Extra Curricular Activities

As sometimes happens, a second window of gaming opportunity opened this week, though only two people were available to appreciate the view through it, Andrew and Joe (me).

It was the perfect opportunity to give Alien Frontiers a spin — the much-lauded dice-based fifties-sci-fi-themed first-game-from-clever-mojo-games-last-year.

Easy enough to pick up, and a very clean, unfussy design. It plays fairly fast, but with two seemed a little underwhelming. The spaces are limited in the two-player game, to reflect the spaces that would be taken by your opponents in a three or four player game, but what's missing is the screwage those two extra opponents would deal out. It is a game where you can be pro-actively aggressive (albeit in a relatively gentle way), and shut down your rivals, and with two of us, being fairly nice to each other at that, it lacked ooomph. I won by a point - but there was some too-ing and fro-ing, it was nice and close.

But it didn't outstay it's welcome, and so we decided to return to medieval Paris for a go at two-player Notre Dame. We had both played this once before, and I took a right pasting, coming fifth in a five player game. I'd learned from my mistakes, and went in to the game determined not to run out of money or influence cubes. I aped Adam's winning strategy from the last game, of going to the park early, which gives you an extra VP whenever you take VPs - it's a very useful spot. It also helps keep the rats at bay early on.

This time Andrew seemed to make a similar mistake to me in the last game — caring about his people. He went to the hospital a few times to keep the plague level down; but by mid game was out of money, and unable to hire those all-important extra people.

I really like Notre Dame — I love the card-drafting, and you're not really dealing with any big numbers — you've only ever got a few coins and cubes at your disposal, and a choice of three cards (of which you only play two anyway) each turn.

Despite the big imbalance in points (Andrew was clearly lagging by the mid-game, with no real chance to catch up) it makes a good two-player game, one which would be far more tightly fought if we both had a few more games under our belts. And it took just under an hour to play, incuding set-up.

In some ways, I'm more keen to get Notre Dame to the table again than Alien Frontiers — that might change once we play a four player game of the latter, I guess. Just goes to show, newer and shinier isn't necessarily better. Sometimes some scuffed bits of cardboard and a few wooden cubes are all you need to have fun. Oh, and a well-designed game.