F@#$ Machi Koro

Machi Koro

Review Summary:

quick, fun, light game.  Absolutely perfect to start off the night while waiting for late arrivals or end of night when you only have half an hour of game time left.

Not too terribly deep, and very dependent on luck.  Not something I want to spend the entire night doing but fun for what it is.

Plot:  

Build a great city!

Ok doesn't matter.  'Theme Integration' is poor.

Game play:

Game play is three phases

phase 1 - roll dice.  Starts at 1D6, can upgrade to your choice of 1D6 or 2D6.
phase 2 - resolve roll.  depending on the players' tableau, you might get money, other players might get money, you might pay money to other players, or other players might pay you money.
phase 3 - buy something that gets you money, forces other player to pay you money, or an end game goal.

So you roll a die or two, and depending on what you rolled, maybe you get money, maybe other people do, or a bunch of that at once.

The cards are labeled 1-12, and are color coded.

I'm not going to list what each and every card does, although that's a great way to get the word count up.  But in general...

Blue cards earn coins whenever anyone rolls their number.
Green cards earn coins whenever the active player rolls their number.
Red cards force the active player to pay coins when he rolls its number.
Purple cards force your opponents to pay coins, or trade buildings when you roll their number.

The end game goal cards give you some neat power.  You can roll 2d6 instead of 1d6, some of your buildings are better, doubles grant you an extra turn and once a turn you can re-roll your result.

The end game cards total price is 52 coins; you start with 3 coins and two buildings.

So that's the game!

Tactics:

A lot of what makes this game interesting is the red cards.  Getting hit by them early game is just a punch to the gut.  The early game red card is a "3", so if you're getting hammered with 3's, you should totally buy the first end goal.  It costs 4 and drops the chance of paying money from 1 in 6 to 1 in 18 (at least until the bad guys buy next level red card)

Usually you need a big score to win.  There's lots and lots of way to get that big score, but windfall's are typically better than a steady income.  Because the bad guys will just take your savings.

My go to strategy is try and get a steady income early, then work towards a big score.

But the absolute 100% way to win is have your cards hit and your opponents don't.

F@#$ Threading the needle or analyzing a complain win. :)

Amun Re last night, I got a (self-described) improbable win after announcing in my outside voice, that I was getting my ass kicked.  The players, Mike C., John K., and Mike W.

I don't recall the exact timing of this pronouncement, although it was fairly early in the 2nd scoring round.  Let's call it the temple phase of round 4 of 6.

A quick refresher on Amun Re because I like to pretend that this isn't just a public email to Mike Wyman.

There's 6 phases and two scoring rounds

Lay out 1 province per player
Auction those provinces
Buy resources
Invest in the temple for money and more resources; 'temple phase'
Collect money during 'harvest'
Score at end of turn 3, and end of turn 6.

Most of scoring is tied up in pyramids, easily 65% and sometimes as much as 85% of your points comes from building pyramids.  You need to build lots of pyramids, and all resources are purchased on the triangle series (1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36...).

There's also cards to buy which either help you out in the various phases or can possibly be VPs, and there's special provinces tied to the temple investment that award points.  At the very end of game, cash on hand also earns VP.

The game usually turns on the VP condition of most  pyramids in a single province.  This is awarded twice, one for each side of the Nile, which divides the game board.

It's worth mentioning temple investing.  I wrote about it like 4 years ago in 'games within games'
If you invest at all you get free stuff.  If you invest the most you a non-trivial amount of free stuff!  The table's investment total determines how much money everyone gets from the harvest.  Some players are going to want a high temple investment and some are going to want a low won for their finances.

There's 2 scoring rounds, and everything except pyramids are swept from the provinces after round 1.  You auction the same provinces with these pyramids in round 2.

The Tactical Situation of Scoring Round 2

I started the 2nd scoring round last in points which wasn't a big deal.  Round 1 scoring keeps everyone in a big thundering herd.  I started with a not unreasonable amount of cash, but a distant 3rd of 4 in the cash  sub-game.  I did have 4 different scoring cards, of which I could reliably plan to get two to score.  So after the 1st province reveal of scoring round 2, my plan was to get a free province and save my money for the built up provinces that did not flip and hopefully work towards two VP cards with subsequent bids.


So I do that.  Buy a pyramid even.  Sounds great right?  Yeah, except that Mike C. and John K. bought TWO pyramids each.  Eclipsing in one phase the winner for most pyramids in round 1.  Remember how about three paragraphs ago I said that the game usually turns on most pyramids?  Well that was a pretty clear signal that I was not going to get most pyramids.

So I make my announcement, and we now move onto the breakdown of the mid and end game.  Here are the key moments.

1) Turn 4, Temple phase

So here I make a pretty good decision.   I'm not going to win most pyramids, so it's probably not worth it to try and win first place in temple.  I choose to bid a little bit and get a reasonably cost effective 2 resource gift.  I get a stone and a card.

It's also pretty key that Mike W. was unsuccessful in crippling the harvest.  This was a theme, he tried to keep it as low as possible often.  The temple acts as a multiplier for the harvest, and it was very much to his advantage to make it as low as possible.  He probably kept the table from the 3X level at least once, but was never successful in dropping it to the 1X level.

2) Turns out the card I got was key.   It was an auction block card, another player can still over bid you on a province, but now has to go two tiers over instead of the normal one.  Auctions are also triangle points, so a blocker at the right place is very powerful.

3) Turn 5, Reveal phase

So province order mattered for the reveal.  After the turn 1 bid I eliminated 2 of my 4 VP cards as impossible.  I was left with VP cards that required all my purchases to be in the same quadrant.  I needed the remaining NW quadrants to be split between the two auctions, otherwise the game is over.

Thankfully they were, huzzah!

4) Turn 5, auction

One of the provinces revealed is in my quadrant, and coincidentally was the best province you could have bid on.  I make another good decision, bidding 15 and using the block card to require a 28 bid to snipe this province.  This adequately intimidates other bidders and I win!

5) Turn 6, auction.

I start the round with 20$ and no cards I'm willing to spend as cash (cards are always worth 1$)

I'm not entirely sure how this happened.  But I got the province I needed at the price I needed to pay, 10 bucks.  It's likely, that it was only important to me and everyone else was concerned about their own game.

Some provinces give you free stuff.  This one gave free stone.  Turns out this was also key.

6) Turn 6, buy resources

You can buy resources in any order, but you can play cards immediately so it's to your advantage to buy cards first.

Since cards are always worth 1$, so it's also to your advantage to always buy a card, because you never know what you're going to draw and if you draw poorly you didn't cost yourself a thing.

I drew a harvest card.  What this card says is instead of getting your normal income from a province, play this card on it and get 8$.

7) Turns out this was a crazy good draw.  I have a farm heavy province that I just bought and it would take a ridiculous amount of money to fill it.  Turns out now I don't have to.  I skip buying farmers and buy 3 stone for 6$.

8)  That free stone that I got?  It's a big deal now, because I am one stone from finishing off my 3rd set of pyramids.  Pyramid sets are also a VP condition.  Usually not as lucrative as most in a province, but not nothing either.

9) Meanwhile, John K. and Mike C. are having an arms race for most pyramids in a province.  Uusally the winner has 4 or 5 pyramids.  They both ended the game with SEVEN.  So turns out this was a big deal too.

10) Turn 6, temple.

This is where I won the game.  It looks like it's going to come down to end game cash now.   That's tied to the temple bid, which is also tied to location points.

I am not getting anything from location points but I need one more stone to complete my set.  You get a gift no matter what by donating to the temple, so I spend 1$ to complete the set, reasoning that 2$ a province is probably adequate earnings with my 8$ harvest card.  I save 2$ for the end game cash on hand total.

Meanwhile, Mike W. throws everything he has into trying to raise the temple level because he has two VP provinces tied to that.  He falls just short of raising it a tier, and the temple level remains at 2, like it has for the entirety of the game.  He even spent a harvest card to do that, which also turns out to be key.

11) The scoring

Everyone has 9 or 10 pyramids built.  They get 1 point for each pyramid.  I get 9.
Most of the table only has one set built.  I have 3.  That's worth 9 points.

18 pyramid points turns out to be really really competitive.  I think John K. got the most, with 9 total pyramids built, winning both most in a province points and one set:  a total of 20 points.

I think the province location points were split 4-2-2 from the table, Mike W. getting 4.

I got both my VP cards played, 6 points.

And I won cash by 2$.  6 points.  Second place gets 4, third place gets 2 and fourth places gets a rock.

So the combination of the lucky draw harvest card for me, and Mike W.  spending his harvest card as money in temple was a 6 point swing.  I think.

I think I go from 1st to 3rd if I don't have the harvest card and Mike W.  plays his harvest card the same way.   I lose 4 points and both John and Mike W. earn 2 more.

I think I go from 1st to 2nd if Mike W. saves his harvest card, losing 2 points and Mike W. getting 2.

12)  The summary

So I think I needed 3 lucky draws and some opponent miscalculations to win.

lucky draw 1  bid blocker card
lucky draw 2  NW quadrant provinces split.
lucky draw 3  $8 harvest card

Opponent miscalculations

arms race - this was a big big deal.  By arms racing, Mike C. and John cost themselves sets and didn't get very good return on their seven pyramids.

last temple - can I really say this was a miscalculation or did Mike W. just get screwed with his pants on?  There was a pyramid arms race going on, and 6th temple phase is the last chance to add.  It wasn't an unreasonable assumption that he'd have help in bidding up the temple tier.  Turns out, no he had no help.  The temple donation total finished at 12 and he needed it to reach 14 to get the extra VPs.

F@#$ Pokemon Go vs Ingress

Augmented reality games by Niantic!

Unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard of Pokemon Go.  If you are living in a cave, download Pokemon now because I bet you'll catch some rare monsters.

Pokemon Go was not the first.  Ingress was was launched around 4 years ago and Pokemon about 4 weeks ago.

The Plots/Basics

Ingress

Ingress is sci-fi themed.  The CERN collider released 'exotic matter' into the world which coalesces around landmarks forming portals.

There's two factions and some aliens involved.  The Enlightenment faction (color coded green) wants to help the aliens advance civilization.  The Resistance (Blue) is suspicious of the aliens and wants to stop them.  That's all the plot you're getting out of me, because 1) I don't really pay attention to video game plots closely, and 2) I don't really have a 2.  Uh...if you get interested in the game I don't want to spoil anything?

The game is all about the portals.  You hack them to get gear.  You claim them for the glory of your team, and also because then you get better gear.  You 'link' portals together forming triangles; this claims points for your team.  You attack them with gear to deny the same to durty durty resistance or the durty durty enlightenment depending on your point of view.  Basically, the game is a global version of capture the flag.


Pokemon Go

Strangely, Pokemon Go is Pokemon themed.  Duh.

You catch the Pokemonsters, you evolve them into better monsters and fight with them.

There's 3 factions, but the story for all of them and why they are fighting hasn't been made clear.  That will almost certainly be some new content that Niantic pushes in future updates.

This game centers around the monsters.   Catching them gives you experience to level up and something to fight with.  You can catch monsters nearly anywhere, but in my 4 days of experience they are much more common around PokeStops.

PokeStop?  Are you just making up words now?

No of course not.  Pokemon does though.  PokeStops are in the same spots and Ingress portals, although there are more Portals than PokeStops.   At a PokeStop, you highlight the stop Icon, a picture of the stop expands and you can 'spin' it and it drops some gear.  You need to spin the PokeStops because they release PokeBalls, which you throw at the PokeMonsters to catch them.

A special PokeStop is a gym.  You can deploy monsters in the gym to hold it, you can fight the monsters holding it to claim it for your faction.  Holding a gym gets you better gear.

The Conceptual Differences so far

Ingress is much more team oriented then Pokemon Go.   First off, there's an actual scoring system for the factions.  

That's not to say the PG is without team-work.  Gyms require many PokeTrainers to realistically hold them and start getting the good loot (there's a similar mechanic in Ingress).

PG is much more walking oriented than Ingress.  In Ingress the destination is important, and to really score points for your team you need to make big triangles.  Big triangles require driving.  Destinations are really important in PG too, but there's game mechanics that reward walking too.  So Ingress lends itself better to Sunday drives, and PG works better with strolls through the park.

Ridiculous Criticisms

On a radio show I once heard an interviewee describe something as a beer and tacos argument.  You are asking me to choose between beer and tacos when both are delicious.

The Driving vs. Walking thing  

Driving in Ingress is only important if you want to score points for your team.  Sure that's the point of the game, but is that the point of your game?  It's capture the flag, like mankind's 3rd game ever invented.  There's a lot of sub-goals in the game that can have absolutely nothing to do with driving.

You can also do quite a bit in Pokemon Go sitting on your ass.  Go to a PokeStop with several lures, place them on the PokeStop and spend hours there.

There's no skill involved

Juan I'm looking at you!

In Pokemon you throw balls at the monsters and need to hit them to to catch them.  To catch a portal you just need to press some buttons.  So Pokemon requires skill and Ingress does not?

WRONG!

I've played PG for 4 a whole days now so I've thrown plenty of balls.  And from what I've seen, some monsters catchings are slaves to a random number generator.  You can hit them with a Pokeball right in the beak, with a curve, without a curve or whatever, and they still escape.  

Furthermore, getting adequately proficient at the throwing of the balls takes about 15 minutes.  An hour if you're working on a curve.

Granted I haven't fought in gyms much.  But I would be really surprised if they were anymore challenging then Glyph Hacking in Ingress.

Segue to Ingress.

When you attack a portal, a ring contracts from about half an inch to nothingness.  You keep your finger on the touch screen to fire the weapon; the closer you get to the nothingness without having ring completely disappear  gives you a damage bonus, capped at 20%.  There is skill at timing the release.

Glpyh hacking.  When you hack a portal you can hold down the hacking button to unlock the 'glyph hack' option.   The game will then flash a series of 1 to 5 symbols that you have to "Simon" back.

You have less than 20 seconds to complete all the Glyphs.  Glyph hacking is worth it because you get better gear.  Gear is pretty important.  Anyways, I challenge you to get these two glyphs right the first time you see them.

Final thoughts for now?

So I've seen a lot of Ingress players bash PG for...reasons.   In someways I can understand it, you like your game and everyone else should too and not move onto the next Flavor of the Month.

And I've seen a lot of non-players bash PG(and by extension Ingress) for various other reasons.  The most common is people getting too engrossed in PG that they don't pay attention to their surroundings.  My rebuttal for that is, can't you say that about smart phones and their apps in general?  Getting immersed in your smart phone while walking or driving is a real problem and it shouldn't take a game to make people aware of the public safety hazard.

And some of it is just the inevitable push back on this summer's trendy activity.  PG got really huge really quick and that will cause resentment to people who have to see the countless social media updates and barely funny memes.

So immersion hazards aside (which in my opinion is more of a smart phone issue than a augmented reality game issue), who do these games really hurt?   Non-players take a deep breath, and realize you won't be bombarded with your friends updates and memes by October.

 

F@#$ A Keyflower experimental strategy breakdown

A Keyflower breakdown, focusing on a failed game.

If you want a refresher on the mechanics go here

Part One:  Background (or how the hell did I get myself in such a hole that an experiment seemed like a good idea)

Simply put, I had an epically bad Spring round.  My opening tactic was getting cheap tiles.  I wanted at least two, hoped for three, and came away with one.  This unfocused opening could've been fine, but I needed to update my definition of 'cheap' to a two meeple bid.  I got cut twice and accomplished nearly nothing that round.  A one tile spring round can be fine, but that tile better be awesome.

Through Summer and Fall, I continued to take good value moves, entering winter with an upgraded trade one meeple for three more meeples tile, and a stable full of green guys.  I was absolutely not going to win, Mike already had 30+ points points on the board with his stone collector (pending resource movement which is just a problem and one that is difficult to thwart) and Greg had a fantastic tableau that was capable of generating points in multiple ways.  One of those two were going to win, so my choice was play for a respectable 3rd or try something new.

Part two:  The Plan

I started Winter with ~6 yellow, ~ 4 red, 6 green and 1 (ONE!) blue.  

I was going to come out swinging for the Chapel (12 points, no additional actions required) and then spend green guys making generic guys on the tile I owned..  Hoping to...

1. Spike the 1 for 3 meeple trader for the rest of the table.
2. Use the newly acquired dudes to make further VP bids
3. Get the green guy VP counter cheaply.

Of those 3 goals, the only thing accomplished was spike the 1 for 3 trader.

Part three:  Why this idea had merit

Greens are tricky.  Practically speaking greens guys can realistically capture two VP tiles.  In a 5 player game (last night's game) there's 9-14 things to bid on, and in typical play, the first two rounds are bidding on tiles.  If everyone bids all 3 times you can get 3 tiles claimed, but since you have green, there's obviously green meeple makers so opponents either have them or can make them to thwart your bids.  

When faced with a player that has a load of green guys you absolutely have to bid your generics early to get the tiles properly suited.

Spiking your meeple making tile isn't a bad idea.  Early on it's cost effective to play there and in late stages it's a viable option opponent's can use it de-color screw themselves.  Limiting options for the other players is a perfectly acceptable use of your resources.

No one targets the green guy VP tile.  It is always an afterthought.  "Well 1 blue guy for 2 points at this late stage is good value"

Part four:  What went wrong

The plan really really broke down on item #2.

The big problem is that the plan was overall as slow developing as just bidding green guys on tiles.  By the time I was ready to start placing meeple bids, every tile that would have advanced my game was claimed, and claimed in force.

A smaller problem with the plan was the one blue guy.  I could have salvaged something if I had a better color mix, and I tried to remedy that by playing green and yellow guys on various meeple makers (mine and Juan's primarily).  Blues were not forthcoming early in the round.  Which tells me that this plan really counted on good random meeple draws (or a better meeple mix going into winter).

The plan also broke down on #3.

By the time I accepted that Plan Point #2 was was not going to happen, I was already deeply deeply invested into getting the green guy VP counter.

This presented two pretty big problems.

#1 - There are certain VP tiles that it just does not pay to hyper-maximize.   You end up spending so many actions and resources maximizing them that you neglect the rest of the game.  So yippie!  You got 30 points from that tile and 45 total meaning you still lose by 30.   The green guy VP tile and the gold resource tile ARE ABSOLUTELY THE WORST to hyper-maximize on.    Green guy tile because you spend so many resources to get the green guys in the first place and the gold tile because you spend a lot getting gold AND gold is worth VPs end game anyways.

#2 - It's a juicy target.  You stack up all your green guys on your tiles and it becomes worth it to snipe the green guy maker.  This happened and I was upset for a good hot minute before I realized it cost me about 10 points total.  So how the game shook out, I lost by 35 points instead of 25.  BFD.

Part five:  Is this idea worth repeating?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe.

You have to start the conversion later.  Get your VP bids in, then see if the Green meeple spiking is viable.

You have to accept that 4-8 points for the Green meeple VP counter is a good return.

And you have to have a versatile generic guy mix.  The point is to convert your unplayable green guys into an asset by getting different colors.  It helps to start with 2+ meeples in each generic suit.

F@#$ Tokaido

Tokaido

Here we go again!  I usually hold off doing these reviews until I've had a couple sessions where I played this game.  I won't get that luxury with Tokaido, it was pretty much universally panned last night.

The Summary of the Review

This game is average at best.   There's not enough viable options to victory, the popular moves are really popular, some important aspects are ridiculously random, and the movement mechanics are problematic.

Theme

You're on vacation and taking a road trip to Edo.  You stop at several places along the way getting pictures, collecting souvenirs or meeting people.  The player who took the most impressive vacation wins!

The game play doesn't feel vacationy but the art and layout of the board are terrific.  This a beautiful game.

Characters

Everyone gets two characters and you get to pick one.  Each character has some unique power, some kind of exception to the core rules.  And then the powers are balanced by starting money, with the weaker characters getting more starting bucks.

Quick Mechanics

Turn order is determined by a number line.  Player furthest in the back gets to move.  So that means you can move twice if there's empty spots.

When you move, you can move any number of spaces with the restriction that you have to stop at an "Inn" and wait till everyone finishes.

There's about 10 spots to land on and something happens there. From simplest to most complex

Farm : Get 3 monies.

Hot Springs :   Draw a Hot Springs card, this is worth 2 or 3 VP.  

Panoramas:  There's 3 types, add a card to your collection and score by how far along you are (1 point for 1 card, 2 points for 2 cards and so on).  There's also a bonus for completing the panorama first.

Temple:  Donate monies to the temple and score points.  Also there's a bonus at the end based on how generous everyone is.

Village:  you can buy souvenirs here.  You're looking for sets and they score exponentially based on those sets.  You can start a new set before completing an old one.

Encounters:  Draw a card from the encounter deck and immediately resolve.  Encounters may give you money, VP, a souvenir or a couple other things.

Inn:  This is a stop sign and you can't go further until everyone is in the inn.

More on the Inn

You can eat a meal at one of the 4 inns.  You need to pay 1-3 gold, and if you eat you get 6 points!

Some more restrictions.  You can't eat the same meal twice and you can't eat at the same inn twice.  So if you eat Dango  at Inn#1 and draw Dango  at Inn#3, too bad.  Eat something else.  This really only comes up for 1 gold meals.  There's only 3 of them. 

First one into the inn gets the best selection of meals.  Last one in moves out first.

End Game wrap up

So that's basically it.  Move from station to station getting points.  There's bonus points at the end for most souvenirs, most money spent on meals, most encounters and most hot springs visits, as well as the temple points.

So what went wrong?

In the middle of game 1, Mike realized the game was playing him.   Mike started last, the spots available to him were awful and then arranged themselves so that he was first one into the inn several times.  Which meant after the reset, he went last again getting the 5th worst spot.

Driving home, I thought about it some more.  And the game this reminded me the most of was The Game of Life.  Being compared to a 55 year old game is not a good thing.   But there's simply not enough good options.  Everyone playing instinctively tried to optimize the number of turns they got.  Which led to a crowded board, set piece moves and slow realizations that you're going to get hosed at the next inn.

There's not enough money in the game.  Farms and Encounters were taken so fast, so often, that several times during the game, players realized "Well, I'm just not going to eat at the next inn".

There's too much randomness in the game.  Characters, Encounters and Meals are crazy important and there's a ridiculous amount of luck in what you draw.

There is absolutely not enough incentive for arriving at the inn 1st.  Getting into the inn 1st is a round killer, and cheap food does not compensate adequately.

Tactics?

Pick a good character?  The money doesn't quite compensate for the power, it's a long game.  The ones that mess with souvenirs and panoramas look the most powerful, but an encounter character won game 1 and a hot springs character won game 2.  YMMV.

The final spot before an inn turns out to be a really good spot, no matter what it does.  Placing there guarantees you'll be first out the door.  Unless there's a really lucrative alternative, being first for next round is probably worth the 1 or 2 points you punted.

Final Word

I would play this game again to confirm I didn't like it but I'm in no hurry too.  Also, 4 player might change it a lot because it opens up a lot more plays.  But the Last Inn First Out and lucky draws have just killed this game so far.

F@#$ Five Tribes

This post is a board game review of the ironically named Five Tribes!  It is irony and not coincidence because a game called Five Tribes only plays four people.!

Final word first so you can skip the boring parts.

4 runs of this game and I am still intrigued.  That alone puts it in the top 20th percentile.  My Gut, which as John Cusack said in High Fidelity, tends to have shit for brains. 

But my Gut says this is a good but not great game.  There's a lot to like, but it just seems to miss...something.

Theme is meaningless

It is so fabricated that it's not really worth mentioning.  So if your thing is theme integration, play Fresco.

Mechanics

First there are the 5 tribes of which we speak, color coded with meeples.

There are also 30 tiles arranged on the board, also with symbols.

The 30 tiles each get 3 random meeples placed on them.  Sort of like this

So the mechanic is, take the pile of meeples off one tile, and move by dropping one on an orthogonal tile until the last meeple is dropped.  The last meeple dropped must match one of the meeple colors on the ending tile.  

So you've moved.  Now what?

Well, first you are awarded all the meeples of the final color dropped on that tile (will always be at least 2), check ownership of the tile and activate the tiles power.

So in order of that last sentence...

Awarded Meeples:  

Each color has its own unique power.   

Yellow gives you end game points, 1 for each yellow dude and tiered points for most yellows.  In a 4 player game, most yellows gets 30 points, 2nd most gets 20, 3rd gets 10 and 4th place gets a rock.

Green gets you trade goods and Fakirs.  

Getting different trade goods gets you points.  It's exponential with a ceiling.  Each good is worth more and more until about the 7th good, and then each subsequent one is worth 10 points.  10 points is a lot, so deal with the ceiling.

Fakirs are kind of a wild card.  They make Red and Blue meeples better, or can be substituted in some White meeple costs.

Red removes a doober from another square.  The more reds you pulled off, the farther they can shoot.  This is handy, as I will explain in the the check ownership section.

Blues award you points immediately.   It's a formula that I'm not going to describe here because, even with context it makes my eyes cross.  Let's just say that a poor Blue play nets you about 2-4 points and a good blue play can net you 14+.

Whites earn you two points each and can also be used later to purchase genies.

no not that one.

no not that one either.

Genies add more VPs than just a white meeple and also grant you some additional power for the remainder of the game.

Check Ownership:

If after moving, you pull the last meeple off the tile you landed on OR you shoot the last meeple off with Red guys, you claim that tile.  Tiles are worth 4-15 VP.   The highest scoring tiles (10, 12 and 15 points) only have a single tile.  The remaining tiles are worth 4, 6 or 8.

Wonder Twin Powers Activate!: 

Whether you claimed ownership or not, the tile you landed has a power that activates.  For clarity sake, each tile has exactly one power, but the powers are duplicated on all 30 tiles.

Two are MUST dos.  If there's a tree symbol, you place an Oasis token on it.  If there's a building symbol you place a Palace token.  The controller of this token gets bonus points.  3 per oasis and 5 per palace.  And yes, multiple oasis and palaces can be on the same tile.

3 are MAY dos.

You MAY pay 3 points to buy any trade good within the first three spots of the trade good queue.  (oh yeah trade goods have a queue.  9 are available per round, order matters)

You MAY pay 6 points to buy any two trade good within the first 6 spots of the queue.

You MAY pay 1 white meeples and 1 Fakir or 2 white meeples to buy a Genie.

Bidding for turn order and Genies

Bidding

You bid points for turn order based on a track.

This is also exponential.  Teal is covering the highest bid possible of 18 points.

Pink is covering the 12 point bid.

then 8-5-3-1-0-0-0

Zeroes are first in, last out.  If you're the first to bid nothing, you will move last this round.  Then everyone fills in ahead of you.

now the order on when you place your bid is randomized for round 1, then based on the subsequent bids from here on out.  In the above pic, next round, Teal will bid first followed by Pink, Black and Orange.

Genies

Genies allow some exception to the core rules.  Like get a free trade good, or your Red guys can shoot two guys off a tile now.  Some require a white guy/Fakir activation and some are just free.  They all give VPs too, in a range of 4-10.

Tactics

zomg.  I am 100% Zoolander at this game.

Routinely, people I think struggled do well and the people I think did well struggle.

A winning score is about 140 points.  You start with 50 to bid with, and the game lasts about 9 turns.   So, the winners average netting 10 points a turn.  The weak scores are somewhere in the mid 120s, so the losers average around 8.

So my obvious weakness is I have no idea how to bid!  That seems important.  Get your net 10 per round.

It seems like green guys and yellow guys cancel each other out.  Like if you go hard to win yellow, there's a good chance you shorted yourself on green and vice versa.   And the practical points ceiling for both of these is around the same.  Green does has a higher maximum, but the opportunity cost for getting there is probably huge.

Loops!  Loops are important.  You can't backtrack on your move but you can visit the same tile multiple times with a loop.  The starting stack of meeples must have 5 minimum to make a loop.

Don't mess with the [10,12,15] stacks if there's 3 colors on them.  If you pick them up, you have simplified the ownership problem in such a way that you're now way less likely to claim these.

White meeples and Genies are problematic.  I'd definitely take advantage of them over the course of the game if I have them to spend and landed on the proper tile.  I'm just skeptical that you can build a strategy around targetting Genies.

So why good and not great?

I actually think this game is just a hair too complex.  The only thing you do is optimize your turn because for most of the game, there will be a 10+ point move out there.  

Now every move changes the board.  If I ever got to the point that I was able to routinely influence my opponents move by what I left this game might be great.   

It just seems like there's entirely too many moving parts to worry about 'good leaves'

F@$% The Marvel Cinematic Universe

This is the definitive ranking of the 13 MCU movies released so far, no arguments are allowed!  Violators of this policy will get their comments replied to with a stern frowny face.  So if you feel as if you can stand the fury of stern frowny face reply...BRING IT

:(

Part 1:   The one's I really liked

#1 :  Captain America:  The Winter Soldier (2014)

I like this one so much because it made Cap interesting.  Cap in the comics was meh.  The frozen for decades story was just ok in the original stories.  He went missing in 1945 and was found ~1965.   20 years is a long time, but you can still see society as it used to be.    70 years and literally everything changes.

Plus, its a great action film with kick ass fights.

#2:   Iron Man (2008)

This has been out so long, and so much has happened that maybe we forget how awesome this was!

Iron Man was a joke!  This was the Marvel Jay-Vee after they licensed away the X-Men and Spiderman.  Except, that RDJ is the perfect Tony Stark, and this was an incredibly entertaining movie!

#3:  Marvel's The Avengers (2012)

You know what this movie did (besides be gloriously fun)?  Redeem the Hulk.   Mark Ruffalo is the perfect Banner.  Serious Hulk is Serious can't carry a movie, because the CGI looks too ridiculous.  But Hulk with a pinch of Comic Relief is the proper amount of ridiculous.

Anyways, the culmination of the MCU's phase 1 was a well conceived ensemble movie.  The writers introduced all the characters before so they didn't have to rehash that again and instead was able to move onto the main story.

#4:  Captain America:  Civil War (2016)

Civil War was a great mixture of fun and serious.

You saw a friendship renew (Cap and Bucky) and one dissolve (Cap and Iron Man).  You saw actual consequences of the fight between the heroic factions.

But this movie also brought the fun.  There were great great moments of actual comic book fun through out this movie.

Part 2:  The mostly good but a cut below

#5:  Avengers:  Age of Ultron (2015)

The critic hive mind gives this one a mostly bad rap.  Yeah it's good, but not great.

In my opinion...this failed the expectations battle.  Avengers 1 was so much fun, how can this be anything but pedestrian?

Also, the MCU has a problem with signature arch-villain let down.  Ultron, Red Skull, and The Mandarin all failed to reach their potential.  In fact, to date the only MCU movie arch-villain worthy of that name is Loki (Purple Man and Kingpin in the Netflix series are both awesome)

And finally, AoU tries too hard with the quips.   By the end of the movie they were eye roll inducing.

But But But But...AoU is paced well, has a diabolical villain and heroes redemption.  Rotten Tomatoes puts it at 77%, which is in Iron Man 2 and Thor 1 territory.  And, that is a disservice.

#6:  Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I go against the critical hive mind once again!  Rotten Tomatoes score of 91!

I found this movie fun and very much worth seeing.  The Groot thrashing and smile was worth the price of admission on its own.

HOWEVER there is no MCU movie that dissolves into its oft repeated tropes more than GotG

Powerful Maguffin everyone is after?  CHECK

Heroic Redemption story?  CHECK

Band of protagonists able to put aside their differences and come together as a team?  CHECK

Bad Guy who hates everyone for Reasons?  CHECK

Climatic sky battle over a city?  CHECK

#7 Ant-Man (2015)

Honest Trailers basically slammed this as Iron Man retold at 1/64th scale.

And while at least partially true (and 100% funny), it's also overly harsh.  This movie made me care about a character with nearly the lamest powers available.  Shrink small and control insects?  And they made a movie about it?!?!?!?!?

Except Paul Rudd was great.  Micheal Douglas was great.  Evangeline Lilly was great.

So fairly good so far, except that the Yellow Jacket villain was meh.  And they spoiled the best shot in previews.

#8 Iron Man 3 (2013)

This barely makes my good but not great list.  There were infuriating things about it, but the things I liked, I liked a lot.

Like

#1 They got Tony Stark being a hero out of the f@#$ing suit.
#2  Extremis is a great Iron Man story arc.
#3 They got Tony Stark out of the f@#$ing suit.
#4 Ben Kingsley was great as Mandarin
#5 They got Tony...nm.

Hate

#1 Who was the villain really?  Oh wait, it was Aldritch Killian of Advanced Idea Mechanics.  Who else has trouble remembering that?
#2 They made Mandarin almost but not quite completely irrelevant.
#3 The ending.

#3 needs some elaboration.  Action movies in general, but especially Sci-Fi and Super Hero movies have a problem with sequels.  I call it the multiplication effect.  Each new climax has to be bigger and badder than ever.  Sometimes that doesn't work.   The Iron Legion all self destructing, turned an already busy complicated ending into a train wreck of explosion pr0n.

Part 3:  The Meh

#9 Captain America:  The First Avenger

This is the movie most likely to get a frowny face reply!

Here is why the movie is only meh.  The Pacing.

It takes way too long to make Steve Rogers into a super soldier and it also takes way too long to get him to Europe.  

But the setting with the dime store novel pulp tech, the cast and overall homage to the classic 1940s character was terrific.  Which partially redeems this.

#10 Thor (2011)

Thor almost needs to be graded on a curve.  This was a hard movie to get right, things could have gone south in about a dozen places.  Also, the MCU has a lot of movies I consider 'bridge" movies.  Lesser stories told to set up better movies.  Thor did a lot of the set up for Avengers 1.

Overall, I liked pretty much everything with Thor on Earth.  The 'fish out of water' scenes were especially fun to me.

Overall, I didn't like anything in Asgard.  Ok, the background and scenery was beautiful, but the story was dull dull dull.

Plus, Loki is the best Marvel Movie Villain yet.

 

Part 4:  The Not So Much

#11 Iron Man 2 (2010)

IM2 really suffered from the multiplication effect like IM3 but much much worse.  2 villains (Justin Hammer and Whiplash), 4 heroes (Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Nick Fury) and one busy convoluted ending.

Another bridge movie for Avengers 1.  Just for the introduction of Black Widow I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.  But I never have to watch this movie again :)

#12 Thor:  The Dark World

Quick, who was the bad guy?

Quick, what was the plot?

Quick, did anything memorable happen in this movie.

#13 The Incredible Hulk (2008)

If you can't remember anything about Thor 2, but tend to forget that the Edward Norton Hulk was part of the MCU what does that say?

F@#$ Point Salad Games

Overcompensating blogger overcompensates with two posts this week.


Today, I examine games classified as 'point salads' in a format I'm calling The Good, The Bad and The Whatever.

Last week, I played 5 Tribes for the 1st time.  And that is most definitely a points salad.  In fact it seems like a majority of the games I've played for the 1st time these last few years are points salad.  Including, but not limited to: Aquasphere, Castles of Burgundy, 5 Tribes, Libertalia, Terra Mystica, etc etc.

In fact, the game I designed (and shelved), Yellow Journalism probably also qualifies as a point salad.

So what makes a Point Salad a Point Salad?

A game in which nearly every move advances your score is considered a points salad.  The 'etymology' is imagine yourself at a salad buffet.  You can take a little of this and a little of that to build your points.

The Good

The best point salads games inherently have multiple ways to win.  I like multiple ways to win.

I mean, I really like that in games.  A one dimensional game is boring.  Most point salads have multiple paths to victory.

A points salad game has lots of moving parts/conflicting mechanics.  It's inherently re-playable, at least a few times.  They are complex and will take a couple runs through to figure out the strategy.

The Bad

Not all, but a good amount of point salad games lead to analysis paralysis.  And not a minor case either.  Too.  Many.  Options.  

The implementation of multiple paths to victory usually fall short.  After only a couple of plays, typically several moves become the pickled beets of the salad bar; no one ever takes them.  This is a huge huge deal for a game built on choices!  If about half the choices are obviously sub-optimal, the game devolves into a race for the other half.

The Whatever

A point salad occasionally has wildly divergent connotation with board gamers.  Seems like a bunch of people have decided there's a lot of people wrong on the internet.

It is a mechanism.  That's it.  

Like...

Most of the games that are ranked high per BGG, that I don't really like are "Area Control" games.  Does that make Area Control games stupid?  No it means that your friendly neighborhood blogger is wrong on the internet.  

But I'm not really wrong either.  I would be wrong if I refused to play a new game simply because one of it's mechanism's is "Area Control" or if I went into said game embittered and waiting for it to suck.

to me, Point Salads, Area Control or whatever kind of mechanisms occur in a board game are like musical styles.  I love punk/ska, but there's plenty of awful punk/ska out there.  I don't like country and western, but there's plenty of really good C&W too.

F@$ Captain America: Civil War

YIKES
YIKES
YIKES

2 months without a post.  Sorry New Years Resolution.


Anyways back with a movie review.

The Verdict first

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.  It is not my absolute favorite MCU movie, but it's easily in the top 5 with Ironman, Avengers 1, and Cap2: Winter Soldier.

The Conception

once again, the Marvel producers conceived this movie well.  It's based on the "Civil War" cross over series, which pits heroes against heroes after the passage of the Super Hero Registration Act.  It's a great story, and to me, it seems like obvious source material for a film.  I speculate that this arc was included in the MCU timeline early on, and a whole bunch of films built to here.

The other thing Marvel does well here, is diverge from the source material as necessary.  The law is an international treaty instead and the story is otherwise really stripped down.

But who cares?  The core of the story is the argument on who should control a 'super heroes' power.

The Writing/Directing/Acting

Writing:  Good for what it was.  Like you're not making Citizen Kane.  I'm going to compare to Mad Max Fury Road here.  MMFR was fantastic because it didn't ever delve into exposition; it kept the story moving and didn't explain stuff when it could show you.  

Now I don't think CA:CW was as good at that as MMFR, but it really didn't have any agonizing slow parts.  

Also, the script gives several characters a chance to shine without derailing the central story line.  That is actually  hard to do (see any number of ensemble films or TV series).  

Directing:  Very very good.  The fight scenes are epic, and the stunts/special effects never look ridiculous.  Again, that is very very hard to do.

Acting:  Again, good for what it was.  The MCU is not casting Olivier, Hoffman or Newman into the key roles.   These films have a knack for getting the actor to buy into the character motivations.

So what specifically did I like about it?

I liked how the previous films shaped the principal characters motivations.  

Captain America :  Wary of organizational interference because of the events of Winter Soldier.  He will not submit to UN control.

Iron Man:  Plagued by guilt from Age of Ultron, confidence in his own judgement shattered, Iron Man wants someone else to hold the reins.

No who's right and who's wrong?  They're both right, they're both wrong.  And that is an interesting dynamic to explore.  

Oh yeah, and the awesome shots and quips.  Antman's big reveal was worth the price of admission by itself, and so was the Spiderman post credits scene.  The final showdown was also epic.

F!@#.  Awesome and Epic in the same paragraph.  Time to quit while I'm behind.

F@#$ Eldritch Horror Characters: A partial review

It was a NYR to de-abandon this blog with two posts a month, so sometimes we're going to get a clunker!

So more waxing poetic about Eldritch Horror; this time I attempt to answer which characters you should play with!


First up in my character my reviews, 4 of my favorites.  Look for underrated/overrated soonish as well as what the hell were the designers thinking with the musician and the astronomer?


A disclaimer:  I'm not trying to make judgements on how powerful an investigator is, although they're probably pretty powerful if they are one of my favorites.  My rankings are biased to how fun I have playing them.

#1 Ursula downs.

Stats:  Versatile, no 4's but no 1's either.  She also starts with an improvement token for any stat so she can go several directions, spell caster, fighter gate closer.

Powers:  This is where Ursula excels.  Her action doesn't occur all that often, but when you do get to move along an uncharted and take another action she's lightning fast.

Here passive is so frikkin awesome words can hardly do it justice.  She gets a free focus asset once a turn.  Need a re-roll?  Have one for free!  There are so so many encounters and mythos cards that this helps with!

Gear:  Lame.   The improvement token is nice but her item is free clues requiring a specific encounter type and an additional test.  It's better than no gear at all, but she will definitely need help here.

Final word:  Versatile stats and an amazing passive, Ursula fits into virtually every party.  She excels with the Egypt and Antarctica sideboards because she gets to use her uncharted move action often.

#2 Tommy Muldoon.

Stats:  Versatile, no 4's but no 1's either.  Starts with a will improvement token.

Powers:  Pretty marginal.  The the action is pulling a monster with toughness 3 or less to his location.  Every once in a while that's handy (I'm looking at you Yig!) but it's not something you use constantly.  His passive is also marginal, if he is sharing a space with other investigators they get to ignore monsters when resolving encounters.  Also handy once in a while, but over all pretty meh.

Gear:  Awesome awesome awesome.  Tommy gets the best starting weapon in the game, the Carbine Rifle.  +5D strength once a round.

Final word:  The fact is that I probably over rate Tommy because of his gun.   But way too many games start with a ridiculously powerful monster on a gate or an epic monster mystery.  Tommy allows the party to face those monsters  without turns of asset acquisition.  I say, Tommy, like Ursula fits into nearly every party.

#3 Agnes Baker

Stats:  Spell caster heavy with 4 Lore, but no 1's.

Powers:  Pretty good!  Action test lore-1 to gain a spell.  Passive, spend a health to gain +2 lore when resolving a spell affect.

Gear:  Fairly good.  A storm of spirits spell and a a profane tome.  The tome grants a will reroll during combat and storm of spirits substitutes lore for strength during combat.  Her lore combined with her passive makes her a pretty good secondary monster hunter.

Final word:  The stats combined with the powers make her versatile, and I like versatility lots.   She'll probably have to rest a lot though :).  I don't like her nearly as much as Tommy or Ursula but she certainly has a spot in most parties.

#4 George Barnaby

Stats:  Support.  1 Strength has him fleeing monsters all the time.  Even with weapons and improvement tokens he's only going to be a secondary fighter.  3 lore, 4 influence and 3 will make him a credible gate closer ans mystery solver though.

Powers:  Very good.  He discards debts and detains based on a handshake test.  His passive is spend a focus to add +1 to a die roll.

Gear:  Meh.  A pocket watch prevents delays which is awesome when that happens, but the variance of the delay occurrence means that the watch is only adequate.  Same with the investment.  It takes a reckoning to promote the investment to a funding, and then another to promote the funding to the benefit.  The funding results also vary so wildly that an investment is...meh.


Final word:  My favorite support character.  I like that he's not one dimensional, if you need him to attempt other things he can probably step up.   His power is mostly used for removing debts, but it's actually way way better when you can discard a detain instead.

F@#$ Keyflower

F@#$ Keyflower

What makes a good game as opposed to a meh game?
What makes a great game?
What makes an astonishingly wonderful game that makes it into your personal top 5?

I need to slow down, I've only played Keyflower 4 times (and only once correctly), so I can't put it in my personal best just yet.  But this game certainly has the potential to make it onto my all time favorites list.

Theme:

Build the bestest colony in all the land!

Not the greatest theme integration in the world, but certainly not the worst.    Pretty solid if that's something you look for.

Gameplay:

It's worker placement, with auction/draft and tile placement aspects.  

Everyone starts with some end game tiles.  These tiles are auctioned for round 4, so you know some of what's coming and maybe can plan accordingly.

Everyone starts with 8 secret and random Meeples in the 3 base colors:  Red, Yellow and Blue.

The round one tiles (Spring in game turns) are revealed.  I don't know the total number of tiles included, I think it's 12 total, and the amount you lay out is based on how many people are playing.

Tiles do something for you when you play there.  You get base resources (Iron, Stone, Wood), you get a wild card resource (Gold), you get more meeples, you can move resources around, and some other stuff.

You can bid on them to purchase or activate them with your meeples.

First the bidding.

One of the unusual things about this game is that it uses table position to track who has bid on what, and not player color.  The tiles are hexagonal and you place the meeples corresponding to where your sitting.  Here's a picture to show that

The tile in the foreground is currently going to the head of the table, and the one in the background is going to the player to his right. 

So meeple color.  That's a worker "suit".  First one to play on a tile, either by activation or by bidding determines that tiles suit for the round.  So both highlighted tiles are suited Yellow.

So high amount of workers wins the tile, and at end of the round bring it back and place it in your tableau.

Oh yeah you can also bid on incoming boats.  In the above picture those tiles to the left with stacks of meeples on them are the colonists arriving this round that you can use next round.   You bid like normal on boat draft order, with the earlier selections usually getting the boats with the more doobers loaded on them. 

Next, tile activation

To activate a tile, you place a worker on it.  Here's another pic courtesy of board game geek (like the above).

So 1st activation costs 1 worker.

2nd activation costs 2 workers.

3rd and final activation costs 3 workers.

So in the above pic, both tiles with doobers on them have been activated twice, and you can tell that because there's 3 total guys one each hex.  

Meepless used this way are recycled by the tile's owner for next round.  So whoever owns those 2 tiles above is getting 6 dudes!  Meeples used for winning bids aren't recycled.

So that's the game play.  You can do two things with your workers.  Bid on tiles or activate them.

Wait, What?

The genius of this game lies in the tiles.

First, you can upgrade them.  They give better rewards and victory points upon activation.  Like get moar resources or move moar stuff.  It's a game of competitive cooperation; you've spent your turn upgrading your tile which makes it more appealing, and now have to wait for the turn to come back around for you to use it yourself.  Good chance you won't get the cheap activation.

Second, some careful though went into which round should certain tiles appear.  Round 1 is pretty heavy on resource production.  Round 2 is kind of a hybrid round, a little resource production, a little utility, and a little meeple recruitment.   Round 3 is victory point heavy, and round 4 is all victory points all the time.

Third, I haven't even talked about the Green suit!

The Green Suit

The Green suit isn't trump, it's just a regular old suit except rarer.

You have to specially recruit Green Meeples using the in-play tiles.  

Now, because they are (usually) so rare, bidding on something with a green is akin to marking your territory.  If someone wants to over bid you with two green, that represents a substantial investment for that there tile.

Games within Games

I count two major ones and another two minor ones.

Playing on tiles is a game within a game.  You get the stuff, but you're setting up your opponent better for next round.  Upgrading is the same way in reverse.  You're making it more appealing to play there, which means people will, blocking you out of the cheap moves.

Managing your green guys is a game within a game.  So you've recruited a green guy, now what?  Well if you bid with him this round he's gone.  If you use him on one of your own tiles, well you've successfully recycled him but also spiked that tile so no one else will ever play there.  Or if you just save him, you deny yourself another move.

End Game Boats are a minor game within a game.   The end game boat draft gets you VPs in varying ways.  One of the VP boats grants exponential boats based on how many boats you own; the only way to get more than one boat is to bid on one during round 2.   Those boats seem limited.  They give you some useful utility but can't be upgraded or played on.  They are truly not worth much unless you get a bunch AND the exponential boat.

Gold is a minor game within a game.  Just having gold on hand is worth a VP.  But you can wild card gold of any basic resource type.  Is that wild card worth it?  Probably!  But if you're using two gold as wild cards on one upgrade it probably is worth your while to go acquire an Iron, Wood or Stone.

 

Tips

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I've won once and had two solid games out of the four played so far.  But that's completely just based on good tactical plays and no underlying strategy.

I think you need to look for good value.  Like a 1 meeple play on your opponents upgraded tile is almost always going to benefit you more than him, so look for those.  

Keep disciplined on early round bids; given the fog of war (because next rounds tiles won't revealed until this rounds is complete), it's hard to justify anything but a green meeple recruiter being worthy of a 3 bid.

Keep doubly disciplined on Summer boats.  They have neat powers, but the lack of an upgrade to VPs and no playing on them is a really big trade off.

If you can, save a stack of one color for late in the round.   Play them on your own tiles because they're coming right back too ya.