What game is hitting your table?

[NeikeDjour]

Ryan: have you put any consideration into having your 'What's hitting the table' as a newsletter article? 

[R Newell]

Ryan: have you put any consideration into having your 'What's hitting the table' as a newsletter article? 

Hmmm...

Newell's Quick Shots

Could do.

[Lori]

Ryan: have you put any consideration into having your 'What's hitting the table' as a newsletter article? 

Smooth, Nicole.  Very good.

[Jolo]

Since April 6th, I have played a few games (34 different, 64 total plays):

Sentinels of the Multiverse (10 plays) - I have played every character and almost every villain, and I am still not tired of it. This is always a hit at open game nights, either through work or at the bar.

Roll for the Galaxy (6 plays) - surprise hit, I never tried it until it was on the ToonCon schedule but discovered it was an exciting, and to me, better implementation of the theme.

Love Letter - Batman (4 plays) - filler, but does not stay around too long.

7 Wonders (3 plays) - you can see my lessening excitement with it, I have 37 plays since 2010, it is a good solid game that I can play with some of my friends that are not as excited about heavier stuff.

Codenames (3 plays) - one night at a company board game night, good party game, big hit at ToonCon as it never stayed in the library

Evolution (3 plays) - I like this, easier to grasp than Tyranno Ex, Primordial Soup are more complex and far longer.

Nations: The Dice Game (3 plays) - quick nice filler, a little like it's sire but much faster

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (3 plays) - Saturday night gaming after supper. I will finish the first box but probably not buy the next box set. It is good enough for what it is, but not great.

Camel Up (2 plays) - It is a fun party game with a light "screw your opponents over" but not a game I will need to own

High Frontier (2 plays) - can that be true, only two plays in six months? I love this game but the learning curve for new players is so steep that quite often we play basic game instead.

Leaving Earth (2 plays) - this week, more accessible that High Frontier and more restricted in your options, no hoarding cash to allow you to build really quick, but a good solid game

Pandemic (2 plays) - I only keep this game to play when someone needs to play it. I am over this game.

Steampunk Rally (2 plays) - great fun, up to 8 players, fast to play and fun to play. I could play this more often

Age of Renaissance (1 play) - awesome, Civ (AH) like game, playable in 4-6 hours, lots of player interaction.

Apples to Apples   (1 play) - I honestly don't remember playing this game

Chaos in the Old World   (1 play) - Another great game I can never win, and want to get this to the table.

Formula Motor Racing   (1 play) - Classical Knizia, mathy and a filler

Friday the 13th (1 play) - actually, this is Poison, a Knizia card game that is not great, but good for what it does

El Grande Decennial Edition   (1 play) - smart game, too bad I am not. I enjoy it, but never win. I taught three new players and finished second last...

The Great Heartland Hauling Co. (1 play) - light pickup and deliver with nifty rules for moving goods

Kremlin (1 play) - classic great game, played 1928 version and I won, but it took us 4 hours and I was shocked it was that long, it felt like only an hour or two went by

Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth! (1 play) - Fun chaotic madness, I like this, don't play it often enough

Mythotopia (1 play) - More Wallace, took a couple of tries to get it right. I am ready to play it again.

Power Grid (1 play) - lone game I played at FragCon, Wendy crushed us like grapes.

Princes of the Renaissance (1 play) - I have now played this twice, once with 3 and once with 5. It is a rocking good game with 5, far superior to three. When the reprint comes it will be on the ToonCon schedule!

Railways of the World (1 play)  - Europe map, friendlier version of Age of Steam, another "like but don't get to play enough". I may have to quit my job just to game more!

Red7 (1 play) - Lone game I played at ToonCon, 3 rounds and it was over.

Shear Panic (1 play) - Fun looking but trickier than it looks.

Steel Driver (1 play) - Wallace train game, very similar to Wabash Cannonball/Chicago Express, good stock game

A Study in Emerald (1 play) - Wallace meets Lovecraft meets Conan Doyle, how can this game go wrong? It doesn't, it is not a simple game, but it is a good game as there is a lot to think about (you can't get assassinated until you are "known" by scoring VP, team with lowest scoring player is eliminated, meaning 3rd place could win etc.) I am curious about the remake (which I will buy) as it is streamlined and simpler.

Ticket to Ride (1 play) - Still a classic for teaching new people, taught it at a meetup group, they were all happy.

Tigris & Euphrates (1 play) - Knizia game, one of his best, very good tile laying with conflict.

Viticulture (1 play) - Hunh, a WP game I like, everyone that played it at ToonCon raved about it afterwards.

Zombie Dice   (1 play) - filler

[R Newell]

A Study in Emerald (1 play) - Wallace meets Lovecraft meets Conan Doyle, how can this game go wrong? It doesn't, it is not a simple game, but it is a good game as there is a lot to think about (you can't get assassinated until you are "known" by scoring VP, team with lowest scoring player is eliminated, meaning 3rd place could win etc.) I am curious about the remake (which I will buy) as it is streamlined and simpler.

I need to own (or at least try) this game, but I think I'm leaning more towards the first edition than the second.  I don't know why but I think I'd prefer it messier and with more crap bolted on.

[Jolo]

A Study in Emerald (1 play) - Wallace meets Lovecraft meets Conan Doyle, how can this game go wrong? It doesn't, it is not a simple game, but it is a good game as there is a lot to think about (you can't get assassinated until you are "known" by scoring VP, team with lowest scoring player is eliminated, meaning 3rd place could win etc.) I am curious about the remake (which I will buy) as it is streamlined and simpler.

I need to own (or at least try) this game, but I think I'm leaning more towards the first edition than the second.  I don't know why but I think I'd prefer it messier and with more crap bolted on.

Try it first, it is an excellent game but make sure you like it first, as the cost of the game is 125+

I taught it to some guys at ToonCon, I think it was Michael Becker and his crew.

[R Newell]

A Study in Emerald (1 play) - Wallace meets Lovecraft meets Conan Doyle, how can this game go wrong? It doesn't, it is not a simple game, but it is a good game as there is a lot to think about (you can't get assassinated until you are "known" by scoring VP, team with lowest scoring player is eliminated, meaning 3rd place could win etc.) I am curious about the remake (which I will buy) as it is streamlined and simpler.

I need to own (or at least try) this game, but I think I'm leaning more towards the first edition than the second.  I don't know why but I think I'd prefer it messier and with more crap bolted on.

Try it first, it is an excellent game but make sure you like it first, as the cost of the game is 125+

I taught it to some guys at ToonCon, I think it was Michael Becker and his crew.

Chances are I'll have to own it to try it.   

[Jolo]

A Study in Emerald (1 play) - Wallace meets Lovecraft meets Conan Doyle, how can this game go wrong? It doesn't, it is not a simple game, but it is a good game as there is a lot to think about (you can't get assassinated until you are "known" by scoring VP, team with lowest scoring player is eliminated, meaning 3rd place could win etc.) I am curious about the remake (which I will buy) as it is streamlined and simpler.

I need to own (or at least try) this game, but I think I'm leaning more towards the first edition than the second.  I don't know why but I think I'd prefer it messier and with more crap bolted on.

Try it first, it is an excellent game but make sure you like it first, as the cost of the game is 125+

I taught it to some guys at ToonCon, I think it was Michael Becker and his crew.

Chances are I'll have to own it to try it.   

Saskatoon is close...

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted...

The wife has had a Firefly itch recently, so we played a few scenarios, The Great Recession and The King of Londinium.  She actually shut me out in the Recession game, $5,900 to $0.  I got revenge in the next session, though.  I tried playing as the villainous bounty hunter Jubal Early in his zippy little pirate ship.  I found it very effective.  Despite some bad luck (Jayne was arrested by the Alliance very shortly after I recruited him, and some of my other crew were eaten by Reavers...), I managed to get a pretty convincing win.  I'm loving the changes to the game introduced by the Blue Sun expansion, especially the greatly increased risk that comes with doing a full burn.  I'd like to get the latest big expansion, Kalidasa, to see what it adds to the experience, but damn is this game ever becoming sprawling and expensive if you dive full in with everything that's been made available!

I tried a couple of team-based light war games at Chewsday Challenge: Memoir '44 with the Overlord expansion and 1775: Rebellion.  Both were a lot of fun.  The former harkens back to playing with a bag of green army men, but now with some easy rules and a map.  The latter reminded me of a game like El Grande but with more entrenched historical flavour.  Both were a lot of fun.

I played a trio of Reiner Knizia titles last night: Ra, Taj Mahal, and I tried Modern Art for the first time.  I've talked about the other two recently, so on to Modern Art.  I imagine that Reiner initially decided to make an art auction game, mulled between a few different auction styles to form the game around, before deciding, "screw it, I'll include every one of them."

"Every one?" asks one of his play testers.



And yet, despite the game bouncing around back and forth and all over the place between open auctions, secret auctions, fixed price auctions, once-around auctions... the game somehow manages to remain seamless and simple and engaging.  When this dude was at his prime, no other designer could touch him when it came to parsimonious strategy games.

[R Newell]

Since last time I posted... PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD EDITION! 

I started the event involved in one of three simultaneous games of Friedrich, of all things (the fact that 10% of the participants were playing Friedrich is crazy and awesome).  This is a unique game in a couple aspects: 1) it's 3 vs 1 but only has 1 winner and 2) it's a point-to-point war game but the combat (and recruiting) is conducted using traditional card decks.  I played as the Prussians, trying to fend off attackers from all directions.  Unfortunately, I spent too much energy being aggressive on the northern and southern fronts, leaving my flank weak and prime for the taking, which Russia successfully did.  Interestingly, a different nation won in each game.  (Prussia was the only won to be shut out, so I guess I wasn't the only one who had trouble defending on all fronts.)

After that, I partook in a few games of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.  This is a co-operative tabletop video game (?) in which one player is on a laptop trying to defuse a time bomb by solving a bunch of puzzles (i.e., which wire to cut).  The other players are given the printed instructions on how to solve each of the numerous types of puzzles.  So one player can see the puzzles but doesn't know how to solve them while the other players know how to solve the puzzles but can't see what they look like.  And this is all against the clock.  Lots of frantic instructions and descriptions that lead to laughs or cheers, depending on whether or not we blow up.  Fun game.

Next, I got in a few games of Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game.  This does a great job of capturing the settings of each movie, with a scenario to match up with each of the four movies, though I think the characters could come through more strongly than they do.  We played Alien and Alien: Resurrection.  This game is HARD, as any good co-op should be.  Upper Deck has plans to keep milking this Legendary cow by applying it to other franchises.  I'm most looking forward to the one for Big Trouble in Little China.

Next I taught a six-player game of Dune.  Finally, I got to try my grail game after so many years and it did not disappoint.  Not to say the experience was flawless.  I found it to be a bit awkward to teach, in part because I'd never played it before and in part because I was using an old rule book for a different edition and trying to account for the design changes and in part because my teammates were razzing me by playing Spice Up Your Life by The Spice Girls.  The basic rules are actually pretty simple and intuitive (apart from the fact that everything is COUNTERclockwise  :confused), but the nuanced and substantial differences between how each faction plays makes good strategy difficult to determine.  House Harkonnen (Dana) and the Spacing Guild (Kathy) shared a sudden victory in the second turn.  I would love to play this game on a regular basis with 6 dedicated players because I think it would blossom with experience.  With or without The Spice Girls as the background soundtrack, I've yet to decide.

A few family-friendly fillers made appearances.  I played in five games of No Thanks!, three games of That's Life!, two games of Red7 and one game of Can't Stop.  These easy to absorb games are welcome inclusions in an event as brain burning as this one.

I also enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) a rousing game of Monopoly.  I don't think too many other games generated as much interest from people walking past than this one.  We were asked questions such as "You're playing Monopoly?!" and "Why are you playing Monopoly?!" and, simply, "Seriously?  Monopoly?!"  But, played by the actual rules and not by the "old wives' tales" house-rules that people tend to use (e.g., getting cash for Free Parking), it's actually a pretty decent negotiation game that doesn't really deserve the bad rep it gets from hobbyists.  Are there better games?  Of course there are, but we had as much fun playing this as anything else we played at PWYF (and more fun than several of them, really).  The fact that we played at a break-neck speed also helped.  Our game took about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  We used my buddy's copy, though, which I hated.  It has a mid-2000s, computer-generated aesthetic that's just... wrong.  That's not how Monopoly Man is supposed to look when he wins $10 for second place in a beauty contest!

I tried The Captain is Dead.  The designers are obviously fans of Space Alert, but I prefer the predecessor.  Both are basically whack-a-mole, but the real-time play and heightened need for communication between players in order to program your actions in Space Alert makes for a more fun and dynamic game.  I did appreciate the character options, though.

Each PWYF, my team has played a few sessions of Letters From Whitechapel, so we made sure to keep up the tradition.  This time we played three sessions (we probably would have only played two, but one was ridiculously short).  This is a favourite of mine that's maybe inched its way into my top three games.  It's a zero-luck game (no card draws or dice) that is full of delicious, wonderful swings of luck (players guessing rightly or wrongly).  No other game generates as much tension for me, especially when playing as the Ripper and silently watching the investigators narrow in on your hidden paths, hoping they don't notice the beads of sweat forming on your forehead.

One of the last games we played (at about hour 23) was Res Publica, a 25-year old Reiner Knizia game that was one of his first ever published.  It's a dud.  Queen Games must have only reprinted it because his name is on the box.  It's really just a slightly modified derivation of Go Fish.  One of my teammates kept falling asleep in the middle of the game.  Granted, he's fallen asleep in the middle of a game once every year at PWYF once we get into hour 22-24, but, after we tallied our scores, his comment was, "well... that was terrible."

All-in-all, I got in over 20 game sessions at this year's PWYF, in part because my epic games (Friedrich and Dune) took about half as long as I was anticipating.  Plus, I played a lot more fillers this time around.