The Big Magnus Spiele Order, Part 2

OK, so this news is really out of date. I have more things to say than motivation to say them. But here's photos of part 2 of the order from Magnus Spiele which arrived in September.





Of those games I've since played Tsuro many times - I recommend it as a light many player abstract; Fragile is an interesting puzzle; Cartagena II is an interesting change from the original but I haven't got a good translation of the rules; Akaba was fun with my nephew; and Drachenei & Zauberschwert was OK. I'm still to get my head around the rules of Verrater.

THE SEVENTH GUEST

I just realised I'm a long way behind on session reports for The Gathering of Friendless. It's because I've been playing squash... of course... I play on Saturday morning, and I'm a useless lump of whining lard until Tuesday at least.

Anyway, Episode 3 of The Gathering of Friendless occurred a couple of weeks ago. The title of the episode was chosen because I was desperately trying to avoid having exactly 7 guests. Seven is the crappiest number for board-gaming. After you've played Shadows Over Camelot you're down to party-style games like Saboteur and The Great Dalmuti. They're fine games, but I prefer 3 or 4 player games on average. Sadly, 7 is a small enough number that it *seems* like there should be some better games to play, so people are reluctant to split into 2 tables. My theory is that with 6 players we could play, with 8 players I could convince people to split into 2 tables, but 7 is just very difficult so it's better avoided.

I took the approach of inviting 9 people and warning all of them that exactly 2 people not coming was unacceptable. They took me seriously, and 4 people didn't come along, leaving us with ... you do the maths... which is a fine number for games.

We started with Carcassonne in honour of the kid who'd visited the real place during the week. I realised that the game is much cleverer than I'd thought, and despite being flogged by CyberKev I increased my rating for it on BGG. All the tile types work together to contribute to the tension, and it's just such a clever game. I can't wait for the collectors' 3D edition (no, I haven't heard of such a thing. I made that up).

We then went on to Word Tower, because the ladies at the table like word games. For whatever reason, the ladies at the table were all at sea with this game, and it was a battle between CyberKev and I to rush to the win. CyberKev scored 4, I scored 5, Hubertus scored 1, and the ladies scored nothing at all. I believe male and female brains are different, and it seems this was a male-brain game.

We then tried out Tsuro, a very useful game which takes from 2 to 8 players. I've tried it with 2 and 5 and it was fine with both of those numbers. Scrabblette made the mistake of coming to attack me while sitting on my right. The second she approached I ran her off the board. A combination of experience and luck allowed me to see off the others well.

It was getting late, but we still had the stamina for Cartagena II. Actually, Jane didn't have the stamina. Jane had a nap. But the rest of us guessed what the rules were from the German and some discussion on BGG, and at least agreed on some rules to use in the absence of anything better. I figured out how to control the boat between the islands, and had 6 of my pirates in town before anyone else had 4.

I enjoyed the evening a lot. I played two games I'd bought but hadn't got to the table before, and we didn't have to play Shadows Over Camelot over and over and over.

Tsuro is the secret game of Metro

Once upon a time, CyberKev and I were discussing how I had won three games of Metro in a row and hence for the fourth game I was viciously targeted and completely annihilated. I don't know whether I really was good at Metro, but it felt like it to me - I knew what I was doing and played with confidence. I also remarked that apart from the obvious techniques of keeping your own tracks alive and screwing other players there was some sort of area control element to the game that I hadn't quite sorted out yet.

For example - your track is in the 2x2 area in the corner of the board. Say I can't (or choose not to) play a tile to terminate your track earning you only 3 points, but I may be able to play a tile such that there are no paths out of that area. (Note that there still may be paths in - in Metro, paths in (INs) and paths out (OUTs) are separate.) If I do that, you're as good as screwed. Inevitably your track will wander around that 2x2 area no matter what you do. The best bit is unless you understand the secret game of Metro you won't even know that I did that, and you'll think later it was just bad luck :-).

It's extremely hard to do this in Metro, because you only get one tile at a time, can't rotate it and you have so many things you need to achieve. However it's nice when you pull it off. Also, I'm not yet experienced enough to easily recognise the IN and OUT tracks.

Tsuro is an abstract game which is similar to Metro in some ways - you lay tiles with tracks on and your track terminating is bad. However in Tsuro you can turn the tiles any way you like, you only get one life and when you lose it you lose the game, and there are no INs and OUTs - a tile can switch INs and OUTs which can result in players colliding with each other (and that's bad for both of them). Also, you get 3 tiles to choose from, but only one place to play them, which is where you're going next.

The goal of the game in Tsuro is to stay alive, or alternatively, to make your opponents dead. You can achieve this by squeezing them for room in a Tron light-cycle like fashion, so there's nowhere for their track to go, or by simply avoiding them and hoping they crash first. In my experience, the two player game rewards aggression, and there's a slight resemblance to Hey! That's My Fish! where you're trying to claim territory. However, unlike Fish! and light cycles there are paths to escape from a blocked off territory. As your opponent, I want to minimise your escape paths if I can.

The two player game is strategic, as players compete for space to move in. The game takes up to 8 players, and as you add more players there are more interferences between players. If I place a tile that will determine where you go next you'll almost certainly be eliminated (sorry Scrabblette), so if you must be near someone try to make it a player on your left! I found that with more players the game was more chaotic as lots of players get forced into small spaces.

Tsuro is indeed the game I was thinking of when I hypothesized there was more to Metro than meets the eye. Surely with this extra experience I truly will become the Metro Master!

P.S. the kid says "um goin back 2 france tomorrow, colleseum wasnt that amazing roof that michealagelo painted wasnt that cool either. I think i like france better! (except the damn Keyboard!) Oh byea and wats Tsuru? How is Cartehgana 2?"