The French odyssey is over, and it was an awesome holiday.
Tornadoes, blackouts, underground troglodyte farms - and lots and lots of wine, food and swimming. With the odd game thrown in. Just to paint the complete picture, Charlotte and I and our three girls aged 14, 11 and 9 were on holiday with our friends Henry and Rachel, and their three girls who are of similar ages.
Henry and I played a total of 73 games over the course of the two weeks - spread across 20 different titles. The majority of these were two-player, but almost every evening brought with it willing participants of various ages and sizes.
The big hit across both families was The Resistance. The kids would have happily played it every night, though a couple of days into the holiday it's charms had worn thin amongst the grown-ups - in fact Charlotte and Rachel both professed a hatred of bluffing and declined to play at all. They did play a 6 player
Panic on Wall Street with us and the two eldest girls, and whilst the girls loved it and were keen to play again, both the mums disliked the mathsy aspect.
So here's a rundown of the games we played, in no particular order. The number in brackets is the number of times we played . . .
It's a solid, enjoyable game - it just runs a little too long given the amount of luck involved.
All our games were two-player, which I think is the best number for pure strategy. Taluva is a real winner - looks gorgeous, almost no set-up time, and plays in about 15 minutes.
This top and tailed the holiday for Henry and me. We played on the first day in Najac, having stopped in Caylus itself on our way down, a very pretty medieval village. I thought I might be able to get a Caylus (the place) t-shirt there, but to no avail - no-one had built the t-shirt shop.
Henry won both games - the first was pretty close, the second I was completely trounced - but in my defence I was tired and forgot that building buildings was an important part of winning.
Henry won both of these, the first as the Scots, the second as the English. And both times by killing my king in battle! It's a brilliant game, one that could easily fit into a tuesday night if a two-player game was required.
This was my game of the holiday, and not just because I won both games. It's been sitting on the shelf for over a year, unplayed, since I got it in a trade. A huge, epic board, and an epic narrative - the Hundred Years War between the English and French. There are two scenarios, and we played both; the differences rules-wise are negligible, but they deal with different periods of history, so you get different leaders (Robin Hood comes in to play in the Lion in Winter scenario).
It's brilliantly thematic, and chaotic - each turn your leaders get a little older, and eventually die - sometimes leaving huge swathes of troops to be snapped up by an opposing leader. I think the main reason it's not played more is that it is very long for a game with so much chaos and chance; but I would say it's the most fun war game I've played.
The numbers say it all - this turned out to be the go-to short game of the holiday, when we had a spare half-hour. We even played at the poolside, and on the ferry. All this despite an inauspicious start. Henry hadn't played before, and wasn't enamoured after a first go. The off-putting iconography and slightly obtuse strategy certainly deserve their reputation.
But to Henry's credit, he agreed to try it a couple more times, and perhaps warmed to it a little more. We then got hooked on St Malo, which is much more instantly graspable, and so for a few days that was our short game of choice. But after 7 games, we both felt we had plumbed it's depths, and Race for the Galaxy seemed to offer a more substantial challenge. There's a real pleasure in getting a little engine running in this game, more so I think than with San Juan, it's earth-bound spiritual brother. So each game is different, and once you begin to know what cards are out there, you can really start to strategise.
I won all but five of the games of Race, though they were mostly extremely close, and Henry had begun to take the odd game off me towards the end. Amazing that it really does hold up - 21 games with just the base set and I'd happily play many more. I regret trading away the first expansion, The Gathering Storm - I don't think it needs the added complication of war, but the extra start worlds and 6-point developments would be fun to play with.
As mentioned above, this is a brilliantly quick little two-player; it shares a lot with Roll Through the Ages, and I think ultimately suffers that game's same lack of strategic depth. None the less a delightful little charmer, and actually one with a directly competitive edge - should you notice that your opponent hasn't built up as many defences as you, you can actively choose to keep the pirates, handing your opponent -5 points.
We played this once, the four adults with Matilda and Flo as a fifth player. They bid recklessly on everything, handing huge wedges of cash to all the other players, but at least they did so fairly evenly. It's a game that works best when everyone has a firm grasp of the internal economy, and one I'm always happy to play.
Henry and I played this with Bea and Flo, and really enjoyed it. We gave it a second outing with Martha and Dot as well, and it was very stressful - the Philosopher/Demon creating an infinite loop with their powers, and sparking some interesting philosophical debate. It's interesting that everyone's first game of this seems to be delightful, and the second deeply harrowing, making a third very unlikely.
Two great games of Twilight, with the first ending in an early war victory for the Russians, the second a mid-war victory for the US (or was it the other way round?) Either way, I won both, mwahahahaha. A great great game, deserving of it's number one spot on the Geek. It's quite a serious game, I suppose, and one I have to be in the mood for, but such mind games, and so thematic. I've said it many times before, but this one doesn't need to be feared - it's not heavy and difficult to learn.
Vegas went down well with Rachel and Charlotte, and with the eldest girls too. Perfect for when everyone wanted to play but couldn't face a big game. Sooo much luck, and yet such fun - it really got me thinking about those two things.
Staying in a little village,with nothing but a bar and a small local Epicerie, we didn't expect to find many opportunities for buying new games. But every wednesday evening in Najac there's a night market, and would you believe it - a stall selling games. Proper games! Quite a few titles I hadn't seen before, and a few we already had, and nestled amongst them, Cartegena. Henry bought a second-hand copy in Area 51 last time he was here, but forgot to take it with him to France, so I grabbed the copy on display. We played a three-hander, and it's a very neat little game (from what Sam says it may be one some of you have played, as Jon B may have a copy).
This was the four-player grown-up hit of the holiday, although it almost didn't happen, Charlotte and rachel both glazing over mid-way through the rules explanation. But they soldiered on, and as soon as we scored up the first game it clicked. I was really interested in Charlotte's take on it - she kept wanting advice on which card to play, professing not to know which was better. I was struck by this, because that 'difficult decision' thing is a key part of what we gamers actively enjoy, demand even, from our games. But for Cha it just produced stress.
For old times sake we played Settlers, and despite it's age and lopsidedness, Cha proclaimed it still her favourite game - the one where she know's exactly what she's doing. None of us really wanted to play a second time though, especially Henry, who suffered the way one person usually does in every game. And Rachel won, though Charlotte was right behind her, and I wasn't far off myself.
A few games of Incan Gold and Love Letter got played, and Henry picked up a nice copy of 6 Nimmt in a tin from a French toy shop. At the same shop I got
Dobble, which was a huge hit with the kids, and is a brilliant matching/dexterity game. Everyone has a stack of cards with a variety of symbols on them to get rid of, and play cards on to a central discard by matching a symbol with one on the top card of the discards. But the real puzzle is the maths - each of the 55 cards contains 8 of an available 50 symbols, and shares one and only one symbol with every other card. How do they do that then? It's the sort of thing that you think might make a good game, only to decide that it's physically impossible and give up. But it seems it isn't. It's just very, very complicated.
And let's spare a thought for the few games that didn't get played: Tichu, Chronicle and Hanabi; Glory to Rome hit the table and got packed away seconds later. And Henry and I played 3 rounds of
Through the Ages, before collapsing into lethargy at the fiddliness of it all. Actually I know that's a barrier to entry that can be hurdled with that game, but Henry had been so gracious in learning Race for the Galaxy against his better judgement that I felt I owed him a break. Oh and he had brought, from his attic, a very old game called
Sorcerer's Cave, where you lay tiles and explore a dungeon. He'd never played it, and we gave it a shot. He got killed by a dragon after three moves, and we decided it hadn't stood the test of time.
JB
