A Two-fer

The Spousal Unit and I held our (more or less) monthly game night over the weekend and then went to someone else's (more or less) bi-weekly game night on Monday. So, you'll get to read about both in one post. Or, for any normal people, you'll be able to ignore two game nights' worth of idiocy in one convenient click. For those of you who like to check out what games we've tried though:

Knotts and Knitts arrived first and they brought several of their new games. We knew other people would be arriving soon so we opted for a short game called Knights of Charlemagne. You take turns playing cards in an attempt to outnumber your opponent in 10 different rows. Every card has a color and a number and there's a row for each of the 5 colors and a row for each of the five card values (1-5). For example if you played a Blue 4. It could be played in the Blue row or in the 4 Row. Because it was a Blue 4, get it? After everyone has played all their cards, whoever played the most cards in a row (the value of the cards in the "color" rows is unimportant) wins the point tile for that row. The color rows are each worth 5 and the "value" rows are worth the value of the cards that can go in that row. So the 1 row is worth 1, the 4 row is worth 4, etc. If both teams have played the same number of cards in a row both teams only get 1 point. You may ask, "Why bother playing a card in the low-value rows at all? It'll only make you a point or two anyway and could be better used going after the color rows which are each worth 5." Well, if one team wins 2 of the 3 rows valued 1-3 (win, not tie) that team gets a 5 point bonus. That's a big bonus. It would be a fun 2 player game but we played it with 2 teams of 2 which was great. You had to not only guess what your opponents would play and have left in their hands but you also had to watch your partner and try to guess what he was holding so you could play the appropriate card of your own. Not an overly deep game but it only took 10 minutes to play a round, which felt about perfect. It was a lot of fun so we played a few times.

In the middle of one of our games Markus and Aim arrived so I handed them Lost Cities to entertain them while we finished K of C. Lost Cities is an excellent 2 player game whose gameplay sounds a bit like K of C. They're made by the same guy so that would make sense. You have a handful of 8 cards and each card is one of five colors and has a number between 2 and 10 on it. There are also 3 "handshake" cards of each color. On your turn you first play a card, either in your "expedition" row of the appropriate color or onto the discard pile of the appropriate color. You then draw a card, either from the face-down draw stack or you can draw the top card in any of the discard piles, which are face-up. If you choose to play a card in your expedition row you can no longer place any cards in that row with a lower value than the one you just played. So if I play the Yellow 5 in my Yellow row I can't play the Yellow cards valued 2-4 in that row anymore. The handshake cards have to be played in a row BEFORE any card with a number is played in that row. If you have one handshake card in a row you get double the points for that row, two handshake cards- triple and, guess what, 3 handshake cards quadruples your points for that row. Here's the kicker: If you never place a card in any given expedition row that row is worth 0 points. As soon as you place a card in an expedition row that row has to pay a start up fee of 20 points. So, if you start a row and don't get 20 points worth of cards in that row you'll lose points. And if you have handshake cards in that row you'll lose double, triple or quadruple points. Many agonizing decisions on when to play cards and which to discard since you hate to give your opponent a chance to pick up a card they can use but you can't.

By the time this was done Frank, Lanie & Beach had arrived. The 3 of them and Knitts joined up for some more K of C fun while Markus, Aim, Knotts, Sylvia and myself broke in our new copy of Chip Whore. Ok, it's actually called No Thanks! but our name is way better. I made a homemade version a while ago and we liked it so much that we bought the real thing. I've talked about this game in a number of previous posts so you'll have to look at them or the boardgamegeek stuff if you want to read about Chip Whore. It's a lot of fun.

We had only gotten a couple rounds in when Jenny, Shelly and Chips arrived. That lead us to the big hit of the evening...
A couple months ago I downloaded the cards and rules to a game called Curse of the Wolfen. That link takes you to the boardgamegeek file where you can download them yourself. For free. It's worth every penny. The game is designed for 6 - 24 players but the rules suggest having at least 10. We had 12. Sylvia and I thought it might be fun to try a game we could all play at the same time. So we did. The theme behind the game is that everyone was on a plane that crashed and the players are the survivors, waiting on a desert island, hoping for rescue. As if that wasn't bad enough, a couple of the people on the plane are a type of werewolf called Wolfen. The wolfen kill someone the night after the plane crash. That person plays the role of the Storyteller who runs the game. That person was me since I was the only one who had read the rules.
At the beginning of the game each player is randomly given a role to play and in an 11 player game (12 counting me but I don't actively play) there are 2 wolfen cards, 4 generic human cards, and 5 cards of humans with special abilities. No one knows anyone else's role or even which of the others are human or wolfen.
The game is split into nights which are, ironically enough, followed by days. During the nights all the players "go to sleep" by bowing their heads and shutting their eyes. During the first night I ask the players who have the special roles to identify themselves one by one. I'll say, "Psychic, wake up and find me." The player with the psychic card will silently raise their head and look at me so I know who they are and then I'll say, "Psychic, go back to sleep." Their head will go down and I'll move to the next role. Also during the first night the 2 wolfen identify themselves to me and to each other but no other knowledge is given to any of the players. During subsequent nights the wolfen get to choose one human to kill. During the days all the players talk with each other in an attempt to figure out which ones among them are wolfen. Each day the players vote for one player to be executed. Players may lie, decieve, whatever, as long as they don't show anyone their role card. The discussions are interesting because the players who are wolfen are attempting to hide this fact so the others don't vote for them to be killed. The humans who have the special abilities are trying to hide that fact or they'll become the wolfen's next victim for sure. The game ends when either all the wolfen are dead (the humans win) or when the number of living humans has been reduced to equal the number of living wolfen (the wolfen win).
What are some of the special powers? Glad you asked. Each night The Psychic gets to choose one of the surviving players and find out if he is a human or wolfen. Very powerful information but it needs to be used and shared by the Psychic carefully or he'll be wolfen bait the next night. The Wolfsbane can't be killed by the wolfen so the only way he'll die is if the people think he's a wolfen and have him executed during the day. The priest has the special ability to chose one player to protect each night and the wolfen can't kill the protected player that evening. This ability combined with the existance of the Wolfsbane causes a lot of confusion among the wolfen when an evening goes by and their intended victim is still alive. The occultist gets to find out if the player chosen to be executed during the day was a human or a wolfen. The last special human is called the Half-blood. He is technically a human but he wins only if the wolfen win. So it's in his best interest to die so the number of humans is reduced!
One of the best parts about the game is that even when you're dead you still get to play. You become a Ghost. You can take part in all the discussions and you still win if your team wins, you just don't get to vote on who gets executed. Your role is still a secret though so no one really knows which special characters are dead and which are alive.
I was nervous about how well it would go over and if it would end up being really boring. Au contraire. Everyone (well, almost everyone) loved it and we immediately played again. I was the storyteller both games. It was so much fun listening to people try to convince each other why they shouldn't be killed and seeing the wolfen squirm and come up with alibies when the finger of blame was pointed at them. The humans won both games, but just barely. The game supports up to 24 players and there are different special powers that humans have and more wolfen in the bigger games. I have no doubt we'll play this again.

It was pretty late after that and several people headed home but Knitts, Knotts, and Marcus stuck around to help us try out our new game Santiago. In Santiago you're attempting to get water from a spring to various plantation areas around the board. When the game starts there are no plantation tiles on the board and no irigation canals but each round every player adds a new plantation tile and the player who happens to be the canal overseer decides where the new irrigation pipe will be placed. If any of the plantation tiles don't have irrigation the tile loses workers and eventually dries up and becomes desert. Each round the players bid on a set of plantation tiles with the high bidder getting dibs on the tile he wants and its placement on the board. 2nd highest bidder goes next and so on until you reach the person who bid the least. That person becomes the canal overseer for that round and has final say over where that round's irrigation canal is placed, but not until all the other players have a chance to bribe him into putting the irrigation where they'd like it. At the end of the game the larger the plantation, the more valuable it is so you can try to jump in on the big plantations or try to cut them off so they can't grow larger or do what you can to keep water from getting to them so they can't expand any farther. I liked it quite a bit and want to play it again when we aren't so sleepy.

That was that for our game night. On Monday Sylvia and I managed to get to another game night that's held bi-weekly at a church cafe near our house. Normally I'd shy away from church functions but in the name of finding new people to play boardgames with we decided to give it a try. We were both glad we did. There were only 5 other people there besides us, four of whom beat us there and were already playing a game of Puerto Rico. PR is one of the greatest games ever. Since we were new to their game night they offered to stop so we could play something with them but we know how hard it is to get a group of people together to play such a great, deep game so we told them to finish what they'd started. Besides, Sylvia could smell the new game in the Ticket to Ride series called Ticket to Ride: Marklin Edition. There are most of the same mechanics as the previous games in the series but the new twist in this one is the addition of passengers. 3 times during the game you can move your passengers along your routes and pick up scoring chips that are on each of the cities. This scores big points, especially if you have a nice, long route to move your passenger along but the value of the chips on the cities decreases as people pick them up. So you need to decide if you're going to call your route long enough and grab the higher valued chips or try to extend your route so you can pick up a greater number of chips. Of course, Sylvia beat me. Don't worry, I'm used to it.

Our game of T2R:ME ended at the exact same time as the PR game. One new person had arrived but one of the people playing PR had to leave so that still left 6 of us. We had a lengthy and rather indecisive discussion about whether we should play a 6 player game or split up for a pair of 3 player games. We opted for the latter.

Sylvia, the host of the event, and the other girl who was there played a game of Oasis. I had never heard of it and know nothing about it except that Sylvia really liked it and managed to win by 1 point. Since her score and the 2nd place finisher's scores were around 230 and the 3rd place player had 150 I can only assume that 1 point is exceptionally close. In the game I played, 1 or 2 points would be an expected margin of victory.

I taught the 2 other guys there how to play Thurn and Taxis. It won the German Game of the Year award this year and it was deserving of the honor. It's a lot of fun, not too confrontational (not that I mind a little confrontation in my games, mind you) and easy to teach. You're supposed to be developing postal routes in 16th century Germany or something like that but it really doesn't have anything to do with the mail. You connect cities into routes through placement of cards with the names of the cities in the game on them. Each city on the board has several roads coming from it which connect to other cities on the board. If you have city A in your route and there's a road between it and city B and you have the card that says city B on it, you can add that card to your route. The trick to adding cities to your route is that new cities can only be added to the ends of your route, not the middle. So if your route is A-B-C-D you can only add a city that touches A or D. When you decide your route is long enough you can score your route. Scoring a route allows you to play little house pieces of your color on some of the cities in your route. When you've gotten house pieces onto different combinations of cities you gain point chips. You also gain point chips for completing routes of different lengths and by earning carriage cards of increasing value. When someone has used up all their house pieces or earned a value 7 carriage card the game ends and everyone adds up their chips to determing the winner. The winner of Thurn and Taxis was me, altough I was the only one who had played before so I had a bit of an edge. Had I not ended the game as quickly as I did though I think I'd have been in trouble. For a much better explanation and even a video review go here. If you like that one you can type "Santiago" into Scott's website search to watch a video review of that one, which is where I got interested in the game.

So, a good number of games over the last several days and I'm now sated for about 36 hours.

OK, long enough. Anybody up for Tigris & Euphrates...?