The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Jeff, Alex, Pat, Neil F., Lindsay, Euhan, Paul
Played: Dungeon Lords, Star Wars Risk, Dungeon Lords (again), Alea Iacta Est, Ra The Dice Game (x2).

Back into games after the thrill of last week’s expo. But then again, Sunday nights are like our own little expos anyway, just with fewer people.
Check out my close-ups for Dungeon Lords, Alea Iacta and Ra tDG…

Dungeon Lords: I’d been looking forward to this game since seeing it on the retailers’ shelves and on the gaming tables last week in Canberra, with Richard’s copy still in shrink-wrap waiting in our house for pick-up, tempting me all the while…
And I wasn’t disappointed. Frustrated, yes, but definitely not disappointed. I love the concept, I love the little bloody plastic imps, the artwork (including the title font on the box cover), and the zany text on the magic battle cards. I like the fact that it’s made me despise bands of merry adventurers, seeking out fame and treasure through home invasions. It’s like someone, namely Vlaada Chvatil, the game’s designer, has taken the whole fantasy roleplaying genre and said, “Right, enough’s enough. Let’s look at this adventuring thing from the perspective of the victims: Those innocent monsters whose job - nay, lifestyle - is to defend their land from those raiding criminals from the surface…”.
Anyhoo, on the frustrating part, this was related to my experience in having my dungeon be judged the most evil on the game’s evilometer. My evil index was pushed so high that the Paladin (and three other smarmy adventurers) were attracted to my dungeon. In the course of play, my best monsters (two dragons) were rendered as good as useless by spells that were applied to everyone’s dungeon. I would have liked to pick off one more adventurer in that final battle (and would have too, if not for those crippling spells), but it was not to be.
Very cool fun.
47 mins rules and setup; 116 mins game time.
Results: Euhan (yellow): 26. Paul (red): 21. Pat (blue): 6. Lindsay (green): 4.

Star Wars Risk (Clone Wars): Neil F., Jeff and Alex played this at the other end of the table. Seemed like an unlikely choice given the range of new games available, but hey…
About 28 mins rules and setup; 120 mins game time.
Results: I had Neil make the record in my notes, which was (alongside Alex’s name): “Darth Sidious was successful.”
And (alongside Neil and Jeff’s name): “Republic loses once Order 66 was called by the evil and halitosis (sic) ridden Sidious”

Dungeon Lords (again): The two previous games ended close to the same time, so the Risky guys took up posts at the Dungeon Lords end in an attempt to better our efforts against the nasty adventurers.
About 25 mins rules and setup; 90 mins game time (don’t know why these guys did it so much faster than us!)
Results (again, thanks to Neil for recording these): Alex, Neil: 0. Jeff: Dungeon Master with 14 “and got a gig in Nth Korea”. Also: “We are pleased that the Dungeon Powers-that-be saw we could be 0 and still build another day”.

Alea Iacta Est: Brand new dice game apparently about sending noble couples to various provinces in the ancient Roman Empire, although the exact intention of the theme has escaped me.
Still reasonably interesting, although for a Euro-themed dice game my current favourite is still the title below this one…
10 mins rules and setup; 35 mins game time.
Results: Lindsay (green): 41. Pat (blue), Paul (grey): 31. Euhan (yellow): 24.

Ra the Dice Game: Yep, this one’s got me hooked right now, even though I should be wearing that novelty gamer t-shirt that says “Dice hate me”.
We played one game and I was a little surprised that there was no resistance to my suggestion that we play again. This game is like addictive gambling, but without the financial loss and with a larger range of colours to look at.
6 mins rules and setup; 28 mins game time (1st game), 24 mins game time (second game).
Results: 1st game: Pat (blue): 41. Euhan (yellow): 34. Lindsay (green): 33. Paul (red): 19.
2nd game: Lindsay (green): 41. Pat (blue): 31. Paul (red): 29. Euhan (yellow): 28.

(A little bit of concept art with the last image here - an alternative monument for Ra The Dice Game…)

In posting this I feel a little like one of those people who forwards lame jokes in email around the office.
But this one seems to be going viral, albeit in the small-ish community of gamers. I’ve already seen a bit of discussion building out there on the concept of “strip Settlers” and “strip Agricola”.

Certainly this is not a hint to my usual circle of gamers that I have any interest in playing strip-anything with any of them. Although somehow combining it with Lightning Reaction could be interesting, in an weird, Abu Ghraib kinda way…
I have nothing further to say on this topic. (For now.)

Source: http://www.xkcd.com/.
Thanks Mark for finding.

Venue: Canberra
Present: The Australian gaming community and their families
Played: All kinds of stuff

Soon it was time for the Sunday evening session back at the hotel. Here’s the scene on night 2 (were you there…?!).
The Sunday night session included 4 games for me (3 new ones):

Finca: Nice game about harvesting fruit and delivering to markets on what appears to be a small Italian island. The little tokens are cute and these, combined with the board and scoring token artwork allow you to almost smell the fruit!
About 45 mins + rules and setup.
Results: Paul (green): 47. Pat (blue), Rick (yellow): 46. Craig (red): 3? (ie., 30-something).

Peloponnes: Here’s another in the genre of ancient civilization building. Compete with the other players to acquire resource-generating land and improvements, and try to get a score that balances population growth with civilization advances/improvements. The twist, or rather, sting in the tail, is the revelation of two random disasters at the conclusion of each turn. Eg., a famine will excise one third of your population; an earthquake will destroy every building improvement you can’t support with extra stone and wood resources; a drought will destroy your crop resources, etc. In fact, the devastation wielded by these events is so severe and non-discriminating that it’s actually funny.
It is possible to manage against these disasters, as I was able to do in the latter part of the game, but it’s hard work getting your little civilization to be in such a well-hedged state. By game end I could withstand all disasters except for famine, and there were two of these within the last two turns, which had a decimating effect on my population. In fact I think these hurt everyone quite badly, and combined with other disasters that Craig had no protection against basically reduced his population to zero. Horrible - yes very. But also funny.
18 mins rules and setup; 50 mins game time.
Results (primary score/secondary=tiebreak): Paul (black): 12/19. Rick (yellow): 12/18. Pat (blue): 12/17. Brian (green): 3. Craig (red): 0.

Such a Thing: With the night drawing to a close we sought something to support five players that wasn’t too long. Despite fitting into the party games genre (sort of), Such a Thing turned out to be such a thing. We had heard some earlier warnings from Melissa about the potential adults-only innuendos that could arise, and we knew we were off to a good start when the first two cards drawn were the ones shown here (click to enlarge).
Sigh. So we played on, but not without controversy, as debate erupted a few times over interpretation of characteristics. 5 mins rules and setup; 38 mins game time.
Brian, Craig, Pat, Rick D., Paul.

Finca: Everyone else retired for the night, leaving Richard and Ed in for a new game. Having played this one already tonight, it was easy to move into it again. I think all three of us were doing about equally well, until Richard managed to deplete both Ed and my significant holdings of olives! The acquisition of the 7-point bonus tile was sufficient to seal the deal and hand Richard a good win.
18 mins rules explan & setup; 45 mins game time.
Results: Richard (blue): 52. Paul (green): 43. Ed (red): 42.

Monday - Day 3 of the Expo - saw us back on the floor in family mode, eager to put away a few more game trials. I introduced Paula and Mr. 7 to Ra the Dice Game, which I like very much, and was pleased to see Mr. 7 take to it quite well. In fact, he won the game, if I’m not mis-remembering.
Somewhere along the way Paula got into a game of Atlantis (was that the night before, perhaps?), which must have made an impression, because it has been given a good workout on BrettSpielWelt since then. Unfortunately the game appears to be not yet available in Australia, otherwise I think it would have been another new addition to our collection.

Before our departure I got to pick out one more new purchase, which was Lascaux, based pretty much on the appealing cover art alone (OK, I admit it – I like ’shiny’ things).
Haven’t had the chance to play this yet.

Venue: Canberra
Present: The Australian gaming community and their families
Played: All kinds of stuff

The after-hours gaming is always a highlight for me and this time it was within a function room conveniently located within the same hotel where we were staying. Here’s a view of the after-hours gaming room, taken on the Saturday night. Were you there…?

The first thing I played was Turbo Taxi, with the family, while we waited for the other gamers to arrive. This is not a new game but one we picked up that day from one of the Expo retailers. It works well within an arbitrarily short period (ie., you can play as many or as few of the 12 rounds as you like) and it managed to occupy Mr. 7-year-old for a while. This is actually a simultaneous-play puzzle game (reminiscent of Take it Easy) in which you try to be the first to complete a 3×3 grid of various road tiles that satisfies certain pattern constraints.

I was able to dip into the more complex stuff after the kids went to bed and the first was Tulipmania 1637 – one of the purchases that Steve Mc. had made that day. This one is about manipulating and ratcheting up the buy/sell prices of different varieties of tulips to their price crash points, making sure your tulip holdings match your tulip buyer cards for maximum price returns.
Unlike other stock collection/buy/sell games, in this one it doesn’t serve to specialize in and hoard the best-priced tulips, because all of them are going to crash at some time and the big payouts are only there for the first one or two tulips of a given variety. So better to be diverse if you can, managing your tulip buyer cards to spread your exposure. Then work on the price manipulation factors, working around the interference of the other players.
Having said all that, all the way to the end of this game I had to admit that I just didn’t get it – it was rarely obvious to me what made for a good sell, what was a good buy, and how best to use the ‘Speculate’ actions! Obviously this failure to ‘get it’ was borne out in the scores…
13 mins rules and setup; 57 mins game time.
Results: Richard: 19950. Gregor: 15600. Iain: 10975. Steve: 10925. Paul: 6450.

The Aristocrats: This was a print-and-play brought along by Iain T. I don’t know how to describe this, except that none of us will ever be the same again, and Steve was the first to say that he needed to go home and have a wash after playing it.
7 mins rules and back story; 18 mins game time.
Richard, Gregor, Iain T, Phil R, Steve, Paul.

Aargh!Tect: This one is another from the party games genre, but certainly unique. Using no more than 5 or 6 different cave-man words, and about as many gestures, communicate with your team-mates on how to construct an abstract sculpture with various wooden blocks according to a diagram on a card (a-la Make ‘n’ Break). Getting into the character of a cave-man was kind of fun, as was bashing team mates with the inflatable cave-man club, but gosh, it’s hard giving instructions in cave-man language.
We only played one round and there was some ambiguity in the result – the other team finished first and revealed their card, but it was discovered that they actually got two of the blocks the wrong way around…
About 10 mins, 1 round. Richard, Gregor, Iain T, Phil R, Steve, Paul.

Schrille Stille: Discovered the reason why this title seemed vaguely familiar was that it is yet another one of Pat’s vast collection that I had only ever seen on his games shelf.
This is not a new game, nor is the game play itself particularly original – secretly vote for colour-coded cards to score points on each round. But the implementation of the voting mechanism certainly is unique: Each player places their voting chips into a numbered wheel (see pic), which are then stacked up onto timber device that ensures each collection of chips falls through into small chamber. As each numbered card is examined, the wheel is turned to drop out the collection of all voting chips for the card, and it’s position on the chart is adjusted accordingly.
This is one of those rare gaming curiosities, although it does seem to play a little randomly. Also, after Phil stretched out to a significant lead we probably did conspire against him a little, which allowed Gregor to sneak over the finish line just ahead of Phil. Sorry about that, Phil. On the other hand, it was also fun to watch the tragedy of Steve’s game unfolding so badly (although he made up some ground towards the end).
8 mins rules and setup; 76 mins game time.
Results: Gregor (orange): 76. Phil R (purple): 71. Paul (yellow): 64. Iain (red): 49. Steve (blue): 42.

Sunday at the Expo was fully occupied by the Protospiel session, run by Boardgames Australia and organised by Richard V. of the same. In addition to my own creation, I played a nice space exploration and management game, and a rugby league trivia game. I enjoy these protospiel sessions, in particular getting a glimpse at the ideas other game designers have and their approaches.
The day also included a talk by Craig Browne of Relatively Creative (co-)designer of Sorts and Sorts for Kids, the winner of the BGA Best Childrens Game 2010. Craig talked about his experience with his first game design and publishing experience with Compatibility, and his ongoing experiences with Crown & Andrews.

Venue: Canberra
Present: The Australian gaming community and their families
Played: All kinds of stuff

Executive summary: Best one so far.
Last year’s expo was the first one co-located with CanCon in Canberra, having been migrated there from Albury by the Expo’s custodian for the past five years, Phil Davies of Mind Games. But this year they were able to expand their floor space to accommodate more exhibitors and more visitors.
Even more importantly, more of our own extended games group was in attendance for at least some, if not almost all of the event – to name a few names: Neil F., Alison and family, Richard and family, Pat, Brian, Craig, Brad, Alex, Jeff F., Rick D., Lindsay, Jeff G., Neil M. Tommy D., Steve Mc., Phil R., Phil H., Iain T. and Ed. I even bumped into Ken F. very briefly… Also in this year were our Vic-based friends Melissa, Fraser and family, Giles and (momentarily!) his new family, and Gregor. And I feel I have almost certainly left some important names off of this list – sorry.

Much of the first day – Sat Jan 23 – was spent getting orientated, catching up with people (ie., the names above), and keeping the kids entertained. One of the first attractions the latter were drawn to was the big novelty chess set. This successfully kept them amused until some socially inept spotty teenager decided to inject himself into the game, dictate proceedings and insult the chess-playing judgements of a seven-year-old. Oh well. But we all moved on.

For my first ’serious’ gaming experience of the weekend I got into a game (although, only the first two turns) of the brand new, yet-to-be-released Wars of the Roses, by Queenslander Peter Hawes (also the designer of Heads of State). This looks to be a fascinating, almost Wallenstein/Shogun-esque game of second-guessing movements for area majority scoring – I wish I could have played for longer. Wars is rich in theme with characters and places core to that particular era of English history, and Peter has obviously done his research thoroughly. Not that I’d know, of course, although I couldn’t help quoting the opening sentence from Shakespeare’s Richard III upon being dealt my character card. (Note that my RIII is not after the style of Sir Larry or Ian McKellan, but rather Peter Cook of Black Adder. But I digest…)
Anyway, four players each play for themselves, but two are Yorks and two Lancasters and bonus scoring is dependent on which family controls the majority of regions for the claim of King) at the end of each turn. This means that you will want to work with your ‘partner’ for the purposes of overall area domination, but in the grab for points even this player will become fair game in localised cases where the majority score doesn’t add to the likelihood of gaining the King bonus.
As mentioned, Wars isn’t available for purchase in Australia yet, but it’s good to know that one of our group (Brad) has put in a pre-order (at a bargain Expo price) – looking forward to that one hitting the table soon.

We moved on and wandered around some more – as usual the miniatures hall was just huge, with some fascinating looking stuff on some of the tables. Here are two shots from within the main hall, taken from different angles.
Back in the boardgames area the Settlers and the Carcassonne tournaments were well underway – here’s another pic.
After some more wandering we made it back to the more kids-friendly environment of the Expo and pulled up some chairs at the Dr. Wood stand. Two of the new titles on display here we already have (Super Farmer and Duck Duck Go!) and I’ve written about both of those here before. But this time we jumped into another also from this Granna series, called ”Hooop”. The temptation is to refer to this “Hoop”, as in something round and hoopy, but I am now convinced it is actually “Hop”, but with prolonged emphasis on the central “o”. Simple concept but plays quite well, with aspects that remind me of Dragon Delta, ie., the little bridges needed to jump from one island (lily pad) to another. Other than this there is no similarity, however.

Before days end we picked up a few games (except for Cardcassonne, nothing over $20) from one of the retailers.