2020 Visions

In case anyone has missed us comparing notes, Martin and I have agreed to end 2020 with a net spend of zero on games: trades are allowed, and even purchases, as long as the money spent is raised by selling games.

Self-control is,  just perhaps, easier for Martin than I, but the handy thing about having no self-control up to this point is that I have several unplayed games to work through in the cupboard - a welcome distraction any time I see an alluring picture on Twitter.

That's why I finally played Gugong last week (Andrew and I were schooled by Adam and Katy) after it sat on a shelf for a year. (To be fair Andrew and I did get as far as setting it up one night but then Steve knocked on the door and we changed plans) But Adam and I enjoyed Gugong so much we played it again the very next night, and although I improved my score considerably... so did Adam.

Adam 53
Sam 35

I did at least have the satisfaction of beating him at Blitzkrieg! and Ankh'or afterwards. Blitzkrieg is a nifty chit-pull game where Axis and Allies fight over five theatres of war in WWII. Ankh'or is a set-collecting game where the sets can overlap. In each case however I'd had several previous plays to hone my skills. "This is what it's like playing Odin with you" I told Adam, when he frowned at my second victory.

On Friday, my last purchase of 2019 had arrived in the form of Rurik: Dawn of Kiev, and Ian and Adam rocked up to give it a whirl. On the board players fight for control of regions, tax regions, construct churches (flip opponents soldiers to your cause!) forts (defend better!) or markets (tax more!) in order to move up four point-scoring tracks: control of regions, buildings built, goods acquired and battles undertaken.

It's all surprisingly simple on the rules front, but implementation is something else: what the publisher calls auction programming. It does sound a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but I haven't encountered it before: players assign numbered workers to auction tracks that give you actions on the board (muster, move, attack, build, tax, or scheme: cards that give you extra actions) and higher-numbered workers will push lower-numbered workers down the track... But: lower numbered workers will activate first. This is a real puzzle and makes the auction almost as interactive as the board, as you can guess (or try to) opponent's plans and react accordingly. In fact there's a real sneakiness to proceedings that reminded me a little of Battle for Rokugan, albeit the mechanics are entirely different.

I was pleasantly surprised to win too: Adam and Ian probably gave me too much freedom in the north to build, and although I scored nothing for combat I was highest on two other tracks and it ended something like:

Sam 18
Adam 13
Ian 9

We finished the night with Push It - what can be said about this classic that hasn't already escaped our lips? Well, I could mention that I won.

Sam 11
Adam 10
Ian 9

And then, on Saturday, Wavelength arrived! This is has been long-anticipated; a party game co-designed by Wolfgang Warsch (The Mind) that I suspect we may play tomorrow night. Teams are trying to clue the location of a target on a spectrum between two extremes: the target's position is assigned randomly, and the spectrum changes with every turn: from simple concepts such as good/bad or hot/cold to more random things - there's even an advanced deck with things like Dictatorship/Democracy.

It seems like it could be a GNN favourite, and we put it through its paces yesterday when Sally and I played with some friends - all of us were enamoured of it. The spectrum categories can sometimes seem easy, sometimes hard, and it illuminates the differences in perceptions around the table. Both teams are involved in both rounds (the non-active team can win points off the potential inaccuracy of the active team's guess) and the whole thing is probably quicker than Just One. A winner!