Games Played this Week: 12
Dominion x 6
Thunderstone x 2
The Three Commandments x 1
At The Gates of Loyang x 1
Campaign Manager 2008 x 1
Roll Through the Ages x 1
New Games/Expansions Played this Week: 3
The Three Commandments
At the Gates of Loyang
Dominion: Alchemy
My preorder of Dominion: Alchemy arrived on Friday, and I picked it up from Just Awesome on Saturday morning. Unsurprisingly, this dominated (see what I did there?) my gaming repertoire this week, as I played it 6 times in 2 days. Most of these games came in the every-other-Sunday meetup at Mission Creek Cafe, where Sean, Eliot, Zach, and I played 4 games before finishing off the afternoon with a game of Roll Through The Ages.
Dominion: Alchemy
Alchemy adds another metric to the purchasing algorithm of Dominion. Last week, I wrote about how Thunderstone used two different currencies: money and attack power. In Alchemy, Dominion integrates a similar mechanic, though in a much more limited way. The second currency comes in the form of a new basic treasure type, the Potion. There are certain cards that have a potion as part of the cost. This makes them a bit more difficult to get, so naturally they are significantly more powerful than the other cards.
Designer Donald X. Vaccarino used this opportunity to get in some truly interesting and powerful cards that would have been difficult to justify for any cost in the original set. While there is a fairly heavy focus on cards that grant extra actions, the poster child is definitely Possession, a card that lets the player to your left take an extra turn that you control, and giving you any cards he or she obtained on that turn.
I have to admit that so far I like this expansion much more than I thought I would upon first reading about it. The new cards are far more interesting than I expected, and their focus on granting extra actions really pushes players away from the tried and true "big money" strategy. This can result in some very long turns as players are sometimes able to play double-digit quantities of action cards, but aside from shying away from introducing it to inexperienced players, I don't mind that too much. The one other nominal downside is that if you are going to play with Alchemy, you should really play with 3-5 Alchemy cards (as recommended in the rules). This means that the games with Alchemy are dramatically different than the games without, as opposed to Seaside or Intrigue where 1 or 2 cards from the set could seamlessly blend in.
At the Gates of Loyang
Uwe Rosenberg's new game finally made it's way into a US publishers hands, and I played a game with Erik and Deborah with Just Awesome's demo copy. This game is billed as the third of a trio of Rosenberg games that include Agricola and Le Havre, though the games don't share all that much in common other than length (they all fall in the 2-3 hour range) and goods that multiply (though this is much more central to Loyang and Agricola than Le Havre).
While this was the third game released, it was in fact the first developed, and I can see signs of that as I play it. While none of the games feature much direct interaction, blocking what other players are doing (more making sure you do it before they block you) is of central importance in the other two games, while in Loyang, players are mostly optimizing their own little farming puzzle, occasionally interacting with players, but not in a way that is terribly forseeable or preventable.
The biggest opportunity to affect other players is in the card draft, which I can't decide whether to describe as "quirky" or "arbitrary". Despite being fairly simple, the drafting mechanic is a little confusing to explain to new players, and while I give high marks for trying to do something different, I couldn't help but wonder if a more conventional "take one, pass the others to the left" drafting mechanism wouldn't have been just as good.
Lest I sound like I didn't like it, I hasten to point out that the "little farming puzzle" I refer to above is quite engaging, and the components are both outstanding and adorable. Definitely one I'll be playing again, but after one play it's not on my "I must own this" list.
The Three Commandments
The final new game I played this week was an odd kind-of-party game by Friedemann Friese and the Lamont brothers. I enjoyed it fairly well, but this game is truly schizophrenic about what it is trying to be.
As a party game, it is far too complex for players who are looking for something along the lines of Apples to Apples or Taboo. The host ("high priestess") each round must keep track of whether a player's actions are violating rules that she (sic) has designated as "good karma" or "bad karma" and reward them points accordingly. The actions can either have to do with how the player manipulates the wooden pieces on the board (e.g. "If the player moves a white piece") or with how the player behaves (e.g. "If the player dances/sings/talks to a player outside of the game/touches his or her hair, etc.).
However, while more "serious" gamers might appreciate the Mastermind/Zendo-like logic puzzle of figuring out the rules of the board, they stand a pretty good chance of being annoyed by having to figure out whether they are supposed to dance/sing/stand up/sit down/fight fight fight.
On top of all that, the game is a lot harder if players aren't actually at least passingly familiar with all of the 80-something possible rules, meaning that first time players either need to take the time to skim through them all, or they just need to be almost completely in the dark for their first play.
For all that, I still enjoyed it, but it does seem like the design goes out of its way to alienate as many people who might enjoy it as possible. I could see this becoming a favorite with a very regular group who play it every time they meet, but as a casual party game that people will be up and running with after 2 minutes of rules and 3 minutes of play, its kind of a dud.
Dominion x 6
Thunderstone x 2
The Three Commandments x 1
At The Gates of Loyang x 1
Campaign Manager 2008 x 1
Roll Through the Ages x 1
New Games/Expansions Played this Week: 3
The Three Commandments
At the Gates of Loyang
Dominion: Alchemy
My preorder of Dominion: Alchemy arrived on Friday, and I picked it up from Just Awesome on Saturday morning. Unsurprisingly, this dominated (see what I did there?) my gaming repertoire this week, as I played it 6 times in 2 days. Most of these games came in the every-other-Sunday meetup at Mission Creek Cafe, where Sean, Eliot, Zach, and I played 4 games before finishing off the afternoon with a game of Roll Through The Ages.
Alchemy adds another metric to the purchasing algorithm of Dominion. Last week, I wrote about how Thunderstone used two different currencies: money and attack power. In Alchemy, Dominion integrates a similar mechanic, though in a much more limited way. The second currency comes in the form of a new basic treasure type, the Potion. There are certain cards that have a potion as part of the cost. This makes them a bit more difficult to get, so naturally they are significantly more powerful than the other cards.
Designer Donald X. Vaccarino used this opportunity to get in some truly interesting and powerful cards that would have been difficult to justify for any cost in the original set. While there is a fairly heavy focus on cards that grant extra actions, the poster child is definitely Possession, a card that lets the player to your left take an extra turn that you control, and giving you any cards he or she obtained on that turn.
Uwe Rosenberg's new game finally made it's way into a US publishers hands, and I played a game with Erik and Deborah with Just Awesome's demo copy. This game is billed as the third of a trio of Rosenberg games that include Agricola and Le Havre, though the games don't share all that much in common other than length (they all fall in the 2-3 hour range) and goods that multiply (though this is much more central to Loyang and Agricola than Le Havre).
While this was the third game released, it was in fact the first developed, and I can see signs of that as I play it. While none of the games feature much direct interaction, blocking what other players are doing (more making sure you do it before they block you) is of central importance in the other two games, while in Loyang, players are mostly optimizing their own little farming puzzle, occasionally interacting with players, but not in a way that is terribly forseeable or preventable.
The biggest opportunity to affect other players is in the card draft, which I can't decide whether to describe as "quirky" or "arbitrary". Despite being fairly simple, the drafting mechanic is a little confusing to explain to new players, and while I give high marks for trying to do something different, I couldn't help but wonder if a more conventional "take one, pass the others to the left" drafting mechanism wouldn't have been just as good.
Lest I sound like I didn't like it, I hasten to point out that the "little farming puzzle" I refer to above is quite engaging, and the components are both outstanding and adorable. Definitely one I'll be playing again, but after one play it's not on my "I must own this" list.
The final new game I played this week was an odd kind-of-party game by Friedemann Friese and the Lamont brothers. I enjoyed it fairly well, but this game is truly schizophrenic about what it is trying to be.
As a party game, it is far too complex for players who are looking for something along the lines of Apples to Apples or Taboo. The host ("high priestess") each round must keep track of whether a player's actions are violating rules that she (sic) has designated as "good karma" or "bad karma" and reward them points accordingly. The actions can either have to do with how the player manipulates the wooden pieces on the board (e.g. "If the player moves a white piece") or with how the player behaves (e.g. "If the player dances/sings/talks to a player outside of the game/touches his or her hair, etc.).
However, while more "serious" gamers might appreciate the Mastermind/Zendo-like logic puzzle of figuring out the rules of the board, they stand a pretty good chance of being annoyed by having to figure out whether they are supposed to dance/sing/stand up/sit down/fight fight fight.
On top of all that, the game is a lot harder if players aren't actually at least passingly familiar with all of the 80-something possible rules, meaning that first time players either need to take the time to skim through them all, or they just need to be almost completely in the dark for their first play.
For all that, I still enjoyed it, but it does seem like the design goes out of its way to alienate as many people who might enjoy it as possible. I could see this becoming a favorite with a very regular group who play it every time they meet, but as a casual party game that people will be up and running with after 2 minutes of rules and 3 minutes of play, its kind of a dud.
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