, and maybe 1 partner?) that you place on an Agricola-style board to take certain actions.  Once each action space is taken, it is blocked for other players in that round.  These actions include gathering certain ingredients, collecting money, etc.  Some of the squares will continue to gather resources if they're not used, ala some of the resource spaces in Agricola (there's that comparison again!)  However, after that, it is time to put your shift(s) to work in the brewery.  You start off with 1 shift, but can gain up to 2 more during the game.  On the brewery actions board, you can use the same actions as other players, or even use the same actions multiple times yourself (assuming you have multiple shifts).  And this is the heart of the action - where you improve your brewery, research new breakthroughs, and actually "process beer" (i.e. brew a new batch, and move anything else down the line to eventually ship).

I made sure to add a brewpub to my operation

Now, I should mention that in our game, Ben replaced one of the brewery actions (which was to grab a specialty recipe for your sole use) with instead leaving all recipes available to everyone for the entire game...with a +2 VP bonus for the first person to brew a certain recipe.  I should also mention that he has the beers split into 3 broad categories...ales, stouts and porters.  (The beer nerd in me wants to point out that beer is really broken down into only two categories - ales and lagers, and that stouts and porters are really types of ale...but Ben has put a lot of effort into this, and that may be unnecessary detail.  Or maybe a clever ploy for future expansions.).  In any case, you have to brew the basic "ale", "stout" or "porter" before you move on to any specialty recipes in those categories. 

Over the course of the game you can improve your brewery by adding more storage, increasing your production capacity, adding a brewpub, etc.  All players can add these things.  You can also hire specialty workers, establish co-ops with local famers, etc...but only one player can get each worker, etc.  These are like the professions/minor improvements in Agricola...except that they are out there on the table, available for anyone...no blind hands of cards!

In our game, Ben coached me through some initial rookie mistakes (there's a lot to take in here), and in the end I ended up winning by a fair amount (though I'm sure Ben was experimenting with different things on his side).  It's not a perfect game, not quite yet.  The difference in our score was mainly due to me increasing 3 out of 4 research tracks to the end, which got me lots of bonus VPs.  I was able to do a lot of research, because in the last few rounds, I didn't have much for my 3 shifts of brewery workers to do...and I think this was somewhat of a result of that 4th brewery action not being in the game.  Although, looking back at Paul's blog, they seemed to have that issue as well.  So, I think Ben still has some tweaking to do here.

Is that a VivaJava Coffee Porter?

But, I think he's close...real close.  And Ben can't take my money fast enough to reserve a copy of this game.  At the end of our demo, he asked me a very specific question, about which decision areas I liked most in the game.  I hemmed and hawed a little, and don't think I gave him a very satisfactory answer...mainly because I was still taking it all in - I liked it all, dang it!  I've been thinking about it since, and I'm not sure I have a more specific answer.  I like the fact that there isn't hidden cards like in Agricola...and I like the fact that the brewery actions are always available.  There is still the tension of decisions like in Agricola, without the overbearing worry that someone else will take a key spot.  The theme really calls me to more than medieval farming (although Ben may have a hard time competing with little wooden animeeples in terms of visual appeal).  I liked the decision space between trying to brew massive amounts of basic recipes, or going for larger point-value specialties, and how to allocate your brewery improvements.

Not sure the next time I'll run into Ben, but I'll be eager to try Brewmasters again, hopefully with more than 2 players.  This is a good one....cheers!

Tobago, Shadows Over Camelot (The Card Game) & Spartacus

Somehow in all my blogging about Prezcon, I missed a few games that Brian and I played in open gaming.  Early on in the con, we borrowed Shadows Over Camelot - The Card Game from the library and tried it out.  I'm a big fan of the board game version, which really kicked off the current cooperative genre...particularly the "coop with a traitor" variant.  I had heard the card game had come out, and put it on my wishlist.  After one playthrough, I'm a little "meh" about it.  However, we only had 2 players, and with only 2 you do not play with a traitor.  This is basically a memorization game, where each player takes turns flipping cards from the deck, which represent different quests, and have point values.  When you think a certain quest is in the sweet spot of 11-14 points, you stop, and reveal all the cards that have been flipped.  If you're right, you get a "white sword", if you're wrong, you get a "black sword", or maybe several depending on how off you were, and what other quests had accumulated points.  There are some clever twists to try and prevent you from memorizing everything, such as variable point cards, and a "Morgan" card that made us count out loud as we flipped more cards (to presumably mess up any point totals we were trying to remember).  I'd like to try it with more players, but right now, it's off my "must own" list.

Tobago is clever little treasure hunting game.  Brian had learned it from the Selzig's, and sat down to teach me.  The clever mechanic is the gradual narrowing down of treasure locations based on cards drawn during the game.  I would categorize this as a light family style game, and while I wasn't head over heels for it, I would like to try it with more than 2 players.




A game I had picked up a few weeks ago based purely on description and reviews (thanks again, D6Generation) was Spartacus:A Game of Blood and Treachery.  Gale Force 9, the publishers, had a presence at Prezcon and were selling the game, in addition to giving demos.  In fact, there was a Spartacus tournament this year, but I had too many conflicts to try it out.  I did get a demo from the GF9, but I think he focused on the wrong thing.  He really focused on the gladiatorial combat - which from what I understand, is really a sideshow to the meat of the game, which involves political maneuvering, wheeling and dealing, and betrayal of alliances among the players.  Paul seemed to have similar thoughts, which he posted in this blog entry.  I'm still looking forward to getting this one to the table. 

Final Thoughts

Well, another Prezcon has come and gone, and I'm already counting down to the next one.  I'm a wee bit jealous of my friends Glenn and Grant who started on Monday...but I'm not sure I'll manage that until the kids are grown and gone.  I'm a little on the fence about my GMing experience.  I'm glad I did it, and I already volunteered to run Waterdeep again next year, but I did feel I missed out on some gaming time for myself, especially when it got to Saturday night.  Perhaps I can ask not to be scheduled on Saturday night...but I don't want to make Justin's job any harder. 

As for the other changes, I'm kinda neutral on the change they made to have the auction on Thursday night.  I usually had more time on Saturday to make it the auction, but I understand their desire to deconflict with the vendor hours.  And I'm not a big auction buyer anyway.  I think the change to have an open gaming area downstairs was a huge success, which led to less overcrowding in the main ballroom.

I can't have a Prezcon blog without talking about the loot I got.  From the auction store, I picked up Caylus.  On more than one occasion, including at Prezcon, I had heard Lords of Waterdeep compared to Caylus, sometimes being called "Caylus-lite".  So when I saw a copy in the auction store, I snatched it up.  As I mentioned before, I picked up a copy of TC Petty III's VivaJava in the vendor area.  For a while, I thought that may be it.  But then I succumbed to the Mayfair booth.  I picked up a copy of World Without End, the "sequel" to Pillars of the Earth.  This was primarily driven by my enjoyment of Pillars, and the same fantastic artwork.  But Mayfair also had a sale going on some game stock they were trying to get rid of.  Buy 1, get 2 more of lesser or equal value for free.  So, I picked up Amazonas, The Dutch Golden Age, and Gangster.  Amazonas I had looked at hard once before as a family game, so I pulled the trigger and picked it up, and selected the other two games based purely on theme.  I got $150 worth of games for $50...not bad, and if I really don't like them, maybe they can be yours at next year's auctions!

Well, I think that about it wraps it up for me on Prezcon 2013.  One thing that dumbfounds me is that we managed to miss out on playing Citadels, which has become our go-to late evening game.  Ah well.  I will mention that our car/travel issues continued right until the bitter end.  Somehow - Brian must have been regaling me with stories of his Julius Caesar adventures, I missed the regular turnoff on our way up Rt. 29.  We ended up coming out on I-66 about 15 miles further west than normal.  Ah well...it could have been worse...I could have come home without a plaque!

What's up next?  Well, we have our regular Tuesday game night at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, so I'm sure I'll post about that.  I need to spruce up this blog with a better background, and more links and such.  And then I need to get working on that game idea.