The Festival of Lights

The most recent Gathering of Friendless coincided with Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights. This festival commemorates the legendary time when Rama returned to Ayodhya after helping Vishwamitra destroy the demons of the Dandaka-van and demolishing Ravana's army at Mithila using the power of the Brahm-astra. You must remember that. Anyway, it's something like a Hindu Christmas, and with our household being as Hindu as it is Christian (i.e. not at all), we lit some candles and got some Indian sweets and celebrated Diwali. That makes sense, doesn't it?

So the subtitle of the Gathering of Friendless episode was "The Festival of Lights". As the only "light" games I could think of were Nacht der Magier, which only takes 4 players and is played in the dark anyway; and Khet which is a 2 player game; we completely ignored the light theme.

We started with a two-team game of Bamboleo while waiting to see who might arrive. CyberKev made a mathematical mistake and took his team down very efficiently, leaving the team of Aaron, Hubertus and John to win 21 points to -1.

We'd all played Trans(Europa|America) but only a few of us had played the Vexation expansion, so we then played Vexation with TransEuropa. When I read the rules of Vexation I was sure I'd hate it - why take a great game and make it malicious? - but it's not malicious at all, it just has blocking. That I can cope with. Most of us didn't get the hang of the expansion at all, with the game only lasting two rounds, with Aaron on 12, me on 10, and nobody else above 1. Even Scrabblette, who is very good at the Trans games, did very badly.

We progressed to one of CyberKev's favourites, Frank's Zoo, which apparently takes up to seven players. There were six of us, and it seemed to me that the game was significantly weaker with six than with four. It wasn't likely that there was a pair of anything in someone's hand, and I found it hard to judge what might be a good play. Scores were very even for the whole game, with Scrabblette eventually winning on 24 and last place being up to 15.

We then played something we'd been hoping to play for months - Mystery of the Abbey. This is one of the four games I rate a 10 (Scrabble, Trias and Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation), and I don't often play it. CyberKev argues that it's too chaotic and the card-passing takes away from the deductive aspect; but I say that if the card-passing has much of an effect you're not very good at the deduction. Last time we played this at Critical Mass I stole the win from Scrabblette so there was some tension at our end of the table - she determined not to let it happen again, me determined to be even more cunning this time.

Very early in the game we discovered that all of the Fathers were in people's hands, so they didn't do it. There weren't many clear clues for a while then until the second round when the event at Mass was that novices were confined to their chambers. For this event each player places a novice in front of their cellula. Scrabblette didn't have one, so there were 5 novices on the board. A few people asked questions about the other novices and I realised that with 5 on the board, one in my hand, one in Aaron's hand, and none with anybody else, that there were two missing. There was one card in the Parlatorium, so the killer must be a novice. A good deduction I thought, but way too obvious and I was sure everybody saw it.

CyberKev immediately went to the Capitulum and revealed that the killer was a novice. I was trying to figure out how I could figure out which novice. I tried to get around to see as many of the face-down cards as I could in the round, but only managed to get to two of them, one of which I knew about already. That left 4 novices I hadn't seen. Then Scrabblette went to the Capitulum and revealed that the killer was a brother. HUH?

Scrabblette had figured out that there were 8 novices in play, so therefore the killer couldn't be a novice. Except that there are 9 novices. One of those completely stupid screw-ups that happen from time to time. But the best part was, at the second mass she was protecting her brother cards and so passed me a novice - the one from the Parlatorium. That narrowed it down to three! I was first player in the third round and hot-footed it to the Capitulum! I wasn't really clear who the killer was, but I had a suspicion that Hubertus had novice Guy, and I knew which of the other two novices Aaron didn't have... so I guessed that was the guy. Further questions between other players while I was on my way only served to confirm my guess, and when I arrived at the Capitulum I accused the correct killer.

In the post-game analysis, I think it was the novice in my hand that saved me. Nobody knew who he was, and Scrabblette, who was definitely smart enough to Figure These Things Out, was off on the wild goose chase with the brothers. Nobody else quite cottoned on that my novice was the last one who wasn't the killer, and maybe they hadn't seen the novice cards outside the cellula in the second round either. In the end, it was an honest victory to me, which is satisfying but not as much fun as stealing a win from somebody else.

The final game for the evening was Unspeakable Words which is becoming a comfortable favourite, even though we do keep discovering new rules. It's a quick and easy word game, and despite the die hating me I always enjoy it. As often happens, Scrabblette thrashed us.

My stats program tells me that this day was my best day of gaming ever. Here's hoping we can continue in that vein!

The Gathering of Friendless

I'm behind in my blogging but I should mention that I've started my new game event, the Gathering of Friendless. For the inaugural meeting Scrabblette was keen to play and the kid was with his mum so we invited people who liked to play word games and their husbands. The attendees ended up being me, Scrabblette, CyberKev, Jane and Hubertus, and we didn't play any word games at all.

We started with TransAmerica which ended up as a tie between Scrabblette and me. Then we moved on to Bamboleo which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me. Then we played China which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me until CyberKev managed to find, scribbled in the margin of the appendix to the codicil of the coda of the amendment to the German edition of the rules that if there was a tie then he won because he'd played the fewest pieces. Pah!

Then it was time to go to sleep, and we all agreed we should do it again.

Mind The Gap

At Critical Mass last night I was happy to see the kid get himself involved in a game of Age of Empires III (which is his kind of game but not mine) so I had time for a proper game of something else. We were about the start a 5 player game of On The Underground but elphiecoyle arrived and we couldn't expand to 6 players, so two players split off to play Ra with Elphie while aaronseeber and Keith and I played OtU.

Regular readers of this blog may remember my rants about train games and wonder why I'm playing this, let alone owning it. It's all Cameron Browne's fault. I read his book on Connection Games and about the same time unhalfbricking.com was offering TransEuropa for $A45. I took a chance and liked that game a lot. When I read that On the Underground was similar but more complicated that interested me too, and I took another chance. So now I have three train games I like (because Scrabblette bought TransAmerica as well) and I think I know what it must feel like to discover you want to be a woman. It's confusing, and...hmm... better not take that analogy too far. Let's just say I'm wondering whether I'd like Ticket to Ride more if I tried it again.

Anyway, with 3 players in OtU you get 3 colours (lines) each. I started building my long blue line (20 pieces) on the central loop as there was a quick 3 points to be gained connecting cameras. Aaron and Keith developed their lines according to the desires of the passenger and took the lead in points. I wanted to develop the blue line - get a loop, connect some symbols - and then make some branch lines out to the suburbs to scores some passenger points.

My plan was working well, in that I had a good solid blue almost-loop but trailed on the scoring track. Then on Keith's turn two passenger cards to the northwest were drawn. Aaron built the line from Earl's Court to Acton Town which I'd wanted for myself. The two more cards to the northwest were drawn, and I had to build a line from Acton Town to Sudbury to make sure I got more than my fair share of those points.

Having been almost too late to score those points I decided I had to start my other line from Woodford to Mile End before the passenger dragged my opponents over there. Meanwhile Keith was building a black line to rival my blue, and Aaron's pink and red lines were sneaking all over the middle of the board sucking up valuable passenger points. I completed the blue loop for a 9 point bonus and caught up with them.

Aaron continued to score well, but Keith seemed to get bogged down with branches. Aaron was leading and Keith fell behind. I could see the pile of passenger cards dwindling and decided I needed to get some good points so in one turn I terminated both ends of my Uxbridge-Ealing Broadway line. On my next turn I branched the blue loop to Hammersmith to connect to the symbol there. Then, the draw pile emptied and the passenger was removed from the board just before my turn. I had the last turn of the game with no possibility of passenger points - but Aaron was only one point ahead of me. I took a branch marker, played to a terminus, took another branch marker and played to a national rail connection, and moved two points ahead of Aaron for a hard-fought come-from-behind victory.

I really do like this game. I could imagine with AP-prone players it would bog down and that would suck, but when it moves along it's very good. It's pretty, you can make and execute plans, and there's plenty to think about.

Notable Games Played Recently

I've been quiet on the blogging front - I think it's because I've been reading a lot of D&D stuff. The party finished their latest adventure and I had to get the next one ready. Also the (first) big box of toys arrived from America and I've been reading the module I bought (Red Hand of Doom). AND I bought the Magic Item Compendium and I've been reading through that for campaign inspiration.

Anway, I have been playing some games.

13 Deadend Drive - I took this over to the nephew and niece and played with them. I just wanna say that I totally kicked their butts... Of the 12 characters in the game, all the other 9 died and I was left with the last three. I didn't realise that the game should end then and we kept playing until one was left alive. A notable event was the chant of "Kill the Cat! Kill the Cat!"

Monsters Menace America - After watching the movie Mars Attacks! the kid and I pulled out MMA to show Scrabblette. She didn't like it at all but the kid and I had a big showdown which I only just won.

Classic Waterworks - Let me totally can this game: Tom Vasel rates it a 2 and comments "I just don't like it". It comes with two decks of cards which you shuffle together, but the cards were cut at different sizes! I've never seen anything so shonky. And it was boring.

TransAmerica - Just like its cousin TransEuropa. The red and orange are a bit difficult to tell apart.

BuyWord - a decent game but maybe too driven by luck. It's different from Scrabble in that you're much more motivated to make long words. Scrabblette managed to beat me!

Pigs Might Fly

When you're on your way to your next board gaming event, keep an eye out for portents and omens. Burning bushes, holes in the sky, whales beaching themselves, the player to your right producing coffee, that sort of thing. Make a haunt roll now. Something very strange has happened.

I found a train game that I like.

Of course there's already Metro, which is not particularly about trains but more about connections. And indeed, my new friend, TransEuropa, is also about connections. But it has trains in it, and I like it, and so it counts.

I was particularly attracted by the thought of a game with extremely simple rules, and based on a map of Europe. I'm in love with the history of Europe and looking at a map of Europe evokes so many wistful thoughts... whereas a map of America reminds me how many Republican voters there are in the world. So Railroad Tycoon, Ticket to Ride and so many of the others immediately alienate me just by looking at the map. TransEuropa has a very nice map.

I've also been reading about connection games in this book. As TransEuropa is not abstract it has a little more going for it than Hex, for example. It's also cheap and scales from 2 to 6 players, so it was worth trying it. Also, nice sensible European people share railway lines, unlike all those stupid American railway people!

I tried to play a quick game with the kid before dinner last night and after rescuing BIL from the bathroom where the door lock had broken we abandoned the game. He showed me that he was going to Kick My Butt. That got me thinking about strategy. It's almost inevitable that the rail networks are going to become connected, so whatever I've done is going to be available to my opponents. So I want my track to be of as little use to them as possible. If there's a long hard slog across the continent to be done, I want someone else to do it and then I want to join on and take advantage of their work.

Armed with those thoughts I sent the kid to bed and challenged Scrabblette. It took only one round for Scrabblette to make the same strategy deductions, so after conceding 3 points to me in the first round she started playing warily and it was an interesting game of cat and mouse. I refused to make any play that could possibly benefit her until it was the best thing I could do for myself as well. Scrabblette tried to do the same thing, and succeeded, so she won the next two rounds and we were even at 10 points each.

However the following round was something of a strategy disaster for Scrabblette. She had a long track across southern Europe, and I had a network in the northeast. I needed to get from Warsaw to Dublin and couldn't see how connecting to her track which went to Barcelona was going to help me, so I struck out across northern Europe to get there by myself. Scrabblette didn't want to have to do all the work of connecting to me, even though she still had to get to Vilnius or somewhere, so deliberately avoided connecting to me. While she made fancy-shaped tracks, I approached Dublin. Eventually she had to connect to me, but by then I was at Dublin and with only one more piece of track got to Firenze to win the round. Poor Scrabblette scored 5 for that round, which was the worst score either of us had all game. So although cat and mouse is a useful way to play, you still must remain focused on the goal!

After a couple more rounds I finished her off. I think we played 7 rounds, which took 90 minutes. The box says the game plays in 30 minutes, but that sounds to me like they're assuming players score more points per round than we were doing. I suppose with more players the game would actually speed up as someone could get unlucky and do badly. As it was, I thought the game had very little luck and and was quite beautifully balanced. I like it.

Anyway, I must go now. I think I can hear a wolf howling outside.