How do you solve a problem like Moria?

There’s no games night this week due to holidays and Adam being domesticated but, in the time I spent cat-sitting for Sam, I decided to try a bit of solo gaming. Sam doesn’t have any one-player games, but he does have Lord Of The Rings by Reiner Knizia which is a co-op game, so I thought I’d try the two-player version by myself.

I’d played it before a long time ago and my abiding memory is how unfair it was. Indeed, my first two attempts ended in abject failure. I couldn’t believe that Knizia would release a game so unbalanced, so I tried again, this time planning ahead to try and lessen the impact of future events.

This did the trick and after a couple more games I was able to win quite comfortably. In fact, getting to Mordor with a healthy collection of shields more or less guarantees success since I can call on Gandalf to help out and the events on the board are mostly easy to avoid.

Since so much of the game is based on the luck of the draw, the best tactic is to be lucky in the first two rounds so you can build up plenty of resources, allowing you to take the brunt of the meaner events in the later stages of the game. As such, a run of poor tiles in Moria can leave you sunk since at the start you have no shields and you shouldn’t really be wasting the yellow cards so early. So if the game begins with a flurry of events, you can suddenly find yourself only a few squares from Sauron and with no cards to help you get out of there.

After this, getting through the next level, Helm’s Deep, is an exercise in futility. In other words, it can be possible to tell if you’ve lost the game after only a few minutes play, which can be pretty depressing after you’ve taken the time to set the board up, chosen the right mood music and poured a glass of wine.

Winning the game is satisfying, but not in a “I’ve beaten a cunning opponent” way, more a “I’ve cheated luck” kind of way. And when you lose, there's just a feeling of bitterness that "anyone would've lost with those cards!" With many players, I’m sure it’ll be different as you discuss strategies and come to each others rescue with your cards. I guess it builds a sense of camaraderie which is missing if it’s just you by yourself. Nevertheless, I found it really quite addictive and at least it meant Sam's cat was never alone for long.

Gladrags and travel bags

Tonight witnessed an old hand to board games return to the fold. Indeed, it was this man’s curiosity about board games that got both myself and Sam involved in the first place. So, by a happy coincidence of work locations, Chris was able to join us for an evening.

But Chris has been away from the scene for a while, so he was keen to be introduced to something new. Colosseum was chosen since Chris had heard good things about it. Joe and Sam talked him through the rules, and before you knew it, it was like a pop musical from the 1960s as we were all thinking “hey, why don’t we do the show right here?” and the game of ancient theatre began.

It started well, with everyone putting on a small show, but before long Sam had amassed a healthy spread of tiles thanks to being last in the first two rounds. Chris got the Best Gladiator award in round one and kept it for the rest of the game, giving him 24 points over the course of the five rounds. I played a cautious game, preferring to stage the same two small shows over and over while I prepared for my triumphant finale.

In round three, however, Sam made a shocking miscalculation. He said he would buy Caeser’s Triumphant March, but then admitted he didn’t have enough money for it. His long term plan was now public knowledge, and we all realised he had the resources to do it and no one else was close. We also noticed a huge pile of medals that he had amassed without anyone realising. From this moment on, it was a battle for second.

Joe’s show about revealed secrets was just beaten by Chris’ show. I can’t remember what it was, but it must’ve been fabulous. Something to do with gladiators, I expect. My show was nice, but it lay at the low end of the big shows, so my caution was not rewarded.

Sam 96
Chris 84
Joe 82
Andrew 69

After this, a swift game of Trans Europa was suggested. It plays like a fast moving Ticket to Ride. You have five cities across Europe to connect, but the trick is to use your opponents’ tracks too. If you fail, then you have to collect points based on the distance(s) from your incomplete destination(s). The game was quick and exciting, as everybody’s go effected your own strategy. Chris did well, picking up all five cities in the first two rounds, meaning the other three players got points for their tardiness. This was enough to get him first place, because in the third round Joe closed out the game with Sam nowhere near his target. His points suddenly shot up, exceeding the number needed to trigger the end the game.

1st Chris
2nd Joe
3rd Andrew
4th Sam

Chris makes a respectable appearance on the board: last in terms of points scored, but second regarding points ratio. And while my performance may have been below par, at least my dedication to the cause has been rewarded, because by simple brute force I have pushed past Adam into second place! I may have played eight games more than him, but that’s not the point! At least that makes up for him beating me on the online You Know The Score game after nine months of struggle by a measly ten points. Bah. (thankfully it's not leaderboard, though)

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	21	92	4.38
Andrew	23	84	3.65
Adam	15	78	5.2
Joe	18	74	4.11
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Quentin	7	28.5	4.07
Steve	4	16	4
Chris	2	10	5

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.

Thanks, George.

Another Tuesday, another battle of wits over wood and card, and this week with only three members of our little bunch present - Andrew, Joe and myself (Sam) - we ran a gamut of games, playing five in all.

We started with Tinner's Trail, a new favourite that belies Martin Wallace's reputation as the high prince of mind-melding rules. We've now played it enough to have strategies in place, albeit not born of ancient wisdom and back-of-hand familiarity. While Joe and Andrew fought over the adits that are such a boon to a cluster of mines, I focussed on making mining as cheap as possible and removing all water if I could. A couple of rounds in I was leading, but my mines were emptying fast, and Joe and Andrew were stockpiling. I didn't want to remind them - I'm sure they remembered anyway - that cash gets you less points the later you leave it in the game, but despite my fourth-round semi-rally, Joe's canny investing early on (he twice made tiny investments when I saved cash to bully people with) were enough to carry him over the line two points ahead of me, and Andrew trailing slightly in third:

Joe 97
Sam 95
Andrew 81

The early-evening talk had been of moving onto Stone Age next, but I remembered my latest new addition and my resolve to actually play the games I buy, so we broke Bacchus Banquet out of the box. In this game of bluff and strategy each player is a conniving Roman bigwig at a feast hosted by Caligula, and everyone has their own objective to meet in order to win the game. Only Caligula's identity is not secret, so you're not sure who is who and what they are trying to achieve. The mechanic itself involves giving gifts (cards) to other players who choose whether or not to receive them. Will they be harmless, or dangerous? And the key thing is, accepting a gift is the only way to become the active player. 'Hilariously', your character's well-being is represented by a belt buckle - if you let your belt out too far your character is gone from the game, presumably in the style of Mr Creosote.

But the '30 mins game time' marked on the box seemed slightly optimistic, as Joe won the first game inside about three minutes, collecting the presents he needed to meet his objective. Andrew and I - joint second by default - shrugged this off and we all tried again. This time Joe took fifteen minutes, playing as Caligula this time, to meet his objective of eating and drinking shitloads of gourmet Italian grub, until he passed out in an orgiastic haze. Well done Joe.

No-one was blown away by this but I felt that A. it was more subtle than I gave it credit for (I don't know about Andrew, but I definitely wasn't paying enough attention to what Joe was doing) and B. it would be better with more players. So a decent, short, 5-player option.

We ended the leaderboard medley with a game of Tsuro - Joe and I shared first and Andrew came second. By now it was ten o'clock so we went off-piste and rounded off the evening with a non-leaderboard game of contract whist, where I scooped up £3 to compensate for an indifferent showing on the strategy front.

Oh, and the post title comes from the fact we all saw the night as a chance to actually win something with three other players - Adam in particular! - attending a talk by Mr Monbiot. But in the cold light of morning only Joe won't be gritting his teeth as he says it.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	19	84	4.42
Adam	15	78	5.2
Andrew	21	78	3.71
Joe	16	66	4.12
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Quentin	7	28.5	4.07
Steve	4	16	4

Trial by Troyes

Having convinced Sam he should buy Troyes (rather than Shipyard — I was going by the BGG ratings: Troyes 35 — Shipyard 126), I felt it only right that I offer to learn the rules. I relish learning the rules to a new game — as long as it's on my own time. I take very little pleasure in trying to get up to speed on the rules to a game which everybody already knows, whilst playing, but sitting down with the game and rulebook, and keeping the BGG forums handy to answer questions, is a lovely way to spend an hour or so. At least I think so.

Troyes, like so many of these games we love, has a relatively poorly-written rulebook.

But boiled down to its essence, the game is pretty straightforward; there are three areas in the city; the palace, the bishopric and the city hall, in which you can place meeples. These meeples represent your influence in the military (red), religious (white) and mercantile (yellow) areas, and determine how many of each coloured dice you get to roll.

These dice are your actions for the turn, though you can also buy dice from other players.

The dice are used to activate activity cards , combat events that threaten the city, construct the cathedral, and add meeples to the three areas, increasing your share of the dice in subsequent turns. So far so euro-by-numbers (apart from the dice).

Added to this are a couple of interesting features:

The influence track — this is a point track that you can use to affect your dice rolls; one influence will allow you to re-roll a dice, and four points will allow you to turn up to three of your dice to their reverse side (great if you roll a bunch of ones or twos). Influence is relatively easy to come by, and your spcae on the track will tend to ebb and flow during the game.

The other interesting thing is the 6 special characters — each player at the start of the game gets one of these and keeps it secret. Each of them gives points at the end of the game for various things — 5, 10 or 15 points on the influence track, for instance. The thing with these is that all players will receive these points, not just the person holding the card, so while each player has a secret objective, if you can deduce it correctly you can make sure you too collect influence and reap the rewards.

After several aborted attempts to wrap our heads round it, on the third try it seemed to stick, and Sam and I managed a two-player game during teatime the other day.

It's very thinky — there's a smattering of maths involved; the various activity cards that come up have what amounts to a quadratic equation on them; 1 to 3 red dice divided by n, gives you x attempts at y. It seems an odd layer of complication or obfuscation, and neither of us is sure it is entirely neccessary. But at the end of the game, I felt it was a satisfying experience, and want to delve back in to better understand what's possible.

It's almost like an evolved euro — one where there really are many many options of different kinds, and if you can wrap your head around them there are some very creative ways to score points. And it's pretty. At least I think so.

Because one Parisian plague pit is un oeuf

This evening, Sam was away globe-trotting but there was a surprise last-minute addition in the shape of Steve. He arrived just as we’d finished going through the rules of Alien Frontier and, since that can’t be played with five, it was put away and another new game was brought out.

This one was Notre Dame, a game set in 14th century Paris in which you have to gain privilege points by careful use of your influence cubes, while trying to see off the plague.

Adam, as cruel overlord of his arrondissement, allowed the pox to go largely unchecked, preferring to concentrate on using his park to gain extra privilege points. I, meanwhile, was a proto-Louis Pasteur, and I swiftly built up my hospital so I could ignore the threat of the Black Death and focus on other things.

Quentin, too, was big on health care, but he mostly hung around Notre Dame itself, trying to impress people by throwing his money around. Steve seemed unsure of his strategy and often forgot to pick up privilege points when he’d won them. Joe, however, tried a completely unexpected tactic of having hardly any influence cubes on the board at all. This left him somewhat becalmed later in the game, as his options became increasingly limited.

Controversy struck at the end of a round when it was discovered that two cards (which would be used for extra points/money/things) had been accidentally played for two turns in a row, instead of being discarded. Quentin insisted that they stay where they were since he’d been playing that round with those cards in mind, although Adam seemed keen on changing them since he didn’t like them. Joe apologised for his mistake and like gentlemen we accepted and forgave him. It will not be mentioned again.

Not often, anyway.

Final scores were:

Adam 56
Quentin 47
Andrew 44
Steve 34
Joe 30

After this a game of Blockers was suggested as a second game. It takes a minute to learn, unless you’re Steve, who wasn’t aware that points were bad until halfway through. Nevertheless his disparate squares were mostly joined together by the end of the game, and he even said he enjoyed afterwards. The other newcomer, Quentin, swore his way through the game and Adam seemed to use the fact that everyone was gunning for him to his advantage as he sashayed to another win.

Adam 4
Steve 5
Joe 6 (gets 3rd on tie-breaker)
Andrew 6
Quentin 7

And afterwards, we all struggled to put the super-slippy squares back into the right place in the box. As Joe quipped "Blockers: a minute to learn, an hour and a half to put away."

So a comprehensive double victory from Adam, and I hope Sam isn’t too upset when he gets back to the country and finds out he’s not first any more.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	15	78	5.2
Sam	15	67	4.46
Andrew	17	63	3.7
Joe	12	46	3.83
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Quentin	7	28.5	4.07
Steve	4	16	4

No laughing matter

After our recent foray into comedy gaming with Robo Rally, I started to think about games with a deliberately funny aspect and how little I enjoy them in the long run. It’s like a joke may be funny the first time you hear it, but after a while it starts to grate.

Robo Rally is supposed to be comedy slapstick, as cruel fate forces your robot into ever more dangerous situations, but instead it just comes across as awkward and needlessly unhelpful. I do remember once finding it funny when I got a hand of useless cards and had to spend a go merely rotating on the spot, but now instead of chuckling at my dizzy robot, I grimly tolerate my lack of progress for another turn.

Smallworld, too, is a game that I can happily never play again. Far from being a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Ramones, the entertainment relies solely on the funny names of the races involved. And while I have happy memories of Kill Dr Lucky, I strongly suspect that playing it again would be a painful experience.

This makes me worry about games that I find funny now. I wonder if in a couple of years, I’m going to look at Galaxy Trucker in the same way. Although you can look at the cards in advance, there’s still an element of the unknown to be faced. So far, it’s still funny when half my ship falls off, and it is satisfying to limp across the finish line, whatever shape your ship is in, but one day I may not be so tolerant of the game’s random elements.

And what of The Adventurers? This game relies on the player pushing his luck in order to get more treasure. But that’s slightly different, since there’s always the option to play safe so if you do fall down a pit or get crushed by a boulder, you always know you had the chance to get out. I don’t find the odds against the player too unreasonable.

As for Colosseum, I doubt this will fall to the same problem because the game itself is played completely straight: the mechanics are good and a poor round isn’t the end of the game for a player. The jokes come from trading gladiators for flowerpots, having the best horse or describing failed attempts at putting on shows rather than anything the game does to you.

As Colosseum demonstrates, it should be the situation that’s silly, but the game’s mechanics should be as solid as any other game. In my opinion, using random elements to create amusing situations is not really workable. Luck makes a terrible dungeon master.

It's a marathon, not a Rally.

Later start time of 8.30 but that did not dissuade 6 hard-core gamers from clustering around the table last night - Adam, Hannah, Andrew, Quentin, Joe, and Sam (me). Having played Tsuro last week four of us were keen to induct Quentin and Joe, so we started with a couple of games of that. It's so simple there isn't much strategy to go into - other than trying to give yourself 'outs' from any route you choose - but that didn't stop Adam from doing very well. He IS strategy, and he won the first game before Quent and I tied for the second game.

Game One:
1 Adam
2 Hannah
3 Quentin
4 Sam
5 Andrew
6 Joe

Game Two:
1 Sam/Quentin
3 Adam
4 Hannah
5 Joe
6 Andrew

(note: these have been collated from the comments section)

With six players present quite a few games were ruled out, but with Andrew keen, Adam curious, and everyone else amenable we finally got Robo Rally out of the box - a game that puts the emphasis on fun rather than strategy - if your idea of fun is being stuck in bank holiday traffic, negotiating an automated answering service, or cutting a particularly tricky bit of lino.

It was, I found, an exercise in frustration. My memories of Robo Rally painted something more fun than this, and I guess that's because when I used to play it with any regularity it was a change from Settlers or the Playstation. Since then, if I may put my pompous hat on, we have embraced games of more depth and subtlety. Of course the game is meant to conspire against you, but I found this manifested itself as a petty annoyance rather than fun. Everyone found it a bit of a pain - and the death knell for this game is not so much that it can frustrate when you're losing, it's that it can bore when you're winning - there's no middle ground. In fact the most nearly-fun section of the game was entirely down to Quent's suggestion that we move each other's robots - exciting and silly, but ultimately too long-winded as we tied ourselves in knots working out what was going on.

Anyway - cool-headed Quentin took first place, with the rest of us in his dust:

Quentin
Adam
Joe
Andrew
Sam
Hannah

- Hannah having been stymied by a 'special ability' that was more like a disability, instructing her robot to power down whether she liked it or not.

Everyone was slightly deflated by the experience so we decided on something quick and non-leaderboard to finish off the night on an upbeat note. Nobody did the maths on Perudo having 30 dice with six people though, so 40 minutes later I (having been knocked out along with Joe) vetoed the 'calza' rule in order to get to bed before midnight. Apologies to Quentin, Adam and Hannah who were then short of options as Andrew giggled his way to first place and took the £6 at stake.

All in all, not a classic games night with Quent and Joe underwhelmed by Tsuro and nobody liking Robo Rally at all. Next week: Sherlock Holmes!


The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	15	67	4.46
Adam	13	66	5.07
Andrew	15	56	3.73
Joe	10	40	4
Hannah	7	34.5	4.9
Quentin	5	21.5	4.3
Steve	2	8	4

A poor evening for Andrew, Joe and Hannah as their points ratios all took a hit. Meanwhile, Adam steams towards taking top spot from Sam, while Quentin's position on the board looks somewhat more presentable.

Tsaturday Tsuro!

As part of my self-appointed brief to immerse my wife in the world of gaming, I managed to sit her down before the Tsuro board on Saturday night. Aided by a couple of glasses of wine, she loved it, and having won the third game (I took the first two) was on the verge of texting Joe to say she'd played a game that he hadn't. Considering Sally has threatened to go into Area 51 to tell them to "stay away from my husband" this seems to be a triumphant step forward.

However when I counted the length of my - very long! - route for the final game, she said "Okay. Now you're a nerd."

It did pass through 41 tiles though.