The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Richard’s place.
Present: Andrew, Pat, Richard, Brad, Alex, Paul, Marcus.
Played: Typo, Caylus, Diceland, Ursuppe, Galaxy, Galloping Pigs, Ave Caesar.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics. A huge Sunday night of games.

Typo: A letters and words version of 6 Nimmt, and according to Richard and Al similar to something called Ghost.
5 minutes rules; 26 minutes playing.
Results: Alex: -3. Richard: -4. Andrew: -7. Pat: -11. Brad: -19. Paul: -22. It seems I had a number of points arbitrarily subtracted from my score for some reason.

Caylus: My first playing, and this enters my hot 10, although I’m not yet ready to add it to my top 10. First impression is that it contains a lot of what I call “moving parts”. These are not simply the physical game components (although it has plenty of these), but rather the actions, mechanics and indices that a player has to manage in order to be successful in the game. I liken this game player’s challenge generally to that of a business operations manager, with a hypothetical (or real) operations dashboard in view. This dashboard is replete with indicator lights, moving charts, alarms, buttons and so on, that are all “wired up” to actuators of the business and both internal and external market signals. The larger the number of moving parts, the more complex is the dashboard and the greater the skill required of the operator to interpret and manage it effectively.
This is not a negative criticism, and in fact I often enjoy games that have a lot of (figurative) moving parts. But generally they take a few playings to learn - not simply the dashboard, but rather the moving parts underneath. Even more important are the sensitivities of the parts to each other.
With Pat’s lucid rules explanation and previous experience of other resource laddering games, I thought I had this one figured out pretty well early on in the game. I soon found myself cash-comfortable and focussed on how I could generate cubes quickly enough to build some of the more interesting buildings and get some markers going in the castle. A quick glance at the score chart showed Andrew starting to pull away a bit, but Pat within coo-ee and Brad actually 1 or 2 spaces behind.
But one of the more difficult aspects of the game with many moving parts is paying attention to what your opponents’ developing strategies are. All the information in Caylus is right there is front of you but, for me at least, this is not enough of a cue to see any emerging and significant differences. At about 2/3rds through the game, as my cash position was weakening, I finally looked at everyone else’s holdings of commodity cubes and was dismayed to see that my pile was about half that of everyone else’s. While I had been minimising use of those buildings that gave kick-backs to my opponents (in favour of the single cube payouts) the others had been jumping right in. So the only one really losing out was me - a lesson learned too late in the game.
As the last turn rolled around Andrew started cursing himself apparently for not managing his cubes optimally to grab some of the big points buildings. Pat leap-frogged Andrew leaving a huge gap, but Brad’s gains were stunning. All I could do was sit back and watch.
I’ll be looking for the opportunity to practise this one again soon…
17 minutes rules. 84 minutes playing.

Results: Brad: 67. Pat: 63. Andrew: 57. Paul: 43.

Diceland: Cardboard dice on a tabletop with game boxes as obstacles. I believe this one is the Dragons edition.
“Stupid but fun” was Marcus’ comment. So much fun, in fact, that they had to play (a shortened version) again…
Game 1: 93 minutes. Richard, narrowly over Marcus, narrowly over Alex.
Game 2: About 20 minutes. Marcus won by a huge margin over Al and Richard.

Ursuppe: Our standard house rule these days is that the Streamlining mutation is not allowed.
Pat went early for Division Rate, and played this throughout the game as bonus BPs, which he saved up to use for card purchases rather than more amoebas. He also selected Struggle for Survival and soon upgraded this to Aggression. However, Brad and I chose not to run the race for filling the aggression mutation gap, and instead stayed with more passive strategies. I got eaten once or twice by Pat, before taking the Escape mutation. I also had an early investment in Longevity (which Pats says was his reason for taking Struggle), but I never got any benefit from this except for the card point.
Brad fell victim to Pat’s eating much more frequently, although he did seem to have an effective strategy. His first mutation was Substitution, then he grew a Tentacle and learned the art of Holding, so seemed to have far less of a problem with food availability.
My Spores (first choice) were used effectively on every turn, as was Movement (eventually upgraded to Movement 2), and these kept me from embarrassment on the score track. But it was Pat’s continued success with card points that kept him out of reach of us, basically unpeggable by about the third-last turn.
A very quick Ursuppe at only 72 minutes.

Results: Pat: 43. Paul: 33. Brad: 28.

Galloping Pigs: Some discussion here of divining the optimal algorithm for playing this. I said to just play a random card, which wasn’t actually true, but perhaps this is as good a solution as any other.
Also “stupid but fun”, and all over in about 12 minutes. I managed to haul the vegetable cards and keep them in all three rounds.

Results: Paul: 17. Brad: 7. Pat: 4.

Galaxy: Titan the Arena in space.
86 minutes.
Richard: (10?). Andrew: 9. Marcus, Al: 6.

Ave Caesar: Had to be done. Outrageous lite fun when you have six players who aren’t ready to call it a night, even when it’s already technically nudging Monday morning.
House rules included: Check the bottom card on your stack for a 6 and reshuffle if necessary; use a 1 card to whip a player immediately in front and swap places; no changing lanes in the spaces immediately in front of a dividing wall; and (in one case) start one space behind the start line. When I crashed out in the first race there was some discussion of introducing a trailing corpse obstruction rule, but we didn’t end up implementing this. Perhaps next time.
Our first race was always going to be a tight one, with very little margin for card space wastage. I took an early and very comfortable lead, but with two 6s in the hand was living on borrowed time. The inevitable third 6 appeared, and I was the first to crash out. Another chunk of the race later, and Pat fell victim to the same cruelty of fate. In the lead with 6s in the hand is like playing Russian Roulette. Seven spaces from the finish line and Alex was the next to spin up the loaded chamber. Brad managed to get within one space of the line before his horse collapsed with exhaustion, as did Richard’s. Finally, Marcus’ stopped short just another one space back. Caesar and his people were therefore witness to one of the greatest anticlimatic blood spectacles in recent history. Very funny stuff.
So we had to play again, this time on a more forgiving track. Richard finessed the win, to be followed by Pat, and everyone made it home safe and sound. But Caesar was displeased. ”Boring. Race again, my charioteers, and this time show me some blood!” he cried.
So the third race was underway on a more brutal track. Little margin for error, and much whipping ensued – just what Caesar ordered. Brad secured the pennant, with plenty of juice left in the tank. I was the first to collapse, 4 spaces short of the finish line, having been forced too many times to take outside lanes. Tragically, Richard too fell short of the line, by a single space. Pat was the last to die, also 4 spaces short, allowing Alex and Marcus to survive for another race…

Game 1: 26 minutes (no-one finished)
Game 2: 19 minutes. Everyone finished - Richard, Pat, Al, Marcus, Paul, Brad.
Game 3: 19 minutes also. Brad wins, then Alex, then Marcus (I think).