My mum once told me "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all". I think at the time I'd been served curried sausages for dinner. Anyway, my personality is such that I was a whole lot quieter after that. But she never mentioned anything about blogging.
I've been watching the amazing events at BGG for the last few days and wondering what side of the argument I'm on. I like free speech, but I want people to shut up. I respect Aldie's decisions, I wish he didn't have to make them. I like Barnes' wit, I can see how he rubs people up the wrong way. But rather than go down that path too far I'm going to give honest opinions on games.
I can't tell you what Ameritrash is but I know it when I see it. Railroad Tycoon. Axis and Allies. Twilight Imperium 3. Many many games that I choose not to play. I'll admit it, I'm not a big fan of Ameritrash. Yes, I'm a Eurosnoot. So shoot me... with your tiny little plastic guns. I'm a mathematician at heart and I love to see mathematics at work. A Steiner triple system is mathematics, totalling the result of 2d6 is not.
BattleLore: I'm a fan of the Command and Colors system, rating each of them about an 8. Do they count as Ameritrash? It's hard to classify a game published by an American company that sells because of its tiny little plastic armies as anything else. So I have to admit I do like the C&C Ameritrash.
Railroad Tycoon: Takes way too long and isn't very interesting. The bizarre financial exploits of the 19th century railroad barons should be confined to history's shame file, not celebrated in games. I rate it a 4 because I was feeling kind that day.
Twilight Imperium 3: Takes way too long and isn't very interesting. The designer took some Euro ideas for this game but they didn't save it. Aimed at people who don't have a life, this game is completely unrewarding as you spend several hours building an economy so you can build space ships that you can lose with a dice roll. Only Americans can love this game - it gives them an opportunity to understand the Star Wars program. It's also aimed at people who think you should wage war just because you can... as opposed to Eurosnoots who know that you only engage in conflict if you expect to gain more than you lose, such as petrodollar hegemony for example.
Arkham Horror: As much as I aspire to despise all American culture, I often fail. Violent Femmes are awesome. House M.D. is awesome. H.P. Lovecraft is awesome. This game does a fine job of animating Lovecraft's milieu, and I admire it a lot. On the other hand, I try to avoid playing it against other people. It takes a very long time and you're at the mercy of the cards. It's also quite complex. I give it an 8, but I only want to play it as a solitaire game.
Heroscape: I bought a couple of sets of this because the bits are so cool and they were very cheap. We played once and even the kid didn't like it. Cool bits, no game. You've got to ask - are these people selling games or are they selling plastic? Of course Hasbro doesn't care. I gave it a 4.
Runebound: This game is similar to Arkham Horror in that I love the theme so much that I must play the game, but allowing other people to play as well would spoil it for me. I like to go off on a trip by myself... This is my favourite solitaire game and ... well just read my lengthy session report. I give the game an 8.5 at the moment, and I'm still buying expansions.
Nexus Ops: I only have time for one more item, so I'll make it a different one. I very much admire the design of Nexus Ops, I just didn't have fun playing it. I think the way VPs are awarded for small goals is very very good, much better than TI3, but I don't really want to play a game where I build stuff and then people trash it. It's too depressing. There's not enough maths. It's just being horrible to people, even though there is a good reason. I'm torn between disliking this game for that and admiring it for its success in achieving what it set out to do, so I sat on the fence and gave it a 6.
It seems the only Ameritrash games I like are those that play with 1 or 2 players. Sitting around a massive game board for 6 hours with people beating on me is just not my idea of fun. I'd rather play St Petersburg.
Showing posts with label BattleLore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BattleLore. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Life's Too Short to Play Twilight Anything (Again)
Following my ambition to play more of the BGG Top 50, CyberKev and I sat down yesterday afternoon to play Twilight Struggle. I hadn't really heard much about it before, and had no particular prejudice against, but I was worried by the play time listed at 3 hours. Due to the rest of my life crowding in on us, we only had 4.5 hours available to play. I took the USSR and CyberKev took the USA.
I'd read the rules on BGG so I sort of knew what was going on. The big mistake I made was misunderstanding about playing scoring cards. I thought the rule that says scoring cards must be played meant that scoring cards took effect at the end of the turn even if you hadn't played them. That's not true - you must use one of your actions to play them. So when I found myself with 2 scoring cards in my first hand, I wasn't entirely satisifed. In the first turn we scored 3 regions despite having not much time to do anything in them.
I also struggled with the Space Race. I hate hate HATE HATE HATE HATE the mechanism where you roll a d6 to see if something works for you. You spend your card on the Space Race and if you roll right you can advance. If you don't, you get nothing. What, are we playing Talisman here? That's not a mechanism for a proper game! It's especially bad because you can't do anything to influence the result of the roll. In any game where the rule is "if you roll 1-3 on d6 you succeed, otherwise you fail" what's going to happen is that one player is going to succeed all the time and the other player is going to fail all the time. Game designers: don't do that!
Games which use d6 rolls properly include Igel Argern where you can space out your hedgehogs so as to take advantage of a wide variety of rolls; D&D where you roll fistfuls of the things so the numbers even out; and BattleLore where even if you roll Lore which doesn't kill anything, you still get some stuff. Talisman is the chief sucker paramount with regard to d6 rolls, where depending on the result you will become rich or totally screwed. Way too random for my tastes, and I was amazed to find such a mechanic in such a highly rated game.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah... the Cold War. So CyberKev started off really strong in Europe and took a commanding lead on points. He maintained his lead for several turns until I realised the value of military action and started coups in a few places. He allowed me to make up some points in mil ops, and some lucky play by me got me into the lead.
Let me share my thoughts on coups and realignment. By placing influence points you can gain up to 4 influence. A coup can potentially gain you 8 influence, and I can't remember the numbers for realignment but it can be handy. Therefore placing influence is often not the best option, and I think for the first few turns we didn't really appreciate that. Anyway, back to the game.
I really like the event cards - they're well designed. I don't like how most turns I had a fistful of American cards that I needed to try not to play - that caused a lot of anguish, especially as the Space Race was so clearly a waste of my resources. When I did have Soviet cards I wanted to play them for events AND for points, so there was a lot to think about there.
We found that the game involved a lot of racing around to different continents when we figured out that scoring was going to happen there. Bluffing might work, but I wouldn't depend on it. I felt a bit rushed - I was always trying to win one more battleground country so I could dominate, whilst making sure CyberKev didn't have all the battleground countries somewhere else. The other continents simply didn't exist for that turn. That felt strange. Also, I didn't much like the idea of battleground countries. Sure, I presume they were countries where the Cold War was contested particularly fiercely, but we're recreating history here - I would have preferred the option to choose our own battlegrounds.
After 6 rounds I lead by one point. At that point we'd been at the game for 4.5 hours, and it looked like we needed another 3 hours to finish. In my opinion, 7.5 hours is way too long for any game except cricket. For that reason alone I will never play Twilight Struggle again. Although the game implemented its theme very very well, it didn't really excite me. Yes, I agree, it's a decent game, but it's not a game for me.
So who won? Well I asked CyberKev to do a final scoring after I left because although I was ahead on the VP track I didn't feel like I was doing so well. Indeed, the USA was 10 points ahead after the final scoring after Turn 6. Hmm... if it had been much worse than that I think a thermonuclear war would have looked good. Last I heard Mrs CyberKev was battling on in my place, and the war continues...
I'd read the rules on BGG so I sort of knew what was going on. The big mistake I made was misunderstanding about playing scoring cards. I thought the rule that says scoring cards must be played meant that scoring cards took effect at the end of the turn even if you hadn't played them. That's not true - you must use one of your actions to play them. So when I found myself with 2 scoring cards in my first hand, I wasn't entirely satisifed. In the first turn we scored 3 regions despite having not much time to do anything in them.
I also struggled with the Space Race. I hate hate HATE HATE HATE HATE the mechanism where you roll a d6 to see if something works for you. You spend your card on the Space Race and if you roll right you can advance. If you don't, you get nothing. What, are we playing Talisman here? That's not a mechanism for a proper game! It's especially bad because you can't do anything to influence the result of the roll. In any game where the rule is "if you roll 1-3 on d6 you succeed, otherwise you fail" what's going to happen is that one player is going to succeed all the time and the other player is going to fail all the time. Game designers: don't do that!
Games which use d6 rolls properly include Igel Argern where you can space out your hedgehogs so as to take advantage of a wide variety of rolls; D&D where you roll fistfuls of the things so the numbers even out; and BattleLore where even if you roll Lore which doesn't kill anything, you still get some stuff. Talisman is the chief sucker paramount with regard to d6 rolls, where depending on the result you will become rich or totally screwed. Way too random for my tastes, and I was amazed to find such a mechanic in such a highly rated game.
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah... the Cold War. So CyberKev started off really strong in Europe and took a commanding lead on points. He maintained his lead for several turns until I realised the value of military action and started coups in a few places. He allowed me to make up some points in mil ops, and some lucky play by me got me into the lead.
Let me share my thoughts on coups and realignment. By placing influence points you can gain up to 4 influence. A coup can potentially gain you 8 influence, and I can't remember the numbers for realignment but it can be handy. Therefore placing influence is often not the best option, and I think for the first few turns we didn't really appreciate that. Anyway, back to the game.
I really like the event cards - they're well designed. I don't like how most turns I had a fistful of American cards that I needed to try not to play - that caused a lot of anguish, especially as the Space Race was so clearly a waste of my resources. When I did have Soviet cards I wanted to play them for events AND for points, so there was a lot to think about there.
We found that the game involved a lot of racing around to different continents when we figured out that scoring was going to happen there. Bluffing might work, but I wouldn't depend on it. I felt a bit rushed - I was always trying to win one more battleground country so I could dominate, whilst making sure CyberKev didn't have all the battleground countries somewhere else. The other continents simply didn't exist for that turn. That felt strange. Also, I didn't much like the idea of battleground countries. Sure, I presume they were countries where the Cold War was contested particularly fiercely, but we're recreating history here - I would have preferred the option to choose our own battlegrounds.
After 6 rounds I lead by one point. At that point we'd been at the game for 4.5 hours, and it looked like we needed another 3 hours to finish. In my opinion, 7.5 hours is way too long for any game except cricket. For that reason alone I will never play Twilight Struggle again. Although the game implemented its theme very very well, it didn't really excite me. Yes, I agree, it's a decent game, but it's not a game for me.
So who won? Well I asked CyberKev to do a final scoring after I left because although I was ahead on the VP track I didn't feel like I was doing so well. Indeed, the USA was 10 points ahead after the final scoring after Turn 6. Hmm... if it had been much worse than that I think a thermonuclear war would have looked good. Last I heard Mrs CyberKev was battling on in my place, and the war continues...
Friday, March 09, 2007
Epic BattleLore Rules Are Out
Days of Wonder have the epic BattleLore rules up on their site. Epic adventures require 2 boards but only one set, and can handle up to six players. I'd be very interested in playing BattleLore (epic or not) while Scrabblette is away next month. Potential players include:
- The evil count von Walduck
- Ozvortex
- dupytren
- scotto
- Critical Mass
- my kid
- CyberKev, though he will be away next month.
Friday, January 12, 2007
Scrabblette's Home!
This is just a quick post to let Scrabblette's relatives know that she is back home safe and sound and tired. She's been fed and showered and will sleep as soon as she calls her mum!
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
New Year's Ambitions
Wow, what a year last year was! Let's be blunt: what a fuck up! I spent half my time playing games and the other half agonising over women. This year I'd like to focus on just one woman and a whole heap of games. I'll be happier, the kid will be happier, the dog's always happy. She loves everyone.
Last year I recorded 793 plays of 267 different games, 198 of which were new to me. That's almost 4 new games each week. Goodness! I played 60-something percent of the games in my collection. Given that I've only played 78% of them ever, that wasn't bad, but it's a number I hope to improve this year one way or the other. My collection needs to be cleaned up.
I've invented the "Friendless" metric which I've added to the Quick Stats table on my extended stats. This metric recognises that geeks will always have games that they haven't played, and have favourites that they've played a lot, but that of course we'd like to have the good ones in our collection and dump the ones that just won't be played. To calculate the Friendless metric, you look at your collection and order the games by descending number of plays. For each game at the beginning that you have at least 10 plays of, you're forgiven one at the end that you have the lowest number of plays of. You then take the number of plays of your least-played game remaining, and that's your Friendless number. My ambition for 2007 is to increase that number to at least 1. After that I'll see where I can take it.
This metric rewards:
BTW, why 10 plays? Well for the games I've played 10 times I feel I know the game well and could teach it and have probably received value for money for my purchase. Also, it has more digits than 9.
On the other hand, it's my duty as a loud-mouth (erm, enthusiastic and frequent commentator) to know whereof I speak. Therefore my second ambition is to play more of the BoardGameGeek Top 50. This ambition has recently been boosted by CyberKev sharing it with me, and we've played a couple of them over the last week (more on that below). I'd also like to play more of the Spiel des Jahre winners. That's why those numbers have been added to the Quick Stats as well.
That's all the ambitions I can think of at the moment. I won't include one about buying games because I think if I can successfully manipulate the Friendless metric my game buying will match my game playing and so will suit my lifestyle.
Now, onto the Top 50 games. I spent most of last year having played 26 or so of the Top 50. The ones I hadn't played were games I thought I wouldn't like or else hadn't had the opportunity to play. In the last couple of weeks CyberKev has organised for us to play a few of them so I'd like to comment on the reality compared to what I expected.
Caylus - as mentioned in an earlier article, I found this one pretty complicated. I thought there was too much stuff in it. I'd play it again, but I'd definitely weight the time I was going to spend against the chance to play several other games. I rate it a 6.
BattleLore - my first play, against the kid, was disappointing. I think playing against Arnold Horshack or the Evil Count von Walduck would be more rewarding. I currently rate it an 8, but that may improve.
Railroad Tycoon - I was so glad when I played this game that "shares" were to be sold and not bought. I really don't get off on US railroads games at all, and I didn't like the auction for first place - to me, auctions are scary hard work things and should be replaced with a different mechanic wherever possible. Having said that though, I didn't mind Railroad Tycoon too much and it's conceivable I could play it again one day. However it was even longer than Caylus and it's not particularly likely I'd have nothing better to do. I rate it a 5.
Go - I did play this years ago, and even went to a Go club a couple of times. I never really got past the "learner" stage, and would have to play against someone at my level to enjoy the game regularly. My recent game reminded me what a beautiful game it is, and if I happen to find the right opponent I will play this regularly. I rate it 7.5.
Twilight Imperium 3 - I blogged about this earlier. Apart from the broken rules and massively long play time, it was OK. I rate it a 4.
Ticket to Ride Märklin - Another train game, but refreshingly on a German map rather than an American one. That really does matter to me. I thought the cards were better and the passenger mechanic worked well. I won by a long way which is maybe why I rated it as high as a 6.
Overall I find that my expectations of a game are generally met, though I liked Ticket to Ride Märklin more than I expected. BattleLore I liked less than I expected, but I still have faith in it. Other games in the Top 50 that I'm looking forward to playing (along with my preconceived opinions) are:
Last year I recorded 793 plays of 267 different games, 198 of which were new to me. That's almost 4 new games each week. Goodness! I played 60-something percent of the games in my collection. Given that I've only played 78% of them ever, that wasn't bad, but it's a number I hope to improve this year one way or the other. My collection needs to be cleaned up.
I've invented the "Friendless" metric which I've added to the Quick Stats table on my extended stats. This metric recognises that geeks will always have games that they haven't played, and have favourites that they've played a lot, but that of course we'd like to have the good ones in our collection and dump the ones that just won't be played. To calculate the Friendless metric, you look at your collection and order the games by descending number of plays. For each game at the beginning that you have at least 10 plays of, you're forgiven one at the end that you have the lowest number of plays of. You then take the number of plays of your least-played game remaining, and that's your Friendless number. My ambition for 2007 is to increase that number to at least 1. After that I'll see where I can take it.
This metric rewards:
- playing games you regularly play
- playing the unplayed games in your collection
- getting rid of games you'll never play
BTW, why 10 plays? Well for the games I've played 10 times I feel I know the game well and could teach it and have probably received value for money for my purchase. Also, it has more digits than 9.
On the other hand, it's my duty as a loud-mouth (erm, enthusiastic and frequent commentator) to know whereof I speak. Therefore my second ambition is to play more of the BoardGameGeek Top 50. This ambition has recently been boosted by CyberKev sharing it with me, and we've played a couple of them over the last week (more on that below). I'd also like to play more of the Spiel des Jahre winners. That's why those numbers have been added to the Quick Stats as well.
That's all the ambitions I can think of at the moment. I won't include one about buying games because I think if I can successfully manipulate the Friendless metric my game buying will match my game playing and so will suit my lifestyle.
Now, onto the Top 50 games. I spent most of last year having played 26 or so of the Top 50. The ones I hadn't played were games I thought I wouldn't like or else hadn't had the opportunity to play. In the last couple of weeks CyberKev has organised for us to play a few of them so I'd like to comment on the reality compared to what I expected.
Caylus - as mentioned in an earlier article, I found this one pretty complicated. I thought there was too much stuff in it. I'd play it again, but I'd definitely weight the time I was going to spend against the chance to play several other games. I rate it a 6.
BattleLore - my first play, against the kid, was disappointing. I think playing against Arnold Horshack or the Evil Count von Walduck would be more rewarding. I currently rate it an 8, but that may improve.
Railroad Tycoon - I was so glad when I played this game that "shares" were to be sold and not bought. I really don't get off on US railroads games at all, and I didn't like the auction for first place - to me, auctions are scary hard work things and should be replaced with a different mechanic wherever possible. Having said that though, I didn't mind Railroad Tycoon too much and it's conceivable I could play it again one day. However it was even longer than Caylus and it's not particularly likely I'd have nothing better to do. I rate it a 5.
Go - I did play this years ago, and even went to a Go club a couple of times. I never really got past the "learner" stage, and would have to play against someone at my level to enjoy the game regularly. My recent game reminded me what a beautiful game it is, and if I happen to find the right opponent I will play this regularly. I rate it 7.5.
Twilight Imperium 3 - I blogged about this earlier. Apart from the broken rules and massively long play time, it was OK. I rate it a 4.
Ticket to Ride Märklin - Another train game, but refreshingly on a German map rather than an American one. That really does matter to me. I thought the cards were better and the passenger mechanic worked well. I won by a long way which is maybe why I rated it as high as a 6.
Overall I find that my expectations of a game are generally met, though I liked Ticket to Ride Märklin more than I expected. BattleLore I liked less than I expected, but I still have faith in it. Other games in the Top 50 that I'm looking forward to playing (along with my preconceived opinions) are:
- Die Macher - long, but I might like it.
- Wallenstein - long and aggressive, but let's see.
- Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage - I'm in favour of the theme but it sounds long.
- Taj Mahal - looking forward to this.
- Hammer of the Scots - looking forward to this as well.
- Crokinole - hard to get in Australia! Probably similar to Carrom which I already have.
- Amun-Re - I once played half a game and it was OK.
- A Game of Thrones - maybe too backstabby for me but I loved the books.
- Dune - I'd like to see how it goes. If I don't like it I'll trade away my copy.
- Roads and Boats - 4 hours with lots of bits! It had better be good!
- Maharaja: Palace Building in India - looking forward to this as well.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
True Love
BattleLore is here... I have to go gaming with CyberKev tonight but I want to spend some time alone with the light of my life... I love her...
The kid is with his mum at the moment, I might have to wait till Sunday morning to play. Be still my beating heart!
The kid is with his mum at the moment, I might have to wait till Sunday morning to play. Be still my beating heart!
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Bring on the Hedonism!
Hedonism:
One of my favourite blogs is xkcd.com. Amongst the silliness and touching thoughts for the lovesick there are some pearls of wisdom such as this one:
It turns out that I'm going to be spending quite a few days over Christmas playing games. After all, I hope to play all the ones that I give at least once :-). But that's my reward for being a brilliant yet miserable and grumpy Java programmer for the rest of my life. If I could figure out how to arrange my life to increase the playing of games and decrease the misery, I would. I'd keep the brilliance and the grumpiness though.
It also means that while other people are buying investment properties and cars and food for their kids and so on, I'm buying games. I don't feel guilt about buying games - all I feel guilt about is not playing the games that I do buy! My collection is quite adequate now, and I think I'd like to focus more on the unusual games rather than the latest hot thing (except BattleLore, nothing will stop me buying BattleLore), and unusual games can be more expensive. So what? My money, my life... I've got the Settlers 10th Anniversary Edition, Hameln, Hamsterrolle, Bamboleo... all of the outrageously expensive ones that are just so cool! BTW, see my latest geeklist.
When I die I want the kid to remember me as a dad who was a hell of a lot of fun to be with. Bring on the games.
| 1. | the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good. |
| 2. | devotion to pleasure as a way of life |
One of my favourite blogs is xkcd.com. Amongst the silliness and touching thoughts for the lovesick there are some pearls of wisdom such as this one:
It turns out that I'm going to be spending quite a few days over Christmas playing games. After all, I hope to play all the ones that I give at least once :-). But that's my reward for being a brilliant yet miserable and grumpy Java programmer for the rest of my life. If I could figure out how to arrange my life to increase the playing of games and decrease the misery, I would. I'd keep the brilliance and the grumpiness though.
It also means that while other people are buying investment properties and cars and food for their kids and so on, I'm buying games. I don't feel guilt about buying games - all I feel guilt about is not playing the games that I do buy! My collection is quite adequate now, and I think I'd like to focus more on the unusual games rather than the latest hot thing (except BattleLore, nothing will stop me buying BattleLore), and unusual games can be more expensive. So what? My money, my life... I've got the Settlers 10th Anniversary Edition, Hameln, Hamsterrolle, Bamboleo... all of the outrageously expensive ones that are just so cool! BTW, see my latest geeklist.
When I die I want the kid to remember me as a dad who was a hell of a lot of fun to be with. Bring on the games.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Zama - 202BC
The kid sits in my seat while the wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus looks on. Arnold searches for Alps.Arnold Horshack came to visit today for another game of C&C: Ancients. I've got the expansion but still hadn't used the elephants in the base game, so I insisted we play a scenario with elephants. The last scenario in the rule book, Zama, looked good to me - the Carthaginians have 3 elephant units and the Romans have none at all. The thought of infantry facing elephants just got me excited.
In the first game, I played the Romans - the guys without elephants. Reading over the rules this morning I realised that a cavalry unit forced to retreat when it was almost at its own back line would be in severe trouble, so rather than focus on the elephants I directed Laelius to charge down the left flank with the medium cavalry. My cavalry were fairly successful on both flanks, and I took a handy lead in victory banners. However the Carthaginian infantry pursued my wounded cavalry and Arnold caught up.
I had certainly distracted him from his elephants, but I hadn't made much progress organising my troops, so were not really prepared when the elephants charged. Arnold directed them against the medium infantry because elephants get as many dice in close combat as their opponents would, and medium infantry have 4 dice. It wasn't pretty. Elephants also reroll swords as additional attack dice, and get armour overruns (or whatever it's called, armour overrun is fairly accurate) and a bonus attack when they overrun. One elephant attack cost me 7 medium infantry. Ouch! But then on the battle back one of the elephant units stampeded another elephant... that was pretty funny. I managed to survive the elephant attack only losing one banner (but many other units), and with some good hits on battle backs and so on came within a banner of victory. When Arnold's line advanced, I won the game on a battle back 8 banners to 6.
After a break for Arena Maximus, chicken sandwiches and the third Ashes test, we played the reverse scenario. I decided I would send the elephants in as early as possible with the hope of breaking his line and then using my line advance and Card of +2 Bashing I would take easy banners against unsupported units. But no, not MY stupid elephants. Whereas Arnold's elephants included oliphants and Stampy Simpson, my elephants included Dumbo and his baby sister. They were big fat baby girlie loser elephants. Not cold-blooded mass murderers like Arnold had. My elephant attack was repulsed without claiming a banner. In fact Arnold had 4 banners before I had any. I think the difference was that when Arnold had the elephants they attacked me, but when my elephants got into range Arnold charged them and attacked them. They mostly ran away with out stomping, trampling. stampeding or trumpeting. Off to the elephant graveyard with nary a whimper.
Fortunately I'd done a reasonable job defending against Arnold's cavalry attacks, and gained a couple of banners. I had to use my line advance card to reassemble the forces after they stumbled over the blubbery carcasses of the "Terrors of the Alps". I wanted another line advance card so I could hit him hard, but I couldn't find one. Arnold did advance the line, and finished me off, 8 banners to 4.
We agreed that this is a great game. I don't know what ancient warfare was really like, but they did so much of it it must have been nearly as much fun as this game. The elephants are a hoot - you never know who they're going to kill next (if anyone). The expansion has camels, and although I'm sure they won't be as good as elephants maybe I'll get away with spitting at my opponent.
By the way, we're REALLY looking forward to BattleLore. The same system, in a fantasy setting, slightly stream-lined, should be AWESOME. The kid hasn't played Memoir for ages, and totally ignores Ancients, but I reckon he'll be hooked by the miniatures. Arnold and also the Evil Count are getting BattleLore for Christmas, so I'll have several educated opponents very soon. It's gonna be GREAT. It's gonna cost me a MINT. I can't wait.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Let Me Talk About Essen Too!
Although I am stuck at work in Australia, I can't help but be excited about the new games being released in Essen. Here's what I'm interested in, or otherwise.
Leonardo da Vinci: I'm interested in playing, but it hasn't got my interest enough to want to buy it.
Taluva: A must-have for me. Very pretty, almost abstract, plays quickly - many of the things I like.
Hameln: I picked up a copy of Shear Panic last week, and I've decided that Fragor games are simply must-buys. Even if the game sucks I can use them to amuse small children. BTW, Shear Panic is a decent game.
Anasazi: I know almost nothing about the game but I love the theme so I'm going to continue watching it.
Fiji: I've had good experiences with Friedemann, and a game about shrunken heads has to be a good thing, so I'm going to get it. Mara's art is always awesome as well.
BattleLore: I have a 10yo son who liked Memoir '44, and loves the fantasy theme. I guess I'll be buying this for a few years yet.
Emira: I'm always attracted to games with controversial themes, and I owe it to my game buddies to buy a gamer's game every now and then. You can't have too many games about hot women.
Silk Road: I was very keen to support Bruno and Ted, but when I discovered it used that horrible "someone misses out on the auction" mechanic, my interest fell away sharply. I'm very interested in the theme, but are the bits beautiful enough to support a mechanic I dislike?
Graenaland: I like the theme, but need to find out more about the game. Maybe I'll just look forward to playing it.
Formidable Foes: I only just realised this one existed. Same comments as above for Friedemann, though the theme doesn't appeal to me as much as for Fiji.
Khan Tsin: I know nothing, but I'm always up for a good 2 player abstract. It looks nice.
Well there goes a couple of months discretionary spending... On a slightly related note, I only own 4 games published this year. However I own 33 published last year. I guess I won't get most of these till next year :-(.
Leonardo da Vinci: I'm interested in playing, but it hasn't got my interest enough to want to buy it.
Taluva: A must-have for me. Very pretty, almost abstract, plays quickly - many of the things I like.
Hameln: I picked up a copy of Shear Panic last week, and I've decided that Fragor games are simply must-buys. Even if the game sucks I can use them to amuse small children. BTW, Shear Panic is a decent game.
Anasazi: I know almost nothing about the game but I love the theme so I'm going to continue watching it.
Fiji: I've had good experiences with Friedemann, and a game about shrunken heads has to be a good thing, so I'm going to get it. Mara's art is always awesome as well.
BattleLore: I have a 10yo son who liked Memoir '44, and loves the fantasy theme. I guess I'll be buying this for a few years yet.
Emira: I'm always attracted to games with controversial themes, and I owe it to my game buddies to buy a gamer's game every now and then. You can't have too many games about hot women.
Silk Road: I was very keen to support Bruno and Ted, but when I discovered it used that horrible "someone misses out on the auction" mechanic, my interest fell away sharply. I'm very interested in the theme, but are the bits beautiful enough to support a mechanic I dislike?
Graenaland: I like the theme, but need to find out more about the game. Maybe I'll just look forward to playing it.
Formidable Foes: I only just realised this one existed. Same comments as above for Friedemann, though the theme doesn't appeal to me as much as for Fiji.
Khan Tsin: I know nothing, but I'm always up for a good 2 player abstract. It looks nice.
Well there goes a couple of months discretionary spending... On a slightly related note, I only own 4 games published this year. However I own 33 published last year. I guess I won't get most of these till next year :-(.
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