I've played games with Cynan a number of times at local meetups, and on Saturday he invited me over to his place along with a bunch of his friends for an evening of games.
There wolf. There castle. Well, *that* joke went over like a lead balloon. Seriously, doesn't anyone watch the classics anymore?
Werewolf has a long history as a party game, sometimes also known as Mafia, Assassin, and probably a bunch of other things beside. The core concept is usually pretty similar. There are a bunch of villagers, one or more werewolves, and a moderator. Every round the werewolves secretly choose someone to kill while everyone's eyes are closed (during the "night"), and the villagers publicly
choose someone to lynch on suspicion of having a slightly too furry neck. While it can be played perfectly well with slips of paper or playing cards, several printed version have been made that provide nicer, customized cards, and usually a couple extra powers as well.
We played Ultimate Werewolf: The Ultimate Edition (not be be confused with Ultimate Werewolf: The Ultimate Edition 2: The Ultimatatinghood), designed by Ted Alspach, best known for his many many expansion maps for Age of Steam, a much heavier game that doesn't even have werewolves.
We had 7 players (plus Cynan moderating), which wasn't enough to pull out too many of the expansion roles. I played the Seer, a role that appears in most versions of the game who gets to silently ask the moderator if a player is a werewolf once per turn. We also used the Tanner, whose entire goal is to get killed (either by werewolf or lynching), which brings up some strange questions vis a vis Mr. Alspach's perception of the job satisfaction of the good people of the leatherworking trade.
I was the Seer, and the werewolves smelled me out immediately, killing me off on the very first night. Sky (Skye?) was the Tanner, and managed to argue himself into an early lynching, much to his delight. Off to this fine start, the wolves proceeded to make mincemeat of the villagers. I was only dimly aware of the proceedings though as Sky(e) and I peeled off to play...
Cynan and Sky (we'll just go with that spelling) described Shogi to me as "Japanese zombie chess", and that's actually a pretty fair description. Like chess, Shogi is an extreme abstraction of war played on a grid (although in this case 9x9 rather than 8x8). Different pieces can move in different ways and be promoted by reaching the far end of the board, and like chess, the object of the game is to checkmate your opponent's king. There are a lot of differences in how the pieces move, but the big difference is that when you have captured an opponents piece, you may spend a later turn to put that piece back in play on your own side (saying "braaaaiiins" as you do so is strictly optional, though I imagine frowned on in tournament play).
Sky taught me the rules and was good enough to keep reminding me though the game what everything did. The pieces all are marked with Japanese symbols, which were very hard to keep straight to my Japanese-illiterate self. Despite his warnings that the capturing rules plus the fact that most pieces had a very limited movement range made defensive play a winner, I took my cues from my nearly nonexistent chess experience and attacked, attacked, attacked. This should have ended up in disaster, and very nearly did - Sky had my king very nearly pinned down, even as I took every available opportunity to harass his much better protected one. Despite this, I managed to blunder into trapping his king up against a couple of his own pieces - I wish I could say it was clever strategy and foresight, but Sky actually saw the mate coming before I did. I'm pretty sure that if we played 10 more games, he'd win 10 of them, but it was pretty cool to pull out a victory.
There are some printed versions of the game with icons and little abstractions of the pieces' movement capabilities. If I want to explore this more, I'll probably see if I can track one down, despite the fact that a real Shogi player would probably consider one of these sets the equivalent of Kasperov playing with a Simpsons themed chess set.
There were 8 people at Cynan's at this point, and I figured this was a great opportunity to pull Incan Gold off of Cynan's shelf. Each turn, all players decide whether to press on in their exploration of an ancient temple or to hightail it with their treasure. Pressing on can lead to greater rewards, but it can also lead to getting bitten by snakes, eaten by zombies, or fallen on by rocks. It's about as pure an expression of a press-your-luck card game as I can imagine, and the attractive components and short play time make it an easy sell to all kinds of folks.
In our game, John jumped out to an early lead, and everyone else was forced to take a lot of chances to try and catch up. In the last round, Sky survived card after card, and even reached a point where he would have won if he'd just taken what he had, but he pushed one card too far, and John was victorious.
Isaac 48, Chris 36, John 28, Cynan 25
Isaac, another person I'd met at a local game meetup, was really wanting to play Agricola, and I hadn't gotten to play it in a while, so I joined him, Cynan, and John (who we taught) in a 4-player game.
I'm not sure of this, but I don't think I had ever played with 4 players before. My games all tended to be either 2-player (mostly with Hilary) or 5 player. The biggest difference I noticed in the 4-player game is that food seemed much more plentiful than I was used to - nobody was ever in very serious danger of starving, and Isaac won the game going away without ever creating a "real" food engine with an oven or fireplace/cooking hearth.
I felt good about my chances early on as I managed to build a room a full 2 turns earlier than anyone else, and I had plenty of food to feed a new family member. Unfortunately, the family growth option took its sweet time showing up, and by the time it did I was out of position and was the third person to grow my family. This was compounded later when I failed to notice that John built two rooms at once and let him take his second family growth before I did when I didn't have to. I don't think this was 12 points worth of mistakes, but it sure could have been a lot closer.
John 19, Chris 14, Cynan 10
It was a little after midnight at this point, but John, Cynan, and I decided to stick it out for one more game, and they taught me Colossal Arena, a Reiner Knizia betting game with the slightly odd theme of players betting on various mythical creatures in a battle royale. It was a strange theme to tack on to these mechanics - there are some actions that are described as the players grabbing other creatures out of the audience and throwing them into the arena - but the mechanics themselves are pretty neat. Like many Knizia games, I just started feeling like I was figuring it out towards the end of my first game. Unfortunately, it was nearly 2 AM at that point, and time to call it a night.
Werewolf
Werewolf has a long history as a party game, sometimes also known as Mafia, Assassin, and probably a bunch of other things beside. The core concept is usually pretty similar. There are a bunch of villagers, one or more werewolves, and a moderator. Every round the werewolves secretly choose someone to kill while everyone's eyes are closed (during the "night"), and the villagers publicly
choose someone to lynch on suspicion of having a slightly too furry neck. While it can be played perfectly well with slips of paper or playing cards, several printed version have been made that provide nicer, customized cards, and usually a couple extra powers as well.
We played Ultimate Werewolf: The Ultimate Edition (not be be confused with Ultimate Werewolf: The Ultimate Edition 2: The Ultimatatinghood), designed by Ted Alspach, best known for his many many expansion maps for Age of Steam, a much heavier game that doesn't even have werewolves.
We had 7 players (plus Cynan moderating), which wasn't enough to pull out too many of the expansion roles. I played the Seer, a role that appears in most versions of the game who gets to silently ask the moderator if a player is a werewolf once per turn. We also used the Tanner, whose entire goal is to get killed (either by werewolf or lynching), which brings up some strange questions vis a vis Mr. Alspach's perception of the job satisfaction of the good people of the leatherworking trade.
I was the Seer, and the werewolves smelled me out immediately, killing me off on the very first night. Sky (Skye?) was the Tanner, and managed to argue himself into an early lynching, much to his delight. Off to this fine start, the wolves proceeded to make mincemeat of the villagers. I was only dimly aware of the proceedings though as Sky(e) and I peeled off to play...
Shogi
Sky taught me the rules and was good enough to keep reminding me though the game what everything did. The pieces all are marked with Japanese symbols, which were very hard to keep straight to my Japanese-illiterate self. Despite his warnings that the capturing rules plus the fact that most pieces had a very limited movement range made defensive play a winner, I took my cues from my nearly nonexistent chess experience and attacked, attacked, attacked. This should have ended up in disaster, and very nearly did - Sky had my king very nearly pinned down, even as I took every available opportunity to harass his much better protected one. Despite this, I managed to blunder into trapping his king up against a couple of his own pieces - I wish I could say it was clever strategy and foresight, but Sky actually saw the mate coming before I did. I'm pretty sure that if we played 10 more games, he'd win 10 of them, but it was pretty cool to pull out a victory.
There are some printed versions of the game with icons and little abstractions of the pieces' movement capabilities. If I want to explore this more, I'll probably see if I can track one down, despite the fact that a real Shogi player would probably consider one of these sets the equivalent of Kasperov playing with a Simpsons themed chess set.
Incan Gold
In our game, John jumped out to an early lead, and everyone else was forced to take a lot of chances to try and catch up. In the last round, Sky survived card after card, and even reached a point where he would have won if he'd just taken what he had, but he pushed one card too far, and John was victorious.
Agricola
Isaac, another person I'd met at a local game meetup, was really wanting to play Agricola, and I hadn't gotten to play it in a while, so I joined him, Cynan, and John (who we taught) in a 4-player game.
I'm not sure of this, but I don't think I had ever played with 4 players before. My games all tended to be either 2-player (mostly with Hilary) or 5 player. The biggest difference I noticed in the 4-player game is that food seemed much more plentiful than I was used to - nobody was ever in very serious danger of starving, and Isaac won the game going away without ever creating a "real" food engine with an oven or fireplace/cooking hearth.
I felt good about my chances early on as I managed to build a room a full 2 turns earlier than anyone else, and I had plenty of food to feed a new family member. Unfortunately, the family growth option took its sweet time showing up, and by the time it did I was out of position and was the third person to grow my family. This was compounded later when I failed to notice that John built two rooms at once and let him take his second family growth before I did when I didn't have to. I don't think this was 12 points worth of mistakes, but it sure could have been a lot closer.
Colossal Arena
It was a little after midnight at this point, but John, Cynan, and I decided to stick it out for one more game, and they taught me Colossal Arena, a Reiner Knizia betting game with the slightly odd theme of players betting on various mythical creatures in a battle royale. It was a strange theme to tack on to these mechanics - there are some actions that are described as the players grabbing other creatures out of the audience and throwing them into the arena - but the mechanics themselves are pretty neat. Like many Knizia games, I just started feeling like I was figuring it out towards the end of my first game. Unfortunately, it was nearly 2 AM at that point, and time to call it a night.
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