The Great Game Reorganisation Continues

As mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm doing a sort-of-major shake-up of the game collection. The point is that I have many more games than I play, and I only want to have a few more games than I play. It occurred to me that if I did get rid of some of the games that I did play and didn't like very much that would be a good thing, but my optimism maintains its stratospheric heights, and a lot of games are staying in case they get better with experience and I get an opponent who likes them, and all that sort of stuff.

The first obvious result has been the reorganisation of the games shelves. I now have one set of shelves for kids and party games, one set of shelves for word and abstract games, and one set of shelves for proper good games. Of course I love the word and abstract games as well, but it's harder to find opponents for them. I'll take photos one day, but if I do it this evening the light won't be good and the photos will be grainy.

I also revised my ratings on BGG. Mostly it was minor, but I did promote a whole lot of 9s to 10s.

Attika - my purchases of Attika, Taluva and Funny Friends last year really made me take notice of Marcel-Andre Casasola-Merkla as a designer. Attika is a very nice combination of (sort of) economic engine and connection game. It plays very nicely with 2 to 4 players.

Domaine - I previously had this at a 10, but I tired of it a little but now I'm hungry to play again. It's bordering on too aggressive for me, but I know that being attacked is a sign of weakness and the game is all about managing your weakness to hold together your domaines long enough to win the game. I much prefer the simple card purchase system over the Lowenherz auction, and I like the geometrical challenge of getting the limited number of fences into the right places.

Hare and Tortoise - It's a serious math nerd game and I'm a serious math nerd. Sometimes it's just frustrating as described in my session report, but I realise now that I should have been using a different strategy and it was my own fault for losing.

Rheinlander - This is now my only 10 I don't own, and I've never even won it - CyberKev has beaten me every time. I really can't grok the scoring system. But I love the way the duchies can expand and threaten each other and sometimes the card you desperately need really does show up. And it's all over in 45 minutes! My plan is for this to be my first purchase of the new year.

St Petersburg - Yes, it's a very strange game, but once you get past the shooting-yourself-in-the-foot stage it's brilliantly tactical. I love the art work, I love the theme, and I love economic engines. That Michael Tummelhofer sure is a smart guy.

Tigris and Euphrates - another sort-of aggressive game, but you just have to realise that the empires are not mine and yours, they are mine and ours. It's a sharing game! I love the connection / disconnection aspects, and the possibility of really great moves.

Tikal - A very thinky game, with connection aspects and the potential for great moves again. Hey, I'm seeing a theme here! It involves a lot of counting, but that's something that sort of comes naturally to me, and my plotting and planning keeps me engaged for the entire game.

Torres - Another game with connection aspects and the potential for great moves. I love the way someone tries to escape onto a really tall tower all by themselves, and maybe with the right action card and a cunning plan you can catch them and take their stuff. The components are stunning, and sometimes I just scatter them on my bed and roll around naked. Oh hang on, no, that's a different game.

Tikal for Two

I've been trying to start a tradition in my household of playing games during State of Origin. SoO is a rugby league match between Queensland and New South Wales played 3 times per year in winter. It's compulsory as a white Anglo-Saxon male to watch the game, but you really only need to know who won and what a cheat the referee was. So I figure I can play a game while it's on the TV with the sound down and still maintain my status as One Of The Guys.

For a few matches my game of choice has been St Petersburg, and the kid received some floggings last year and Scrabblette received one for the first match this year. However as I had a new copy of Tikal which was crying out to be played I decided to play that for this match. Scrabblette had played Torres before so she was familiar with action points, and all I had to do was explain the actions and the scoring and we were underway.

It became clear very soon that Scrabblette wasn't going to quickly make really bad mistakes like she had in St Petersburg, and when the first volcano came out (in the Bs) the score was 11-10 to me. As the game proceeded Scrabblette proved herself to be the master of excavating temples and I proved to be the master of drawing treasure tiles. To be fair though, when you draw a treasure tile you're committed to maybe 15 points of action to take them, and if you choose to do that you miss out on a lot of temple stuff.

Scrabblette was the first to place a new base camp so of course it was my job to make sure she'd put it in the wrong place. I placed a guard on top of one of the adjacent temples. Scrabblette recognised the wisdom of that move and excavated two temples to level 9 and played guards on them very soon afterwards. Ooh, yuk, 18 points per scoring I'll never see again. She also noticed the way I was trying to block off her camp and did similar things to mine. I have created her in mine own image and I don't like what I see. In the second scoring I again scored one more point than her and so led by 2 points.

For the third volcano the map is very spread out and you start putting out temples that your opponent can never get to. Scrabblette managed to play a shortcut to one of my temples from her camp and was able to flood one of my previously safe areas with her men. I was definitely under pressure! In fact, after the third scoring she leapt ahead to lead by about 8. She was playing well!

Finally after the third volcano the treasures were mostly gone and I was able to get a pile of men on the board. With some clever movement I took over a couple of her temples - she was spread quite thin. I also played a shortcut of my own and was able to get my fat guy into one of her formerly safe temples. I played the last tile and moved my guys to threaten some of her temples. She scored first and occupied as many temples as she could. She didn't spend any action points on defence though, and I was able to move my guys into some good temples to score them for me in turn. Along with 30 points for treasures I was able to score very well in the last round, and passed her to win by about 5 points.

What a good game! Scrabblette put up a very good fight but my experience at stealing wins (e.g. Mystery of the Abbey) stood me in good stead. I'll definitely have to get Mexica and Java and try those.

Oh yeah... we won the footie. I think it was 10-6. Some guys scored some tries. Or something. And the ref sucked.

Torres Epiphany

Scrabblette and I played Torres the other evening. The rules don't mention anything like "you're not supposed to add a knight to a castle your opponent has been building and get more points from it than her", but Scrabblette somehow inferred that rule. Let's just say my convincing win may not have been worth the sacrifice. Nevertheless, I think it was my first win at Torres.

Anyway, at the start of the game I had an epiphany. It's kinda obvious. Anyway - it takes one action point to move a knight to an adjacent square OR put him in one door and out any other on the same or lower level of the same castle. It also takes one action point to place a tower piece. So, rather than take multiple steps, place tower pieces to optimise the distance you can move a knight in one step.

There are other considerations of course, like "will placing this tower piece make it easier for my opponent to come uninvited into my castle?" But in general combing castle building and movement is an optimisation which might let me win at Torres occasionally.