As the dust finally settled on Novocon (prev post), Tuesday night lurched up in the calendar like an old friend, a blessed relief, or havering commitment, depending on your perspective. To start off with, we were a four: host Joe, Ian, Katy and myself (Sam). Gigs, illness and the world cup kept others away, and we kicked off with a decent stab at So Clover. With two more plays later in the evening, memories of this opener are hazy now, but Laura arrived just at the end to help us hit 19/24, with Ian's small/pond clue illustrated here.
The evening's main course, however, was Charioteer, which I described as a bit like Flamme Rouge, but with Chariots. Teleported back to ancient Rome, we steered our carriages twice around the track via the thematic medium of card melds.
Everyone has a hand of 8 cards, and on your turn you can play up to three for the matching symbol and number: four green sixes or six red threes; and so on. Where Charioteer singed our brains was the calculation of movement: the number of symbols plus the number inside the symbols (-so four green sixes would be a movement value of 10). Then add any tokens you want, then a skill bonus if you have it, then subtract damage = that's how far you move.
By itself, this little calculation isn't too onerous, but it's done by everyone on every turn, leading to much brow-furrowing, forgetting of skill bonuses and cursing of cards etc. Plus my method of explaining mainly involved stumbling over myself saying lots of numbers aloud.
There are four suits to move you: green is the speedy sprint, red does damage, yellow heals damage and black is the exceedingly useful cornering suit, that allows you to take the inside lane.
Whatever suit you play, your skill in that suit increases. If you please the emperor, it increases twofold. And if you please the crowd, who are baying for a particular move in each round, you get to draw a token from the bag. These are dead handy: healing damage, bumping up movement, shielding you from more damage or allowing you to shed crappy cards from your hand before you redraw.
Everyone was excited by the tokens and tried to please the crowd, but they're a tough audience. Drawing tokens from the bag was thrilling, as you never know which token would confuse you next. Everyone was also flummoxed by the heady mix of lovely card stock, and maths. "How is this like Flamme Rouge again?" Joe asked me.
"It's a race?"
So perhaps not an unparalleled success, but there was a lot of laughter as we weaved around the track and christened the playing tokens spaffing, until it was decided this was very immature, so it got changed to spooging instead. Katy led the early running as Laura lagged behind, but she caught us all on lap 2 and surged up to, briefly, third. Then as we rounded the final corner Ian's hand-management came to the fore as he shot off into the lead and sailed down the home straight to win by a country mile about 8 sections of track.
1 Ian
2 Joe
3 Sam
4 Katy
5 Laura
If Laura was down about her flagging charioteering however, she brushed it off to take an astounding victory in Las Vegas. We played four rounds, and I don't mind saying I was repeatedly dicked over (-mainly by Joe, who refused my advice to leave off) as the others played a semi-competitive game. Laura most of all: after two rounds she had to leave, but by then she had established a large bankroll ($260m) that nobody else was close to. Could anyone catch her?
Could they spooge. Ian was closest, but we spent more time screwing each other over than making any real progress. Laura won despite only playing half the game.
Laura $260m
Ian $250m
Katy $190m
Joe $170m
Sam $150m
Now back to a four, we returned our attention to So Clover, hoping to beat our earlier score of 19. However, it was not to be. Despite some good clueing, the decoders performance levels had now deteriorated and we managed to make some basic errors. Also the clues were far more smutty now, possibly the result of the foul-mouthed Charioteer adventure. Anyway, after scoring
16/24
We went again, and marginally improved to a semi-respectable...
18/24
...before calling it a night. A fun night! Thanks all, see you next week.
A fun night. I liked Charioteers - I feel the confusion was much more down to some of the design quirks than your explanation Sam. They've clearly started from an idea of having four 'suits', which is an easy concept for gamers to grasp - but most of the cards have 2 or 3 suits symbols on them, and multiples of each (eg a card might have 2 yellow 4s, and a yellow 2, and a green 6) which makes that simple mechanic quite a bit harder to parse. Added to which, you're playing cards with matching suit *and* number, so if you're playing a card for its yellow 4s, the yellow 2s are irrelevant. I also struggled before realising that the lozenges were also 'suit' specific - obvious in hindsight.
ReplyDeleteI think the cornering mechanic is clever. Not wholly convinced the cruft is worth the attendant faff, but I'd definitely like to play again - perhaps a full race but at a lower player count. It does seem that you should play a full three laps to get the benefit of those skill bonuses - they would really ramp up the excitement going into the last lap. Kind of the opposite of both Downforce and Flamme Rouge, where you can run out of steam if you mismanage your hand; seems like with this you just get faster and faster. What the hell are they feeding those horses?
JB x
Thanks for a fun night all, I needed a good laugh and some swearing and it delivered both! I'd definitely play Charioteers again, but would prefer it if lady luck had stayed on my side, rather than reverting to Ian. Katy x
ReplyDeleteThe second lap was much faster than the first, and you're right Joe, the third would be quicker still. I think we all forgot to promote our skill markers at times... I might put together a little player aid for next time.
ReplyDelete