by calebleejl
<div>Boxes from Daiso to contain resources</div>
<div>Boxes from Daiso to contain resources</div>
<div>Boxes from Daiso to contain resources</div>
New Image for Le Havre
<div>Boxes from Daiso to contain resources</div>
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GENCON '16 -The Most Excellent and Exciting Report!!! LEARNING 39 NEW TO ME GAMES!!!!! ***Photography and Reviews of the Games I Encountered!
by Steph
As it happens I went to Monday night games before heading off to Indy. I was desperately craving a play of Scythe having not played it ONCE the week before!
I randomly picked red from 2 options, since everyone else was already sitting when I got there. Joe taught Michael how to play and refresh John on it.
I was working out my strategy in the game while the rules were going on. I had the worst possible board for the red player. It was near impossible to get an early mech out. It was around mid game when I finally got my character to the center- and got one of the special action cards. They were all pretty crappy and I was disappointed with them. I ended up taking one military for 2 hearts and used it all of 2 times to help boost into the second level tier for scoring.
I was doing alright, but I had crappy combat cards and I got some more crappy combat cards. I ended up picking up 3 encounters to try and help me out. It wasn't good enough, what I needed never showed up- I really needed more recruits to keep me going.
Michael was (blue) boosting up the popularity track and just working on one thing at a time. He managed to get up to the 3rd tier for scoring. Joe was (black) and was working on moving in on people's territory. He had objective that seemed he was easily able to complete for 2 stars.
In his final turn he moved in on the center hex and managed to overtake me. It was tough for me since I had crapola to use for combat cards I used 7 force and 2 combat cards 3 each. He had only 4 force and 9 in combat cards. We tied therefore he ended up kicking me out. The game wouldn't have ended if I had won and I would had been in a much better position to win. Goddamn combat cards!
So the game ended and Michael actually won this game with a ton of end game points I think he was mid 50s. Joe was second place with 50 and I was 3rd with 48. Damn I was so close but so far. I needed that center tile for the potential win. I should have held a guy back when I ended up moving the mechs with workers. Then I would have stopped Joe from moving in, I think. It would have also gotten me another hex in the end.
Oh well, I didn't have an easy time that game but I still played well! It is a great game and I am happy to play it whenever I get the chance.
Prismafied
:star::star::star:
After that we ended up playing a 4p game of (every Monday night goers favorite) (ok, not every) Tichu!
I ended up being Geoff's partner this time! Yay Geoff! This game I never had a good enough 8 cards to call grand. It was super sad. There was one had that I was liking the look of and NEARLY called grand. I ended up calling and making a tichu, however. Had I called grand the hand would have gone sour. I would not have been passed a 9 for my 9 bomb set.
Geoff and I started out pretty strong and I caused Ron and Dan to be set on a grand call Ron decided to do. There was a bit of a lull for Geoff and I as Ron and Dan managed to catch back up and ended up in the lead for a long while.
It was OK since FINALLY Geoff and I started seeing SOME glimmer of hope and managed to pick up the Phoenix a few times towards the end. As you can expect, since we are awesome, We won! Much to late past my going home time but we played a 90 minute game and ended up winning. At least we won! :D I would have been pissed otherwise! :P
:star::star::star:
Gen Con!!!!
On the flight down Ron and I played a game of Le Havre. I just wanted to get there and have all of the funs but I still had an amazing time crushing Ron in this game! I took some pics!!
:star::star::star:
Wednesday night I had the pleasure of meeting up with BGG friend [user=EchoOperative][/user]
He was so kind to invite me and Ron to a gaming event Wednesday night. When Ron and I flew in we went to this meet up and got in a few games!
We started with Aquarium. New to me!
This small boxed game with an 60 play time! It was FAR too long. Gees I felt like I was playing this game forever. There is a lot of fun drafting ideas going on here but it needed to be 20 minutes only.
Very simple card drafting and set collection game with charming art and a bit of take that game play. I actually like what the game is doing- we were just playing the basic game and with more advanced rules you add more card which would make the game even longer!
I can't say that I loved it. I really enjoyed the first 15 minutes but it was quickly becoming repetitive and long for me. We were playing with 5 players (can go up to 6p). Perhaps it would have been better with 3p!
I totally kicked butt this game, so perhaps that helps my rating of the game. I always like to win! :D
All in all, seems like a cute light game for families but I am not sure it will work for me and future plays.
:star::star::star:
Next up was a game of Junk Art. A game I got to play back in April! I just Pre Ordered it! :D
I have to say I love this game. We played on a very crappy table that if it got bumped everything would fall over so I can't really count this game because of this. And, because I lost so badly! :P
We played one scenario that was hilarious and we also played it incorrectly! But, it came down to building our structure by the player to the right passing us a card from their hand. After 3 pieces were added we then had to stand up and move to the left. If it falls over then you are out. So you want to pass cards that will either get the player OUT or easy so when you have to move to the structure it would be easy for you to play on.
That was a crazy round I loved it!
I have a great time playing this one, even when I lose badly. I know it will be a huge hit. Super fun and I can't wait for my pre-order to come in!
:star::star::star:
The final game Ron and I got to try out was Merchants & Marauders: Broadsides. New to me!
It is a strictly a 2p game so I was weary on it since I can't say I love a lot of 2p only games (besides Arle of course). This is a ship game and you are working your best to destroy the other ship. I haven't played the parent game it is themed for so I can't compare.
It is push your luck for the perfect target cards. I got incredibly lucky and was able to kill off his captain in the first turn. You have to destroy the 2 meeples to win the game.
Our game was unfortunately cut short due to timing but we got in a few rounds. It seemed like a cool game. I would definitely like to try a full game sometime, but it still ends with being a 2p game only. It seemed I got a really good head start by being first player- he was unable to defend properly.
I wonder if there is a major starting player advantage or if it might even out over the course of the game. Hard to say at this point.
I will just declare myself as the winner! :D
:star::star::star:
:star::star::star:
Thursday was the first REAL day of the con!! Super pumped and excited we got there super early. We met up with our geek nations tours friends Amelia and Zack! We waited in front of the vendor hall for about 2 hours in anticipation. By the time the doors opened we got word Harry Potter had sold out and Seafall had sold out before doors evened opened.
I didn't have my sights on any one game I had to pick up so I was just going in an seeing what was good to demo. Mina had been talking a lot about Via Nebula So Ron and I sat down to try it out! New to me!
We played 4p with another guy and his son. They had already been through the halls as a VIG member.
We were in the demo but the game was not hard. You are performing two actions on your turn and trying to get good to your factory to make a city. You do this by acquiring goods from other locations and transporting them. Once you have the material needed you can claim a common card from the display or from your hand of 2. Once you place all 5 you trigger end game and you add up points. There are a few different ways to get points and different goals to aim for with the cities you are building.
All in all we nearly finished the game in the demo so with the 30 minutes we were able to get more than half way even with 4 of us learning. I definitely liked the speed and I liked the game a lot more than I thought I was going to. Of course Ron won, he is the one that nearly ended it with placing all of the cities and getting a lot of ending card points.
I have to say if the game wasn't $60 I might have bought it. I actually enjoyed this Pick up and deliver- basically since we were using other players pathways and resources and it wasn't repetitive since the board seemed to be changing with depleting resources and different ways of playing. I might look into trading for this game- I would really like to give it another play soon.
:star::star::star:
Ron and I started wandering the halls and I recently looked up the game HOPE. New to me!
This is a game that was recently kickstarted. The art was stunning for the box and I recalled it when I saw the demo table at the Morning players booth. They are a French publisher and were demoing this game and another game which I got to play later!
Hope is a co-op which is why I passed over it when I saw it on BGG and when it was on KS. I still wanted to give it a chance since the board drew me in for a demo. Ron and I sat down to this coop and since it was 2p we didn't have the option for a traitor role which was fine since I hate hidden traitor roles in games. (it actually almost turned me off immediately- but I stuck around).
Our object was to try and colonize planets by moving around the board and settling planets to beat out the plight. If the plight makes it to the end then we lose if we manage to colonize the goods and fill the track first we win! And whomever gave the most is the real winner.
This game is SUPER abstract. Like mind bending abstract. Hopefully (no pun indented) if you backed this game you like abstract games since this is a doosie. :P Each player has a special power which we ended up not playing with since we forgot about it anyway. Only a few things to do on your turn. Draw to your hand limit, move by activating your ship in the direction of gravity, or drop resources on the appropriate tiles after movement. It gets complicated with the movement and what dimension you are in and where you can drop the resources.
Ron and I had a bad couple of rounds to begin with but caught up to the plight and was able to stay ahead of the game. In the end we won! But more importantly, I had more offerings and was the ultimate winner!
I am not sad I didn't back it but I wouldn't mind playing again if it showed up on my table in the future! I wouldn't want to play with a traitor, however.
:star::star::star:
After that Ron and I bumped into the Hero Realms booth. New to me!
Hero Realms is a game I backed instantly when I saw it up on KS. 1. I am still so very much addicted to Star Realms App. It is brilliant and I love playing in the BGG league. 2. It is supposed to be more similar to Star Realms than Epic. Epic just didn’t work for me and I ended up trading it away.
Visiting the booth allowed for me to demo this new game before its release. It was crazy awesome! Perhaps too awesome? It works basically the same at Star Realms in that you draft cards the same way but for life it is potions and instead of bases you collect warriors that stay in front of you and you tap it. There are power card that allow for un-tapping and reuse so timing is everything! There is a new system for keeping track of life points- which was great!
So, in our game I was collecting lots of cards which allowed for healing. I kept on healing and healing and killing Ron slowly. I was up over 80 life points at one time- that was OFF of the health track scoring cards. I had to improvise. Perhaps it was too easy to acquire health in this game. I don’t know if Ron was enjoying me beating him up so badly. I enjoyed it for sure. All of my champions were working together with my cards for a TON of extras. Some cheap cards seemed really over powered so I think they might have to reevaluate the cards and make them more expensive when necessary. I hope they work on the balancing a bit more. Otherwise I loved the art and the game- it is hard not to when I love Star Realms so much.
Perhaps it totally helps that I absolutely destroyed Ron. There was no hope for him. I can safely say he didn’t like the game as much as I liked it. :P
:star::star::star:
So, then I had a very horrible Cry Havoc demo.
More on this later since I actually got to play the full game later on!
:star::star::star:
:star::star::star:
After more walking- SO MUCH WALKING! :P We found a demo with Legendary Inventors. New to me!
I didn’t know anything about this game, other than it was a place to sit and had some nice art. I can generally rely on at least enjoying an Asmodee title a bit.
This is a very simple set collection/ area control game. You are trying to win control of an invention by using the resources from your inventors, tapping them, if you will. On your turn you can use an inventor and their knowledge to influence the inventions. If it completes then you get 1 of 3 available bonuses and second place would also get a benefit after 1st place picks. You can take the card that was completed to try and get a straight set of 0-5 rated cards for end game bonus points, you can take a token that helps upgrades inventors for more influence or you can take a bonus 1 time action. These are just random small tokens that are placed on the card at the beginning of the age.
Ron and I were just playing 2p so I am not sure how much it changes with more players but we went through the 3 ages and then had a final end game scoring. I managed to collect a set of inventions 0-5 and got the bonus of 5 points for that on top of the points the inventions already has. There is other ways to score points like upgrading the inventors to be what the card says they want to be. Ron was working on that bonus but never got around to completing her. It just meant that I was to win the game! Fine by me! I blew Ron away with my score- though I don’t recall the actual score at the moment. :P
I have to say I liked the game well enough where I would play it again but it is very light and I don’t really like area control games like this. At one point I had no cubes to place since Ron didn’t want to finish a few inventions since I was winning them- there was no point. So I lost a few turns because of this until he finally finished an invention. That soured my opinion of the game and I won’t be seeking it out. I would try again, however.
:star::star::star:
I saw from AFAR Dream Home being played. New to me!
I basically pushed people over and rushed over to the table to get in a game. Okay so people were in a demo and I had to wait 5 minutes BUT THEN I got to play. It is only a 30 minute game and the rules are super easy. We were playing 3p but you always put on display the same number of cards. From the roof stack 3 cards and they might be a benefit card or a roof card and then you put out 4 room cards. Starting player gets a HUGE advantage (in 3p) and discards one pair of roof/room cards from the display. Then in clockwise order players take a pair (directly adjacent) roof card and room card- or if you want to go first then you take the solo room card. There are no real rule for room placement in the house except the dark cards need to go in the basement, like the garage card.
You are drafting these cards and then placing them in your house. Some benefit cards provide a bonus point if you have the kitchen card and places a bender in it, for example. This is really drafting and set collection. You want to put like- type rooms together to form more points. All of the points is represented on the cards so a kitchen does better next to another kitchen and a pantry wants to be next to a kitchen. There are different goals to work towards when collecting cards like you want a bedroom and bathroom and kitchen to make a great house so you get bonus points for that. If you have all of the same roof colors you get a bonus etc.
I was 1 roof short of getting an additional roof bonus in my game. It would have saved my score a bit, but I still would have been last. Ron was going first basically all game and discarding all of the cards I needed in order to make my house perfect, of course. The guy demoing the game was doing well to be expected and I think he might have won. It was a close race between him and Ron though and I was about 10 points behind. I think I ended with 27 and they were higher 30s. The demo guy said the high he saw for the day was 44… so Yeah I consider my score an epic fail! :P
I have to say it was a definitely highlight for games I played and would have bought it. Not coming out for a few months though. I will have to be on the lookout for it. Really light but I really enjoy drafting and tile placement games and this is no different! BEAUTIFUL game! I am very much looking forward to it.
:star::star::star:
By the time I made it over, Lotus had already sold out. New to me!
Lotus was on the short list of games I wanted to demo and probably pick up. For a $30 game I really wanted to demo it first. It is SO PRETTY! The demo lady clearly had played a lot of times. However, she forgot a major scoring rule which would have changed a lot of plays for me. It is not like it is a hard game, so I was ticked off with that.
It is a simple card game to try and collect sets of flowers. On your turn you have a few different options and you get 2 of them. You can add (up to 2) a card from your hand to an existing flower, add additional influence to a flower using your bug creature, or draw cards. You want majority of the flowers when it completes so you can get a bonus tile from the display that might increase your hand size or gain additional bug to help influence better. If you don’t want a tile then you can just take 5 points. She forgot to say the play who completes the flower gets to keep the flower for a point PER CARD at the end of the game. So even though you might not win the influence you will still win the flower. Each player at my table though you got to keep the flower but were only getting a single point for the “book” you collect, not the total number of cards collected. Well that certainly changes things.
I would have completed a few 7 carded flowers since I could have but I wasn’t about to give other players an opportunity to collect lots of points when I would get basically nothing. Alas it wasn’t clear in the demo and we finished the game out. I think I managed like points- I am being dramatic but it was FAR FAR less than the winning score. I kept getting hosed in this game. I think it is so so pretty and I want to play again. I think Riley might own it so I would want to play again. I got seeds to plant for demoing the game so I might have to go do some yard work… hahaha
I did enjoy it and look forward to my next play.
:star::star::star:
Ron and I found ourselves back at the Morning players booth for round 2 with a demo of Mines of Ōlnäk. New to me!
Not gonna lie, this game looked like a hot mess on the crazy ass table! I was immediately drawn into this game because of this. The WILD colors and pieces everywhere made it just insane to look at. Of course I wanted to play! Later on in the con the table was covered with a solid covered material vs the artwork from the game. :D
I hadn’t ever heard of this game but it is going to KS soon, I think. I will have to follow it along since I really enjoyed this one play. This is a resource management and action selection game. Each player has their own player board where they are selection an action to take from there discs get dispersed and placing them in order around to each location until there are no more discs to place. The action is taken and then subsequently players take turns using the discs that were on the space. You can use them in adjoining location spaces to try and upgrade your action or you can place them on the hexes in the center board for resources and influence on the mining tracks. Ultimately, you are trying to obtain control of regions on the board and claim common goals presented on the board. Money is points and money is used for a bidding mechanic and different actions.
In our game we were playing 3p with another guy who was pretty overwhelmed with the colors and was clear influencing his ability to learn the game. But we helped him along. There were a lot of little weird rules that wasn’t obvious at first but once we got going we were moving. The game only lasts 4 phases and 2 rounds per phase. At the end of each phase then you get used discs back to your use and the spaces open up.
There is a lot of moving parts in this game and that is why I like it. You have to really plan ahead and think about future moves. I messed up and needed one final disc when I didn’t have one and I would have gotten a much better score. I think next game I play will be good and I will learn from my mistakes so I very much look forward to that. Apparently there is even more to the game but there was no way they could include it all in the rules explanation so I look forward to working towards learning the more advanced rules. I am pretty sure I lost this game we played since I hosed myself and bid too much for control of a region. I think it is a very cool game and can’t wait!
:star::star::star:
The vendor hall was closing just as we finished so that was very good on timing. Ron and I made our way up to the Rio Grande Room and found a game of Tiffin. New to me!
Tiffin was a new release for the con and I was interested in trying it so I sat down and made Ron read the rules. It is amazing he puts up with me! We found no other interested party to play with so we just played the 2p game. He told me there was a BOT and I said “oh for realz.” Yes, apparently, there is a BOT for EVERY player count. Then I didn’t feel so bad.
This is a card game to try and make deliveries by gaining the most influence on the given route. There are 4 routes presented at a given time and players use cards from hand to place their cubes on the routes to try and gain control. When the routes are completed they are scored based on who had the most majority and extra points for the cubes placed as a tiffin.
We are given 2 bonus cards for one time use and of course Ron and I both forgot about this and it would have been super helpful. On your turn you do one thing only. You can play a card to help a delivery, you can draft a few cards, or you can place a tiffin. The BOT comes into play when you start playing cards for deliveries. Some of them have a picture of a human symbol on the top left under the number. This moves the bot along and when it hits the max (2 for a 2p game) it does its turn. The bots turn draws 2 cards and starts filling up the delivery routes how you normally would as an active player! The bot might win majorities! It is definitely a random element and that is what I enjoyed most! I know a lot of people will not enjoy this feature but to me it is what keeps the game more interesting.
The way it works I figured I was going to be winning a route then Ron places there with more cubes and takes control, fine I was expecting that but then the bot has a turn and total completes it and I end up in 3rd! Crazy!
It turned out to be a very close game and I was SURE to be the winner. I was doing a very good job managing the final turns and then I won! Until Ron told me the final route would be completing still based on what was out there. He failed to mention this before, of course. He ended up passing me with the final route scoring- curses! I nearly had him.
This was a game I was going to acquire with my bingo card I had- but Ron wasn’t that impressed with it and I ended up getting some other games in its place. I think people will like this one okay, I am not sure how much staying power it will have. I definitely would want to play this one again.
:star::star::star:
I had Ron sit to try and learn another new game called For Crown & Kingdom. New to me!
This game we found another couple to play with for a 4p game. It looked simple enough and it was. You are moving pieces around this board like in Finca. The space you leave from you add up all the dudes there and move that many spaces. Depending on the character you move you get to do different actions. Ultimately you want to spread your influence over the land and get your banner on each of the spaces of the circle.
The first 15 minutes was interesting and thinking. As the game went on players were stealing money and you never had money to get your people out of jail without other players taking your money. It was the never-ending game. I managed to do pretty well early on and managed to get down 6 markers to the board out of 12!!! Then the game just got unbearable to play. It was so much take this and take that and no one could do anything. Fortunately the other couple wasn’t enjoying it and we called the game before it was complete. We had been playing like 45 minutes and I was the only one who made any progress at all with 6 banners down!
Ugh, I can’t say I ever want to play this game again. It looks pretty and simple but it turned into something that was just never going to end. I don’t know how you are supposed to get anything done with essentially no money. You can’t make it from round to round with any money and the whole point is to spend money to do extra things. But, since that happens BEFORE you move then you can’t ever do anything. I guess I won by default but perhaps we all won for stopping the game play.
:star::star::star:
I had wanted to try out the new Dominion: Empires. New to me!
We had enough time before the tourney to play this game! Mina had been talking a lot about it so I wanted to give it a go. I hadn’t liked Dark Ages and Adventures so much so I didn’t have high hopes. We pulled in another girl to play with us and got a rundown of the brief differences to this deck. I hadn’t come across split decks before but they are 5 cards of one type and then 5 cards of another type that work well off of each other. There was a new thing called debt (at least I hadn’t seen it before) and when you acquire a card you debt tokens which you have to pay off before buying any other card. There was also one event card that we could utilize too. Simple differences the girl we were playing with only knew Dominion expansions up until Alchemy so she was a bit behind. :P
We got to playing and I went totally crazy. I went into debt every chance I could just because I wanted to see the outcome! One turn I was like 16 in debt but I was acquiring all these excellent cards that was doubling my totals and giving me lots of money to buy with. I needed it in order to get out of all the debt but hey I was able to buy lots of provinces!
Ron and the girl thought I was crazy for picking up so much debt and basically losing out on a bunch of turns. I like to play a bit crazy just to see what happens. I know the cards are put there for a reason so when something costs 8 to buy and comes with 8 debt- it’s GOTTA be good, right? Right!
I had a lot of fun playing this game and was really happy to have gotten the chance to remember how I love Dominion. I need to move around my dominion boxes so maybe it will be recognized and played more. Maybe I just have too many boxes and it is too intimidating! I can’t wait to delve in and learn more cards.
I think this game ended with a pretty close score. I think Ron won with 47 and I was just behind at 45. In the end it is one of THE FEW (I think only 3) games I ended up buying after trying out at this con. That is saying something…
:star::star::star:
The final game of the night was a tourney for Russian Railroads.
I had forgotten how much RR makes me mad. :P I had been playing a lot of RR German Railroads which has eased that side of the game for me. Ron was allocated to my table and I was hoping that wouldn’t be the case since it would give a better chance for him to get to the finals.
I started out strong, however. I was building my top railroad and collecting multipliers. It was awesome! Until round 5 when I said OH SHIT I forgot to be COUNTING the damn multipliers. I was so fucking stupid I am still pissed at myself. Of course the 20 + points I missed would have won me the game in the ending. Not that I wanted to play in the finals ANYWAY- but it is still not fair. I am such a stupid moron I guess I deserve to come in second place by like a few points.
I heard the finals was a runaway with someone close to 600 points anyway. I duno, I can’t say I love the game after knowing what German Rails does to it. One of the guys at our table lost pretty badly but he hadn’t played in years and was just playing for the fun of it.
Remind me next time to not do tournaments unless it is for Ginkgopolis or something I very much enjoy. In the end I should have won that game and I am still pissed at myself for playing so poorly. Ron and I are too nice. Ron would have won if he didn’t point out an obvious move to the other guy. Ugh just everything about it made me mad. I can’t do it again!
:star::star::star:
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Ron was up and playing early for the 8am Eclipse tourney. He probably could have advanced if he wanted to but choose not to show up to the semi finals- he just wasn't feeling like a punching bag, again.
I can't say on Friday morning I started off well. The first game I learned was Meow. New to me!
She was just standing there looking to teach me a game and I reluctantly obliged. This is a straight up bluffing game really not much else. Draw a card and say “meow!” they can call you on it or not. If they don’t then they draw a card and do the same. This just happens over and over and over. Until someone calls someone out. If you pull a non- meow card you still say meow trying to get 2 non meow cards to win. Or if they call you out and you haven’t lied then they lose.
I mean that is really it. We played 2 times and since it was only us 2 it was under a minute before the total of both games were complete. I am a terrible liar. Of course I lost. No fun as a 2p game- if you can call it that. Definitely my worst game of the con, but at least it was fast!
:star::star::star:
I found myself at the Iello booth and playing a 4p game of Candy Chaser. New to me!
This game I missed out on playing when Joe H brought it around (I think) when it was a new Japanese release. It is ANOTHER bluffing game to try and get your candy to the end of the track but you have to do it without other players figuring out which color you are and rely on them to do it. It is tricky and it comes down to each player getting to accuse one other player of the color they think they are. If they do then they are out.
Of course I was out before I had a chance to accuse. It was terrible, I am the worst liar ever as we just figured out. The colors are great and it is a super cute game. I just don’t think that there is much to this game which will keep me wanting to play it. Definitely a family game and one kids would enjoy for sure! :D I would play it again, it was harmless but I won’t own it.
:star::star::star:
One of the best games I was able to learn ws next on the table! I found Sagrada at the Floodgate booth! New to me!
This game had me at the cover. I generally don't judge a game by the cover, but this one I was in love at first sight! So, perhaps I was biased before even playing the game. I was SUPER excited to finally get the chance to play it.
This is a dice placement and drafting game. It is very spacial and abstract. There are 18 dice in each of the 5 colors and you go through all of the dice with a 4p game. We were playing a 4p game and it took a lot longer than I was expecting 45-60 minutes. People were getting lost in thinking and with their options or simply weren't paying attention to turn order. First player draws 9 dice (4p game) and takes one and then it goes around and snakes back and all players end up with 2 dice for the round. This goes on and on until your player board is filled up. You are building a stain glass window and dice placement is critical.
There are 3 common goals that score you points for the arrangement of dice on your board. Each player card has a different arrangement of additional patterns they must meet and some are seriously easier than others. I didn't look through but they were all double sided and I am just not sure how 'balanced' they are since in my game it seemed it was a lot easier for some to do very well. There are also 3 action cards for you to take to help with the dice selection. Those also change each game and you only get a few marbles to help utilize these actions so you have to be really wise in when you want to do this.
When placing the dice they can not be adjacent to SAME value OR color. You have to place adjacent to an already placed die which includes diagonal. Every player also has a secret bonus for scoring card which shows a color that you score for each pip you have in that color.
I had yellow for the bonus scoring and of course no 6s ever showed up. Lame. I did my best with placement but in the end I left too many holes and needed specific numbers where it was just impossible to get what I needed. Our common goals were to have 5 different numbers in a row, with 5 different colors and then the column had to also be different colors. Doesn't seem hard, but with the board I had it was quite difficult. One corner had color restrictions and the other had number restrictions. It was very challenging and I had a great time!
The demo guy was awesome and let us play the full version, One was definitely enjoying it and I am not sure the other guy I was playing with liked it but he stuck around (which he said was a testament since he hadn't demoed anything yet). The demo guy totally kicked out butts- perhaps he had been playing too much. The other guy enjoying the game was doing VERY well but he had a bad last few turns so it didn't work out for him so well. He still came in second though. We were playing for the final Sagrada pin! Lucky for me the demo guy could see my enthusiasm and ended up giving me the pin! I was so excited- this game was awesome and I had a great time, losing and all!!
I will definitely be on the look out for the KS in Sept. It was a super awesome game and the art is just stunning and I support Floodgate! :D
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I found myself a the Greyfox booth and sitting down to play London Dread. New to me!
I am not sure why I decided to sit down and play this game since a lady was just telling me how she had a terrible gaming experience playing it before. Ah well, I still sat down and played.
This is a co-op game and you are working in the street to find clues and beat the puzzle. You have to find the plot cards and beat the scenarios. The interesting part of this game was the time aspect. You only get 12 minutes I think it was to figure out your clock and all of the clues you have to encounter and beat. Each player has special skills they can vanquish and it helps defeat the board. Each section of the board has 6 cards and 1 plot to try and find. The final section has 2 plot that need to be revealed. The plot cards are a bit harder to accomplish and beat so usually multiple people need to be on that location in order to win. Now, during the countdown players are figuring out where they are going to be at X o’clock and if someone else has to help with the card they will also have to be there at the SAME X o'clock in order for it to be a success. Traveling to a different quadrant means you have to spend a full hour slot to do so.
All along you are worrying about what you can and can’t accomplish but you have to also be worrying about the other players fulfilling what they can in the 12 hours you have in order to complete the mission. Everyone has to end on the same space for the final encounter of the final plot card. Plot cards have to be completed in Letter order A-E and that was not explained well enough in my game so I didn’t understand that. Some plot cards can only be completed in certain times like day time or evening.
I didn’t understand the A-E timing so I never calculated when the guys were going to complete plot B. I had the other lady meet me at plot C and we were to complete that. We did but it was a turn before the guys and it was apparently illegal but to get the full experience, we kept on with the game and just played as if it were OK. It was a cool 12 minutes I could feel the pressure and trying to figure out the puzzle. I actually very much enjoyed this part of the game. Well thought out and cool art. I was the Nun, of course. I made my way around the board and fighting what I could. It was a fun time.
Where it started to change course was when we were gearing up for the final battle. We had like mini bosses that we had to encounter. This actually killed off one of the players. But, what you were gaining from them was a single die to add to the final battle. Okay you can choose to participate in the mini battles or not but if you didn’t then you would not get the extra dice. You run the risk of pulling a bad card and not being able to complete and perhaps rolling the trauma die which might end up killing you under the circumstances. So these mini battles gain you dice and the final battle you add up all of the horror with the board scale and see how many hit points we needed in order to beat the game. We only needed 5 and with 3 people and I think 15 dice we were unable to roll 5 hits and we lost. It all came down to a final die roll. It seemed like the designers couldn’t think of a clever ending and said roll some dice. I was very let down with this. The game play was actually well worth my time and I was very interested in trying to figure out what everyone was doing and the timer aspect. There was so much hope but then the final battle was just like well, ok.
I am not sure what the other scenarios bring to the table or how much harder it gets. I would try this game again, but, I can’t say I would request it since I know where the game leads to. It wasn’t the worst I played!
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Since the Good Games Publishing was right there I went over to see if I could get a demo in of Unfair! New to me!
I have been following this game since I first learned of it, probably through a picture I saw. I love theme parks and this one was a card game so I was VERY interested in trying it out. The demo was set up for mid game play. Most of the structures and features had been pre set and we were all set up for a specific strategy and idea. I like hat idea, but the poor guy demoing the game had to make sure everything was set up accordingly.
In this game you are playing rounds. In each round there are events that might happen when people play an event card. These cards are VERY MEAN and can definitely be a turn off for some players. Very much take that in this part of the game. Players might damage or steal your parts and features. Things you have spent time and money to acquire and play. I haven’t played a full game so I don’t know HOW BAD this can be but there could be a problem with this in the long game, I am not sure. You will definitely need a backbone to play this game and just be aware of other players “abilities” and bonuses.
Then you move into the construction phases there are 3 turns to play cards or draw cards or plan with blue prints. The blue prints are specifically end game points if you meet the requirements. In the 2 rounds we played I picked up another blue print and it needed to be a restaurant with a PIRATE theme attached. I was never able to get that pirate theme card, I think there are 2 of each theme, so I auto failed that challenge. Not good since you LOSE points if you don’t complete it. Doh!
Once those turns were complete there is the coring round where you count up all of the stars in your park and get $$ = to that number. My bonus staff member gave me double this amount so I was rolling in the dough. It didn’t help since one guy kept blowing up my stuff for his money. There is a lot of end game scoring which was shown to us, but we didn’t really count it up since it was only a demo.
The other guy managed to kill some of my point cards but I was still doing pretty well with all the $$ I was collecting and you do get points for money even if it isn’t as good. But what he didn’t say was the BIGGER and BETTER your attraction is the more points you get. You want to be adding upgrades and features to the SAME machine. The more cards you have the more points you get for a single attraction. So while you can have up to like 6 attractions you score better for the amount you put into a single attraction vs having a bunch of smaller ones.
The whole game seems very cool and I just love the art and feeling of building up your park. This should be coming to KS soon, I believe and I will definitely have to look into getting this one. I have to say I enjoyed the small exposure to the game I got to play. I look forward to building from the ground up and seeing what happens. It seems like a very cool game.
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Ron was finally done with his long game and I located him and we went over to play Junk Art.
This game there was HUGE pieces. It was SO SUPER COOL!!!! I loved playing with the huge pieces. We actually one ended up doing 1 round for the demo and there was a kid trying to play with his dad, but he could barely reach. Really fun to play with these blocks they were all hand made and there was a rumor that they might extend to production of this game in the massive form. We will have to see how accurate that is, but here is hoping!
This game we were playing that you didn’t have to match colors, I guess they were missing a card or something, I am not sure.
It was just a cool game to be playing with huge pieces. I just placed my pre order online since I didn’t want to carry all of the wood home- it WOULD have been so heavy! (yes pun intended) :P
I definitely didn’t win the round I was playing since I missed out on some placements due to being too short to reach the pieces I needed. THEN he told me I could take any color in that shape. Doh! It was still a fun time and I had Ron take my pic to show the size of this game!
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Ron and I walked around and found Iello booth and got in a few games over there. We started with Schotten Totten. New to me!
This is a game of chicken. You score differently depending on what cards are played in what location. Each section of the board can only have up to 3 cards played and in the end all regions will have 3 cards on both sides since all cards will be played. You are trying to have the best combo of 3 cards or if nothing else best added score. So if you know you will be losing a side then you don’t want to put effort into that space until you have to dump a card. It gets tricky since you are both drawing from the same deck of cards and you just might not get the card you want even though you are holding out and hoping for it.
Ron luck, for me, this game was terrible. I was getting all of the cards he needed and I ended up kicking his butt by taking majorities for the win. It is not really tug of war type 2p game but I put it in the same weight and category as a game such as Piñata.
Anyway, I had a good time playing it and the art is charming. I just don’t play many 2p like this. Definitely a family game for the ease of game play. I think it will do well!
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Next up was another game from Iello that hasn’t been released quite yet called Kenjin. New to me!
This is actually similar to the game just before in that you are playing cards down in front of a region trying to battle for the control of the region. Nothing gets resolved until the game is over. This game plays 2-4 and Ron and I just played 2p. The game seems most uninteresting @ 2p. With 3 or 4p you have to manage all of the same cards by battling areas and 2 different people- it seems a lot more interesting.
Most of the cards are placed face down and some cards are face up with immediate powers to look at another player’s card, for example. There are a lot of different powers and things you can do in this short game. I actually very much enjoyed it and nothing played out how I thought it would so that was pretty cool.
I really thought I had this. Ron's general was found and killed so pssh I was thinking no problem, I got this. Yeah, not so much. He was moving his people around and it happened that he killed a bunch of my guys and I was just hosed! I think I only managed getting 4 points when I thought I was going to win the locations! Yeah, not so much! I actually very much look forward to trying this game again with 3p since I know it will just be crazy cool. Trying to plan for 2 people in battle will get very difficult. I can generally read Ron pretty ok, the problem is he can read me better and know what to expect.
I have to say that was a cool game! I will be on the lookout for it in the future.
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Up next was perhaps the game of the con. I saw it being played A LOT and tons of people were carrying it around like everywhere. I met up with some friends Craig and Anne from home and they were looking to play Cry Havoc! New to me!
Earlier in the con I had a very very BAD demo of this game. Basically, it wasn’t a demo. The guy was obviously familiar with the game and knew what he was talking about. He was going a mile a minute and not explaining anything just going through a turn order and what happens. I was following OK, only because I am a solid gamer and can pick things up quickly. If it was a pretty new gamer they would have been lost with the first sentence. He was telling us to do all of these things and how to move and get into battle. There are 5 rounds in this game (potentially less) and 3 turns per round. Each turn you can do one type of action which could be to build, move, draw cards etc. He didn’t explain buildings at all and just said to move. Then we skipped the 2 next turns and went directly into battle and then the demo was over. It was terrible.
I was happy they had wanted to play this game so I could explore the building aspect to it. Yes, this game has a lot of combat but there are ways around it and figuring out the best way to handle combat. By building you can enable other benefits like weapons and influence for a given region. You activate the building to help do whatever it is your race does. In the game with Craig and Anne I was handed yellow which was the human race. They particularly like technology and advancements with control of the regions. I could activate my default power to get 1 point per region I had in control. Done! I did that as often as I could and got a fair amount of points for it.
My friend Greg was flying solo this con so I texted him to see if he wanted to play with us and he did so he showed up and ended up playing Trog the bot faction if you do not have a 4th player. It is HIS world you are invading in this game to try and gain control. Having battles gives crystals to regionals and makes it more valuable. More crystals means more points. You want points in his game!
The whole game ends after the 5 rounds is complete. At the beginning of each round there is an event. In the chance a player has PASSED an event on the scoring track then the event is moved to the next available event space and you proceed with one less round for the game. Interesting mechanic. Of course Trog had crossed the event line and the game we were playing lasted only 4 rounds. It was moving quickly then it really slowed down when we started getting more complicated hands of cards and combat I also think we were losing focus.
It was definitely a close race in our game I thought for SURE Greg had gotten me. He was claiming like all of the land and gaining so many points a round. I was barely scraping by holding the territory I was controlling. I managed to pick up some really nice action cards which allowed me to reverse combat order and it gave my buildings almost a super power. Reversing the combat means I was able to destroy his Trogs before they did any capturing or scored any points for regions. It was really awesome. I put my final score on the board at 78 points and Greg was ONE point behind me with 77. Poor Craig was just under Greg with only 28 points. I am not sure what happened there but he had a rough game it seemed.
All in all I enjoyed the game and I would play again. I liked it about as much as I liked Blood Rage. Not enough to own it but would play again if suggested. Lots of minis in the game and bits to go with it. I think everyone had a good time playing and learning this one so that worked out for everyone.
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Saturday I wanted to wait in front of the door and it was a good thing too since we got to the game I wanted to demo and then the table was full, just like that. We got to demo the new hotness of Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne. New to me!
I can’t say I was a fan of Cosmic Encounter, since I wasn’t. This game has a lot of same features as that game but you are allocated to play as a house from Game of Thrones. SIGN ME THE HELL UP. Sadly, my color RED, is the Lannister house. LAME. At least I got to play as Tyrion. With the terribleness that is Lannister, at least there is Tyrion. There are a plethora of selections. Each house has 5 choices and everyone has a different power and benefit. Of course, everyone hated me from the beginning, I couldn’t blame them- I said “just go ahead and kill off Joffrey- I don’t blame you!” A lot of fun jokes and it is so interesting to play this game when everyone knows all of the players and it is just so exciting.
The object of the game is to get all your influence spread across to other player’s houses by winning battles and allying with the appropriate side. You have to use your cunning ways to convince people to side with you. You of course can deny help from others if you wanted to. Why, might you do this? Well the Tyrell house is very swingy and will gain influence whether they win or not. Hahaha at least for Marjorie’s power. Hilarious and true. When you join a battle you have to select one of your Houses attacker or defender. There are specific cards that align with this person you have selected. So, if I send Cersei to attack her card I can play happens after the battle- if I use her in battle then play her card she deals one more damage to the losing side to each participants. :P I was so so so mean in this game. I used her card 2 times in a row killing off 2 players from the losing side. I think there are 2 of each character in the deck and cards do not cycle fast. Of course you cannot sill off your main character, but all of the other 4 characters from your house can be killed off. :P
On the active players turn they are the attacker and they draw a card from the deck and it reveals a house they will be attacking and they will have to choose a defender. From there the inactive players can be bargained with to try and ally with the side they think will help them gain influence. Active players can choose to accept help or not and each inactive player can try and participate. Using cards from hand you place one down probably with a value and the values played and the influence of the king and active players all tally and the greatest amount wins! Tyrion's power makes it so the card played turns to negative on both sides. So if I played a 2 it would be a -2 and the other player plays an 8 turns to -8. He was crazy! I loved it!
I had a lot of fun playing this game even if we didn’t finish it. Tyrell was nearly the winner because of all of the influence their house can give out. You just have to be aware of Marjorie’s power and not allowed her to join in on the fun, ever! Technically they were the winner. I managed to get 3 influence out on the board out of 5 so that was pretty good. I can see this game getting played a lot. I really had a great time with it and I can’t wait to play it again. Ron didn’t like it so much. As I said earlier a lot of the battles are dependent on the cards you have drawn. If you just don’t see the good cards you need to do well then you can easily be screwed over. The cards do not cycle fast enough. Perhaps we were missing a rule about getting through the cards faster. He did say if you run out then you run out and too bad for you- so perhaps you don’t want to get through them faster. I see a lot of replay value here with so much table talk. OMG the theme is just amazing and one I am totally in love with. I am super excited for it. I can’t wait!
I got Crowned!
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We ran into my friend Nate who was there as a VIG and was planning on getting me Odin- which of course, never happened. We were wandering the halls a bit and we went over to try out a game I was interested in learning called Ascendants of Aetheros. New to me!
The art is so pretty and was getting talked about on the geek so I wanted to see what it was about. Sort of a deck builder to try and get a certain amount of points in the crystals you are collecting. There is a lot of attack cards and attack blocks you can be doing.
The demo kid clearly knew what he was doing and that he had been doing A LOT of demos for this game. I can’t say he was very clear in explaining it. Random guy joined in after we had started for the second round. It worked out ok. It was a 4p game and you are trying to protect your crystals and point cards best you can but you don’t get much choice in the cards you get and there is not a lot of cycling through your deck. On your turn you can do a number of things and Ron was going to town.
Perhaps I was glamoured by the pretty art but Nate and Ron hated this game. They were saying it is very much do this attack that action defend that action and very linear. Doing the same thing over and over again and not much game there. Perhaps they were right. I wasn’t sad when the game ended. I think it is really meant to be a fast 2p game but it plays up to 4 or 5p and at that count the downtime is kinda long and if you don’t have the cards to attack then you are just sort of sitting there.
In the end Ron won the game with 80 shards I think they called it and we were only playing a half game but everyone was kinda happy to have it be over. I wanted to love it! I nearly bought it- but then I was able to demo it. I got a cool swag bag with a 2p game inside! I can’t wait to try it out! I would revisit this game if it showed up but I doubt it will.
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Nate was leaving for the airport and Ron and I were left to wander around. I saw an open table to learning a game called Wrath of Dragons. New to me!
I was immediately drawn to the dragon meeples and the color set up of the board. Ron and I sat down and 2 other joined in for a demo of this game. It was a 4p game but I know it can play with more than that. This is a game about being a dragon and destroying the cities! You want to try and collect resources for set of different material goods and collect the most cities by burning them down. The more variety the more points but also if you have the single most of any of the items you also get points for that too! In the game you can spend resources to upgrade the dragon and other benefits. Each round there are a few phases and there is a certain amount of rounds before the game ends. There is a drafting mechanism that helps you get the city locations you can fly to and perform the action on the cards. If you have more than one for a given city you can play any and all of those cards. Spending resource will also help you gain additional actions if you wanted.
There is an area control aspect to it in that once a dragon is in a location then you can’t also go to that city but by burning the cities down you are collecting them so there is that to consider for area control points for the end of the game.
In our game it was just a couple round for the demo and we went over the scoring which is actually pretty easy to follow with the player aid/shield provided.
In our game I was just trying to figure out the rules and burn the cities down. I focused mostly on taking control of the cities and trying to level up my dragon to get better opportunity for healing. It had ended with the white player in the lead at the end of the game since she had the most diverse collection of goods and cities and was scoring a lot of second place points. Obviously the end game after several round will go a lot differently and there will be a lot to consider. I was tied with the green player in second which was one point behind white. It turned out to be a pretty close game! Ron just failed this time around I think he was too focused on one thing and didn’t realize going diverse would have been better.
I actually very much enjoyed this game and I have already agreed to a trade so I can acquire it. I look forward to playing a full game. I don’t know how it will play with 2p but I think it is worth giving it a shot. At least try and get it out at a game day soon, or something. It seems like a very solid game and I can’t wait to play the full thing.
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A Game of Thrones: Hand of the King was definitely a hot title that was being talked about a lot. New to me!
I was fortunate that I found the table empty when we walked by and were able to play the very fast game. It is set collection game and when you take majority of a house then you get the house banner. You only have to MATCH the current player with the most in order to take the control. The way you collect the tiles if by Varys the spider- of course he can influence anyone!
On your turn you move Varys in one orthogonal direction and collect any number of the SAME TYPE house. You get them all to your collection and you acquire the house banner if able. This keeps happening until all of one house has been claimed then that player will take a vicious action card from the display of actions card. It might say Steal Dani or kill Arya. Something that will affect other players or the game board. It was probably for the better that I wasn’t playing to get the characters I like best. I ended up with Dani and she was then stolen from me by Ron since he is a jerk.
When you move on the board you want to be careful though since you don’t want to set up an awesome play for the next player to just steal your banner away.
In our game I was painfully aware of the positions on the board it meant losing out on some awesome plays to collect many cards. I ended up playing the safe way and leaving the player to my left no really good options. This was actually very good thinking of me. I managed to end a house this way and take one of those mean action cards and it cause a house banner to come my way. I ended up with 3 banners for the win and I had all the worst characters in the series. Winner!!
It is a cute 10 minutes abstract game for set collection. It is harmless and fun. Other were saying they liked the art but I would have enjoyed it more with the photographs from the show. I duno I think he art is Ok but it didn’t grab me. Maybe if it were in more colors and clearer house colors it would have been better. I liked it and I will probably by it. Nothing outstanding here though.
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Since there was a few seats available Ron and I sat down to play Vikings: The Board Game. New to me!
This is based off of the TV show which I haven't seen before so I can't compare. The game actually seemed solid. I know the demo version only had the first phase I think there is summer and winter in a given round and maybe 2 or 3 rounds. We only went through the first summer phase. In the phase there is a board to explore. You are spending your day points to cross the seas and get to land for resources and market actions. For each tile you flip you get to bump up on the explore track and this might get you a lot of points depending on how much exploring you did. Ideally you want to find the resources needed to fulfill your contract for more points during the winter phase.
I actually thought there was a lot of nice things going on in this game. It wasn't clear that the exploring was going to get so many points when we started so Ron didn't end up exploring as much as me since I went in another direction. He followed closely in another players foot steps. It is definitely a resource management game and you can only hold so much on your boat so you have to try and trade it for money since you can have unlimited money, of course!
In the winter phase, which we didn't get to, there are actions to take to trade resources for money and points and to help prepare for the next summer exploring phase.
In our game I did very well in terms of points even though I didn't make my objective. I didn't realize I had to return home after collecting the resources I needed- seemed almost impossible. I did get a ton of points in other areas though and I think I won- but another kid was doing well with exploring too so he might have been close in points to me. All I know is I had a TON of points and Ron and only a few. It kinda tells me exploration is important.
I would definitely try this game again. I like the randomness of the tiles and potentially getting screwed over with a 4 day 3 food tile. There is something fun about that. I actually had a good time with this and am interested to playing a full game.
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We made our way over to the CMoN booth. I can't say I am excited by their new logo but if you aren't familiar CMoN is Cool Mini or Not. They are actually making a lot of games these days with no minis- I got to try a couple small box games they were showing. Ron and I jumped into a game of Kreo. New to me!
It is just so freaking pretty I had to give it a try. Yes it is co-op and I was weary of this fact as I always am. BUT PRETTY! You need 3p in order to play this game.
It is a card game to try and restore the plant to have the perfect elements needed to survive. All cards are dealt at the beginning of the game and you get to look at your entire hand of cards! each turn the start player passes and each player plays a card from hand. There are a ton of terrible cards that make semi complete features lose their elements like really bad things happening.
We need to fulfill the guidelines from the chart in order and work our way down the tree. You only need a certain number of features before moving down the line to the next. Someone has to play an atmosphere or comet card to start the game and going from there players should hopefully be able to start completing the cards by playing the appropriate resources. If it all works out atmosphere and the 2 resources and then an additional win or river card might be played. Now each player can only play one card and ALL of the cards must be played so you have to figure out the time to play all of the bad cards. Ideally you can make the planet fulfilled and win the game by the last card is played or you lose.
In our game it was going pretty okay. I had about ALL of the terrible cards but I was playing them all at the correct time!We ended up not losing a bunch of cards from the tableau so I did my job wisely.
It came down to the last couple of turns and it was apparent that we were not going to win. Ron needed to have the planet card for his turn and he didn't We also didn't have the orange card we needed. I still felt pretty accomplished we got the planet down and 2/4 resources. But we, in reality, were no where near finishing that game. we were also playing the EASY game. I can't wait to try it again! I really liked it.
This was 1/3 games I demoed and then purchased. I did really like it. I might have been blind to the rainbow card and how pretty the game is, but I had a great time playing. Coll stuff!
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Next up was another CMoN game called Cthulhu in the House. New to me!
This is a very simple kids Cthulhu game. You are trying to keep your monsters alive. There is a random element to the game and a lot of bluffing. Each player is handed 2 monster and you have to move the monsters in the house and have them fight. On your turn you get one action to move a monster or cause a fight in a room. Portals follow monsters around and provide the winner. You say mr green monster is going to win over purple monster. Then you flip the portal and it says if you are true or not and then one of the monsters dies. So you really don't have MUCH control since all outcomes are cause by the portal tokens and there is no real way of knowing. You can have say over who is fighting and attempt to pick a winner but yah it comes down to chance.
I was actually trying to keep my guys alive this game but there was just nothing I could do for one of them since it all happened so quickly and before I could react. Ron moved one of my guys in a room and then the next turn the demo guy killed him off. DoH! I did do well and got my second guy to be 2nd place. But of course Ron won that game with 2 very high scores for both of his monsters. The demo guy never looked at his tokens and he lost very badly.
It was a cool game but definitely for kids. BABY CTHULHU so cutes! I didn't mind playing it but I don't have to play that one again.
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Ron and I walked by and found Brynk. New to me!
This is a simple dexterity game that takes place on a rolling platform. On your turn, it is simple. You take a piece from the table- ANY piece and place it on the structure. Players keep going until it falls over and then they are out and everyone else keeps playing.
Very simple game, I quite enjoyed it and I might have bought it had it been available at the time. We ended up playing 2 games since I lost pretty quickly in the first game. We found some more people for the second game and one of those guys was VERY bad- he breathed and the thing fell over. I suppose dex games aren’t for everyone. Hahah It was still fun.
I was doing very well in the second game making it very difficult for Ron to play, but he never cracked. He managed to keep playing and it was down to both of us. Of course I lost. BUT I was doing so well!!!!!
I very much enjoyed this dex game- but I like dex games in general. This one was simple and fun.
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Across the way was The Last Friday. New to me!
I had definitely wanted to try this. To my disappointment they had sold out just that morning. This is a new take on Whitechapel and I can’t help but love that game. I immediately thought of my friend Scott when we were playing this game since it reminded me (theme wise) of Camp Grizzly – which was a terrible game Btw, but he loves it.
In this game we are campers trying to get back to our cabins while the hunter is on the loose trying to find and kill us. This was just chapter 1 which was the length of the demo. The game continues to have all of the campers then looking to try and kill the hunter. There is a lot of cross between this game and Whitechapel but there are a number of twists in this one. It is very clever and The 4 nights in Chapel turn into 3 or 4 chapters in this game and there is a lot of progression in Friday.
I am very excited by this game and I would have bought it on the spot. The colors are vivid and the challenges are exciting. In our game Ron was playing 2 colors and one of his characters died. Just because they dies didn’t mean he wouldn’t return to the next chapter but it would be as a new character and the one that died would lose all of the items they were carrying.
Everyone else made it back in the cabins all safe and sound. The lake in the middle is a fun playing ground. Since you have a general idea of where the hunter is from round to round and every 3rd round the hunter has to reveal where he was 3 turns ago. But the lake he can freely move across some one moment he is on one side of the board and the next he is on the other. It is super clever and really hard to keep track of!
I had a lot of fun playing this one and I would have bought it had it been available. I will definitely have to pre order it so I can get it in. I really like the game which is not a surprise since I really like Whitechapel. I can’t wait to play the full game!
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Ron and I made our way up to the Rio Grande room and got in one more game to complete my Bingo card. We played the older game called Yspahan. New to me!
This is an older game but still represented in the room. No one was playing and I decided we should play. We found a 3rd player named Jessica and Ron read the rules. The game lasts I believe 3 weeks and each week is 7 days long. Each day the start player rolls all of the dice and puts them on the board by number. This is a dice drafting game and there are multi purposes to playing these dice. You might take control of part of a region, or get money or camels which are types of currency in this game. Other options could be to move the merchant and send shipments off or to just take a bonus card for a sweet action.
It is a very simple game with lots of choice’s and interesting mechanics. I didn’t think I would like it as much as I did. There are a lot of nice things going on. You are trying to gain area control and score points by fulfilling the area with your cubes by the end of the week. There are many ways to get points.
In our game I was spending resources to build buildings and gain the benefits that way. The more you build the more points you get and the more benefits you get. It seemed only logical to go that way. Jessica took a different approach and spent her resources early and got the +2 points per scoring region. She was getting all of her points that way and taking control of as many areas as she could. Ron was focusing more on the trading route and trying to get his goods shipped up there for max points from those tracks.
Like I said there is a lot going on and we were all pretty close in the final scoring and all doing very different things. That is super interesting and I would really like to play this one again. I had a lot of fun playing this game. I really liked the dice drafting mechanic and for me it worked very well. Really cool game. Perhaps it also helps that I totally kicked butt in this game! :D It was a good time!
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Super awesome and fun highlight from the trip!
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Later that night Ron and I made our way to the BGG room. It was a new room this year where BGG was given the opportunity to get some table space for the people! We still had to spend a ticket but it was only $1 per hour which is much better than the gencon library because BGG had acquired all of the hot games from vendors and there selection was top notch. I only wish I got to spend more time in that room!
We were going there to meet up with Amelia and Zack they were already learning the rules to the game called Telsa vs Edison. I had agreed to play but then I backed out since I really didn’t want to spend my 2 hours playing this game. It was a good thing too since Amelia was HATING the game by the end. She wanted to burn it with fire, I could tell.
Instead, I found a group of people and we played Arcane Academy. New to me!
This was a game I was very interested in learning. It was on my list. Of course it had been sold out when I went to the booth to pick it up- so I missed that opportunity. I will have to find it at another time. I was happy they were looking to play this one because I really wanted to learn. One guy had played before and he was able to teach it.
This is a card management and tile placement game. On your turn you activate a tile on your board. It then activates all of the surrounding CONNECTED tiles that have not already been used. You get a whole bunch of stuff from these activations. It might be to score a card which might be an item or spell card if you have the resources needed to complete it. It could be to activate an item card or to take a tile from the center (which doesn’t get placed until after the turn is over), or to just gain resources. There are some tiles that give you a lot of resources but they have no connections. Everything is very well balanced and the connection points help maintain that. The game ends when someone completes their 8th card and everyone gets another turn. If you don’t want to do anything on your turn then you can “rest” and remove all of the activation cubes so you can start over again in the next turn.
This game is great! I had a super fun time playing it. I was just completing the cards I could with the resources I had. It turned out to be excellent for me. I was collecting a bunch of item cards and playing spell cards to get points for item cards. I had a lot of activations I was doing that was essentially stealing brain power from other players but they didn’t want to give it up so I was getting points from the general supply. I was rolling in the points. While my cards didn’t provide a lot of points on them specifically I was gaining a lot of points in other methods so it was working out for me well.
I totally demolished the guys in this game. It was very satisfying. I really enjoyed this game too. There are a lot of awesome choices to be made and tile placement is critical. The art is charming and it is a great game. I will definitely be looking to pick this one up. Very cool.
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The final game of the night was Ice Cool. New to me!
It was in the library and was the appropriate amount of time while they were finishing the Telsa game. I read the rules, GASP! And we could easily start the game when they were completed. We were only in the room for a couple hours but I was happy with it.
It was a game I made Ron pre order for me to save $10 pre-order price was $30. It is an ADORABLE penguin flicking dexterity game. There are X number rounds = to number of players and each player gets to be the “catcher” role once. The catcher’s objective is to try and run around the board running into the other players to steal their ID cards. The other penguins are trying to make it through the doorways with the fish above to acquire their fish tokens. The round ends when either a player collects all of their fish tokens or the catcher catches all of the other players. If a player is caught they still play they just won’t get a bonus card for still owning their ID card. Point cards are awarded for each fish collected and every ID card.
You do this so each player can be catcher once and then the game is over. Most points at the end of the game wins!
It is generally a pretty easy game to teach and play there are some other small rules like if you have 2 value 1 cards you can reveal them and take another turn.
All I know is I am very very bad at this game. I can’t catch people I can’t run through doors. I was like in the corner all game not flicking well at all. It will take a bit for me to get better at this game. I think the one thing I don’t really like is that there is only 1 set up for the game and it doesn’t really ever change. It might get boring after a few plays, I guess we will find out.
For now, we all had a good time walking around the table to shoot our penguins. It turned out I wasn’t as bad as I had though and ended up tying with Zack in this game for first place. We then continued to tie on both tie breakers so we had to call it an even match and share our victory. Or we could have just played again. We were getting kicked out of the room so there was no time for another game even if we wanted to. I have to say I really enjoyed it and I want to make the penguin bounce! I don’t want to ruin my finger but the penguin can fly if you flick him correctly! :D
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I can’t say I had the best Sunday but we still managed to learn a lot of games before departing for home. We started the morning with Goblin's Breakfast. New to me!
It was recommended to me to try out and play from my friend Nate. This game is a pretty simple card game to try and eat the foods. There are a lot of take that cards and weapon cards that make players lose their food and discard it or steal it. You are trying to eat the most food and when the cards run out you add up all of your scored food points.
Amelia and Zack had stopped on by to play the game too and we played a 4p game. It is very much a take that game. Nothing you can do to prevent the attacks from happening. I suppose you want to take the lower valued food and maybe it will still be around when it is your turn again, I don’t know. I somehow won this game with 2 food cards valued 5 each for 10 points. Other players were scoring smaller valued cards 2’s and 3’s but they didn’t get up to 10 points.
I can’t say I was that impressed with the game. I have played better silly card games and I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel I had a lot of choices on my turn but to take the best thing. Maybe I wasn’t in love with the art, I don’t know. It just didn’t grab me, but I tried it per recommendation. It wasn’t bad but it was more of a family game and kids would appreciate it more than I would.
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Ron and I visited the Kosmos booth and ended up playing a bunch of games there! We started with the game called dimension. New to me!
A game I recently picked up in an amazon sale. Apparently it was a huge hit at the con and they were like sold out with a $50 price tag!!! Dang! It is possible I would have fallen in love with the game had I not played the designers other titles like Uluru and Xalapa. If you don’t know his games they are all very similar. There are a mix of rules laid out on the table and you have to do your best to follow the rules and get the combinations when placing all of the pieces on your personal player board.
I rank this game the easiest of the other games so I was definitely less impressed by this design than say, Uluru.
Ron and I played one round and it was clearly super easy and that it wouldn’t be getting much more difficult with more plays. We tied since we could both easily accomplish the task at hand. It was still fun to play with the balls. :P
I won’t be opening my copy of Dimension, in fact, I have already traded it away for a copy of Wrath of Dragons. Perhaps I am making a huge mistake but I don’t care! I want to play that dragon’s game again!
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Next up was the 2p game called The Rose King. New to me!
In the Kosmos 2p series this is a game I hadn’t had the pleasure of playing before. To be honest I generally don’t like strict 2p games in the small boxes like this. I didn’t have big hopes for it at all. It is a simple abstract game where the players are trying to form big sections of their color. On their turn they perform one action to draw a card to use a card from their tableau (max 5 cards in the tableau). You have to move in the direction of the sword and then you place one of your markers there. If the space is already occupied then you can use a special card that you only have 4 of to flip the influence token to your color. Since you only have 4 of those cards you want to try and save them for the really important moves or to really mess up the other player.
This is a straight up abstract game. A good player would be aware of the cards in front of their opponent and the available option they have at the time. I wasn’t thinking that deep in our game. I was just trying to evaluate the situation at hand when it was my turn. I had no idea what Ron was doing on his side. Of course this was the reason for my demise.
I was doing alright but then Ron came swooping in and destroyed my big region. I worked on getting it back up to speed but it wasn’t good enough. The way the scoring works is for each region you get the number of influence tokens squared in points. So even though I had an 11 sized region Ron had a 14 sized square and beat my entire score with just his big region. Yah- I was doomed to begin with.
The game actually stuck with me and I really enjoyed the time playing it. I really want to revisit this game and see if I can do better, now that I know what to expect. It is a very cool game!!
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We rounded the booth out and finished with a 2p game called Tally Ho!. New to me!
Apparently this is a pretty old title. Who knew!? Tiles are placed all over the board face down. On your turn you reveal a tile or you can move a tile. Of course at the beginning of the game you will be first revealing the tiles. There are 2 sides the human side and the animal side. The first person to reveal one or the other gets allocated as that faction.
Ron picked up the cute animals before I did. So I was auto assigned to being the humans hunting the animals and chopping down the trees. Each tile has its own value in points and how it can move on the board. The fox likes to eat the ducks- the humans like to shoot the animals especially bears. But the bears like to eat the humans. The lumberjack liked to chop the tree. You have to actually move through a clear space to land on the tile you want and then you get to collect the tile you landed on. The hunter has to actually be FACING the correct way and you can never rotate him. That seemed odd to me since about all of my hunters were facing the wrong direction. It was just hot happening for them.
In the end once the final tile was revealed you get 5 more turns. If I managed to get my humans off the board then they will score as positive points for me, so that really helped my score a lot too. I still managed to lose by a land slide. Ron’s bears were killing me left and right and there was nothing I could do about it. The lumberjack could only move one space at a time so it was like super slow to get anywhere and do anything, then I would be eaten…
I can’t say I was that impressed with this game. Maybe because I felt I didn’t have a whole lot I could do since I managed to flip all of my hunters in the wrong direction. A lot of them just got eaten. I would try the game again, since there was definitely something there, but it didn’t grab me like the Rose King did.
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We made our way back to the center of the room and found this really really pretty game called 4 Gods. New to me!
I didn’t know anything about this game other than there were some tiles and it was seriously so pretty. I was immediately drawn to it. I hadn’t recalled seeing it the other days so I was definitely shocked to see it now and I HAD to play!
She got to explaining that it was a real time game to try and build the land and take control of a faction to score lots of points. It was definitely interesting right off that you don’t start with a character and color, but that you start by building the land and when you see fit that you then take control of the land type you want. Once you do take control then you can start placing the profits on the tiles you are placing. Ultimately you are trying to build the biggest land region for your type. So if I have the water faction then I want to have the largest water region on the board compared to other land terrain types. I also want to have the MOST different water regions. It was hard for me since I wasn’t really drawing the water tiles. You also much match the land tiles on every side when placing a new tile. You can place a profit in any region, even if someone already controls it- it just means you might have to share points.
As I said, the game is played in real time until the board is filled up. We just played until it was mostly complete. You can always have 2 tiles in hand and all tiles are front and back so there is a LOT of scouting you can do If you don’t like a tile you can place it down in front of you and then it becomes available for the other players to then grab and use. It is kind of chaos.
The tiles are small and there could be 2 terrain types to a given side so it is actually very easy to get a side connection wrong and not know it until the end of the game. Once you acquire a character you can start building cities. The cities might be destroyed if another player fins an appropriate tile to that matches the terrain types on all sides.
There is a lot to consider when playing this game. Since it is real time it goes very quickly and you don’t want to be last man playing. You want to be in on everything and gain points for everything.
There was one part that was a little annoying. You can never place a tile with less than 2 side and one side cannot be an existing city. We were almost at a standstill because of this feature. But, I think they do that since they want you to start searching for pieces to destroy city tiles. I guess it makes sense I will have to play the full game and see. We ended up using a house rule that you could place next to cities. So, our game was a bit off.
We were playing with a kid and his dad, so I didn’t mind. I was just curious about that so it definitely seemed weird and I want to try it with the real rules to see how it compares.
We ended up not really scoring our game just showed a few different things and left it at that. It is definitely a game and going to be on the lookout for. I very much enjoyed my demo of the game and I think it is just astonishingly beautiful. Very cool.
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Since it was available, we sat down to try out a new Martin Wallace game called Hit Z Road. New to me!
Ron was shocked that we were going to play this game since it was ZOMBIES! Gah, I hate zombies. You can’t candy coat this either, they are either there or not there. The demo guy was trying to convince me it wasn’t so bad, but there were a ton of zombies.
We had 4p and it was actually better that way. We had to bid for turn order with our resources that we very much needed for game play and battles but sometimes bidding for turn order really matters. If you get to go first then you get first stab at the available cards. There is 4 rows of 2 cards each. You have to encounter both cards to pass for the rounds. Some cards are super easy and you don’t even have to fight anything, other cards you have to fight lots of zombies but might issue points! Points don’t matter if you are dead, however.
When you fight you get to choose to use bullets first and get as many hits on the dice as you can killing off the zombies. Then you roll the number of dice = to your life force and try to get the hits. But when you start with these dice you run the risk of getting infected. You would have to heal in order to survive the infection.
That is essentially the game. You are moving through a deck of cards and you have a bunch of encounters along the way getting fewer and fewer resources as you go. You want to make it until the end and count up the points. If you don’t make it until the end then you die off and the other players calculate their scores.
In our game we played the first few rounds and then one final round with the difficult cards. There are other incidents that happen in the game and it became clear what was good and what was bad. It was fun to see how hard the cards got and we were getting lower on the resources needed. It was actually surprisingly a fun game. I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going to like it considering the theme. I wish it was like Alias theme with spies and such. I would have enjoyed it a lot more and probably would have bought it.
I would definitely play it again for the full game, but maybe not with 4 players as it was dragging just a bit with that player count. All in all very interesting game and I love when games shock me into liking them.
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The final game of the con was a GenCon special called Save the Cupcake. New to me!
It was a 2p game one and all of the pretty colors. It is set up and played like plinko (from price is right), and the demo girl kept saying that. Ron was trying to save the cupcake and I was trying to direct my boulders towards the hidden cupcake. All of these cards were hidden and I had to reveal them one at a time per my turn. Ron was spending cards to change everything around and divert the boulders. There was not much I could do to change it but I could always play one extra card in response to his plays.
Of course nothing was going according to my plans and I hot 4/5 plates and they were all busts. Ron successfully diverted all of my shots and I never found the cupcake. It was very sad for me. But, I got to play a pretty cupcake game. This, of course, is a game I don’t have to play again but I would if I happened to cross paths with it. I would like to try being the one to save the cupcake. Ron is too smart for me is what it comes down to.
It was a cute game and I appreciate it. I just don’t think it would ever get played if it was in my collection! :D
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Monday night game was canceled and to make up for it I made Ron play Fields of Arle with me!
I didn’t get a chance to play it and it was the only time I could have so I did! I am counting it as the same week since I need it to be! Then I can play again this weekend and be OK.
It was so nice to be home and playing Arle. Back to the security of the faming life. This game I went for plows and failed to really relate any of my game play with the buildings on hand. It was an error on my part but I had my own plans.
I was working the fields and I turned them into forests in the first round so I got some serious wood production going very early one. It was a cool idea and I am glad I pulled it off. I started flipping them over too late but managed to get most of them flipped by the end. I got started on the stalls and stables too late, but it happened eventually. I wasn’t so happy with my out come in the game but I still managed to get my average score of 116 so I was happy with that. I really needed a carriage that holds a lot of little items. I wasn’t able to ever get that I always seemed to be a wood short.
Ron won that game but not by much I think he was at like 121 or something so it was a pretty close game. I kept taking all of the spaces he wanted. I appreciate that! I love messing Ron up!
Always happy to come home and play some Arles!
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Thanks for following along! I am sure that was a doosie to read and even load on your web browser, I am sorry!!! I just happened to learn 39 games this week! Dang that was a lot to talk about. It was such an amazing time with amazing friends. I just love cons!
I hope you have an amazing week.
I hope to get in more gaming this week! :D
Until next week!
Happy Gaming!!!
-Steph
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New Image for Le Havre
by bruno555
<div>Pawns are now personalized.</div>
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New Image for Le Havre
by bruno555
<div>Pawns are now personalized.</div>
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Thread: Le Havre:: Variants:: Adding some hand management to Le Havre
Hi there
Le Havre is one of my favorite games, I own it since 2010 and have played it +30 times. Even though I like it a lot, I miss the hand management part of Agricola; moreover, through all my plays I've realized that the special buildings (SB hereafter) are barely used, so I thought about this variants:
Variant A.- Instead of following the official rules for SB, each player starts the game with 5 SB in hand. During the game a player may put into play one of his/her SB into his/her playing area paying its cost to the bank. This works exactly as the normal buying action in the rules (e.g. Isn't considered a principal action and can be executed at any time during a player's turn).
Clarifications and suggestions to play using this variant:
-Players (maybe) should start with $10 instead of $5 in order to make it easier the construction of their first SB.
-All SB with a lock icon in its top right corner* (Stadium, etc.) maybe should be removed from the SB deck before dealing starting hands.
-Immediately after a SB is put into play, players (including its owner) may use it normally.
Variant B.- Similar to variant A, except that players may put into play, in a common area, one SB from their hands without paying its cost.
Clarifications an suggestions to play using this variant:
-Thematically, this would represent the political influence of the players on the city, deciding which projects will be built by the municipality.
-Each player may only use this "political action" up to 3 times** per game and maximum once per complete round (so, at the end of the game each player should still have at least 2 cards in hand).
-The SB played this way should be placed in a common area where all players can make use of them following the normal rules (e.g. paying the entrance costs, if any).
-As per the official rules, at any time during their turn, players may buy one of the SB in the common area.
-All SB with a lock icon in its top right corner* (Stadium, etc.) maybe should be removed from the SB deck before dealing starting hands.
-Immediately after a SB is put into the common area, players (including the one who put it) may use it or buy it normally.
*About removing SB, I suspect only Stadium and Luxury Yatch would represent a problem.
**I'm not sure about the number of SB each player should be able to put into play in the common areas in the whole game
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That's it. So, what do you think? What variant (if any) do you think would work better? Please let me know.
Now, please guys, don't tell me there's an expansion deck of SB, I know that![meeple]()
The thing is I live in Ecuador, South America where there's not a single board game store, so I'd like to work with what I have at the reach of my arm![]()
Thank you for reading. Any feedback would be very helpful to me... Would you like to try my ideas to see how they work? Do you wanna share your own? Please feel free to do so.
Thanks again!
Le Havre is one of my favorite games, I own it since 2010 and have played it +30 times. Even though I like it a lot, I miss the hand management part of Agricola; moreover, through all my plays I've realized that the special buildings (SB hereafter) are barely used, so I thought about this variants:
Variant A.- Instead of following the official rules for SB, each player starts the game with 5 SB in hand. During the game a player may put into play one of his/her SB into his/her playing area paying its cost to the bank. This works exactly as the normal buying action in the rules (e.g. Isn't considered a principal action and can be executed at any time during a player's turn).
Clarifications and suggestions to play using this variant:
-Players (maybe) should start with $10 instead of $5 in order to make it easier the construction of their first SB.
-All SB with a lock icon in its top right corner* (Stadium, etc.) maybe should be removed from the SB deck before dealing starting hands.
-Immediately after a SB is put into play, players (including its owner) may use it normally.
Variant B.- Similar to variant A, except that players may put into play, in a common area, one SB from their hands without paying its cost.
Clarifications an suggestions to play using this variant:
-Thematically, this would represent the political influence of the players on the city, deciding which projects will be built by the municipality.
-Each player may only use this "political action" up to 3 times** per game and maximum once per complete round (so, at the end of the game each player should still have at least 2 cards in hand).
-The SB played this way should be placed in a common area where all players can make use of them following the normal rules (e.g. paying the entrance costs, if any).
-As per the official rules, at any time during their turn, players may buy one of the SB in the common area.
-All SB with a lock icon in its top right corner* (Stadium, etc.) maybe should be removed from the SB deck before dealing starting hands.
-Immediately after a SB is put into the common area, players (including the one who put it) may use it or buy it normally.
*About removing SB, I suspect only Stadium and Luxury Yatch would represent a problem.
**I'm not sure about the number of SB each player should be able to put into play in the common areas in the whole game
_______
That's it. So, what do you think? What variant (if any) do you think would work better? Please let me know.
Now, please guys, don't tell me there's an expansion deck of SB, I know that
The thing is I live in Ecuador, South America where there's not a single board game store, so I'd like to work with what I have at the reach of my arm
Thank you for reading. Any feedback would be very helpful to me... Would you like to try my ideas to see how they work? Do you wanna share your own? Please feel free to do so.
Thanks again!
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Reply: Le Havre:: General:: Re: i heard something about new publisher and a reprint soon - any information?
by adamredwoods
According to the Le Havre forum, Hanno said in Dec 2015, there is a reprint coming in 2016:http://forum.lookout-spiele.de/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=1794&sta...
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Reply: Le Havre:: General:: Re: i heard something about new publisher and a reprint soon - any information?
by Squishi
Wow! I just got the same information straight via mayfair games:"We are actually planning a reprint for later this fall - exact date is yet to be determined. Stay tuned!"
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Reply: Le Havre:: Variants:: Re: Adding some hand management to Le Havre
by davypi
The main problem I see is that there are some buildings that are clearly better than others in the special deck, especially if they come out early. In particular I am thinking of the Farm and the Iron Mine/Coal Seam. If either of these were in my hand, my first move on the first round would be to get that building out because I would be reaping in the free resources and/or the entry fees for the rest of the game. If my opponent(s) don't have a building this good, you've effectively given one player an advantage based on the luck of the shuffle.I remember one variant a friend of mine and I played a long time ago where we each started the game with eight specials. We then picked one and passed, and repeated this until we had each picked four buildings each. Those eight were then shuffled and then used for the special deck and the other eight were put back in the box. This is really a draft and not hand management, but it allowed us to have some knowledge/control over what special came out, but not so much that it gave either of us an advantage. I could similarly see having a variant where each player has eight cards and at the end of a round when the city would build a special you instead let both players (in a 2P game) could play one from their hand to the city. So each player at least has a chance to build a strategy around special buildings, but again, with the city having ownership you at least mitigate some of the bias that could come from a lucky shuffle.
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File: Le Havre:: Stickers for tokens
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Reply: Le Havre:: Variants:: Re: Adding some hand management to Le Havre
by snikla
davypi wrote:
The main problem I see is that there are some buildings that are clearly better than others in the special deck, especially if they come out early. In particular I am thinking of the Farm and the Iron Mine/Coal Seam. If either of these were in my hand, my first move on the first round would be to get that building out because I would be reaping in the free resources and/or the entry fees for the rest of the game. If my opponent(s) don't have a building this good, you've effectively given one player an advantage based on the luck of the shuffle.
I remember one variant a friend of mine and I played a long time ago where we each started the game with eight specials. We then picked one and passed, and repeated this until we had each picked four buildings each. Those eight were then shuffled and then used for the special deck and the other eight were put back in the box. This is really a draft and not hand management, but it allowed us to have some knowledge/control over what special came out, but not so much that it gave either of us an advantage. I could similarly see having a variant where each player has eight cards and at the end of a round when the city would build a special you instead let both players (in a 2P game) could play one from their hand to the city. So each player at least has a chance to build a strategy around special buildings, but again, with the city having ownership you at least mitigate some of the bias that could come from a lucky shuffle.
I remember one variant a friend of mine and I played a long time ago where we each started the game with eight specials. We then picked one and passed, and repeated this until we had each picked four buildings each. Those eight were then shuffled and then used for the special deck and the other eight were put back in the box. This is really a draft and not hand management, but it allowed us to have some knowledge/control over what special came out, but not so much that it gave either of us an advantage. I could similarly see having a variant where each player has eight cards and at the end of a round when the city would build a special you instead let both players (in a 2P game) could play one from their hand to the city. So each player at least has a chance to build a strategy around special buildings, but again, with the city having ownership you at least mitigate some of the bias that could come from a lucky shuffle.
A few days ago I had pretty the same idea. But there was no time to try yet. But it looks very interesting and should be tested.
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Reply: Le Havre:: Variants:: Re: Adding some hand management to Le Havre
by grant5
There is also the Construction Site Variant in which you can use a proxy of the Construction Site if you don't have it (it was an Essen promo):[q=Ponton]There are people constantly complaining that there are too few special buildings each game. This is an untested proposition to allow for more of them. Also, this variant allows for special buildings in short games.
Setup: Place the Contruction Site to the start buildings. It's available from the beginning. Randomly choose 6 special buildings and place them on the proper space on the board. These are the regular special buildings to enter the game as usual. If you play the short game, skip this step. Place the shuffled deck of remaining special building cards face-down next to the board. Deal 3 cards from this stack to each player.
In-game: Whenever you enter the Construction Site, play one of your cards to the town. Enter the new building, if possible. As usual, you may buy that new building to avoid the entry fee. The Construction Site stays where it is. Do not take it in your hand and do not remove it from play. At the end of your turn, draw a new special building. Do not draw from the special buildings on the board.
If you don't want to allow for special buildings from the beginning of the game, take 5 random special buildings at the beginning of the game and put the Construction Site on top, or shuffle it in. Deal hand cards when it enters the game regularly and proceed like described above.
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The Postman Always Brings Twice
As I have written before, there have been a couple of games that I have been "hunting" for some time, and recently I added yet another Rosenberg title to the wanted list. Some failed purchases via the BGG Marketplace, some missed opportunities on the "faster finger first" UK Facebook group, outbid on some EBay auctions had left me a bit frustrated.
Well last week some pleading via a "wanted" post came good, doubly so in one case, and the postman (well, courier) deposited a couple of bundles of joy (one hopes!) on the doorstep...
![]()
Goodies, Goodies...!
Someone contacted me about Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, which I snapped up straight away, and then someone else listed the game with both expansions so I bought that as well (gotta have all those extra buildings!) - how handy that the UK Math trade is currently running, anyone looking for a copy of A:ACBAS? And then a message saying that not only did someone have Ora et Labora that they were willing to sell me, but they had my "white whale", Le Havre (with Le Havre: Le Grand Hameau and a full set of Le Havre Expansion: Essen Promo Cards that they were also happy to part with. Deal swiftly struck!
Having Mrs B and Billy fully up to speed with all Uwe farming games it's time to get stuck in to the heavy goods conversion ones (having said that Billy acquitted himself well with Ora et Labora last week). I can't say that Mrs B is thrilled about the hundreds of chits (and associated flipping) that are integral to those games but she is overjoyed to see All Creatures Big and Small arrive in the house...
![]()
We just about managed to have a game of it on Saturday, which makes it sound like an arduous task - but then we had spent 5 hours in A&E Friday night (with my elderly Grandfather being rushed in and us being the closest family able to get there, he's ok(ish) for now) which was as tiring and eventful a place to be, as you would expect on a Friday night...
Anyway, the game was /is a delight and this time I ran out winning the ranching contest (I realised after we played it on our Anniversary date night at Thirsty Meeples that we scored it wrong, only awarding the bonus points for the animals and not earning the 1 point per animal part as well...which suppressed the scores somewhat, and upon reevaluating from a photo Mrs B had won that initial play..!) We only used the base game buildings as we're still working out the best way to play and how to build the ranch efficiently. Mrs B pleasingly declared that this is a game she absolutely loves and can see us playing "dozens" of times.
I certainly hope so, and with any luck we'll get at least a couple of the bigger new arrivals in over the next few weeks as well.
:D
Well last week some pleading via a "wanted" post came good, doubly so in one case, and the postman (well, courier) deposited a couple of bundles of joy (one hopes!) on the doorstep...
Someone contacted me about Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, which I snapped up straight away, and then someone else listed the game with both expansions so I bought that as well (gotta have all those extra buildings!) - how handy that the UK Math trade is currently running, anyone looking for a copy of A:ACBAS? And then a message saying that not only did someone have Ora et Labora that they were willing to sell me, but they had my "white whale", Le Havre (with Le Havre: Le Grand Hameau and a full set of Le Havre Expansion: Essen Promo Cards that they were also happy to part with. Deal swiftly struck!
Having Mrs B and Billy fully up to speed with all Uwe farming games it's time to get stuck in to the heavy goods conversion ones (having said that Billy acquitted himself well with Ora et Labora last week). I can't say that Mrs B is thrilled about the hundreds of chits (and associated flipping) that are integral to those games but she is overjoyed to see All Creatures Big and Small arrive in the house...
We just about managed to have a game of it on Saturday, which makes it sound like an arduous task - but then we had spent 5 hours in A&E Friday night (with my elderly Grandfather being rushed in and us being the closest family able to get there, he's ok(ish) for now) which was as tiring and eventful a place to be, as you would expect on a Friday night...
Anyway, the game was /is a delight and this time I ran out winning the ranching contest (I realised after we played it on our Anniversary date night at Thirsty Meeples that we scored it wrong, only awarding the bonus points for the animals and not earning the 1 point per animal part as well...which suppressed the scores somewhat, and upon reevaluating from a photo Mrs B had won that initial play..!) We only used the base game buildings as we're still working out the best way to play and how to build the ranch efficiently. Mrs B pleasingly declared that this is a game she absolutely loves and can see us playing "dozens" of times.
I certainly hope so, and with any luck we'll get at least a couple of the bigger new arrivals in over the next few weeks as well.
:D
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The best years in board gaming
Only games which have 500 or more unique BGG players (in 2016 or earlier - above or below timeline).
Read more »
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Thread: Le Havre:: Rules:: Little "F"'s on tiles
by Xantechdp
Does anyone know what the small letter "F" is for in the bottom right corners of all the tiles?↧
Reply: Le Havre:: Rules:: Re: Little "F"'s on tiles
by Adamvic
I've always thought it stood for Franc...↧
Reply: Le Havre:: Rules:: Re: Little "F"'s on tiles
by Robman
Yes, it stands for Francs. When you ship goods as an action, every tile has a money value represented by the number of Francs depicted in the bottom right corner of the tile.↧
Week 90
[MP3]http://traffic.libsyn.com/wdyptwbra/Week_90.mp3|Week 90![/MP3]
DIRECT DOWNLOAD!
Welcome to Week 90! The One The Week After The Week After Gen Con, but still not full of Gen Con!
T-Shirts!!!
https://www.analoggamer.com/collections/wdyptw
Don't forget to go back and listen to the Conversation Thing Episodes!
Week 90
Intro :32
Jessica Wade and Eric Buscemi 4:44
Live from FeldCon
5 Minute Review with Brandon 15:46
Potion Explosion
Kerensa, Gabby & Brandon 22:49
Game of Trains
IceCool
Potion Explosion
Suicide Squad
Bad Moms
Story Cubes with AnnaBeth 41:07
Potion Explosion
Life of a 6 yr old
Mason A Weaver 47:09
Online Games
Orleans
The Networks
FeldCant
Castles of Burgundy The Card Game
Notre Dame
The Speicherstadt
Valiant Variant with Carl & Aly 56:12
Mystic Vale
IceCool
Imperial Settlers
Mike Risley 1:05:05
Glass Road
Learning Through and with Games with Jamie Maltman 1:07:19
Online Games
Castles of Burgundy The Card Game
The Pursuit of Happiness
Roll through the Ages The Iron Age
Baseball Highlights 2045
Scythe
Pandemic Legacy
Dominant Species
Quadropolis
Mangrovia
Klask
Patrick Hillier, the Over the Hillier Gamer 1:20:25
Le Havre
Junk Art
Terraforming Mars
Cohort
Agricola All Creatures Big and Small App
Outro 1:27:42
End 1:28:59
DIRECT DOWNLOAD!
Welcome to Week 90! The One The Week After The Week After Gen Con, but still not full of Gen Con!
T-Shirts!!!
https://www.analoggamer.com/collections/wdyptw
Don't forget to go back and listen to the Conversation Thing Episodes!
Week 90
Intro :32
Jessica Wade and Eric Buscemi 4:44
Live from FeldCon
5 Minute Review with Brandon 15:46
Potion Explosion
Kerensa, Gabby & Brandon 22:49
Game of Trains
IceCool
Potion Explosion
Suicide Squad
Bad Moms
Story Cubes with AnnaBeth 41:07
Potion Explosion
Life of a 6 yr old
Mason A Weaver 47:09
Online Games
Orleans
The Networks
FeldCant
Castles of Burgundy The Card Game
Notre Dame
The Speicherstadt
Valiant Variant with Carl & Aly 56:12
Mystic Vale
IceCool
Imperial Settlers
Mike Risley 1:05:05
Glass Road
Learning Through and with Games with Jamie Maltman 1:07:19
Online Games
Castles of Burgundy The Card Game
The Pursuit of Happiness
Roll through the Ages The Iron Age
Baseball Highlights 2045
Scythe
Pandemic Legacy
Dominant Species
Quadropolis
Mangrovia
Klask
Patrick Hillier, the Over the Hillier Gamer 1:20:25
Le Havre
Junk Art
Terraforming Mars
Cohort
Agricola All Creatures Big and Small App
Outro 1:27:42
End 1:28:59
↧
↧
Reply: Le Havre:: Rules:: Re: Little "F"'s on tiles
by grant5
To expand on what Robert wrote, it's a reference to the value (in Francs) shown on the Shipping Line card*, which is the amount of money you get for shipping the chit with the Shipping Line action.Additionally, there are some special buildings that reference the value of goods for other purposes, and that is the number used in those calculations.
*the original printing of the game has a misprint on the Shipping Line card that incorrectly shows the value of coke as being the same as the value of coal, but the numbers printed on the chits themselves has always been correct.
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Reply: Le Havre:: Rules:: Re: Little "F"'s on tiles
by Xantechdp
Thanks! We are playing our first game. It's round 6 and none of us have built ships yet . . .I'm thinking our eyes were too big looking at the large offerings and now we are all worried about meeting the 5 food requirement lol.↧
Reply: Le Havre:: Rules:: Re: Little "F"'s on tiles
by Robman
Xantechdp wrote:
Thanks! We are playing our first game. It's round 6 and none of us have built ships yet . . .I'm thinking our eyes were too big looking at the large offerings and now we are all worried about meeting the 5 food requirement lol.
Yes, ships grant a huge relief when it comes to feeding. With food provided by ships, it allows you to do other things for points rather than chasing down the food train.
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