The Power of Ten

On Friday Martin and I faced off across the spotty blue plastic-coated tablecloth of destiny with a bunch of two-player games at our disposal. I'd long wanted to try Iron Curtain, Martin had a similar curiosity about Res Arcana - so naturally we began with a completely different game, Omiga.

This is a real-time game of pattern recognition and tile placement. Each player starts with one tile on the playing area, and must add more tiles that (background colour aside) match its neighbours: blue half-circle to blue half-circle, say, or positive arrow to negative arrow. The goal is to get around the back of your opponents' tiles - the first one to do so wins. It's fast, frenetic and just right length: our contest took about 53 seconds.

Martin - wins
Sam - doesn't

Next up was Iron Curtain. I've long been both interested in these two-player face-offs over control (13 Minutes, Cousin's War, Fort Sumter) but always felt the actual play - with the exception of the brilliant Twilight Struggle - was too abstract. I don't think Iron Curtain totally breaks that paradigm for me personally, but it's certainly a big improvement on the cube-pushing perception of the games mentioned above.

Here players add area cards to an expanding tableau, and can take an action or add influence cubes  depending on who the card 'belongs to' (despite being a superpower, you are often playing cards that belong to your opponent) Points are scored for card control and area control.

It was close, but no cigar for me.

Martin - superpower!
Sam - supermarket

Now it was Martin's turn to learn a game - Res Arcana. I've been playing this a lot with Stan, who likes the similarity to Magic - mechanically it's quite different, but players are facing off against each other in a race: in Res Arcana, first to ten victory points wins.

Each player only has one Mage (special ability) and eight Artefact cards to play over the entire game, and the goal is to combine them into an engine builder that rewards you with bundles of resources - and in turn, buy Monuments or Places of Power with them; both of which score points. The Places of Power are only five in total, which lends Res Arcana an air of tension. Another neat twist is that passing scores you a (temporary) point. I wheedled my way past Martin to snatch the win, thanks to my cards providing bounteous resources.

Sam - Res Arcana!
Martin - Low res

Martin kicked himself for some of his decision-making, but I wouldn't want to play him now he knows what he's doing - I only beat him by a single point.

Throne and the Grail was less close. This is a neat set-collection game with a twist. Players add cards from their hand to a tableau and only once per round may collect 5 of the cards for their own sets, which - one hopes - score for the most-of something, plus 5 points for runs across each of the numbered cards. There are also plus and minus point cards with which to season/poison the well... the twist however is the three grail cards: if a player manages to collect all of them, they win instantly.

I gambled when Martin had two of them already and swooped in - leaving him free to play the third grail card to the table, and then pick it up!

Martin - Throne and Grail!

That was our fourth game, and we were just getting started! I liked Throne and Grail so much I asked we play again, and managed to beat him by a meagre 3 points...

Sam - Long live the king etc

Martin wanted to try Maskmen with two as he had heard it was good. It was fun, but halfway through he predicted we'd win two rounds each, and that's exactly how it panned out.

Martin/Sam - best uncertain wrestling promoters

Then another new game for me - Khmer. It's a game of simple rules that provides tension, brinkmanship and a bit of bluff - players are dealt cards numbering between 1 and 6, and on their turn have four options: dump a card from the game (this is only allowed with a 6, though) play a card to the table, claim a card from the table for yourself (this stays visible but is considered part of your hand) or knock. You knock when you think the cards in your hand collectively score the same (or just under, but must be closer than your opponent!) as the cards on the table. Martin wiped the floor with me, and the game is so quick I demanded we play again.

He won again. I stopped demanding.

Instead, as Sally returned from her night out, we embarked on The Fox in the Forest, a two-player trick-taker where the odd-numbered cards in the three suits each have special powers. Utilising these is really how you win the game, and I think my lack of familiarity with them didn't help. But at this point I was on my fourth glass of wine so who knows. The scoring for FitF is clever too: win 0-3 tricks of the available thirteen for 6 points. Or win 7-10 tricks for the same reward. Middling trick wins award dribbling points though - and 11-13 trick wins get you no points at all, but instead labelled Greedy by the score sheet.

Martin - Fox!
Sam - Hen

The evening was coming to a close but as we still had our sobering tea to drink we bashed out a final game of Khmer. I painted a silver lining around my evening of mostly-defeats by grabbing an unlikely win!

Sam - Khmer!
Martin - come again?

A great night of two-player battles - ten in all. I liked Iron Curtain and the Fox in the Forest, liked Khmer a lot, and loved Throne and the Grail. Thanks Martin!