The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Alex, Jeff, Pat, Paul
Played: Fits, Brass, Oh, Pharaoh!.

A small number of players and a small number of games tonight, but all quality.

Fits: Pat picked up this one in Amsterdam a few weeks ago. Apparently it was in the running for Spiel des Jahres. A very neat little implementation of Tetris for the tabletop, with variable charts on successive rounds for bonus points and penalties.
Scores show that I suck at this game, but it was enjoyable nonetheless and I’d certainly play again.
2 mins rules and setup; 32 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 18. Jeff (green): 8. Pat (blue): 5. Paul (red): -9.

Brass: It’s been a long time between drinks for this biggie so we all needed a rules refresher (except Jeff), and our total playing time was probably blown out a bit as we struggled with some decision-making. But this was one of the best games I’ve played for ages. I’m not in a desperate hurry to play again soon (although I would if the opportunity arose), because it left my appetite for serious strategic and tactical game playing well-satisfied!
I’ll skip the details except to remark on Jeff’s strategy, which was apparently focused on cotton warehouses and selling through ports, largely shunning the building of rail links. The results demonstrated quite clearly that this was a perilous path to take.
Pat’s overwhelming score was due in large part to a big rail network (I think he got 60 points from this) and 2×18 points in Shipyards in the last one or two turns.
17 mins rules and setup; 153 mins game time.
Results: Pat (purple): 154. Paul (red): 124. Alex (yellow): 114. Jeff (green): 100.

Oh, Pharaoh!: New(-ish) card game with simply numbered cards (1-9) that are collected then laid out to form number pyramids, with the small numbers at the bottom then increasing up each stack of the pyramid. Funny stuff happens when you smite an opponent’s pyramid with a thief card. Ignore the thematic inconsistency (how does a thief carry away a great chunk of masonry?). But it turns out that we played the thief- wrong. Your die roll needs to equal or exceed the row number of your target card, not the numerical value on the card. Our way obviously placed a higher premium on 6-9 value cards!
This was ok, but possibly too long to be considered a good filler. There are probably too many good games out there to expect to see this one at the table too often.
11 mins rules; 53 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 194. Jeff: 180. Paul: 175. Alex: 157.

Venue: Brian’s place
Present: Andrew, Alex, Jeff, Steve, Richard, Paul
Played: Set Cubed, Ra: The Dice Game, Roll Through the Ages, Im Reich der Wüstensöhne, Clans, No Thanks, Paul’s Prototype.

Brian had brought back some new stuff from his recent trip to the US, incl. Set Cubed, Ra the Dice Game, and the materials for a new, quick abstract game. I’ll say nothing more about the latter, except that Brian and Andrew were completely successful in hiding the novelty feature of the components from me and then taking me by surprise with it on my first play…

Set Cubed: This is a dice variation on the abstract set-making card game, then merged with Scrabble. Sets (of cubes), once rolled up, are placed on a grid, with bonus points for some of the spaces. New dice are drawn from a bag for each play.
30 mins.
Results: Andrew: 27. Brian: 22. Alex: 20. Jeff: 19.

Roll Through the Ages: The second dice game for the night, played on the other table. While I felt that I knew what I was doing in this game, there was certainly no strategy or planning in any of my play. I took the Irrigation development early (first turn, in fact) and this served me well, as I suffered not a single disaster for the whole game. My last turn play to earn an Empire was a rewarding one at 14 points, but the final result demonstrated that I probably needed a bit more focus on Monuments.
About 20 mins.
Results: Richard: 34. Paul: 29. Steve: 28.

Ra: The Dice Game: The third dice rolling game for the night, played by the Set Cubed gang on the other table. From only a brief glimpse this looks quite attractive, so I wouldn’t mind having a go at this some time…
Three epochs.
Results: Alex: 51. Andrew: 43. Brian, Jeff: 36.

Im Reich der Wüstensöhne: In continuance of Richard’s apparent obsession with deserts and camels (see recent plays of Timbuktu and Oasis) comes this baby from Klaus ‘Settlers‘ Teuber. Ride your camels around the desert, draw tiles to create oases, and ‘populate’ these with variable height tokens to claim the goods (and other benefits) after the oasis is enclosed. Turns out we got the rules slightly wrong with the playing of tiles at the edges, hence we ended up playing our own unofficial variant.
Never mind. Great game anyway. And I’ll have to insist Richard plays Yspahan and Durch die Wüste sometime soon to complete the set.
14 mins rules & setup; 84 mins game time.
Results: Steve (orange): 34. Paul (white): 31. Richard (red): 24.

Clans: Played by the Ra dicers while camelling continued on our table. Short, close game, except for Alex, who apparently played too…!
~10 mins rules & setup; 15 game time.
Andrew: 46. Brian: 45. Jeff: 44. Alex: 32.

No Thanks: Played by the Ra dicers/Clanners while camelling continued to continue…! I don’t have any data on this one; will have to update with Alex’ help later.

Paul’s Prototype: Great to have another go at this with ‘real’ playtesters (instead of my virtual ones on a spreadsheet) since making some important changes. Even more importantly, the ‘feel’ of the game play, and my testers’ feedback, is the most promising I’ve had. This despite Jeff’s completely unexpected and bizarre play strategy, in attempt to ‘break’ the game. He wasn’t successful in this (ie., it withstood the break test), but he did flush out a tiny rules ambiguity for me - thanks Jeff. I’ll add this to the FAQ, but no, for the record the Surplus Market points benefit of Tourism and Retail is not cumulative with multiple tiles! Also, I think I’ll introduce a hard limit on accumulated unpaid loans of 6 per player! (No-one else will know what that means until the game is actually published, which, thanks to tonight’s testers, is now a small step closer to reality.)
Some more rules mods to try, and the game ran over expected playing time by about half an hour, but I’m feeling much more positive about this.
30 mins rules & setup; 130 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 32. Jeff (green): 31 (really 29). Brian (red): 27. Paul (purple): 22.

Venue: Richard’s place
Present: Andrew, Alex, Jeff, Brad, Richard, Paul
Played: Alex’s new game idea, King of Siam, Simpsons Slam Dunk, Limits, Iliad, Witch’s Brew.

The truncated rotation takes us back to Richard’s house again this weekend. Not too many pics tonight, but at least taken with my better camera.

Alex’s game: After some weeks of nagging on my part, Alex offered up a new concept for trial at this evening. No specifics will be revealed here in case he pushes ahead with more development, but I think it’s ok to describe this one as a trick-taking card game with a twist.
Concept is very nice; some of the various rules scenarios (ie., mechanics) and scoring need some adjustment.
About 45 mins for three hands.

King of Siam: Played at the other end of the table, but was over and done with so fast that I didn’t even get the chance to take a snapshot!
14 mins rules & setup; 26 mins game time.
Results: Brad: 5. Andrew: 4. Richard: 1.

Simpsons Slam Dunk: Two of three filler games played by the Siamese Kings.
1st game: Andrew: 46. Brad: 23. Richard: 20.
2nd game: Richard: 40. Andrew: 23. Brad: 18.

Limits: The third filler game by these guys. Apparently this one is like Bluff or Liar’s Dice but with cards.
Brad: 0. Andrew: -1. Richard: -3.
This game plus Simpson’s Slam Dunk filled about 20 mins.

Iliad - The Art of War: All six of us playing in three teams of two. The game mechanics are very straightforward: Play military unit (ancient Greek) cards from your hand to the table, one at a time, to gradually build your force for the round, OR, expend one of your melded cards to destroy another belonging to an opponent (according to the specific rules for each unit type). But your cards are a limited commodity and you’ll only gain another three each round, so you’ll want to preserve your plays for the rounds that give you more points. The earlier you pull out of a round, the larger the hero bonus you earn (and the more cards you preserve for use in later rounds), but you’ll also be less likely to score the game points on offer for the round.
I’m usually not a fan of such games with such a high chrome factor, but this one I quite enjoyed. And that’s not simply because my team mate and I stormed home with the win! Usually there’s too many variables to track, but in Iliad it doesn’t take too long to learn the basics, although the quick reference sheet is a definite help.
Brad and I had some well-timed plays, but also some bad luck and perhaps misjudgments on the part of our opponents to help us through.
12 mins rules; 57 mins game time.
Results: Paul+Brad: 15. Alex+Richard: 9. Jeff+Andrew: 0.

Witch’s Brew: Here’s another new(-ish) title doing the rounds at the moment, with this being the first opportunity for me to play it. It reminds me of few other games, with Hoax the one first coming to mind. But it is definitely an original and certainly very cool. I can see why it is a Richard game…
13 mins rules & setup; 60 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 27. Jeff: 23. Alex: 22. Brad: 17. Richard: 15.

September 6, 2009: Games
Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Alex, Jeff, Richard, Paul
Played: Roll Through the Ages, La Strada, Street Illegal, Shark.

Small group again tonight, with Father’s Day and other commitments in place. Pictures should be decent for this session, but circumstances see me out of touch with the camera until Thursday, when I’ll try to upload them here.

Roll Through the Ages: After having it sit around for a few weeks I finally get to play this one! Yes, it’s dice rolling like Yahtzee, but the food management, developments and monument building works for me in adding theme. And the etched/stamped wooden dice are nice, too.
I will say that I agree with some of the post-game critical discussion, suggesting some imbalance in monument scores, especially those in the lower range, and also that a race to five developments seems to make for a truncated game experience. But overall, great.
15 mins rules; 41 mins game time.
Results: Jeff: 23. Paul: 17. Richard: 8. Alex: 6.

La Strada: First playing of the set picked up for me by Pat for a bargain. And first playing for both Richard and. Jeff. And first playing for me and Alex for what could be 5-10 years…
Place road tiles to join city, town and hamlet connections to your network, blocking access to your opponents while trying to work around their plays. As Al remarked, it’s bit like a trimmed-down Magna Grecia, and certainly plays well with 4p. I can see the 2p rules being pulled out for family sessions in the near future too.
9 mins rules & setup; 35 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 26. Paul (black): 22. Jeff (brown): 20 (+1r). Richard (grey): 20 (+0).

Street Illegal: The old Fette Autos car racing card game. My “Moonlight” character immediately made me think of “Fez” from That Seventies Show.
I can see all my bad judgment calls in hindsight, but sorry - I just don’t love this. I suck every time I play, and rarely feel that I have any meaningful control. Maybe I should have been ditching cards more often…
15 mins rules refresher and setup; 65 mins game time.
Results: Alex wins. Jeff 2nd, with a close challenge on the last straight. Richard 3rd, but behind an Old Pro. Then another two Old Pros before me, Fez, in last place.

Shark: Care of Pat I got this in the bargain batch with La Strada. This is the original Shark, not the re-born version with the different board, rules set and little building pieces. This game panned out as all about day-trading and little by way of medium- to long-term investment. Those that risked it a little fared better than those who stuck with the fast in-and-out strategy, with Richard cashing in big towards the end with his big yellow acquisitions.
One of the funniest, most engaging and enjoyable game plays I’ve had for a long time, even if it did run for nearly half an hour longer than any of us were expecting!
10 mins rules; 80 mins game time.
Results: Richard: 291. Paul: 288. Jeff: 125. Alex: 114.