The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Pat’s Place.
Present: Rob, Brad, Pat, Paul.
Played: Yucata, Fuerio, Viking Fury, Corsari.

An opportunistic dip into Pat’s Thursday night world, although most regular participants are still on holidays. A few pics here, all taken with the Nokia.

Yucata: A filler, but quite a clever one. There’s more in this than meets the eye at first!
Due to either newbieness or carelessness or hopelessness, I ended up eating most of the blue (bad) stones in both games we played.
5 minutes rules, 2 x 15 minute games.

Game 1 Results: Rob: 5. Pat: 2. Paul: 1.
Game 2 Results: Rob: 8. Pat: 5. Paul: -16.

Feurio: Form the most valuable bucket brigade chains into a hexagonal fire advancing on multiple fronts. Judicious use of fire breaks can help mitigate bad luck on tile draws.
5 minutes rules, 2 x 15 minute games.

Game 1 Results: Paul: 42. Rob: 40. Pat: 31.
Game 2 Results: Rob: 45. Paul: 37. Pat: 23.

Viking Fury: This is by Ragnar Bros., apparently the same team responsible for History of the World, and Blooming Gardens. Apt, since this game is somewhere in between :-).
Brad has already written a review of this on BGG here. I agree with most of his observations and would add only the following:
1. When Pat explained the complexities of sea movement, my initial thought was that it seemed unnecessarily complicated and burdensome. However on playing, my experience was that this was not the case, and in fact this was an interesting aspect of turn planning. But given the rate that we accumulated and played Rune cards, I think the cost to change the wind modifier was rather cheap, and could probably be two cards instead of one.
2. Like ssmooth (see Brad’s review), I too found the dice-rolling aspect of conquest a real downer. I lost far too many opportunities on dice rolls than I should have given the weight of overwhelming force, and would like to see an alternative or modified raiding/settlement system, in which the strength of units on one’s longship is the main determinant of success rather than a dice roll. Eg., remove one die pip required for each surplus unit on board the longship (or something similar). The point is that a massively overwhelming force should win, even if the losses are heavy. At present, a mediocre force (of 3 units) is no less likely to be successful in a given turn than an advanced longship full to the brim with 7 Viking units, which just doesn’t feel quite right to me.
3. I’m not all that enthusiastic about the way points are accumulated, which are weighted heavily in favour of colonising than anything else. There is an exponential (or is it geometric?) progression in the value of settlements as others nearby become occupied. I would have preferred to see these values capped more reasonably in favour of adding more weight to the completion of Sagas, which would have the effect of increasing the competitive pressure in the game. However, I concede that the current weighting of points is arguably just as legitimate and a reflection of what the designers intended. New players simply need to be aware of this when they start playing - that a set of three 4-val settlements is actually worth more than earning the Saga majorities for all three nations (36 points versus 30).
Despite these criticisms, I’d be happy to play this again. I’d be even happier if there was a consensus house rule on eliminating, or at least reducing, the influence of the dice-roll gods of Ragnarok…
Rules explan time: 30 minutes. Game playing time: 158 minutes.

Results: Pat and Rob: both 162 (despite completely different patterns of play!). Paul: 121. Brad: 116.

Corsari: Get ready to set sail, me land-lubbin’ hearties, aaarrr…
Collect pirate suits.
One game of three hands for three players in about 30 minutes.
Game 1 Results (lower is better): Paul: 33. Pat:34. Brad:42.