Some games from the Gathering
Stone Age
Stone Age was set up on a couple of tables all through the convention, and it seemed to have at least respectable traffic throughout the week. It's a new Rio Grande game that should come out sometime this month. Each player controls a stone age tribe collecting resources to build huts and food to keep themselves alive. The tribe is represented by meeples, who can be placed on action areas during the placement phase of the turn. Many of the spaces are used to gather resources; in those spaces, each character buys the roll of one die. The total of the roll is then divided by the value of the resource to determine how much is gathered. The other spaces allow players the right to buy cards (which are worth points and allow various actions), build huts for points, decrease their food needed each turn, increase their population, or take a tool. Tools are a nice little mechanism to even out the luck of the dice a bit; each tool can be used once a turn to increase a production roll by one. This won't turn a bad roll into a good one, but it can make a big difference on a 7 roll for a resource worth four. The game end is (usually) determined by hut building; at the beginning of the game, there are four equal stacks of huts. When one stack is emptied, the game ends. This gives the players quite a lot of control over when the game will end; if one stack is built frequently, it will be a short game. Scoring is based on huts (each hut is worth the value of the resources used to build it) plus cards; each card, in addition to providing some bonus when purchased, gives points either as part of a set or for something else (such as tools or tribe members) collected during the game.
I wasn't terribly impressed with Stone Age; it just felt far too long for what it is. Even with the tools to even things out, there's a lot of luck in what you roll. I played twice; I lost the first game because I could not manage to roll above 12 on 6d6 for several turns while trying to gather food. I won the second by a mile, with almost exactly the same strategy (in fact, if anything I made one more costing error in the second), because I had decent rolls on food and excellent rolls on gold. I also didn't see a lot of interesting decisions; it was almost always obvious where to place my people. All else being equal, food reduction seems stronger than the other places to play meeples; this reduces the decision-making process even further and seems to hurt the last player significantly (in a four-player game, the first player will spend three fewer food than the last player every full starting player cycle if every player always chooses this space when available) I could forgive these flaws in a shorter game, but Stone Age seemed to take over an hour both times I players.
[Edit - I just learned that I was taught the consequences for starvation incorrectly; it's much less harsh than we thought. This could make starving your people a viable strategy, which would eliminate the "automatic" food reduction choice.]
Hanging Gardens
Hanging Gardens is a double set collecting game with a mechanism I haven't quite seen duplicated elsewhere. The basic piece in the game is a card with a 3x2 grid, some spaces of which are filled in with a color. Each player starts with an empty 3x2 grid. Every turn, each player will get a new card to add to their grid. The placement rule is simple - every colored space must go over an existing space in the grid, while empty spaces can hang off to expand the grid. The placement goal is to get groups of a color, which can be turned in (and marked with a blocker which prevents card placement over one square of the group) for scoring tiles; the scoring tiles form another set collection game, which look very similar to another game whose name escapes me at the moment. Whoever has the highest score when the deck empties wins. This isn't a very deep game, but it is quick, and the spatial reasoning required is a bit different than anything I've seen before. I doubt I'll pick it up or suggest it, but I wouldn't mind playing it again if someone else wanted to.
Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy was probably my single most-played game this week. I joined the tournament, but I got knocked out in a close game in the second round when I was on the wrong side of a kingmaking position (not that I fault the third player - he took the role that was right for him). I did have several very frustrating games outside of the tournament; I'm not sure what I can do when my hand screams military, I build the military infrastructure, and Explore +5 for 8+ cards (using other explore powers as well) on each of the last six turns of the game fails to give me any military world or development worth more than two points. That happened at least twice over the course of the week. The production strategy can at least use a larger subset of the deck...
Through the Ages
Through the Ages was probably the most heavily played longer game I saw; there was always at least one game going. I got in three games over the course of the week. I found myself playing two of them in very similar ways - I spent the entire third era hiding behind Ghandi. He's much more powerful than I gave him credit for; you're vulnerable to aggressions, but the doubled action cost makes it very hard for anyone but a dedicated warmonger to play Wars on you. That was enough in one game, where my point income was absolutely overwhelming, but not in the second game. The third game saw Jonobie (who was on her first game) go from no military power to the military power over the course of a few turns, with barely any rock production. I continue to be impressed by the number of paths there are to follow in this game - I think I see new ones every time I play.
Agricola
I think Agricola was the biggest hit of the Gathering; it wouldn't surprise me if Race for the Galaxy and Tichu got more plays, but from my completely unscientific observations when length is taken into account I think Agricola was probably the most played game. I did have one set of cards that I'm not sure I handled correctly - late in the turn order, playing with the interactive deck only (something another player wanted to do), I had, among other things, the Wood, Stone, and Reeds buyers, the Wood Collector, the Baker's Kitchen, the Corn Store, and Alms, the Wood Path, the Clay Path, the Social Climber... I can't remember the rest, but nothing else seemed very powerful or synergistic. I decided to try for a massive buyer-oriented strategy with this approach - spend the time before the first two harvests setting up for a massive Corn Store sowing, playing Alms in round six to ensure sufficient food. Get the Baker's Kitchen on the table in round seven, and use my massive food advantage to abuse the buyers for the rest of the game. I wasn't quite able to execute on this strategy - I was a turn slow - and this just left me way behind. Once I had the buyers on the table with infinite food, everyone else also had severe problems, but I was short actions and I couldn't catch up. If I ever have this hand again (unlikely, unless we decide to play with just the I deck again), I must find a way to increase my population early while heading for the combo - I just couldn't get enough actions, and the other players will ignore the relevant resources rather than giving me the "free" actions I was counting on to catch up. Playing the Stone Buyer early might have helped, but it would have screwed with my Alms pretty severely.
Tigris & Euphrates
I got in one play of T&E on the new set. There's a new board on the other side; we played the original board, so I can't comment on how it plays. It's a bit confusing for someone used to the old version, but I don't think it would be that hard to get used to. I won this one through sheer arrogance; one opponent launched a major external conflict and didn't bother to throw anything in to the blue conflict when up by four tiles. Four blue tiles from my hand later, I had all the blue points I could ever need and his invasion was in ruins. There was never much doubt after this conflict that I would win.
Neuland
I also got in a play of the new version of Neuland. There's (at least) one new building that I unfortunately didn't notice when teaching from memory: the Alchemist's Hut, which takes a paper and a pot of silver, and makes a pot of gold which can be used as any one resource. I think I'll like this change; it makes it harder to block out a resource with the rare buildings without making life any easier, and it makes silver slightly better. Paper+Pot of Silver is more than it takes to construct any other resource, so I'm not particularly worried about balance problems. Componentwise, I didn't see any introduced problems, although the symbols are again a bit confusing for someone used to the original.
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rupes) wrote,
