Friday, January 19, 2007

More Boardgame Action

And I mean "action" in the most liberal sense of the word.

Hey! That's My Fish!: This is a cute little game we got from Karrrl and Mycuz as a "Thanks for having us to your house for Christmas and helping us dodge our families" gift. The game board is made up of a whole bunch of hexagon shaped tiles aligned into a hex-grid. It's something like a 10 X 10 or so grid, but I can't remember the exact number of tiles. Each tile has either 1, 2, or 3 fish on it. Each player controls a few penguins, the number of which varies depending on the number of people playing. You start the game by placing each of your penguins onto one of the tiles with 1 fish on it. After everyone has placed their penguins the players take turns moving their penguins. You can move your penguin in a straight line in any direction you want and you can move him as far as you want as long as you don't run into another penguin or hit a spot where there is no tile. How could there be no tile? Well, everytime you move your penguin you pick up the tile he was sitting on and you score the number of fish on the tile. That leaves a little hole where he used to be and as players move their penguins around more and more tiles disappear and it will eventually become impossible to move your penguins. When no one can move their penguins anymore everyone adds up the number of fish they've collected and the high score wins.
When you first start playing the natural tendency is to go for the tiles with 3 fish on them. I mean, more fish = more points, right? Well, it doesn't take long to figure out that what's more important is making sure you don't get your penguin into a place where someone can move their penguin and prevent yours from being able to move anymore. You're also trying to look for opportunities to get the other players' penguins stranded thus keeping them from making more points.
The hexes are arranged randomly each game so the board is a little diffent every time. It fast, light, not too confrontational, and has a bit of strategy that keeps you on your toes. I'm not great at seeing more than one move ahead so I'll never be great at abstract strategy games (also my downfall at chess) but it was very enjoyable and I think everyone liked it.

RoboRally: This has been a huge hit. We've played it with 4 and 6 players and it's better with 6. In RoboRally you control a little robot who has a laser mounted on the front of it. The goal is to move around a factory floor to reach checkpoints before the other robots (players) do. You also need to try not to get shot by the other robots' lasers, fall into pits, walk off the edge of the board and avoid a number of other obstacles.
The game is comprised of Turns, each of which is broken up into 5 Registers. At the beginning of each turn you're given a number of movement cards equal to 9 minus the amount of damage your robot has taken. So at the beginning of the game you get 9 movement cards which say things like "Move 2" or "Turn Left" or "Back Up". You look at the movement cards you have and put one face-down in each of the 5 registers. When everyone has picked their movement cards the fun begins. Each register your robot will move according to the card you played for that register then various board elements will activate (conveyor belts move, gears rotate, pushers push (duh), lasers fire) and your robot fires a laser straight ahead. You need to try to get your robot to head toward the next checkpoint with the cards you're given while taking into account where the board elements will move you as well. But the real mayhem happens when robots run into each other. Each movement card has a priority number on it and the robots move each turn in order of highest to lowest. Let's say Sylvia's robot is directly in front of mine at the end of register 1. Let's also say I had played a Move 3 card in the 2nd register and Sylvia played a Rotate Right card. The Move forward cards have higher priority numbers than the Rotate cards so I'd get to move first. As my robot moves forward it pushes Sylvia's robot. That means Sylvia's robot is no longer where she expected it to be when she arranged her Movement cards at the beginning of the turn but she still needs to move her robot according to the cards she placed in her registers. So when she Rotates Right she's no longer facing where she thought she'd be. If next register she had a Move 2 card played she still has to Move 2 and just deal with where she ends up. At the end of each register the robots all fire their lasers and if your robot is in line with laser fire it takes damage. The more damage your robot takes, the fewer cards you get to choose from at the beginning of the next turn, making it even harder to get your robot to go where you want it to. There are ways to "heal" damage and bonus cards to get that will make your robot more potent as well.
RoboRally can get pretty chaotic but that's the fun of the game. You have enough control over your bot to use some strategy but you never know when things will go haywire. Heck, it happens often enough that you simply miscalculate where your robot is going to go even without the other robots bumping into you. It's a lot of fun and I highly recommend it, especially with 6 or more.

So there are a couple more games I've played recently. There have been quite a few more and I'll try to get to them soon. Insomnia cured.

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