ARK OF THE COVENANT
(Klaus-Jürgen Wrede; Hans im Glück)Rich Meyer, Eric Brosius and Walter Hunt were at Alan Moon's Gathering of Friends this year, and had a chance to play some of the new games. Here's our comments on them. (Note that we've already played Ticket to Ride and San Juan, so they're not listed below - and both are in our Game Library already.)
ARK OF THE COVENANT
(Klaus-Jürgen Wrede; Hans im Glück)
A Carcassonne variant. The big meeple has become the Prophet; he can only be placed in a city, which scores double if he wins. There's an extra bit, the Ark, which moves around the board and scores one point for the owner of each meeple it passes. Screwage seems to be a little lower in this version.
Ark of the Covenant: Carcassonne in the Old Testament.
Walter: I played it once and would play it again but likely not buy it. A must for those who must have all things Carcassonne, but otherwise as unnecessary as a 30-sided die. (Of course, I have one of those, but it didn't cost $20.)
Eric, Rich: Did not play it.
BLUE MOON
(Reiner Knizia; Fantasy Flight)
Blue Moon is a non-collectable card game with various races from which you can build play decks.
Walter, Rich: Did not play it.
Eric: Blue Moon is a 2-player game somewhat like Magic: the Gathering. It was the first game I played when I arrived in Columbus: I was pleased to see old friend Tom Lehmann and we sat down to try it out. I played the Hoax and Tom played the Vulca. It's a game that seems to work well, but this kind of game isn't my cup of tea, and Tom wiped the floor with me.
DICKE LUFT
IN DER GRUFT (Norbert Proena; Zoch)
A memory-style game in which cartoon ghoulies have to make it to crypts before the sun comes up. Another example of beautiful production: the board has die-cut indentations in which tiles (representing the various nocturnals) get placed, with grave markers on top of them to indicate ownership.
Walter, Rich: Didn't play it.
Eric: Dawn Under is the English name for Dicke Luft in der Gruft ("Thick Air in the Crypt.") Each player has a set of vampires that he or she must bury underground in anticipation of the coming dawn. It's a memory game. I don't particularly enjoy memory games, but Dawn Under is very well done. The components are fabulous, and the mechanics work very well.
DOS RIOS
(Franz-Benno Delonge; Kosmos)
An economic game in which players try to build houses and haciendas in the Valley of the Two Rivers. Tile draw determines which places get scored based on the presence of campesinos (workers). An interesting mechanic allows players to divert the paths of the rivers that cross the board from north to south.
Dos Rios: Campesinos farming in the Valley of the Two Rivers
Walter: I played it once and found it only mildly interesting. The mechanism used to redirect the rivers (placing dams) is interesting, but I'm not sure there's a lot of game there. The drawing of tiles to indicate production means that you can place well and get screwed, and you can't easily catch players that get ahead.
Eric: I played it once. It's an action point game (analogous to Tikal) with a clever mechanism for re-directing the two rivers by placing dams. The courses of the rivers are important, because scoring takes place along the rivers. They flow down from the "top" of the board toward the city at the bottom. Each player has a set of little men ("campesinos") who can collect wood for dams, collect money from farms, or scare the opponents' campesinos back to the city. It's clever if you "play fast, make mistakes" (as our MVGA motto would have it) but there's a clear risk of analysis paralysis.
Rich: Didn't play it.
EIERTANZ
(Roberto Fraga; Haba)
A silly party game. One of MVGA's three tournament wins.
Walter: I'd play this on a cold day in . . . well, you get the idea.
Rich: Didn't play it.
Eric: The game comes packed in an egg carton. There are nine hard rubber eggs, one wooden egg, and two dice (we all know that an egg carton has twelve compartments.) You roll the red die to see what it will take to earn an egg (for example, shout cock-a-doodle-doo or run around the table,) and then you roll the white die to see where you have to hold the egg for the rest of the game (for example, under your chin or between your knees.) If you drop an egg (easy to do if you're running around the table with an egg between your knees,) you lose it. The person who gets the most eggs (with the wooden egg counting double) wins. The first tournament of The Gathering was an Egg Dance tournament (Alan obviously knows a good ice-breaker when he sees one) and there was a great deal of hooting and hollering as we worked through the brackets. I kept tying for the lead and moving up to the next bracket, and before I knew it, I was in the final with Dan Luxenberg, a friend I had just met. I wound up winning the Egg Dance tournament (much to my surprise.)
EINFACH
GENIAL (Reiner Knizia; Kosmos)
An abstract game in which players lay double-hexagon tiles and score for runs of symbols on them. An extremely attractive presentation with enough game-play to satisfy players without overwhelming them with choices.
Einfach Genial: "Simply ingenious." Mighty humble, that Reiner.
Walter: I played this game in a three-player setup and found it a bit fast. Abstract games are not my favorite genre, but this one was pleasing enough. The scoring takes a little while to get used to, but after a few minutes I had a good idea of what to do. The scoring is Euphrates & Tigris style - your score is your lowest total in the six colors - so it's important to look for possibilities in each tile type.
Eric: I'm not usually a big fan of abstract games, but Einfach Genial is pleasant enough as abstract games go. I enjoyed it while I was playing it, and I can see that it would be a good game for families. It's a tactical game, and it seemed that point scoring opportunities fell into the lap of one player or another in the two games I played, which had 4 and 3 players. It might be more of a game of skill if only 2 people were playing.
Rich: Colored tile laying game with a final scoring mechanism that owes a debt to Euphrates & Tigris: your final score is equal to your point score in your lowest color. If you max out in another color during the game, you get an extra tile play. For a game of this type (which is not generally my cup of tea), I thought this played fast and offered enough decision making choices to keep me engaged. I would definitely play it again readily, though I can't imagine it would become a long term favorite.
FEURIO (Heinrich Glumpler / Edition Erlkönig)
A game based on firefighting; it's an area control / tile laying game. (I believe it's been out since Essen, but is included here because one of us played it for the first time.)
Rich: Tile laying game about fire fighters. You try to build connected strings of your firemen. You score more if you get your men near the hottest part of the blaze, but only if you also have others at the low end as well (as the score of each string is equal to the total points of the tiles, divided by the lowest tile that remains on the outside edge of the blaze. Quick, with some decision making along the way -- unfortunately, if one player turns up a couple of 1s, he/she will have a distinct advantage. Like Transamerica, since this is a quick bit of filler, this isn't as big a deal as you think.
FIFTH AVENUE
(Wiko Manz; Alea)
An area control / point scoring game. There are several actions a player can perform each turn; players accumulate cards to use in bidding for the right to place skyscrapers in various areas on the board. Two markers move from south to north, leaving a trail of locations where auctions can be conducted. Similarly to Medina, players work with (or are at the mercy of) players before and after them.
Walter: I was unimpressed by this game, and couldn't figure out a strategy; the end game was dependent on a luck flip which hurt me and greatly benefited the eventual winner. Still, Stefan Brück likes it a lot, and he's the one who brought Puerto Rico to fruition. Maybe I missed something, but I doubt it. (If you want dissenting opinions, there were several folks at the Gathering that liked the game and didn't like St. Petersburg, which was my favorite of the new ones.)
Eric: This is an Alea big-box game, and although I'm predisposed to find these games attractive (I love Princes of Florence, Taj Mahal and Puerto Rico) I wasn't wowed by my one playing of Fifth Avenue. The action in each block involves intricately boxing the other players out of valuable spots, and it seemed too fidgety for my tastes (I have a lower fidgeting tolerance than many gamers.) Some people have compared the card play to than in Taj Mahal, but in Fifth Avenue you don't have to spend your cards unless you win the bid, so the delicious brutality of Taj Mahal is missing.
Rich: Disliked it. Although we learned it from Jay Tummelson himself, Jay forgot to convey one very key setup rule, so it was an asterisk game, but I was extremely unimpressed. It is fiddly without offering much strategic meat, save for a scoring mechanic that basically makes it necessary to either score via a two person coalition, or score by taking advantage of poor play by another. After the game was over, I declared that the condition necessary for a second play would be locked in a stuck elevator with a severe claustrophobic who needed to be distracted. I'll stand by that assessment.
GOA (Rüdiger
Dorn; Hans im Glück)
An economic development game about the spice trade from the author of Traders of Genoa. It has auctions, card play, resource management and certain luck elements (primarily with the founding of colonies). As with Princes of Florence, there is a limited amount of time to do everything and you have to set priorities correctly; unlike it, there are opportunities for extra actions, the acquisition of which may be a key to winning this game. It also has an aspect of Industrial Waste - each player has a development board in which ability to perform other actions is improved by moving markers along (which costs an action itself).
Goa: lots to do, not enough time to do it all
Walter: A big favorite at the Gathering among the strategic gaming set. There's a lot going on here, and correct assessment of values and good planning is rewarded. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether there are definite areas where you will always have to concentrate - in which case there will be fewer strategies with which to win. But I enjoyed it and will almost certainly add it to my collection.
Eric: I enjoyed Goa (it was one of the few games I played at the Gathering with a mostly MVGA group; I deliberately tried to play games with as many people as I could, especially people I hadn't met before.) It worked well and had interesting choices. I wound up buying a plantation that produced red spices on the first turn, and this set me on my way toward increasing my production so much that I was able to overwhelm my opponents. It's possible that this represents an imbalance, but we'll have to play more often. This game is somewhat fidgety, so I expect others will enjoy it even more than I do, but I'll be happy to play it when they suggest it.
Rich: Played this once at the Gathering, and once since returning home (since Brian Fealy came away with the copy that hit the prize table). Think this is probably a 9 for me, although it, like Traders of Genoa (by the same designer), is longer than the typical Eurogamer attention span (probably 1:45 to 2 hours per game). Like Princes of Florence, you have a limited number of actions you can take over the course of the game, and about halfway through you'll wish you had a few more. I think there are several ways to earn a victory, but it will be interesting to see whether that belief stands up over time. Meatiest new game at the Gathering.
HANSA
(Michael Schacht; Abacus Spiele / Überplay)
A trading game about trading in the Baltic. Players move a ship marker from port to part, acquiring goods and building markets to sell them. Play requires both careful planning to benefit onself and to avoid "setting up" the next player.
Walter: I played this once in a three-player game and did reasonably well, but always had the feeling that I was working harder to prevent the next player to benefit than to do something for myself. For Baltic trading, I'd rather strain my brain with Kogge. I'm not sure this is that interesting (though Matt Horn commented recently on the Unity list that he really enjoyed it, so I may have missed something.)
Eric: I played one game of Hansa on April 8 at MVGA and two more at the Gathering. It's a simple, clean Michael Schacht game, like Web of Power or Paris Paris, and history has shown that I like Michael Schacht games more than most people. The decision to establish markets is the strategic decision in the game, and I've noticed that properly-placed markets have been a key to victory in the games I've played. I'll be suggesting Hansa at MVGA; not everyone likes it as much as I do, but now that we're getting 6, 8 and 10 players, I'm hoping to find a few people to play it with.
Rich: I liked this reasonably well. It seems on theme, has a fair amount of interesting choices (not just in placement of your traders, as Eric mentions, but in how you position the ship for the following player's turn), has roughly a 45 minute playing time. I too probably like Kogge more, but Kogge fits a longer time bracket as well, so I think there's room for both in a game library.
MARCO POLO
(Reiner Knizia; Ravensburger)
A simple game about the Silk Road. Players play cards, Cartagena-style, to move their marker from the beginning to the end of the board. Nice components and easy play makes this game attractive, but even having the draw choices visible leaves the luck factor very high.
Marco Polo: Cartagena with camels
Walter: I played this once, which was plenty. There isn't a lot of game here; and if that wasn't enough, there's a hideous twitch factor in the mid-game. After the middle scoring (when one camel reaches the "6" space in the center of the board) all players' camels are moved there - and then you wait until someone can play a whole pile of cards to move through the rest of the spaces. In the game we played, someone got tired of waiting and moved partway - and finished last.
Eric: Marco Polo is a game of collecting various types of melds (like in rummy) and playing them at the right time to move your camel forward. There's a balancing mechanism that makes it easy to catch up to the leader, so no one can run away with the race. Instead, you jockey for position and try to make your move at the right time (it reminded me of those Olympic bicycle races where the racers literally stopped dead in their tracks and tried to force their opponents to take the lead.) This game fell absolutely flat for me, even though I played with a pleasant group of people.
Rich: Not my cup of tea. If you somehow don't get an initial hand distribution that lets you lay down your first needed meld, you're starting in a hole, and there does not appear to be an easy way to get back out. If you're moving with the pack, there is some strategy to your hand building, and to when you spend victory points to get extra moves. But overall, I found it awkward and minimally interesting.
OASIS
(Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum; Überplay / Schmidt)
A resource placement game with a little bit from a bunch of games. Players make an offer of one or more cards, and then the offers are taken by players in descending order of position, giving their position marker to the player whose offer they accepted. There are two types of resources: things to place on the board and markers to multiply them. The score in each category is the number of objects times the number of multipliers, so you have to acquire both types to score anything.
Oasis: Camels and tiles and cards, oh my.
Walter: MVGA has just added this game to our Game Library so I'm sure I'll play it again. It's very light and forces you to make careful choices; everyone eventually gets to go first, so it's important to take advantage of offers that give you access to scoring opportunities - you might never see them again. Still, it has the feel of having drawn on several other games without offering anything particularly new. I was "whelmed" - neither over nor under. My most recent play at MVGA confirms my lack of interest.
Eric: I've played eight games of Oasis now, and as with other Moon and Weissblum games, I enjoy the clean mechanics and clear rules. There's plenty of luck in the cards you turn up, but there's skill in evaluating what the other players are likely to do. If you want to play well, you have to remember what multipliers your opponents have been taking, and I'm just starting to remember this information. I was pleased this week when I laid out two cards as player #5 that were just the ones I wanted and no one else took them. I was able to scoop them up and go on to victory. The exciting part was that I suspected I would get those cards. This game seems a bit like Taj Mahal in that it seems random at first, but after playing a few times you start to notice more opportunities to control your own destiny.
Rich: I had played this one several times prior to the Gathering, and liked it a lot. I played it twice at the Gathering, and liked it less than I had previously. Due to varying quality of opponents in both games, there appeared to be situations in which one player making poor decisions could effectively 'throw' the game to another (what I think of as a Medina sort of problem). I still think there is more than meets the eye, and that a good player should have substantially more control than is initially evident.
OH, PHAROAH (Thilo Hutzler; Kosmos / Überplay)
A light card game of pyramid-building and destruction. The cards are illustrated with cartoonish figures, and the experience is more fun than strategic.
Walter: Didn't play it. I saw Alan Newman and Craig Berg working at the game, which they described as "Go Fish with pyramids", so I took a pass.
Eric: Oh, Pharoah! is a card game in which you collect cards and try to build and score for pyramids despite your opponents' attempts to steal your cards and knock your pyramids down. There's a great deal of luck in the card selection and in the drawing of "take that" cards, while the skill seems to be in the whining ("don't pick on me. I'm losing, so pick on him instead.")
Rich: Light card game. My reaction is less negative. Since you can trade cards freely with other players, the Go Fish comparison is not really valid. The basic decision element is whether to cash one's pyramids for a guaranteed score, or risk having them broken by trying to build additional levels (which increase the scoring multiplier). There's a randomizing element to the game's end which I gather in some cases makes it drag on too long - in my play, it ended fairly quickly (which may have enhanced my view).
POWER GRID (Friedemann Friese; 2-F Spiele / Rio Grande)
The new edition of Funkenschlag / Power Grid is a quantum improvement in quality over the old "crayon rail" style game. The original version was popular once in awhile at MVGA, but Jay Tummelson's hand on the presentation shows, bringing this excellent game to a broader audience. I didn't get a chance to play the new version at the Gathering, but secured a copy for the club.
Walter: I always enjoyed the original and look forward to trying the new one.
Eric: We've played Funkenschlag several times at MVGA and enjoyed it, but it's a fairly long game, and drawing power lines with crayons on the small board is time-consuming (Walt had the board enlarged and laminated at a print shop.) Power Grid takes the basic Funkenschlag chassis and super-charges it, eliminating the crayons and packing just as much game into less time. I played it only once and lost on the tiebreak by $3, but I can see that it'll be a great addition to our MVGA repertoire. I didn't push to play it again at The Gathering because I knew we'd get plenty of chances at MVGA.
Rich: I love Funkenschlag and consider it an underappreciated gem. This re-design takes the basic game and eliminates a lot of its more fiddly elements, and reduces overall play time by quite a bit. The only bad thing is that the new scoring tables are more generous than the original, which appears to make it easier to grab an early lead and hold on to it (in the original, so much was stacked against the leader that one had to be very careful to pick the right moment to make a move). Still an excellent game.
RAILROAD
DICE (Jens Kappe; Wassertal Spieleverlag)
A rail building / stock game in which dice are used to build track, buy stock, and develop railroads. The board is built from large tiles on which dice are placed, and small tiles that keep track of the relationships between them (see picture below). This is the first of a series from a small German publisher and after selling out completely at Essen is available again (but very expensive on this side of the pond.)
Railroad Dice: Building railroads, stations, and stock with dice.
Walter: I had one play of this late at night and found it intriguing. It takes a little while to get used to the game mechanisms, but it's clearly very clever. I'd probably like to add it to the collection since it's so unusual, though it's just coming back into print after having sold out at Essen.
Eric: Railroad Dice was a pleasure to play because it has unusual mechanisms that work very well together. Rodney Somerstein taught us the game, and he introduced a variant: the second place owner of a railroad earns half of what the first place owner gets, rounded down. This provided an incentive to invest in lines you don't own. I can't comment on what effect this change had, because I haven't played with the original rules, but the game worked very well when we played it.
Rich: Didn't play it.
SAGA
(Wolfgang Kramer / Horst-Rainer Rösner; Kosmos / Überplay)
A card game with an interesting mechanic for conquering lands. Use your knights to conquer lands, which in turn provide you with fame. When you lose a land, the cards go back in your hand - letting them be used again, but counting against you if the hand ends. Lots of player interaction.
Saga: Meet interesting forces of knights and send them home.
Walter: I played the game once and found it interesting enough to play again but not to buy. The land cards (shown in portrait mode in the picture above) have two sides, so there's some additional stuff in the "advanced" game.
Eric, Rich: Didn't play it.
SAINT PETERSBURG (Michael Tummelhöffer; Hans im Glück)
A card game with a small board. Players acquire cards in each of four categories, adding them to their display and scoring their values in rubles or in victory points. There are multiple strategies and very interesting choices to make.
Saint Petersburg: Workers and buildings and boyars, oh my.
Walter: The best game of the Gathering for me. A definite buy that I've only begun to understand strategically; I played it six times (there were only two copies available, too!) and won it twice, with three middle finishes and one complete failure. We will definitely add this to our Game Library when it becomes available.
Eric: Saint Petersburg was the hit of the Gathering for me. I played eight times, even though there were only two copies and you almost had to stand in line to play. Some people complained that the theme was thin, but I'm happy to play a thin-themed game as long as it works well. The cards are very attractive (they're printed using not a 4-color process, but a 5-color process, with gold as one color) and the decisions are tough. In particular, it's hard to know how much you should spend for buildings and how much you should save for the aristocrat and upgrade phases. I found myself lying in bed each night thinking about how to play Saint Petersburg. This is one Gathering game I will definitely buy for myself.
Rich: Most likely mass market hit I played other than San Juan (which is simply Puerto Rico-light). Card game, with a lot of resource management elements (money is tight through most of the game, so one needs to decide a direction and stick to it). Not clear if over time there may not become only one or two paths to victory that must be followed. We're not at that point yet . . .
(Note: Eric wrote a terrific analysis article for Boardgamegeek on this game; check it out here.)
DIE SIEBEN SIEGEL (Stefan Dorra; Amigo)
A Wizard- or Spades-style card game, with the players contending to take exactly the number and kind of tricks played. The game is played with five colored suits, with one (red) always designated trump; there is a mildly interesting bidding round prior to the play in which players place tokens in front of them indicating their trick objectives, with the added complication that one player can take the role of "saboteur" - whose goal is to cause other players misery with the play.
Die Sieben Siegel: Token resistance
Walter: I played the game with some fellow-newbies and a couple of veterans. It's clear that if I cared to keep track a bit better I would have performed more successfully - but wouldn't have enjoyed it any more. This isn't the sort of game that has had many adherents at MVGA.
Eric: "Die Steven Segal" (as the women were calling it) is a card game in which you have to predict not only how many tricks you'll take, but which suits they will be in. I'm not a fan of most card games (Joe Kidd has a reputation for not liking Wizard, but I'm the real Wizard-hater at SSG) and this one held no attraction for me.
Rich: Didn't play it.
SPY
(Reiner Knizia; Kosmos / Überplay)
A card game. Players try to play their cards by color or symbol, placing markers on corresponding cards when they reach a set that exceeds the number of markers currently present. It plays very quickly, and cards not part of a played set remain "staged" on the table.
Spy: Play cards, play markers.
Walter: A simple game that lists for 10 years and older; I can't imagine anyone over the age of 10 being interested. Not a terrible game - Reiner Knizia doesn't make terrible games - but one play was enough. It's more or less a dud.
Eric, Rich: Didn't play it.
SUNKEN CITY (Wolfgang Kramer; Clementoni / Überplay)
A highly-produced game with beautiful components, this game saw a lot of play at the Gathering. It's got a few clever mechanisms, though it was described as light.
Walter: I didn't play it, but most people who did warned me off it as not worth the time. Kramer's a reliable designer, but this isn't enough of a "gamer's game" to interest me.
Eric: Sunken City is a beautifully-produced game in which the players try to collect the most treasures as Neptune rampages around the board sinking things. It's a "take that" game at heart, and as such it's not in my sweet spot. It worked adequately, but I didn't particularly enjoy playing it.
Rich: Keen bits - not much game. If you're the person who winds up being Neptune's prison bitch (and I was), the game feels capricious and most of your choices are taken away. Even if you aren't, there just isn't much in the way of real decision making.
Not reviewed but available at the Gathering: Lost Valley, Terra, Tongiaki, Indus, Anno 1503 (including expansion), Iglu Iglu.