Another off-day game

I bumped into Jake in the hall, right as I was thinking about finishing up for the day and going home, but he convinced me to stay and playa game or three (it was not hard). He and I played a game of Ingenious.

It's nice, now that we have built up a solid foundation (almost an entire semester!) of game playing, to be able to whip out a game, silently, diligently set up the board, and just get into it. Ingenious is a nice simple game, with plenty of strategy and randomness to make it ultimately replayable.

Here's how the scorecards looked at the end of this game:

Ingenious Score Card (a "+" means the score went off the card)
player	red	green	blue	orange	yellow	purple
Chris	+	9	11	12	9	+
Jake	+	9	6	6	3	+

The reds and purples flew off the board quick, but Jake just didn't have the luck of the draw to move his yellow very far.

Remember, in this game, your score is your LOWEST total on the board. SO: Chris' low of 9 in both green and yellow DEMOLISHED Jake's yellow 3.

An off-game-day find

Yesterday, I (Chris) had to run off campus for a bit, but when I was coming back I ran into Jake in the parking lot (literally! He was walking, I was driving, and I just swung my car right in front of him. He was unhurt, but complained about how dirty the car was...). We both had some time to kill, so games must be played!!

I have owned Torres for quite a while, and have never gotten to play it. The rules seemed rather complex, but it has won all sorts of awards in the US, Germany, and around the world. I knew it had to be good.

So, Jake and I pored over the rules, got the gist, and dove in.

It's great. Just great. Really fun. Really tactical.

You play as princes trying to build the best castles for your king, in order to inherit the crown. On each turn, you have a limited number of blocks you can build into your castles, and a limited number of action points to move knights around, or do other actions. Because of this limit, strategy abounds!

The game is played in three phases of a few turns each. At the end of each phase, each castle is scored. You take the surface area the castle covers, and multiply it by the height of the highest knight you have in that castle. So you have to sort of think and strategize in three dimensions. It can cause brain pain -- but is ultimately satisfying.

I can highly recommend this game. The first playthrough will seem a bit awkward (at least I thought so), but it does have a nice flow. There's a bunch of funky special rules, but they seem to make sense in an odd way once you've played the game.

I didn't record the exact scores, but I do recall -- Jake KILLED me in the first game. I won the second game by a less, but still comfortable, margin. The third game had me winning for most of it, but Jake was sneakily cranking up one of the castles I built the foundation on, and he eked out a nice strategic win.

The Game that Changed the World

As the new millennium rolled in, so did a new board game... Carcassonne is credited by many as being the game that brought back board gaming. It won awards all over the world the following year, including the "Spiel Des Jahres", the "Game of the Year" in Germany. The thick cardboard tiles and colorful wooden pieces (WOOD! Not Plastic! What a refreshing change...) gave this game a visual and tactile appeal that no other game has had in a long time. It takes a little while to get used to the rules, but learning them is quite rewarding. As you play the game, it as satisfying to be watching the world unfold before as it is making big scoring plays.

You are placing tiles to make a map where roads, cities, and fields unfold. You have a sort of god-like control -- you place the land tiles wherever you want, as well as populate the world as you see fit. As roads and towns are completed, followers on those areas score points. When a cloister is completely surrounded, the monk in the cloister obtains points for the influence they exert on the surrounding areas. Farmers in the fields score points at the end of the game for the towns to which they sell their wares.

This is the map at the end of the first game, played by Jake and Chris. Here's how the turns went down...

• Jake broke onto the scene with a 2 point town
  
• Chris got a 6 point town
  
• Jake got an 8 point town
  
• Chris got a 2 point town
  
• Jake got a road for 6 pts
  
• Chris surrounded a cloister - 9 pts
  
• Jake finished a town for 8 pts
  
• On his next turn, Jake capped off Chris' large town - giving Chris 22 pts!
  
• Chris finished another cloister - 9 pts
  
• Jake finished a town for 10 pts
  
• Chris finished a road he had been sitting on since the start of the game - 12 pts
  
• Jake got a quick 2 pt town
  
• Chris completed an 8 pt town, and got a 2 pt road at the same time
  
• Chris finished another 8 pt town on his next turn
  
• Chris got a 3 pt road
  
• Chris got a 5 pt road
  
• Chris got ANOTHER 2 pt road
  
• Jake got a 4 pt road
  

All the tiles were placed, so we went to the endgame...

• We looked at Jake's partials first:
  
  
  
  • 8 pt cloister
    
  • 4 pt road
    
  • 3 pt road
    
  • 4 pt town
    
  
  
• The Chris' partials:
  
  
  
  • 4 pt cloister
    
  • 8 pt cloister
    
  • 4 pt cloister
    
  • 3 pt road
    
  • 4 pt town
    
  
  
• Then onto the final bit of counting the income from farms:
  
  
  
  • Jake had 2 farms -- one had 2 towns (for 8 points), the other had 7 towns (for 28 points)
    
  • Chris simply shared Jake's 7-town farm (for 28 points in all).
    
  
  

The final score saw Chris winning with 138 points, and Jake with 98 points.

Tic Tac Toe Times Twenty

Today, December 12, 2005, was a day perfect for learning a new game! Chris taught Jake how to play Mindrings, billing it as a good 2-player brain warm-up. We played a quick game for learning purposes. Chris won quick -- but just because Jake didn't quite see the finesse and nuance of this quirky little battle of wits.

Here's how the game goes: There is a board consisting of six concentric rings with holes that radiate from the center to make spoke-like lines. Each player alternates, playing a peg on the board. The object: get 4 pegs of your color in a row. Here's what makes it differ from Tic Tac Toe: When you place a peg, you then rotate the circle that peg was placed in -- you can either rotate clockwise one position, or counter-clockwise TWO positions. So, the board is changing every turn.

BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN: Chris brought his camera in today! These are ACTUAL pictures from the games!

The first picture shows what the board looked like after Jake won the first round. Notice the 4-in-a-row line of red pegs at about what would be 4:30 on a clock.


Jake also won the second round. Notice the 4-in-a-row line of red pegs near what would be 1:30 on a clock.

What Jake doesn't know (until he reads this), is that we were playing the "basic" set of rules for the game. If you are really bold, you can play the advanced version -- play is the same, BUT if, at any time, a player can surround two opponents pegs with two pegs of his own, that player can remove those two pegs. EXAMPLE: It is yellow's turn. Yellow places a peg and rotates the board so that, on one of the spokes, there is a line of Yellow, Red, Red, Yellow, in that order. Yellow may then remove those two red pegs from the board.

Next time we'll play the more vicious version.

It's not an easy game to find -- it's made by a company in Canada called "Vantex Corporation" -- I think it's the only game they make. If so, it's a good start for the company. I will be keeping an eye on them for other simple, clever, challenging games.

More Psycho-strategy Gaming.

The next game played on Monday, December 5, 2005 is one that I (Chris) have been itching to play since I heard about this club. We played Citadels with SIX players: Chris, Manny, Cathy, Jake, Matt, and Charles.

You are trying to build a city. There are cards in the game which picture different buildings (they are called districts), and cards which portray characters.

Each turn of the game is played in 2 parts. Each person first picks a role to play -- Assassin, Thief, Magician, King, Bishop, Merchant, Architect, or Warlord, from the character cards. The King chooses first, and then the cards are passed around the table for each of the other players to choose.

Each of these characters has an ability, that sort of makes sense -- the Assassin can kill another character(they lose a turn), the Thief can steal all the money from another character, the Architect can build his empire faster than others, and the Warlord can destroy buildings. Other characters can provide you income from your buildings.

The second phase is where you can get money or more building cards, and build a building -- as well as use the special ability of the character card.

As the game progresses, different people will tend to gravitate towards using certain cards -- you don't want to do this because you will become a target of the Assassin and Thief. The neat thing is -- you choose your character in secret. The Assassin and thief target a CHARACTER not a PLAYER. So, for example, the person representing the Assassin announces that he or she is targeting the Merchant or Warlord. You don't know which player that is -- it's a sort of guess. You may have just killed a player unintentionally.

Once a person succeeds in building 8 districts, the game is scored, with a bonus for being the first to that, and bonuses for a variety of different kinds of districts.

Here's how the game went -- at least the killing and stealing parts!

• In the first turn Manny killed the Architect (which turned out to be Charles).
  
• Matt stole all the money from the King (it was Cathy).
  
• Matt killed the Thief (Jake).
  
• Matt then killed the Warlord (Chris).
  
• Matt attempted to kill the King, which turned out to not be chosen.
  
• Charles stole from the Merchant (Cathy).
  
• Manny ended a turn as the King, which means he calls out the orders for the characters to do their turn next. He called for the Bishop to come forward repeatedly, and no one claimed the turn. We got done with the round and realized Manny hadn't played -- he was the Bishop! It was funny if you were there...
  
• On the very next turn, Charles assassinated the Warlord. When you are assassinated, you are supposed to just be quiet and sit out the turn. Manny moaned loudly, and showed everyone else that he was the Warlord. Again, it was funny at the time.
  
• After laughing at Manny's mistakes, Chris, who had picked last so he knew what cards went unused, picked the Thief, and announced that he was stealing from the Merchant -- a card he had, just a few moments ago, laid unclaimed on the table.
  
• Manny used his Warlord power and 5 gold to destroy Charles' School of Magic.
  

At this point, 1:00 was swiftly approaching, and both Cathy and Jake had class to attend -- they left, and the rest of us finished up.

• Matt tried to steal from the Warlord (who went unclaimed).
  
• Chris used his Warlord power to destroy Charles' Watchtower -- being a one-gold valued property, it was destroyed for free. Chris laughed maniacally.
  
• Matt killed the Merchant (he assumed it was Charles, it was Chris).
  
• Charles rebuilt his Watchtower, one turn after it was destroyed. He also laughed maniacally.
  
• At this point, both Chris and Charles have 7 districts -- one away from completion.
  
• Matt killed the Bishop (he assumed it was Charles, it was Chris -- sound familiar!?!?).
  
• Manny decided to kill the Magician (which turned out to be, of course, Chris again).
  
• Charles built his last of 8 districts as a Warlord -- destroying one of Chris' properties to make a wider margin of victory, and, in my humble opinion, also for spite.
  

Here's the final value of the cities of the folks who finished:

Citadels final scores
Charles	Matt	Chris	Manny
26	26	17	16
+4 for 8 districts first
30 point winning total

It's just as interesting to see who committed which felonies, and who fell victim... here's the leaderboard for that:

Assassinations
Assassins
Matt	5 (1 was unsuccessful)
Manny	2 (note: it was his very first and very last action in the game)
Charles	1
Victims
Chris	4 (ouch!)
Charles	1
Jake	1
Manny	1

Robberies
Thieves
Matt	2 (1 was unsuccessful>
Charles	1
Chris	1 (and it was NOT successful
Victims
Cathy	2

Districts Destroyed
Warlords
Charles	1
Chris	1
Manny	1
Victims
Charles	2
Chris	1

So, in the dark side of Citadels, we can see some trends -- Matt liked killing, and Chris liked dying. Most of the time it was announced that Chris was really not the intended target, he just happened to be in the wrong place making the assassinations more like drive-by shootings.

Also, the thieves were spread around, but Cathy must have been walking down a dark alley with $20 bills hanging out of her pockets, being the only victim of the crime.

New Games!

This week, we got in a couple new games. The first was Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, which was played by Jake, Manny, and Chris.

We didn't get to play the entire game... Chris showed Manny and Jake had to play, and as we were playing, people wandered by, and we wanted to include them, so we cut it a bit short -- probably didn't even get halfway through.

The Carcassonne series is sort of a modern classic. These games are great balance of ease-of-learning, interesting and varied gameplay, and strategy. Funagain.com lists five Carcassonne games among their top 33 games sold.

Basically all the Carcassonne games involved playing tiles to build cities/rivers/forests/meadows and other things. You place characters on the board to gain control of those to get points when they are completed. Some characters remain on the board to be scored at the conclusion of the tile-laying.

Here's some things that happened as we played:

• Manny claimed the first points with a quick river claim for 4 points.
  
• Chris next claimed a 7 point river.
  
• Manny got another 4 point river quickie.
  
• Jake broke onto the scoreboard with a 3 point river quickie.
  
• Manny got a 4 point river.
  
• Chris got a 4 point forest.
  
• Jake completed a large forest, AND got a quick forest on the same turn for a nice 12 point play!
  
• Chris got a 5 point river.
  
• Manny, picking up his fourth river/lake tile in a row, claimed another 3 point river quickie.
  
• Jake got a 5 point and a 4 point river back-to-back....
  

And then we called it quits to get some other people involved. Jake was comfortably ahead, but there was a lot of game left to play...

Intact Blokus!

Educational Insights has sent me the replacement piece for Blokus. We can play the full version again! Seriously, they were very friendly and helpful -- everyone should buy Blokus (or Travel Blokus for two players). It's a great game, and seems to be made by a great company!