F@#$ Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

How the hell have I gone 6 months without reviewing Puerto Rico?



Plot:  colonize Puerto Rico building up your plantations.


Goal:  Its a game about victory points.  You get VP's by shipping goods and purchasing buildings.   Special end game buildings are expensive, but are worth lots of victory points.

Mechanics:  Lengthy rules here

Pick a role.  First person to pick, the 'governor' rotates from player to player, turn order is predictable but not always the same.  The person that picks a role gets a bonus, but everyone may get a chance to participate.  No one is guaranteed participation, but multiple people may go on the role selectors turn.

 
Quick roles here.

Settler - grab a plantation, the picker may get a quarry instead.
Mayor - get guys.  Picker gets an extra guy.
Builder - buy buildings if you can.  Picker spends one less.
Trader - sell goods to the auction house.  Picker gets +1 money
Captain - everyone ships goods for victory points.  Picker gets +1 VP for the first good he ships.
Craftsman - everyone gets goods.  Craftsman gets an extra one.
Prospector - there are two of these in 5 player.  Sole role that ONLY the picker participates in.  Get 1 money.

After all players have picked a role, the remainder are bribed +1 money as an incentive.  It is possible to get quite a bit of money from bribed roles.


The plantations.  There are 5 plantations worth 0-4 in trade value.  In ascending order, corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco and coffee.  Corn is special that it needs no production building.  Or you can possibly get a quarry.  A Quarry drops the price of buildings.



The buildings.  There are 2 types of buildings, production or violet.  Production buildings are paired up with plantations, both need to be manned when craftsmen hits to make goods.  Violet buildings provide some kind of rules exception, like more money with trades or more victory points when you ship.



Game Play:  Game play is slow.  There are quite a lot permutations and variables to figure.  It is a deep game though, there's a lot of guessing what your opponents would do and trying to thwart their moves.

Review:  Ten years ago I found this game revolutionary.  The whole role rotation thing, the bribing of unpopular roles, the player interactions was fantastic.  Unfortunately, this is another game with really good computer implementation.   I played it lots via computer, and it goes a whole lot faster.   We haven't played this face to face in years.

Tips:

* be careful when picking mayor and craftsman.  Those are the most advantageous for the players who did not pick that role and the extra guy or extra good are often not worth it.

* defensive captain.  Use captain to thwart trading especially if you don't have the high value goods.

* the winner is most often the player who gets the most and/or best synergy with the 5 end game buildings.  It's not a lock though, a shipping VP win is still very possible.  You can find the void.

F@#$ Tobago

Tobago

Plot:  You are a treasure seeker in a race for artifacts.

This gets a few more words than my normal plot sections because this one actually works.   The game play, board and pieces all work together well with the theme. 

Goal: 

Grab loot!  Loot may as well be called victory points because it has no impact on game play like most games involving money do. 

Mechanics:

The hexagonal board has several different terrain types and 3 different landmarks.  On the map, you place 3 huts, 3 palm trees and 3 statues.  Statues require a specific hexagonal facing because they do something special later in the game.  Huts and palm trees do nothing except provide points of reference.

Each player picks a starting point for his SUV, and is dealt a hand of 4 clue cards. 

Clue cards narrow the locations of the 4 treasures; each treasure has a corresponding color attached to it, black, white, yellow or brown.

A turn you can do 3 things.

1)      Play a clue card.  A clue card MUST narrow the possible locations by at least one to be played.  These cards read something like “This treasure is in the largest jungle”, “This treasure in not in the scrublands”, or “This treasure is within two spaces of a hut”.  Strings of clues will ultimately be played, so mark yours.  Helping narrow down the location guarantees you a share of the loot.

-          Treasures can only be retrieved when the search has been narrowed to 1.  Duh.

2)      Move your SUV.  This might be hard to explain with words but here goes.  An SUV gets 3 moves.   Moving within a single terrain type counts as a move, and crossing into a new terrain type counts as a move.  So you can start on the far side of the jungle, and drive 6 spaces to a new border for a single move.  But crossing over from the jungle to the beach is one space and counts as a new move.  Then you can move anywhere into the beach for the final move. 

-          Picking up a treasure kills the remainder of your SUV’s move.

3)      Discard your clue hand and draw 4 new cards.

Scoring

Picking up treasure starts the scoring phase.

Each loot card has a value of 2 through 6.

Each player that helped narrow the search gets a share of the loot, and the player that picked up the treasure gets an extra share.  Order of who played the clues matters too, first one in gets first choice.

So for example, a treasure string has the pattern of blue, red, red, green, blue and then red picked up the treasure.  Blue gets two shares and first choice.  Red gets three shares and green gets one share for six shares total.  Seven loot cards are dealt; each player gets to peek at his shares worth (blue 2, red 3, green 1) with one remaining secret.   These are shuffled then revealed one at a time.  First player in (blue) gets to either take or pass on this treasure, and it works its way down the string, each player taking or passing in turn.  If no one takes, that treasure is discarded.  

At this point statues trigger.  Look at a statues facing, then travel along that facing till you reach the end of the island, at that spot an ‘amulet’ is dropped.  Rotate the statues clockwise for the next amulet drop.  An SUV must drive over an amulet to retrieve them, but picking them up does not cost moves like picking up treasure.  Amulets basically give you free moves.  If you play an amulet you can do any of the above 3 moves listed and go again. In addition, you can remove ONE treasure marker from the board.

After all loot is allocated, the player who picked up the treasure immediately starts a new clue string for that treasure.

Game play

Game play is surprisingly quick.  After the example turns I was absolutely convinced that this game would be an analysis paralysis nightmare.   Totally not the case.  First, you only have 4 clue cards to look at.  Second, chances are you can’t play at least 2 of them anywhere anyways.   Turns go pretty quick.

The tactical and strategic decisions are solid.  How much do I narrow down this treasure?  Which treasure do I narrow down?  When do I go and pick something up?  These are all interesting questions.

A couple of possible design flaws, one a little nit picky and one not so much.

Nit Picky:  Having a terrain type of lake that you can travel through and ocean which you can not drive through is needlessly confusing.   Once we adapt to that contradiction the game plays fine, but honestly, a million different terms for terrain in the lexicon and the designer picks lake.

Not so Nit Picky:  In 3 player, it looks as if the first player to go has a huge advantage.  Being first on the clue string is pretty important and player one gets to start 2 treasures.  In the two games we played, the first player to go won by 10+ points both times.

Tips

*Moving your SUV has huge opportunity costs.  Unless you pick up a treasure that turn, it costs you a loot card.  Have a good reason before you move.

*Amulets only get you one move.  So if you spend a move to pick up a single amulet you have effectively passed.  Only get amulets on the way to a treasure OR if you can get at least 2 with the same move.

*Early game, it looks like getting a lot of cards down early in a long clue string is a great move.  Once treasures start getting picked up, I’m not sure that the big strings are worth it.  But having 2 games total under my belt, I can’t say for sure what the ideal clue string is.

F@#$ Filler Games

Today I write a rambling stream of conscious essay on filler games.

What is a filler game, as defined by Darren?  

A filler game is easy to teach, easy to play and takes very little time to play, ideally 10 minutes or less.

Why these qualifications?  It’s how we play these games.  Let’s say we have 7 people attending a game night.  There are maybe 2 games we own that play 7, and generally don’t play 7 well.  It’s not the games fault either, that many players is unwieldy and it makes turns take forever.  I refer you to my “What makes a good game” post; I want it to be my turn lots, everyone else can F@#$ off.  So our solution in general is to split into two groups.  It is a guarantee that these groups will not finish at the same time.  So to avoid that stupid socializing and talking to each other, we play filler games.

Easy to teach:  These games have got to get going quickly.  If the game takes a half hour to teach, you won’t get through turn 1 by the time group 2 finishes.

Easy to play:  There should be no deep decisions.  Analysis of your move should take 5 seconds maximum.  Same reason, this is supposed to be quick so when the 2^nd group finishes you can move onto the deeper game fare.

Playtime :  10 minutes is my ideal, but a half hour is still doable in a lot of circumstances.

No Thanks! is probably THE fill in game.  It meets each and every qualification and is a fantastic game.  This is the game we fill in with most.

Some others, Dice of Cataan works, but Dice of Cataan is pretty dumb.  Same with Roll Through the Ages.  NF doesn’t own Wyatt Earp or For Sale, but both of those play well and qualify.

Lost Cities board game is border line.  Normally the game takes 90 minutes to play, but you can choose to play 1 round and that takes about 30 minutes.

I think Space Alert might eventually qualify too, but currently if we break out Space Alert we are playing that for at least 2 hours.

F@#$ Kingsburg

Kingsburg

Plot:  gain the Kings favor by building cool stuff and defeating his enemies.

Goal:  It's a game about victory points.

Mechanics:  Bear with me, going by memory of a game I played once a month ago. 

Rounds are seasonally based.  Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter.  I "think" that winter does not have a build phase and instead has an invasion phase.

A season has 2 parts. 

Part 1 is check status and maybe get a reward.  It's a most/least proposition.  Like if you have the most buildings you get a victory point in Summer, or if you have the least buildings you get more resources in spring.

Part 2 is gathering.  Roll 3D6 as a base (sometimes you can get extra dice via rewards or buildings previously bought)

There are 18 spots on the board, numbered from 1-18.  You claim a spot, and its rewards by placing a die or multiple dice onto it.  For example lets say you roll 2-5-6.  You have 7 spots you can place on. Play on the 2, 5, 6 with a single die.  Play on the 7, 8 and 11 with combinations of 2 dice, or on the 13 with all your dice.  Spots are claimed one at a time via a draft, so if you save dice you are running a risk of being shut out of a spot. 

The spots give benefits in various combinations.  Some give a single benefit only, some give you a choice and some give multiple benefits.  Things you can acquire are

Resources - wood, stone or gold.  Used to buy buildings.
Victory points - used to win the game.
Knights - used to defeat the invading horde in winter.
Clairvoyance - used to peak at what's coming in winter so you can plan accordingly.

All buildings score VP, and most provide some kind of rules exception.  The one that I bought that I liked the most was the market.  Once a turn, the market lets you adjust a numeric total by +/- 1.  Its pretty powerful, it makes it hard for your foes to block you.


Winter is Coming. 

at the end of the year, something invades.  The invader comes with a strength number.  This number can be approximated by anyone, and is known exactly by players who took a spot with a free peek benefit.  If you beat it, good things happen.  If it beats you, bad things happen.  If you push, nothing happens.  Generally speaking, you don't want to lose.  Pushing 'might' be acceptable, but the cost of losing can be crippling.  The exact consequences vary, but some invaders destroy your best building.  Your best building probably took several resource rolls to build.

Tactics:

Again, these are just my impressions from a game I played once a month ago.  Take these with a grain of salt.

- the way the board is set up, until you get to the really advanced spots (like 16+ or so), everything is near to a 1-1 resource per die ration.  What the hell does Darren mean by that?  Well, spots 1-6 get you 1 resource and spots 7-12 get you 2 (in general) and so on.  So the tactical advantage of going for these larger spots is the decreased chance of being shut out.
- the exception to this is the military spots.  right before the winter invasion you are allowed to spend 2 resources to get a knight.  The 1-6 range spot (I think its 5) gets you 1 military, so in a way that's worth 2 resources.  The 7-12 spot (I think its 8) gets you 2 military AND a peak at the invader.  These look like really efficient plays.
 

Expansions:

We played with a lot of these.  So many that I don't even know what components are in the core game.  I think the expansions inlcuded:

Alternate tech trees.  Buildings have a path along a row, and usually they are the same for everyone.  An expansion allows you to replace a building row.

Roles/Occupation.  Draw 3 cards with some kind of role on them.  Pick one, this gives you some kind of benefit to use during the game.  Like extra resources, moves or military.

Combat Tokens.  Everyone gets an identical hand of tokens.  These are numbered from 0-4.  During the invasion show down, you play a token and adjust your military up by the corresponding amount.  At the end of the game, you will have 1 token left.  You get matching victory points to that number.

Review:

The die roll/location draft is innovative and clever, and makes the tactical decisions fun.  The buildings provide plenty of rules exceptions, so this made strategic decisions fun.  This is absolutely worth playing again, 7.5/10.  Having said that, I kind of would like to see another designer take a crack at this mechanic.  Race for the Galaxy is a dramatic improvement over San Juan, and both use the same 'your hand is your currency mechanic'.  And while I like this game as is, I can't help but suspect that a fresh try would smooth a lot of things out.

F@#$ The Avengers

just when you think I'm zigging, I'm zagging.  Movie Review!

Back when I bought and read comics, Avengers were my go to title.  Hawkeye and Captain America were in fact the last two titles I collected.  So this movie has to live up to Star Wars like nostalgia for me.



It's based loosely on the Ultimates universe, which tries to re-imagine the classic heroes as they would appear in the current world.  No one believes Thor is from Asgard for instance, and actually institutionalize him.

Anyways, it might be hard for me to review this without giving away spoilers, but here goes.  Go see this movie.

Avengers was conceived well.  One of the biggest weakness of the X-Men franchise is there are simply too many X-Men.  With one or two exceptions (Rogue and Wolverine) none of the heroes personal narrative was told adequately.  And they compounded that problem by cramming more X-Men into the sequels.  Avengers solved that problem by having the more popular heroes have their own solo film first, where the individual narrative was already told.  You already have an interest in Cap, Shellhead, Thor and Hulk.  Now you can argue that Hawkeye and Black Widow were under utilized, and perhaps that's true.  But it sure didn't feel that way.  This was the Avengers story, about how a scrappy bunch of heroes put aside their differences to thwart the epic evil bad guy.  Besides, although Hawkeye is my favorite, even I have to admit he is small potatoes in the Marvel Universe.

Avengers was cast well.  Robert Downey Jr. once again proves that he was an inspired choice for Iron Man.  Mark Ruffalo is the best Hulk yet.  Chris Hensworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye are all solid.  Yeah they aren't as dynamic as Iron Man, but neither are the characters.   Scarlett Johansson is great as Black Widow, and Samuel L. Jackson is fun as Nick Fury.  He doesn't drop an F-bomb, but he does get to scream at stupid people like only Samuel L. Jackson can.

2 hours and 22 minutes is a long run time for most movies.  Avengers is paced well, and the action builds on the last scene as we wait for the climax.   If I want to nit pick, I will say that some fight scenes drag just a bit (I get it, Iron Man and Thor are both strong...) but that is exactly what I described it as.  Picking Nits.

The story was adequate.  Look, I'm not looking for the Usual Suspects here, adequate is good enough.  In a movie like this, reaching too far with a story can actually get in the way.

The dialogue was fun and really is what makes this a great super hero movie instead of an okay one.  I am including some non-verbal actions from Hulk, since usually all his character does is scream.  So no specific spoilers here, but Hulk has a couple literal laugh out loud moments.

A request for comments.  For a week or two, don't mention specifics.  I will delete them as 1 of my 3 readers hates spoilers.