The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Richard’s place
Present: Andrew, Jeff, Alex, Pat, Brian, Brad, Tommy, Neil F., Richard, Paul
Played: Valdora, Atlantis, Poutine Cuisine, Simpsons Slam Dunk, Dominion, Le Havre, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Shadow Hunters (x3).

Another big night of quality games.

Valdora: Looks a new one, with little cards as metaphors for pages in a book, and tasty-looking plastic gemstones apparently as currency or points.
Played by Jeff, Alex and Pat, but I have no record here of scores or positions.

Atlantis: First playing for Andrew and me, with Brian doing the rules. I’d seen the missus playing this on BrettSpielWelt, but could never figure out what was going on.
Anyway, I thought I was positioned quite well in this game until I looked up to find that two of Andrew’s tokens and one of Brian’s were already home. Before much longer it was all over and we were adding up final counts. Coincidentally it was a three-way tie.
5 mins rules and setup; 25 mins game time.
Results: Brian, Andrew, Paul: All ended on 19 points.

Poutine Cuisine: This was being played on the other table and sounded like a foodified version of the game Pit, with open, uncontrolled offers and bids for various dishes (or components thereof).
5 mins rules; 10 mins game time.
Results: Brad, Neil: -3. Tommy, Richard: -1.

Simpsons Slam Dunk: Yet another game with a chaotic aspect to play. Played twice - First was Brad, Neil, Tommy, Richard (no results recorded). Second was the same group, but joined by Paul, Andrew and Brian (after Atlantis).
Results of the second playing were: Paul: 23. Andrew: 16. Richard: 14. Neil: 9. Tommy: 4. Brian: 3. Brad: 1.

Dominion: The timing just didn’t quite work out for me on this one. Andrew was keen to play this for his first time and I would have joined too except for the fact that Le Havre took priority…
8 mins rules and setup; 40 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 54. Andrew: 40. Tommy: 25.

Le Havre: Second game of this within as many weeks with the same players as we collectively dig deep and try to retain some useful experiential memory. My first observation is that our turns actually seemed to take a few seconds longer on average than last week’s game. This was an apparent illusion, however, because the whole game was actually 20 mins shorter. Why I felt turns took longer was because I was paying considerably more attention to the powers of the various building cards, and maybe taking slightly longer to evaluate the possibilities. The shortening is probably due to two factors: 1. There was less need for in-game re-explaining of rules subtleties; and 2. The occasional no-brainer turns were completed more quickly.
Some extra side points:
* I played a new (but unintentional) strategy this game of not buying any ships until the second last turn. But I don’t think it worked.
* A (mis-)judgment call over who was ahead on points between Jeff and Brian cost me second place by a mere 1 point.
* I was again frustrated many times in this game by players moving just before me and blocking my planned actions. (This led to much of my extra A-P contribution as I had to re-think my actions!)
* Despite devising a system of moving the turn-end cards off to one side to avoid problems of execution and ship allocation, we still managed to screw this up at least once.
* Chaps, you’ll be pleased to learn that I’ve come up with a new, very simple solution to this problem that we can try in our next game.
8 mins setup and rules reminders; 135 mins game time.
Results: Alex (blue): 160. Jeff (green): 114. Paul (timber): 113. Brian (purple): 97.
[Could/should have been: Paul: 113. Jeff: 112. Brian: 99. !]

Tales of the Arabian Nights: This was Richard’s original (first edition) that he had to dust off. From memory, you have to role-play each turn then be judged by the other players as to whether you’re any good, which was kind of arbitrary and the reason I’ve avoided this game for maybe 20-odd years. But, our players tonight seemed to enjoy it, and I got the following extraordinary written account from Neil (some minor (and incomplete) editing applied to uplift spelling and grammar):
Neil F. - Abu Hassan. Brad - Bradzilla. Richard - Sinbad.
As we traveled around the barbarian world we encountered such wonderfully magnificent creatures as multitudinous Mermen, and insane barbers stood in our way of greatness and enlightedness. Sinbad quested within an inch of fulfillment before he decided a life of pilgrimage was his destiny and his detriment. Bradzilla gained a key to the lost underwater city but due to some poor judgments became accursed, ensorcelled and crippled. The chosen path of Bradzilla was one of rogue. An unsuccessful career it was. But Abu Hassan was the only successful adventurer. By bowling a maiden over he was ensured enlightenment and that cricket would forever play in the Emirates.
15 mins rules and setup; unknown game time but probably less than one hour.

Shadow Hunters: Deduction and attacking game with some similarities to die Kutschfahrt, with hidden friends, enemies, and agendas.
(Regarding the pics, note that for the first one here I had to do some serious cropping in order to preserve some dignity for Pat and to spare us all from distraction from the intended subject. When you take a picture through a glass-topped table, sometimes you get more in shot than you bargained for…)
First game: Tommy and Richard won as Hunters against Brad, Pat and Neil.
In the second game Pat and Richard won as Shadows.
For the third game, Neil left but Alex, Jeff, Brian and I (from the Le Havre table) joined, where the result was that Alex, Jeff and Pat won as Shadows.

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Jeff, Alex, Richard, Pat, Brian, Mark, Matt, Paul
Played: Emerald, Dominion (x2), Smallworld, Maori, Fairy Tale, Le Havre, Dungeon Lords.

A huge night of quality games (speaking only for myself, of course!). Didn’t use the camera as much as I should have tonight.

Emerald: The dragony thing again first up two weeks in a row.
Results: Pat (blue): 43. Alex (yellow): 40. Jeff (green): 34.

Smallworld: Gets another run after some time off.
12 mins rules and setup; 60 mins game time.
Results: Brian: 87. Alex: 81. Pat: 79. Jeff: 70.

Dominion: The first run for this acquisition made possible a few months ago courtesy of Nick (whom we haven’t seen here for a while - where are you, Nick?).
I believe this is only the second time I’ve even played Dominion, the first being back in April 2009. But we also had two newbies (to Dominion) tonight, namely Mark and Matt, and both Richard and I needed a rules refresher anyway. Apart from the minor nuisance of consistent shuffling (which has been commented on by others previously), the game flowed very smoothly. So smoothly in fact that the cards went my way and I was actually able to win. For the record, we played with the “Starter” set in our first game tonight.
12 mins rules and setup; 46 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 34. Mark: 33. Richard: 23. Matt: 22.

The first game was so nifty and neat that we launched a second playing straight away: The Village Square option. I saw no reason to change my strategy, and happily enough I ended up with the same result. Unlikely and unprecedented!
I wish I had some photographic evidence. Was so engrossed I forgot to get a pic.
55 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 35. Mark: 30. Richard: 26. Matt: 21.

Maori: A quick and crushing session, apparently. According to Jeff, Pat’s overwhelming score was “Al’s fault”.
22 mins.
Results: Pat: 60. Jeff, Alex: 34. Brian: 25.

Fairy Tale: Another filler for these guys as they waited for the second Dominion to end.
10 mins.
Results: Alex: 50. Pat: 48. Brian: 45. Jeff: 35.

Le Havre: I’d been looking forward to playing this one again, but it had been so long that I (and Brian) needed a rules refresher. I kept my performance expectations low, with the understanding that we’d try to give this further workouts over the next few weeks.
So yeah - Brian and I were left behind on the scoretrack somewhat. But not disgraced. And Le Havre may be my favourite at the moment. Looking forward to the next session.
25 mins rules and setup; 155 mins game time.
Results: Alex (purple): 179. Jeff (green): 168. Paul (timber): 133. Brian (red): 118.

Dungeon Lords: A big and hairy game to throw Matt and Mark into - some complex mechanisms to get used to while competing with the likes of Richard and Pat might have put them at a slight disadvantage!
25 mins rules and setup; about 120 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 33. Richard (green): 29. Mark (red): 12. Matt (yellow): 11.

Venue: Brian’s place
Present: Andrew, Jeff, Alex, Richard, Neil F., Brad, Pat, Brian, Paul
Played: Emerald, Race the Wind, Trendy, Atlantis, I Don’t Know What do You Want to Play?, Power Grid (Central Europe), Dry Gulch Junction, Ra The Dice Game, Set, Dungeon Lords, Master of Rules, Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune.

Tonight felt kind of chaotic (hence the title of this post), perhaps with memories of Dungeon Lords top of mind. But with so many games crammed into the whole night, things were chaotic overall. Note that’s not a bad thing - a little bit of disorder every now and then can be refreshing.

Emerald: Something chaotic about dragons.
Results: Alex, Brad: 29. Jeff: 26. Pat: 25.

Race the Wind: A racing game about yachts. Attempts to simulate some of the rules and effects related to wind and bow directions and the interactions of nearby yachts. The trouble is that, a) resolving the effects of those interactions was not straightforward nor was it intuitive (to a non-boat person like me, at least); and b) in-between such interactions was ‘normal’ boat-racing, which had nothing at all compelling about it (move one space then change direction a bit, etc…). Certainly chaotic, especially since they’d made the boats to scale, including curved bases that meant they kept falling over on the flat surface of the board. But just not very interesting.
Water pattern on the board looks good, though.
25 mins rules and setup; 39 mins game time.
Results: Richard across the line first, then Andrew, Brian, Neil F, Paul, in that order.

Trendy: The Emeralders filling in time
Results: Brad: 154. Jeff: 143. Pat: 129. Alex: 124.

Atlantis: New purchase for Brian, supplied by Caterpillar Games via Neil F., and played by Jeff, Pat, Brad and Alex.
But I have no scores or times recorded here. Can someone please advise in the comments below?

I Don’t Know What do You Want to Play: One might think we’d be tired of this by now. But somehow it continues to pull through. On this occasion it was used to decide on…

Power Grid (Central Europe map): This was the first playing I’d had of this map, that features three regions that don’t permit nuclear power (if you build exclusively in those areas) and also features the city of Vienna (Wien), which confers a $1 discount on each unit of garbage you buy if you occupy.
Richard seemed to be picking Andrew as a likely winner, but I was seeing the game as mostly going Richard’s way. He took the lead early and therefore was penalised with resource buying costs and building placements, but through this managed good plant purchases and power-ups to maintain a healthy income stream throughout. Brian was surprisingly close on his heels, perhaps underrated because of his choice for Wien and garbage plants. I thought I had good placement on building positions, but sub-optimal plant purchases left me just off the pace.
Great tension in this game throughout, but especially the last two turns.
8 mins rules and setup; 72 mins game time.
Results: Richard (black): 11 (+$15). Brian (green): 11 (+$2). Paul (blue): 10. Jeff (purple): 9. Andrew (red): 6.

Dry Gulch Junction: The theme for this one is easy enough to figure out from the name, although I don’t know anything about the game play. But, it’s great getting Neil F. to take the game results down for you, because you often get a nice little commentary. Here’s his summary of this game play:
A bordello near a boarding house, a 3-story soup kitchen, no sheriff. You do not want to visit Dry Gulch Junction unless you are a cross-dressing super hero.
Actually I do want to visit, to see all this stuff and the CDSH…
Results: Pat: 52. Neil: 49. Alex: 47. Brad: 45.

Ra the Dice Game: Somebody else was hooked tonight (I did see Pat pull out the box).
28 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 44. Pat (blue): 42. Brad (red): 37. Neil (green): 35.

Set: 10 mins of matching and counter-matching.
Brian’s score is not a completely fair reflection of performance, since he was busy making tea and only played part of a game.
Results: Richard: 13. Paul: 9. Brian: 3.

Dungeon Lords: This was the biggie, pushing out over two hours from setup to pack up. And despite the heightened sense of chaos I actually felt I played a most ordered game. All except the events requiring me to pay taxes for my dug dungeons. Both occasions were frank fails and I collected a total of six penalty cubes for a cool net -18 points at game end. My final score was not a complete disgrace because I played it safe and ended up with the ’softer’ adventurers, catching all six before they could inflict too much dungeon damage. I also pulled in maybe 2/3rds of the exclusive titles for a good points gain. My summary at game end was that I had a good quality dungeon, I was just unable to pay for it!
But, Jeff won the day fair and square. He climbed the evilometer scale and landed both Paladins in his lap – tough fights, but the net +10 points for these nudged him way out to the winning position.
21 mins rules and setup; 112 mins game time.
Jeff (yellow): 22. Paul (green): 16. Brian (red): 14.

Master of Rules: Don’t know what this one was about, but it was on the next table and was very loud…
About 6 mins rules and setup; 35 mins game time.
Results: Brad: 10 (1st). Pat: 10 (2nd). Richard: 7. Alex: 6.

Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune: Latest (?) in the Carcassonne franchise, this one apparently consisting of a spinning wheel in which various events are decided by the equivalent of a dice roll. Although I understand the wheel doesn’t actually physically spin, does it…?
Richard: 185. Alex: 184. Close scores.

Venue: Pat’s place
Present: Jeff, Alex, Richard, Brian, Lindsay, Pat, Paul
Played: Ad Astra, Assyria, Don, Factory Manager, Gloria Mundi, Pack & Stack, Ra The Dice Game.

Post title is simply a distant reference that even Valentine’s Day is an appropriate occasion for gaming.

Ad Astra: Star system expansions. Although scores remained close for much of the game, by the last turn or two Richard was clearly positioned for the win. Alex trailed for most of the time, despite being the most prolific player of score cards. His plan became clear on the final score reckoning, however, when he revealed his possession of the special alien artefact that allows the owner to win if their score is exactly 42. Seems like Alex also activated his improbability drive to pull this one out.
33 mins rules and setup; 82 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 42*. Richard (blue): 64. Paul (green): 54. Brian (red): 51.
(Unfortunately my close-up shot here is just a little blurry…)

Assyria: The ancient middle east. Lindsay did the courtesy of recording scores, but also added a note about each player’s strategy.
A very close game from the looks of the scores, but apparently focus is more rewarding than diversification..?
About 20 mins rules and setup; about 70 mins game time.
Results: Lindsay (orange): 115 (strategy: Ziggurats). Pat (brown): 110 (strategy: Offerings). Jeff (yellow): 108 (strategy: Ziggurats/Offerings).

Don: Making offers that can’t be refused to fill in between-games time.
15 mins.
Results: Jeff: 22. Lindsay: 21. Pat: 10.

Factory Manager: This is my second playing of FM. There is still one aspect of the game that I don’t fully get yet, and maybe this is best resolved by me reading the rules myself. The thing that I have been partly confused by is when your worker tokens are allocated, when they are consumed by actions and when they are not. I basically get it, but I’m still (partly) confused!
My overall opinion echoes that of Greg Schloesser (Feb 4, 2010) - this is very dry. Somehow the interactions in Power Grid bring out more ‘personality’ in that game than they do in this, and for that reason PG remains my preference of these. The game did however, provide me the opportunity to get my best pic of the night (the close-up).
22 mins rules and setup; 75 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 282. Jeff (blue): 218. Paul (green): 191. Brian (red): 190.

Gloria Mundi: Barbarians at the gate pushing our heroes closer to north Africa. Thanks again to Lindsay for recording the results for this one, in terms of progress in their quest to escape from the advancing Visigoths.
17 mins rules and setup; 66 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): Africa. Richard (green): Close to Africa. Lindsay (yellow): Messina.

Pack & Stack: Dice rolls give you a collection of the old Cuisenaire-like rods, up to a max of 5 units long. Then players flip over their face-down truck card, then try to beat all other players in choosing the optimal truck for their rod collection (each truck has a different space pattern and a different capacity). Points are subtracted for unpacked rods and for empty space left in the truck.
With 7 of us playing competition was fierce for the trucks and I think I was last to choose at least twice. Another go perhaps some day for redemption?
8 mins rules and setup; 13 mins game time.
Results: Lindsay: 84. Pat: 45. Richard: 32. Paul: 31. Alex: 11. Jeff: 8. Brian: “-ve something”.

Ra the Dice Game: As I noted in the previous post, this game is just habit-forming. Given a spare 30 mins and no other game choice forthcoming, why would you choose anything else?
Once again I lost, horribly.
28 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 42. Alex (yellow): 41. Jeff (red): 29. Paul (green): 26.

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Jeff, Alex, Pat, Neil F., Lindsay, Euhan, Paul
Played: Dungeon Lords, Star Wars Risk, Dungeon Lords (again), Alea Iacta Est, Ra The Dice Game (x2).

Back into games after the thrill of last week’s expo. But then again, Sunday nights are like our own little expos anyway, just with fewer people.
Check out my close-ups for Dungeon Lords, Alea Iacta and Ra tDG…

Dungeon Lords: I’d been looking forward to this game since seeing it on the retailers’ shelves and on the gaming tables last week in Canberra, with Richard’s copy still in shrink-wrap waiting in our house for pick-up, tempting me all the while…
And I wasn’t disappointed. Frustrated, yes, but definitely not disappointed. I love the concept, I love the little bloody plastic imps, the artwork (including the title font on the box cover), and the zany text on the magic battle cards. I like the fact that it’s made me despise bands of merry adventurers, seeking out fame and treasure through home invasions. It’s like someone, namely Vlaada Chvatil, the game’s designer, has taken the whole fantasy roleplaying genre and said, “Right, enough’s enough. Let’s look at this adventuring thing from the perspective of the victims: Those innocent monsters whose job - nay, lifestyle - is to defend their land from those raiding criminals from the surface…”.
Anyhoo, on the frustrating part, this was related to my experience in having my dungeon be judged the most evil on the game’s evilometer. My evil index was pushed so high that the Paladin (and three other smarmy adventurers) were attracted to my dungeon. In the course of play, my best monsters (two dragons) were rendered as good as useless by spells that were applied to everyone’s dungeon. I would have liked to pick off one more adventurer in that final battle (and would have too, if not for those crippling spells), but it was not to be.
Very cool fun.
47 mins rules and setup; 116 mins game time.
Results: Euhan (yellow): 26. Paul (red): 21. Pat (blue): 6. Lindsay (green): 4.

Star Wars Risk (Clone Wars): Neil F., Jeff and Alex played this at the other end of the table. Seemed like an unlikely choice given the range of new games available, but hey…
About 28 mins rules and setup; 120 mins game time.
Results: I had Neil make the record in my notes, which was (alongside Alex’s name): “Darth Sidious was successful.”
And (alongside Neil and Jeff’s name): “Republic loses once Order 66 was called by the evil and halitosis (sic) ridden Sidious”

Dungeon Lords (again): The two previous games ended close to the same time, so the Risky guys took up posts at the Dungeon Lords end in an attempt to better our efforts against the nasty adventurers.
About 25 mins rules and setup; 90 mins game time (don’t know why these guys did it so much faster than us!)
Results (again, thanks to Neil for recording these): Alex, Neil: 0. Jeff: Dungeon Master with 14 “and got a gig in Nth Korea”. Also: “We are pleased that the Dungeon Powers-that-be saw we could be 0 and still build another day”.

Alea Iacta Est: Brand new dice game apparently about sending noble couples to various provinces in the ancient Roman Empire, although the exact intention of the theme has escaped me.
Still reasonably interesting, although for a Euro-themed dice game my current favourite is still the title below this one…
10 mins rules and setup; 35 mins game time.
Results: Lindsay (green): 41. Pat (blue), Paul (grey): 31. Euhan (yellow): 24.

Ra the Dice Game: Yep, this one’s got me hooked right now, even though I should be wearing that novelty gamer t-shirt that says “Dice hate me”.
We played one game and I was a little surprised that there was no resistance to my suggestion that we play again. This game is like addictive gambling, but without the financial loss and with a larger range of colours to look at.
6 mins rules and setup; 28 mins game time (1st game), 24 mins game time (second game).
Results: 1st game: Pat (blue): 41. Euhan (yellow): 34. Lindsay (green): 33. Paul (red): 19.
2nd game: Lindsay (green): 41. Pat (blue): 31. Paul (red): 29. Euhan (yellow): 28.

(A little bit of concept art with the last image here - an alternative monument for Ra The Dice Game…)