Trades!

As mentioned in earlier posts, I've been doing a big clean-up of the game collection. You guys are noticeably NOT volunteering to trade my dross away from me. However, anything half decent is being snapped up, and I've completed some trades this month.

Nexus Ops for Africa - Nexus Ops is a very sweet game- nice bits, very good mechanic for encouraging war without turtling or complete player destruction, and easy enough to play. However even that much player confrontation doesn't really work for me, and I couldn't see myself getting much play out of it. On the other hand, Africa is a decent mid-weight Euro that I quite like, and I've already played 3 times. I think I liked the 2 player games better than 4 players, as with 2 players I expect the screwage (e.g. the kid dumped an antelope where I was about to put a camp for 5 points), and with 4 players I feel picked on.

China for Java - I like Tikal and Torres a lot, and am very interested in trying out the rest of the Mask series. I bought China because I wanted Web of Power, and it turns out that I wanted the theme more than I wanted the game. I'd much rather control Frankreich than Wu. China will be missed by people other than me, but if I can get Web of Power I may be forgiven.

Thurn and Taxis for Ticket to Ride: Marklin - Thurn and Taxis is a beautiful beautiful game, but I could never make any sense of the strategy, and that bugged me. In fact I never came better than third in a game, until I played 2 player when I actually won. So I traded it to the guy I beat... so he can lose at it? On the other hand Ticket to Ride is a game of which my opinion varies from "brilliant" to "boring". It's sort of a good connection game, but it's sort of boring when people block your routes... I can't make up my mind. But the big issue is that Scrabblette likes it. Scrabblette particularly likes the U.S. map (which is why we own TransAmerica as well as TransEuropa), so I will also have to get the base game, and I'll probably get Switzerland as well while I'm at it. I got Marklin as a stop-gap, and because I like the model trains and the 4+ engines.

Lust

There are a number of new games out and about that I'd like to comment on.

Caylus Magna Carta - Rick Thornquist reviewed this and it sounds like a streamlined card game version of Caylus. What good news that is! I may be tempted to play it.

Tannhäuser - I don't know what appeals to me about this game, I think it's the grim theme and excellent artwork. It may be something like Doom: the Board Game but without the ripped-off Space Hulk mechanics. I don't really like war theme, but when you add demons to it that changes everything. Check out the publisher's promo material.

Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg - this was reviewed on boardgamenews.com. The review explains the game well and I want it pretty badly now. Oops, looks like BGN has gone and exceeded its CPU quota again.

Thurn & Taxis: For Power & Glory - this is an expansion to Thurn & Taxis which is a game I like to look at but don't much want to play. The map on the expansion looks just as pretty as the original. Do I buy it just to look at?

Disgusting Fat Lazy Game Collection

I'm disgusted. I played Thurn and Taxis today. It's an alright game, I loved the map so much that I bought it. I don't remember how much it was because I paid in some foreign currency, but let's say it should have been about $A60. I've played that copy three times, and I honestly can't see many more plays happening, what with my obsessive game-buying habit. Apart from the fact that I'm very bad at it, I've had most of the amusement it will provide for me. Sixty bucks for three plays? That's not a great return on investment. But I had to have it, because nobody else here does and I wanted to play it some more. It just seems like a lot of money...

I guessed one day that I've played 1200 games in the last two years and spent maybe $A6000 on games. I'm not complaining that the hobby is driving me to the poor house, but at $A5 per play I could be doing a whole lot of other hobbies that would be cheaper. I think I need to change my ways to spend less. However sometimes I feel that shopping for games is a significant part of the hobby. Don't you just love putting together an order from Bags and Boxes or Rebekka Spielt or some on-line site with great prices and a selection of new treasures?

Anyway, my immediate action is to cull my BGG wishlist. There are some games (e.g. Puerto Rico) which I will play enough without having my own copy. There are some games (e.g. Antike) which I woud love to have but would cost $A80 and be played twice, so I can't justify the purchase. I hope I can recognise a few of those before I spend any money on them. Maybe next year I'll even trade away some of the games I already have that don't get played. Or maybe I could just play them and stop feeling guilty.

Hunch Gaming

The kid and I have occasionally, very occasionally, been inviting CyberKev and Mrs CyberKev over to play games of a Monday night. By carefully managing the invitations we ensure that there are exactly 4 players which means we can play those pesky 3-4 player games. As I insist that we play at the gaming table, which is rather low, CyberKev has christened the event "Hunch Gaming".

At the first Hunch Gaming we played my Settlers of Catan anniversary edition.

To be honest I forget who won, I think it might have been me. I do remember that the kid ate a lot of M&Ms and was very very tired by the end of the game.

At the second Hunch Gaming we played Thurn & Taxis.


Notice from the picture that as well as having a low table, my lounge room has bad lighting which we tried to rectify by adding the fluoro lamp which mostly served to blind CyberKev without illuminating very much. My other best gaming spot, the back deck, has the same lighting problem. Whoever lived in this house before me didn't care for seeing things very much.

Anyway, Thurn & Taxis seemed to go a bit shorter than Settlers and the kid was not so exhausted by the end. CyberKev won, and I struggled into third place only managing to beat the kid. In my 3 games of Thurn & Taxis, I've come third in all of them.

That's all the Hunch Gaming sessions we've had so far. With the hassle of looking after the kid it's hard to get organised for it. With the addition of Scrabblette to our household we would now have 5 players for Hunch Gaming, and that just screams Trias to me. If only I could get organised.

Gigamic Hits the Shelves

The kid and I went to the FLGS yesterday. When I say F, I mean they came to Critical Mass and gave us discount vouchers, that's how F they are. So we had to go and buy 2 games to use out discount vouchers. The good news is that they now stock the Gigamic range of games, in particular the beautiful wooden ones such as Quoridor and Quarto. The very good news is that more shelf space has been granted to board games with a new section holding Thurn and Taxis, Emerald, Ticket to Ride Marklin, Hansa, El Grande and I forget what else. I could have spent $A200 without thinking, but having been to the vet earlier in the day I was a bit scared of doing so (or maybe it was the liver treats upsetting my stomach?). In the end, the kid chose to get King of the Beasts (you don't often go wrong with Reiner), and the kid chose for me to get Quoridor. How come the kid chose both? Because I'll play anything and he has to be the opponent.

We haven't played King of the Beasts yet, but we did have 2 games of Quoridor. It's good! In my troubled sleep overnight I was thinking of cunning and nasty ways to play. It is a 2 player abstract so it's not to everyone's taste, but if you're into that sort of intense thought it is very interesting. You're often wondering whether to block your opponent, advance yourself, or to place a wall that will ensure that your opponent can't block you. I want to play more of it! Unfortunately 2 games might be all the kid can handle, because he got fairly badly beaten. Oh well.

Thurn und Taxis

Notice my lack of (yellow) post offices, and the game had barely started.

Maybe the most treasured game at ConVic4 was intheclear's copy of Thurn und Taxis. It had arrived the day before from Germany, and he'd printed out the rules from the 'geek, and everybody was keen to play the expected Spiel des Jahres winner. I was definitely included in that, because one of my other hobbies (in abeyance at the moment) is stamp collecting. particularly the pre-federation stamps of Australia, Malaysia and Germany. I have a number of the original stamps issued by the Thurn und Taxis family when they were running their postal service.

CyberKev, Gregor, Andrea and I found the Thurn und Taxis box unguarded and unused, and immediately set about playing it. The basic mechanism is that you collect sets of adjacent cities (routes), and when you score a route you get to put post offices on some of those cities. You get points for the length of the route, having a post office in all cities in a state, having a post office in almost all states, and stuff like that. When someone finishes a length 7 route the game ends at the end of that round, and whoever has the most points wins.

This was yet another game where I didn't pay enough attention to the victory conditions, or maybe I just had a misguided plan that didn't work, but I was struggling to keep up with CyberKev and Andrea. Gregor had a lot of post offices but not a lot of points. I remember struggling to get cards I needed. Eventually I decided I needed to build a post office in Lodz to keep up, and I couldn't find a Lodz card anywhere. I think CyberKev was holding on to two of them which was pretty cunning. I lost touch, and CyberKev and Andrea ran away with the points. I ended the game to put myself out of my misery. A CyberKev followed me in the turn order, he was able to make a move to get the point to beat Andrea.

Despite being flogged, I really loved this game. The map is beautiful, it is simple to play but requires thought, and I love the theme. I'm gonna get it. And I'm gonna play till I win once, at least. I hope it wins the Spiel des Jahre, that will make it easier to find!