The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Nick, Jeff, Alex, Brad, Pat, Euhan, Brian, Paul.
Played: Jenseits von Theben, Kingdoms, Big City, Age of Empires III, Tichu, Tier auf Tier, Amun Re.

I had committed to this evening of games before realising that Australia was to meet Fiji in the Rugby World Cup tonight. Thankfully not a major game, but I did have to walk away from the games table a few times to check on the Wallabies’ progress. Reassuringly, they ended up at 55-12, a far better result than mine in AoE3 tonight.
Brad is so under the pump at the moment that he has no time for taking and editing pics. So everything you see today is mine.

Jenseits von Theben: Dig it
Nick offered this on the back of my previous comments that (based on look and theme) I’d be keen to give this a go some time. Hence I was a willing participant, along with Alex and Brian.
The theme is of course turn of the (20th) century archaeology study, digs and exhibits, spaced over the map from London to Moscow to Rome, Egypt and Palastine. The game features a very elegant representation of the time dimension in game turns, which reminds me of Around the World in 80 Days, although I think the mechanic is slightly different.
Nick explained the feature of the Congress cards - collect enough of these and you can rack up a decent supplement to your ‘basic’ score from regular archaeological digs and exhibits. I was lucky in being close to the first one that appeared, so I picked this up cheaply. More luck saw me pick up a total of 6 of these within the first game year, much to the chagrin of my opponents (Alex in particular). None of us even saw another of these until very late in the game, but again I was able to claim the 7th and maximum in about week 45 of the second year. Doing the presentation circuit was of course at the expense of real archaeology work, and in the meantime my opponents were getting their hands dirty hauling up artefacts.
It was the 2nd year before I commenced my first dig in Greece, where I spent 10 weeks to dig up 8 tokens, 6 of which were blanks and the other two yielded a measly 4 points. With the help of a special “re-dig” card, I returned there a few weeks later to dig again, this time yielding a more satisfying 11 points. Overall my dig tokens were a lot less than the other players, and I had no exhibits, but the Congress collection kept me in the lead or in touch with it. With just enough time left, my game finished with a dig in Crete, and this yielded an excellent return of 9 points. I also picked up my share of knowledge majorities, and all of these were sufficient to acknowledge me as the greatest archaeologist of my time.
The theme and the feel, and the time mechanic work really well for me, so replayability is certainly there in Theben. The only thing that detracts from this is that the luck elements seem a bit heavy - certainly thematic again, but doesn’t make for a better game. One variant that Pat mentioned was to take one blank tile from the bag after anyone attempted to dig a given site, to encourage (or rather, reduce the discouragement for) digging after others have already pulled much of the goodness from the site.
About 14 mins rules explan; >90 mins game play.
Results: Paul (blue): 63. Brian (red): 45. Alex (yellow): 39. Nick (green): 36.

Kingdoms: A Reiner Knizia game that I hadn’t seen before, played at the other end of the table to Theben. The final scores were close-ish, apparently reflecting self-balancing success factors in the game. However, Euhan was still obviously able to leverage significant points of difference from his opponents…
6 mins rules; 33 mins game time.
Results: Euhan (yellow): 257. Brad (green): 226. Pat (blue): 220. Jeff (red): 213.

Big City: This was played by the “Kingdomers” while Theben was still in progress.
Pat won by one point. Apparently Brad would have won if he had played before, because he missed a subtle last turn maneuver to impact Pat’s score which would have given him the game. Everyone was in the hunt, so it was close in the end.
15 mins rules; 40 mins game time.

Age of Empires III: Wealth and oppression
One-game veterans Euhan and Paul led New World newbies Brian and Jeff into the Age of Discovery tonight. After rules explaining, turn order fixing, and first building purchases, some strategies became set quite quickly. With a “free” Captain every turn, Brian focussed on Discoveries to good effect, but also spent much game time picking up resource tokens. Euhan went the Soldier strategy again, using it to boost income in Discoveries, and of course for violence, particularly during the scoring rounds. Of the starting tiles left, I opted for the bonus Missionary, with the intention of landing as many colonist dudes as possible throughout the game. I don’t recall Jeff’s choice of first building, but his strategy became clear fairly quickly: build wealth - lots of it. And he managed to do this without being at the expense of colonists in the New World. His red dudes certainly held their own on the map. His progress seemed to be similar to mine in the previous game, only much better. For many turns, he chose the player initiative option to retain first place, although he was rarely challenged for this. I thought it was a rather inefficient use of a dude each turn, but the end result is an argument against this point.
For much of the game I felt that I was playing quite efficiently and effectively, although I struggled financially, in stark contrast to Jeff and to my game of last week. As a result, I couldn’t get my hands on the best choices of Capital Buildings when they arose, and only ended up with 4 of these by game end. This was also in contrast to the other players, who managed to pick up about twice as many. In addition, my colonist dudes seemed to be co-located with Euhan’s war-mongering soldiers. In a decision to ease back on the noobs (and largely money-bags-Jeff for some reason), he seemed to direct much of their combat potential against my guys. Historically accurate, someone remarked, for the Spanish to be oppressing the Portuguese out in the colonies, but rather whinge-inducing when you’re on the receiving end. Sigh. I picked up a few soldiers during the game in an attempt to neutralise them somewhat, but this was too hard to sustain with so many other choices to make. I eventually ended up with the “double-Missionary” combo, and resolved to overcome the problem by just trying to overwhelm the board with colonists. But this was too late in the game and all other players had appreciated the importance of landing colonists, so I only ever got my fair share of landings and no more. The final Capital Building that I managed to pick up was the one that converted on-map colonists to VPs @ 2:1. But after Euhan’s trigger-happy boyos were finished with me, this netted a mere 7 points. Coupled with my modest Discoveries worth 13 points in total, I scored 32 points in the last turn, compared to Brian’s 48, Euhan’s 65, and Jeff’s 88.
A humbling experience indeed.
20 mins rules; 145 mins game time.
Results (player: 1st round, 2nd, 3rd, plus bonuses for final): Brian (orange): 6,12,32,60. Paul (green): 2,16,28,48. Euhan (yellow): 2,18,38,83. Jeff (red): 8,22,46,110.

Tichu: 45 mins. Nick had to leave, but the conclusion was as good as foregone.
Brad & Alex: 85, 230, 230, 480.
Pat & Nick: 15, 70, 170, 220.

Tier auf Tier: Pat beat Alex and Brad in 7 minutes.

Amun Re: These guys were still waiting for AoE3 to finish. I don’t know why they chose Tier auf Tier to play ahead of this, but…
10 mins rules; 65 mins game time.
Pat (blue): 60. Brad (black): 46. Alex (yellow): 39.

Venue: Brian’s place.
Present: Richard, Andrew, Alex, Brad, Pat, Euhan, Brian, Paul.
Played: Tsuro, Age of Empires III, Samurai, Arkadia, Blue Moon City.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics of Tsuro, Age of Empires and Samurai, which will be here soon! The lo-res pics of Arkadia and Blue Moon City are from my Nokia.

Tsuro: A filler for the non eaters, while the rest of us chowed down on Brian’s home-cooked offering.
Brad was the first driven off the edge, by Pat who was the 2nd to go, leaving Alex as the victor after about 15 minutes.

Age of Empires III: The Missionary position
I’d been long awaiting the opportunity to play this, so I was particularly enthusiastic when Andrew produced this from Euhan’s bag of tricks. Although not overly excited about the game itself (more on this later), Pat agreed to be rules explainer and a participant, since none of the rest of us had played before. He started by describing the game like a cross between Caylus, for turn-wise selection of and competition for action choices, and El Grande, for scoring rounds requiring region majorities.
There’s no description of mechanics here since that’s been adequately covered in reviews and other pieces written elsewhere. But I generally enjoyed the tension and competition for the prime action spaces. Despite thinking there’d be plenty of time to launch Discoveries all over the unexplored map, in fact I only managed to get two of these (Brazil & somewhere in Canada), including one ‘free’, courtesy of a special Capital Building. I also got one other special Discovery card in the last turn of the game, using 7 dudes - yes, one wasted, and a Missionary at that - but this pulled a rather weak-scoring Mississippi, not an India or China (which therefore amounted to 4 dudes wasted!).
By the mid game I was focussing more on the income-producing resource tokens and the merchant ship, at the expense of on-map colonists and special guys like Missionaries, Merchants and Soldiers, thinking I’d pick up special buildings to help me with this later. Flawed thinking unfortunately, and poor turn timing saw me miss out on some choice Capital Buildings and in landing enough dudes on the map. In fact, in the crucial last two turns I hardly contested for colonist landings at all, being shut out by the other players for all except one Missionary. That Missionary helped me hold Brazil for 6 points at the end, although only by successfully table-talking Euhan out of attacking me. If he’d gone ahead, worst case is that I’d be down 6 and he’d be down 2 points - a smaller gap but not enough to alter the final relative positions.
But the building that really secured me second place was the one that converted each $5 to 1vp at the end. With $111 in accumulated cash, I picked up a whopping 22vp, to move me from last to 2nd position after all other scoring had been reckoned.
After one playing I like AoE3, and would be keen to play again and explore some different strategies. Pat is less enthusiastic, noting that like Caylus, play is rather “processional” with little change on board to adapt to between turns. Furthermore, as players agonise over their colonist placements the game tends to bog down, especially in the last turn. I would agree with all this, but I still think there’s more to be uncovered in AoE3.
30 mins rules; 128 mins game time.
Results (player: 1st round, 2nd round, final): Pat (blue): 8,30,107. Paul (green): 8,22,96. Euhan (yellow): 6,26,89. Andrew (red): 0,16,81.

Samurai: This is an older generation Avalon Hill ‘’bookcase game”, about region conquests in medieval Japan, and apparently with some similarities to Warrior Knights from a few weeks ago. However, after more than 2 hours of play there was no definitive result. Richard explained, “We managed to restore Japan to its pristine wilderness with scarce a human footprint on it…!”
According to Al, Neil M. was probably the winner followed by Richard, then Al, Brian and Brad. Apparently the funniest bit was Brad having to commit seppuku because he was late boarding the boat to the Cherry Blossom Festival. O, the shame.
30 mins rules, 135 mins game time.

Arkadia: Reminiscence
There are a few things about this game that remind me of a number of other games - in fact I felt as though I had even played this before. Sure, the castle towers are obviously from Torres, and the building shapes are highly reminiscent of Princes of Florence, but it seems like there’s another point of familiarity somewhere… But, this must have been in a past life since I’m quite sure I haven’t actually played it in this one before.
Anyway, place building shapes, surround on-board buildings with dudes, collect tokens and score - pretty simple stuff in principle. I did make one major mistake in the second turn by committing most of my dudes to a single building (it seemed like a good idea at the time!), but thereafter I was just unable to trigger score rounds that got anywhere near those of my opponents! The following day Pat suggested that we probably played a rule wrong, and that the closer of a building is entitled to take an extra token (the one on the building) as a bonus for their efforts. We didn’t do this. I’d like to think that I closed more buildings than the others, and therefore my score relative to the other players should be higher. But, in reality my building close-offs were probably no more frequent than the others, and therefore my final score would still have been relatively poor. In addition, the game ended one turn before I could get all of my coloured dudes out, so I was even further behind.
Abstract and strange, but worth another crack one day (with the right rules).
15 mins rules; 62 mins game time.
Results: Euhan: 81. Pat: 73. Paul: 55.

Blue Moon City: Played by the residual Samurai crowd while Arkadia proceeded on the other table.
12 mins rules; 45 mins game time.
Alex (light blue): 5. Richard (purple): 3, and about two turns away. Brian (grey): 2, and >2 turns away.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Alex, Jeff, Nick, Pat, Euhan, Brian, Paul.
Played: Jenseits von Theben, Vinci, Escalation!, Honor of the Samurai, Ra, Tier auf Tier, Yspahan, Modern Art, Corsari.

Good to see a return to the gaming table from Jeff this week, having just come back from a sojourn overseas.
With Brad away, the pics are all mine for this session. Disappointed with the blurriness of most (esp. Ra); happy with some (Yspahan#2, Corsari).

Jenseits von Theben: Subtitled simply Thebes for the non-German speakers, this was a fairly new title brought over by Nick. It looked quite interesting - don’t know the players’ impressions, but if they’re generally good I wouldn’t mind having a crack at this next time it appears.
About 20 mins rules; 65mins game time.
Results: Brian (red): 50. Jeff (green:) 40. Nick (blue): 31.

Vinci: Diplomacy and “diplomacy”
With Euhan the relative newbie, we gave him the honour of selecting the next game from my vast(!) selection. After thumbing over Taj Mahal, Roads and Boats, and El Grande, he finally settled on Vinci. Good choice, we assured him, although this copy didn’t have the special markings to accommodate the rules variant used recently by others in this group (new civilizations must appear at a pre-determined board edge).
As fourth chooser at the start of the game, I got to pick up six bonus points for a civ combo that everyone else passed over, but I thought wasn’t too bad. Messages and Medicine gave me a starting force of 13 and a recurring +1 each turn, with the privilege of being able to disperse my tokens.
As the game got underway a nicely humorous stoush erupted between Alex and Pat when the latter targetted and attacked the former (or was it the other way around?) “in retaliation” for a counter-attack that was yet to come! This kept two opponents occupied, although my perception was that Euhan stood to gain an emerging edge from this ahead of me. The natural choice was therefore to bring my civ into conflict with his and pare back some of his enormous points gains in the north-east. This went tit-for-tat for two turns or thereabouts, until I managed to split his empire in three and at this point he went into decline.
There was much table-top “diplomacy” - read table-talk - with threats and hit-the-leader urging. With turn scores of 13, and at one point, 17, Pat clearly rose to be the Caesar of his time. He cleaned up my long-successful empire forcing me to decline and start afresh. But as I set forth with my lone hit-the-leader strategy, he used his Diplomacy privilege to prevent attacks from me. This was made effective for the final two turns of the game, and I was forced simply to maximize points at the expense of the others, mainly Euhan again. If I were playing for place, this was the right choice anyway…
Total empires played this game: Paul & Euhan: 2 each. Pat & Al: 3 each.
15 mins rules; 73 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 107. Paul (green): 99. Euhan (red): 95. Alex (yellow): 94.

Escalation! was played as a filler by the Thebens as they waited for Vinci to finish. They may have got in a single hand only.
2 mins rules, 12 mins game time.
Jeff: 23. Nick: 17. Brian: 12.

Honor of the Samurai: There is nothin’ like a Daimyo
Having played once before some time ago, Pat declined to play this card game offering brought by Nick, but couldn’t remember his reason for not being rapt. Players control up to two houses each, one headed by a Daimyo and the other by a supporting Samurai. The object is to collect Honor points through the people and possessions accumulated in each house, and to prevent your opponents from doing likewise through attacks and special card actions (eg., Ninja assassins). By attaining the Shogun status, you can massively accelerate your points gains, but also paint a whopping target on your forehead. Alex was the first to discover this when selected the Shogun card on his second turn, prompting me to attack him and claim the title for myself. I actually managed to hold it for a complete turn and claim the points, but on the next Brian attacked me with some kind of Ninja assassin card, with harsh consequences: My Daimyo, his wife, castle, armies and other possessions were wiped out in one fell swoop. This made me think immediately of Warrior Knights, played last week, in that you can prepare yourself (somewhat) against typical attacks, but unpredictable events for which you can have no protection against can hurt you hard. We relayed this to Pat, who was reminded of the main reason for his lack of enthusiasm for HotS.
The rest of the game played out quite funny, with Alex down a Daimyo, allying himself to others and yet sticking the knife in their backs at every reasonable opportunity. But Nick was the one who eventually fell over the line first, putting the rest of us out of our misery.
8 mins rules; 61 mins game time.
Results: Nick: 310. Alex: 165. Paul: 145. Brian: 105.

Ra: The alternative to Honor of the Samurai, played at the other end of the table. These guys seemed to be packing this up within minutes after starting, although the whole thing ran for about half an hour. Obviously Euhan was the one who made best use of the tiles, almost making the combined scores of his opponents.
8 mins rules; 25 mins game time.
Euhan: 63. Pat: 38. Jeff: 29.

Tier auf Tier: A quick novelty game while Honor continued at the other end of the table.
9 mins. Euhan won (again) over Pat and Jeff.

Yspahan: These guys had to break open another half-hour game while the Samurais battled on. The end result for Pat was a bit of a surprise. Apparently he’d gone for the caravan strategy again, which is about getting as many cubes as possible on the caravan and the lucrative points haul this can bring. All good, but if you don’t get good camel rolls when it comes to your turn, your hams can be strung with this approach.
6 mins rules; 39 mins game time.
Results: Jeff (green): 88. Euhan (yellow): 83. Pat (blue): 65.

Modern Art: Painting into a corner
Pulling out this game was almost a blast from the past - I don’t how long it’s been since I’ve played this, but it must be way more than two years as the only other entry in the ‘gap that mentions this game is way back in Jan 2006, when it was played by guys other than me (Richard, Pat, Brian and Matthew, to be precise).
I used to think I was able to play this quite well, and even have distant memories of winning at least once - which I concede may be completely false memories. In fact, for the the first three rounds or so of this game I thought I was actually well-placed in this game too. But Modern Art is a funny game of risk and reward. We all thought Brian was crazy when he shelled out for that Krypto and those two Yokos, thinking one won’t pay out at all and those others were over-payed for. But that round ended quicker than expected, and Brian cleaned up big time in that round. In fact, in the final round, the reverse scenario kind of happened to me. I wanted to see Christin P’s come out and thrive and the remaining Gitters to go down. To bring on the latter, I actually offered a Lite Metal, the first seen all game, fully expecting to get at least one more turn before game end. Although I knew there must have been a bunch more out there, I just wasn’t expecting them all to fall so soon. My Christin P therefore scored an amazing $10 - just a few dollars shy of what I paid for it, resulting in the second last in a series of poor decisions I’d made throughout the game (the last was floating that stupid Lite Metal). At least I was spared the indignity of finishing with less cash than I started with.
9 mins rules; 70 mins game time.
Pat: 489. Jeff: 431. Brian: 337. Alex: 290. Paul: 260.

Corsari: Some pirate action to finish off the night, arrr. This game is a lot harder with 4 players than with three, but I continue to find more depth in this with every playing. If only the luck of the deal aspect could be reduced somehow…
4 mins rules (for Jeff); 78 mins game time.
Results (lower is better): Alex: 58. Jeff: 79. Paul: 99. Pat: 132.

Venue: Richard’s place.
Present: Alex, Brad, Neil F., Pat, Richard, Paul.
Played: M, Warrior Knights, Tichu.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics.

M: Played as a filler for the second week in a row, this time with 5p while we waited for Neil to arrive with Warrior Knights. Correct rules used too, despite the occasional need just to check these again - in particular, when a scoring row is triggered, the triggering player may indeed take the tile they just played, even if it is the only tile in the row.
We also played a cut-down version, by using about 10 less tiles than the whole set in order to make the game finish slightly faster.
5 mins rules; 28 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 230. Alex: 220. Brad: 210. Richard: 180. Pat: 170.

Warrior Knights: Cruel hand of fate
Before the serious gaming started tonight it was noted that we were to have exactly six players. Someone observed that this was the right number for Dune, but this idea was not met with a great deal of enthusiasm, even from the proposer I think (which wasn’t Richard, by the way).
Brad had been carrying around a copy of the latest edition of Warrior Knights recently, but none present had played before, or even knew the rules. But, rather than extinguishing the idea altogether, Richard quickly called up Neil (yet to arrive), who came with game and thorough rules experience in tow.
Neil’s set was the original edition, not the latest glossy release. He forewarned that it was very “chromy” and would easily run 3-4 hours. This was fine with all present, although just outside the norm for a Sunday night game choice. We were able to get started without a complete rules explanation, and things moved along generally smoothly in the early parts of the game. The mercenary auctions worked well, but I thought the voting on the special privilege cards was an unattractive part of the game, favouring the stronger players on board and the loudest negotiators.
However, I held my ground fairly comfortably for the first four or five turns or so, as did most of the other players, although Pat kept a low profile in his corner of the board, apparently weaker than everyone else. I then decided to position myself for some tactical defence and expansion. I moved half of my troops and mercenaries, about 800 men, into the one legion with the view to using this for attacks and sieges, while the other legions were to defend captured cities with lesser forces. After the shuffle but before I could mobilise them I was struck by someone’s Fate card at the start of the next turn, and some plague or epidemic just wiped them out entirely - over half my army erased within a few seconds. Other players were also dealt severe and indiscriminate blows like this - not something I was expecting to see.
Within another turn or two, while Brad and Richard continued to joust and raze each other’s cities to everyone’s amusement, Neil marched onto my stronghold with a double attack turn and successfully sieged me into non-existence before I could do anything - took my three cities and half my cash. In retaliation I thought I could take back the city of Lenz, but with a forced march Neil returned with enough strength to kick the pus out of me before my second siege phase, and my game was as good as over. Didn’t see any of that coming!
In the meantime, more cities were razed, lowering the victory threshold. After slowly building his forces, Pat poked his head out from his hole in the corner and successfully took Neil’s stronghold, placing him a mere one city from outright victory.
The last turn was declared by time-limit consensus at about 11:30pm, running until 12:00. Pat lost one of his cities to Alex before being able to make a winning die roll. However, on the basis of total cities won, Pat was certainly able to claim a marginal or tactical victory.
As an overall assessment, Warrior Knights is not going to be near the top of my favourite games list. Obviously I’m biased by my particular game experience, but there are too many ‘features’ of this game that don’t feel balanced. Perhaps some of these are addressed in the more recent release, but I’m not in a hurry to explore them.
27 mins rules upfront; 245 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 5 cities. Alex: 2.5 (1 overseas city counts as 0.5). Richard: 1.5. Brad: 2. Neil: 1. Paul: 0.

From Richard:
Al, Pat, Neil and Richard decided to play some cards to finish off.
Tichu was chosen as being “not too stressful” over Flaschenteufel. Random pen spin made Al and Neil partners against Pat and Richard. A quick game as Pat and Richard shut out both of the first two hands to be up 400 to 0. Could have been game (at 500) except Richard tried to finesse the timing of calling Tichu. Tip for young players: “don’t try and finesse the timing of calling Tichu if it is after midnight: you’ll get distracted and forget to call it and then feel miserable about wasting a good hand!”.
Third hand saw Alex call Tichu, which he went on to make, but in the unusual circumstance of negative cards points (-15 I think: Phoenix offset by a 10). That made Pat and Richard 115 vs the successful Tichu-ers score of 85, and carried the Dream Team over the 500 line….