Thursday, August 31, 2006

What Games May Come?

Since I last posted here, there have been two gamedays. As you can guess, it's durn well time to catch up! These were the last two gamedays of the summer. Hopefully tomorrow (or Saturday) the most recent gameday (with pictures!) will be up. Sorry for delays, but much has happened!

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August 22nd, 2oo6


A very wide array of confusion surrounded this meeting, which very well may have lent to the fact that only four club members ended up coming. That doesn't mean we didn't have a mess of fun, though! There are plenty of games for four players, and Chris had just recently bought five new games, most of which made their club debut at this meeting. You could call this the game-test meeting, as the majority of it was spent explaining, giving feedback on and of course, playing new games.


Buccaneer

A game of piracy on the high seas! What could go wrong? Actually, nothing. This game was one of Chris' new ones, and since only three of us were present, it was the first one played. Your turn consists of exactly one thing: Moving one of your five pieces. End of turn. It's remarkably simple, and as such the game can move pretty quickly once all the players are familiar with it.

Each player receives a "hand" of five tokens. These tokens are valued 2, 3, 4, 5, and "?". Each token represents a pirate, and the number value on it is the cost of that pirate during raids (we'll cover that in a moment). The cost of the "?" token depends on the ship that is raided. So, as explained before, one turn consists of moving one of your tokens. Where do you move them? You move them on top of another token for some hot token-on-token action. Well...actually you do so to form a crew. The player on top is considered the captain of that crew, and as such can move the entire stack anywhere he wishes- either on top of other players' pirates, or onto a ship in order to raid it. There is, however, nothing to stop another player from placing his token on top of a ready-made stack, and assuming control of the ship.

Play continues as such until someone decides to raid a ship, during which time play stops. The captain of the ship receives a particular treasure (of four different kinds; there are generally one or two different kinds on each ship) and money from the vessel. However, he does have to pay his crewmen. So a stack consisting of a red 2, a blue 3, and a black 5 will earn the red player 2 gold, the blue player 3 gold and the black player 5.

The game's explanation is rather complicated due to the scoring effects, but the game itself is immensely simple. New gamers need not fear the longevity of the above description- it's easy.



The Final Scores

TJ 126
Chris 108
Sean 101



Intrigue

Old friend and gamer Erick arrived, and we switched to the classic game of screwage, Intrigue. A description was posted in the last blog, so I won't bore you with the details. In this particular game, the President and Vice President forged an Unholy Alliance in order to dominate the match. Sean could have easily trounced TJ at the end, but instead allowed him to take the win by letting his entire castle be populated by TJ's minions. In the end, this alliance brought great wealth to both of them. Chris and Erick teamed up too late, however,

The Ending Cash

TJ $128,ooo
Sean $120,ooo
Chris $119,ooo
Erick $108,ooo


Cleopatra
and the Society of Architects
Guest-starring www.wikipedia.org! :)

This game, simply put, is incredible. Words really are insufficient to describe it, but I'll give it a shot. The game mechanic is so similar and yet so unlike to so many games that it throws so many curves. And yet, at the same time, it's remarkably simple.

The goal of the game is to have the most talents of silver. A talent is the unit of measurement they're referring to. Basically...it means one unit of silver. In laymen's terms: Five talents = $5.

You gain these talents by building certain structures up towards and into Cleopatra's Temple, including two massive Obelisks and six Sphinxes. These structures are built, and you earn money based on their value, among other factors. For example, building many buildings in one turn will yeild more points. However, it becomes difficult to do so because of hand limits.

On to that hand of yours! It will contain resources of five types. Stone, Marble,
Lapis Lazuli, Wood and Artisans. Yes, artisans are resources (slaves=property, I suppose). These resources, in various combinations will allow you to build certain buildings. Seems straightforward enough. Your hand is replenished in a very strange manner however. First of all, the deck is cut in half, and one half of the cards is flipped upside down. Only then is it shuffled back into the deck, leaving about half the deck visible, and half the deck invisible. Then, three cards are laid out onto the table. On your turn, you have the option to take cards or to build. If you take a card, you add a card from the draw pile to each stack; as such, the stacks will grow, and more cards will be picked up by each successive draw.

Another added element is Corruption. Certain cards that will provide with advantages throughout the game (such as extra resources, certain building advantages) will corrupt your soul! This means you take a corruption token and put it into your pyramid-shaped bank, where you will not know how many of them there are (unless you can remember, which in all honesty is not that difficult). At the end of the game, corruption is the first thing looked at. The player with the most tokens automatically loses the game, or, in the terms of the manual, is fed to Cleopatra's crocodiles. Another event adds corruption that involves five dice that are rolled every time a structure is built. One side has an Egyptian
Ankh. The rest are blank. Once all five show the Ankh, a blind auction happens with the talents you have. The player who bids the most removes three corruption tokens from their bank. The player who bids the second most gains a corruption token; the third-most gains two, and the fourth, three.

Corruption is a very big part of the game, and it reflects heavily in the scores. For example, Erick's focus was accumulating wealth with wanton disregard towards corruption. As such, his final score was 57 talents, well above the rest of the players. Unfortunately, he ended up with
15 corruption tokens, causing him to be eaten by crocs. Damn shame. TJ's approach was exactly the opposite- his goal was to remain pure, hoping that a modest income would let him win. He did have the least corruption by the end with 5, but a meager 34 talents. Sean and Chris both had 38 talents, but Chris had 9 corruption while Sean had 6. Sean for the most of the game had NO CORRUPTION, and it wasn't until the very end that he began to hit himself for the extra talents. It paid off, and he was declared victor by purity.


Senator

A very simple game based on blind bidding. All players are bidding for tokens with certain specific effects. Some remove tokens, some give you the power to stop your own tokens from being removed. All count for points. One token with a fasces (a bundle of sticks and an axe; A symbol of Ancient Rome before it became Mussolini's symbol for Italian Fascism. But enough of the History lesson...) on it will make all of your collected tokens permanent, so that nothing can happen to them.

Bidding happens by cards, numbered 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, and one with a bloody dagger. The dagger is the Assassin card, which kills everyone. Normally, if you do not win a bid, you take your cards back. When the assassin is played, all players cards bid that round go out of play. Unless the assassin is played, the highest bid wins.

A special effect also goes into play at the beginning of each round, which may disallow permanence of tokens, or limit your bid to only two, or other such effects.

Play goes very quickly.

The final scores were incredibly low, as the game is played through five hands, and that's it. Chris and Sean tied with 2, and Erick and TJ tied with 1. Chris had a special token, however, the Imperial Seal, which breaks ties. Because of that, he won.

Quiddler

Because this game is so popular amongst the gameclub, I really shouldn't have to explain it. A brief synopsis, though, for the benefit of newcomers:

Each hand consists of one more card than the last. The first, four example, is three cards. The next is four, the next five, and so on up to ten, the final round. Very rarely is a game of Quiddler finished, but we managed to in this meeting. Basically, players swap cards with the draw pile a la gin in order to form words. Once one player can use all his cards, s/he goes out, and all other players get one more turn to form words. Points are added or subtracted based on the rarity of the letters used ("vex", for example, is a huge point-earner, despite only being three letters long). 10-point bonuses are given for longest or most words. Most points after ten rounds wins!

Chris trounced the rest of the group with 275 points. TJ's 226, Sean's 215 and Erick's 207 cowered in the face of such adversity.

With that, the game club departed for another week; a very short day as compared with last time.

Until next time ladies and gents, play on!

~ TJ

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

August 15th, 2006: Jake's Last Day

Truly an epic gameday, Jake's farewell meeting was not without a great deal of fun. Some new games were played, as well as many oldies-but-goodies. An appearance by club favourite Guitar Hero was also made later in the evening, assisting to make this meeting the longest meeting in Game Club history, and one of the most fun.

Sword and Skull
There were a LOT of people at the meeting, so two games ran simultaneously at first. Mike 1, Chris, Sean and Steven played an epic game of Swords and Skulls, yet another "lively game" involving pirates. Many pirate games are played by the game club, not the least of which is Loot, a simple card game. To my knowledge, this is the first board game on the subject that the Game Club has yet played.

I didn't get a chance to play this game so I don't know much about it. It's a boardgame that seems to touch on the economic, political and idealogical complexities of being a pirate locked in a seventeenth-century struggle between life, death, and the Pirate King.

That, or it's an excuse to shout "Arrr!" while battling opponents for treasure.

All in all, Mike 1 claimed victory, as both Chris and Steven had to leave.

Christina, Cathy Wilms, Jake, Mike 2 and TJ all had time enough to play three games while the pirates went about cavorting and capering.

Beat the Buzzard
A very simple card game, Beat the Buzzard is a favourite along with Zeus on the Loose as ways to pass time when waiting for larger games to start. So we began with this fun little game. It's easy enough to learn in moments. Players have cards numbered 1 - 15, and are competing for cards that range from -5 to 10. No matter what card you're bidding for, high numbers are good, as in the case of positive numbers, high card wins. In the case of negative numbers, however, which take points away from your score, the low card "wins", and takes the card. It's a game of double-super-secret-reverse psychology, and one that can muddle the mind of the most nefarious bidder.

In the first game, Mike 2 captured many small numbers, leading to his triumphant victory over the rest. In the second game, TJ's capture of just a few high numbers lead to a narrow win.

Intrigue
According to Sean, this game is "all about the screwage." Soon, we would all learn exactly why. Each player has four rooms in their Castle, valued at $1ooo, $3ooo, $6ooo and $1o,ooo each. These rooms pay money to whomever's specialists are located in them. Each player has four different specialists at their disposal, and two of each of them, making for a total of eight different workers than can be employed by their opponents. The ultimate goal, of course, is to have the most money. Each castle, however, MUST have one of each of the four specialists under its employ, forcing you to make deals in order to secure a good spot in the castles, while also not giving away your prized 1o,ooo to someone who will end up betraying you later.

According to the rules "everything is allowed." And that means everything. For instance, if one were to apply to a castle, and offer that castle's owner $2o,ooo for the room that pays $1o,ooo, there is no stopping that castle's owner from taking the money and then throwing the other person's opponent to the wolves, if his castle is already full. Payment is received each turn for the rooms you control, so as is often touted, the key to this game is location, location, location. As well as a lot of betrayal, betrayal, betrayal.

In the end, Christina took victory with a whopping $14o,ooo. Trailing her were TJ and Cathy with $138,ooo and $121,ooo respectively. Jake and Mike 2, sadly remained far below with $98,ooo and $49,ooo each. Mike 2 had been evicted from every player's castle by the end of the game, so for the last few turns he earned no payment, clearly spoiling any hope of victory.

Continuo
Continuo is an interesting game with similarities to Aquarius and even Blokus. Your goal is the most points. To do that, you lay cards out in a particular fashion so as to connect a lot of similar coloured blocks. Each card consists of patterns of blocks of different colours, of which there are plenty of variations. Points are scored based on the grouping of colour each round.

In the end, TJ walked away the winner with 151 points, well ahead Jake and Cathy's 125, Mike 2's 119, and Chrissy's 115.

With that, the game of Sword and Skull came to a close. Chris left to retrieve his car, and Cathy, Steven and Chrissy left to celebrate the latter's birthday.

Wayfinder
Upon Chris' return, a game of Wayfinder began. Wayfinder is like Mancala on several types of pure Colombian cocaine. Four differenly coloured resources begin on each square, and the ultimate goal is, in effect, to have the most *stuff* of your colour on each square. The way this is acheived is movement akin to Mancala. From your starting position (chosen at the end of a previous round), a player picks up every gem-like resource token in the square, and makes a straight-line or right angle away from it, in any direction he is able, and drops one in each square he passes. For example, If one square has five tokens, it can only move five spaces.

Additionally, if any square ends up with only one different colour, that colour becomes the only colour that can ever go into that space. Once five of the same colour control a square in that way, that colour is allowed to replace them with a hut, which is counted for points at the end of the game.

All in all, a very fun game, but very difficult to keep track of what's going on all over the board all at the same time. Jake wo with 129, Sean took second with 118, TJ held third with 110, and Chris wept from last place with a mere 84.

Infinity
This was a game that Chris had bought from the dollar store a long time ago, but had apparently never played. The idea is interesting: form the Universe from the Beginning to "Destiny", by laying tiles on different arms of the Galaxy, creating planets and moons and eventually Life.

Many aspects of this game intrigued the players, including one rule allowing you to freely draw from your discard pile, or from that of the person to your left. Infinity is also the first game with an instruction manual to include "Black Hole" as a verb. (ie Black Holed)

A very interesting and very fun game that will probably find its way to more meetings in the future.