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!

A Commanding Presence

This week's GNN saw numbers fall to an almost non existent level of just three. And, with Ian expected later, I rolled into Martin's house at eight to the sight of a couple of Japanese two player games on the table.

We started with The Throne And The Grail, one of the games I bought for Martin the last time I was in Japan. This is a strange kind of bidding game. Strange enough that I immediately regret calling it a bidding game. Each player has a hand of five and they take turns playing those cards into the centre. But, instead of playing a card, you may pick up the five most recently played cards. Those go on the table in front of you and will make up your final tableau. The trouble is, once you have picked up, you can't pick up again that round but you have to keep playing cards into the centre. This means your opponent can get whatever is left. This may be a good thing or not.

The end of game scoring is simple majority on the four suits gets you points, as do the numbered cards (some positive, some negative) that score their face value.

The other way to instantly win is to have all three pieces of the Grail. When I saw I'd been dealt the third when Martin already had two in his tableau, I put on my best poker face to keep him in the dark. Didn't work, but I still managed to avoid giving him the piece for the instawin. Still lost, though.

I forgot to take a photo of the game, but I did photograph the message in the fortune cookie that I gave to Martin in recognition of his win.

Martin 24
Andrew 12

Then we played Khmer. A cunning game of making sure that the overall value of the cards in your hand is the same or less than the communal cards on the table. Each player gets six cards in their hand, value one to six (in the pack there are two of each and six sixes). Each player takes turns in playing a card to the centre or taking a card from the centre (which is then put face up in front of them, as it's a definite part of their final score) or you can discard a six. Or, of course, you can knock if you think your total is close enough to win.

Martin wiped the floor with me, but I enjoyed it a lot and we kept playing until Ian arrived.

Martin 6
Andrew 1

With the three of us together, the games usually end up being the combative, strategic area control type of thing and tonight was no different. Welcome back to Impulse, the tiny space epic played out in less than an hour.

In Impulse, everything is a card. The map is made of cards, the bombs, minerals, your defences, goods for trade, etc are all represented by the cards. A remarkably efficient design, albeit one heavily laden with rules.

But once we'd had our rules refreshed, we were off. I lost a cruiser early on to Martin's sabotage card. In fact, he threatened to just hop back and forth between his Command and Sabotage cards, hoping to pick us off one by one. It certainly pushed him quickly up to seven points.

However, the next time he tried it, he failed, and Ian's fleet sailed impassively by. And when Ian attacked back, he won! Martin suddenly looked weak. I, at this time, was mostly hiding in the corner, trading cards for points. Before long Ian and I had caught Martin up, and the scores were 9-9-8, with Ian in last on the score track but looking strong on the map.

Martin was stuck by his bad luck on the map. His third of the map was either command cards to move or sabotage cards to attack adjacent ships. It was a limited range of options. Ian made a mega-move that sent him from eight to fifteen points, but left him with few cards. I used some Draw commands to fill out my hand and Martin tried to sabotage Ian and failed again.

At the end of one of my turns, Ian was on 18, and bound to hit the game-winning score of 20 on his next turn. I was on 17, about to hit 18, so I needed two more points to win. I attacked Ian. But, it was an optimistic gamble. I had no reinforcements, and Ian won easily. Which gave him two points, and the victory.

Ian 20
Andrew 17
Martin 11

Next we played Azul. This game of tile taking is such an old familiar, it's hard to believe it's barely a year old.

After a low scoring round one for everyone, I find myself with three unfinished rows. I play cautiously and I'm pleased to only get -1 in penalties, but also just 4 points overall for that round.

During round three, Martin suffers an existential crisis, repeatedly muttering "What am I doing?" He is later gripped by indecision over where to place three blue tiles he picked up. In this row? Or this row? This literally went on for a minute. Maybe a minute and a half.

Round four ended with Martin leading 37-29-29. Round five was a dream for him, as he completed colours and columns for bonus points, while Ian had a nightmare final round.

Martin 75
Andrew 64
Ian 54

By now I made noises about heading off, but I convinced myself to stay by suggesting Eggs Of Ostrich as our night cap.

And I'm glad I did, since I ended the winner, thanks to an uncontested amber in round three. Notable events were mostly confined to round two, where we all played our Two Bag cards on three separate occasions.

Andrew 27
Martin 24
Ian 21

And so, with a victory each (not including the two player games, of course) we disbanded for the night. Thanks to Martin for hosting. Here's hoping for more next week, but the grip of the summer holidays has been tighter this year than it's ever been.