Bringing back the Nerdy Recap

Lords of Waterderp

Juan just KILLED everyone.  Key here was intrigue cards, he played lots and lots and lots and got pretty good benefits.  Buildings did not play a huge role, on turn 2 we had a selection that just sucked.  So these became road blocked till they were bribed enough to make it worth getting.  

My game got screwed when I saw an opportunity to cascade quests.  I completed quest #1 which rewarded me 4 thieves and a quest.  Which I grabbed a quest from the board and immediately completed.  Whoops.  Should of read the quest closer.  Check that.  I should have read that period.  Quest took like 7 dudes and netted me ZERO points immediately, and two points per intrigue card played from here on out.  I had like 6 moves and 1 intrigue card left when I got this.  Whoops.

Truth is Juan won by 30 points and this had no bearing on the outcome, but playing better means I could have gotten within 10 of the leader.

Alhambra

I won!  Hooray!

I provided more evidence that longest wall wins.  I don't totally believe that, but allowing for exaggeration for effect it is absolutely true.

Anecdotal and with no actual statistics to back this up:  The player with the longest wall wins at least half the time.  Of the remaining wins, at least half of those are won by a player with a very competitive wall; defined as no more than 1 or 2 off the pace in rounds 1 and 2 and no more than 3 behind for end game.  A good wall total is a function of how many players are in the game.  Last night at a 4 player table, 15 was the longest and 7 was the shortest.

Now I had some tenets I played with last night too.

#1)  I cared very little about which suit the tiles were in during round 1.  Early on, you just want to get tiles in play.

#2) If there was an efficient exact change buy, I got it.  In 4 player, chances are every buy is going to advance your game.

#3) If something really helped and I had the money I bought it and said hell with efficiency.  The timing really worked out well because in all 3 rounds an inexact buy was followed by the scoring phase.

An interesting facet was that I didn't win a single color at round 3, but finished 2nd in half the suits and 3rd in the other half.

No Thanks!

My Eeyore like braying about taking the low valued cards proved justified as I got my ass kicked 3 games in a row.

F#@$ Breaking in new players

Nerdy Friday had two new players last night.  Welcome to my co-worker Brittany and her husband Bobby.  I said I'd blog about this; so to get this out of the way.  Brittany prematurely revealed two scoring cards in Amen-Re last night, the 9 farmer and east side/west side river card.

 now for the worst segue ever written, how do you get new people to return to your game night?

See its hard, gaming tables have different personalities and its hard to say if its a good match or not.

At Nerdy Friday, most everyone likes to win; its very competitive.  It's good-natured competition but its still fierce.  (as an aside here, while we are competitive we don't have a capital G 'Gamer' personality disorder.  We keep things friendly)

At Nerdy Friday we like to tease one one another.  Again good-natured, but you will get teased sometime during the night.  Probably by me.

Now are you wrong if you don't like fierce competition with a side of trash talk?  Absolutely not.  Games are supposed to be fun.  So if our style isn't to your taste, the only way to do it wrong is to come back and not have fun again.

Brittany and Bobby were both delights to play with last night.  They were friendly, smart, quick playing and very capable of firing back teasing barbs of their own and I hope they come back.

So how do I recruit them?  Well I don't.  I'm way too old to seek new gamers approval, all I can be is myself.  If it was fun for them I totally look forward to seeing them again, otherwise c'est le vie. 

Maybe its analogous to a new job interview when you already have a good job.  At that point you're not too needy, you really are finding a good fit.

F#$% the Newsroom

I am an Aaron Sorkin fan, just to make that clear.  I loved the West Wing; it might be my favorite show of all time.  Studio 60 was ok, and probably deserved a 2^nd season. But with the bidding war and excessive rights fees I can totally see why it didn’t make it past season 1.

The Newsroom is probably a bit better than Studio 60 and not as good as The West Wing.  Which isn’t quite fair, WW took a season to really hit its stride, and Studio 60 started slow too.  The Newsroom so far has lurched along.  Some episodes inducing cringes and some episodes showing flashes of Sorkin’s previous brilliance.  Quick take on the first 5.

• “We Just Decided Too” - very good pilot, and average episode.  Pilots are tough because you got to get people caring about characters you just introduced.  The beginning rant was awesome and right in the snappy banter sweet spot.

• “News Night 2.0”  -  lame.  It’s hard to buy that the ‘best EP there is’ is such a moron with email.

• “The 112^th Congress” – lame.  Although watching Jeff Daniels smack down the Tea Party was fun.  This episode covered 6 months in an hour.  It finally does introduce the bad guys though, stupid upper management.

• “I’ll try to fix you” -  good.  I really liked the depiction of everyday life and petty squabbles getting put on hold when something really important happens.

• “Amen” – good.  Explored the difficulty and consequences of trying to cover Arab Spring.   

Which brings us to “Bullies”

Bullies was good, but frustrating.  By my count there were 3 recycled West Wing plot elements.

#1 – Gay Republican refuses to be defined solely by his sexual orientation.  This right out of “The Portland Trip”   Quoting from that Wiki article

“Josh spends the evening discussing an anti-gay marriage bill (similar to the actual 1996 Defense of Marriage Act) with a gay Republican congressman, and can't really understand how a gay man could throw his support behind a measure that says he's a lesser citizen of the U.S. The Congressman says that he agrees with most of the Republican agenda and doesn't have to base his entire life around his sexuality, but does show visible contempt when some GOP colleagues fawn over his efforts in support of the bill.”

#2 – Primary protagonist reluctantly seeks therapy because he can’t sleep, and it is revealed that both male leads were abused by their fathers.  “Five Nights”

#3 – Snarky bodyguard watches over reluctant principle; CJ Craig in West Wing and Will McAvoy in Newsroom.  This is pretty much Mark Harmon’s character Simon Donovan.  This one bugged me the least because the story arc will not be the same, at least I doubt there will be sexual tension.  Plus the snark was really entertaining and the bodyguard might be my favorite character on the show.

So why does this matter?

It’s actually praise worthy to draw inspiration from previous works.  The classics are classic for a reason and very little is truly original.  When you crib near verbatim you are turning your show into West Wing’s greatest hits.    And if the show keeps going in this direction I will just sign up for Amazon Prime and stream WW’s reruns.

F@#$ revisiting games

I say often when initially reviewing a game that I haven’t played it enough to make a firm review yet.  So here’s the first revisit post.

Samurai

Mike actually reviewed this, and I posted that I hated it in the comments and elsewhere.  I am now backing off of that for a couple of reasons.

 

·         I have improved at this game.  Totally self centered and self serving, but something clicked and while I still don’t think I will win often, I am no longer completely over matched.

·         Nerdy Friday went/is going through a stretch of playing mostly 3 player games.  There quite frankly are not many games that play well with 3.  Samurai plays 3 quite well.  And while it will never be my first choice, if it comes down to playing Lost Cities or Galaxy Trucker for the 3rd time in a row, or breaking out the under played Samurai, I say Samurai.

Tip:  This game requires an ambush mind set.  If you just close your own cities the best return you can hope for is 2 tiles for 1 goodie.  I don’t know what the winning goodie ratio is, but it is certainly lower than 2-1.  You must get help from other people to lay tiles onto cities you capture, and the best way to do that is plan/improvise ambushes.

7 Wonders

I still like this game, but it might be played out.  We haven’t played it in months and I haven’t really missed it.  While not as set piece as chess, there are axioms to follow that makes early turns into a predictable choreograph.  This is made worse with fewer players at the table.  I really feel this game needs 5 to function well, and if we get 5 at NF, we are probably playing something we don’t get the chance too as often as 7 Wonders.

Tips:  The set piece choreography is resources early in round 1, especially if they match your recipes for Wonder builds.  Military late in every round so your neighbors have less chance to match you.

Age of Empires

My main problem with this game is how to win.  A colonizing strategy wins entirely too much, military/exploration wins entirely too little (and by little I mean you can’t focus on these at all, they are only useful as support for colonizing), and mercantilism depends so much on what you can buy.  Also the ‘Incan gold’ buy is broken broken broken.  So the game devolves down to who can maximize the priest landings and whether the mercantile player gets good 3^rd round draws.  Game takes way too long for two paths to victory.

Galaxy Trucker

I actually really like this game which is amazing since if I play with Mike I will not win.  It might be played out for a while though.  The game can be incredibly frustrating, and while I laugh at myself for screwing this up I can see where this makes it not much fun.  This might be an instance where the game is only good when similar skill levels play.  I mean if most everyone sucks at building the ship, hilarity ensues.  If most everyone builds a good ship, it’s competitive and fun.  If the table is split between the two, it’s not much fun at all.

Game review index updated 7-17-2012

Lords of Waterderp
Amun-Re
Kingsburg
Tobago
Puerto Rico
Agricolo
Goa
Crayon Train Games
Steam
Chaos in the Old World
Thebes
Space Alert - Darren's Take
Space Alert Mike's take
Settlers of Cataan
Bohnanza (the bean game)
Clash of the Gladiators
D&D 4th Edition
Carcassone
Automobiles
Last Night on Earth
Galaxy Trucker
Dixit
7 Wonders
Dominion
Hammer of the Scots
Ticket to Ride
Alhambra
Scrabble
Age o Empires: Age of Discovery
Samurai
Saint Petersburg
Lost Cities
Fresco
Notre Dame- Mike's take
Ra
Race for the Galaxy
Notre Dame - Darren's take
Olympos (not Olympus)
Brass
Smallworld
Stone Age
No Thanks!
Olympus

F@#$ Lords of Waterdeep

Lords of Waterderp
and the Waterderp FAQ

Plot:  gain glory for you Waterdeep faction by completing quests and constructing buildings!

Theme:  You can easily transfer the mechanics of this game into any other, but surprisingly the theme works very well.  The resource cubes represent 'adventurers', and you recruit a number of heroes matching some quest's recipe to complete.  Honestly this works just as well as 'gather 6 stone, 3 wood and a gold to build this monument.'  Plus you store your adventurers in a tavern, what could be more fantasy RPGish?


Mechanics:  You play one of 5 factions.  The factions are currently identical, but WotC loves expansions so no telling how long that lasts.  The first twist is you are dealt a Waterdeep Lord as your patron.  These Lords are kept secret, and gain bonus VPs based on the type of quests you complete.  More on that later.



Gameplay is a straight forward worker placement mechanic.  The spots have thematically themed names, but whatever.  Only one worker can be placed in a spot, and here's what you can do.

1. Recruit heroes.  Basic move is 2 fighters/rogues per action, or 1 cleric/wizard
2. Get quests.  4 quests are always face up for everyone to examine.  You can go grab one.  The quest grabbing will have an additional benefit like get more gold.
3. Get 4 gold.  
4.  Go first next round and draw an Intrigue card.
5. Play an Intrigue card.  Intrigue cards are action cards, the provide some benefit to you or some detriment to your opponents.  A lot of times by playing one gives your opponents benefits too.   There are 3 chances to play an intrigue card, and an agent placed here gets to go again at the end of the round.
6. Buy a building.  You must be able to purchase a building to play here, ie no cock-blocking.  This goes immediately into play and can be used this round.
7. Activate a purchased building.  A building generally provides an additional benefit to the above moves, like instead of getting 2 fighters you can get 1 fighter and 1 of anything.  If you move into a building, the player that purchased it gets a benefit too.

So you do these things to gather adventurers and gold to complete quests you have claimed.  Quests have recipes required for completion, like 1 cleric, 1 wizard and 2 fighters or 2 fighters, 2 rogues and 4 gold.  They give benefits upon completion, usually victory points.  It's a game about victory points after all.   Quests may also give some other benefits, like draw another quest, draw an intrigue card, get money, get more fighters, etc, etc.  Some quests, referred to as 'plot quests' give a persistent benefit you can use for the rest of the game.

Quests are typed, like Piety, Skullduggery, or Warfare.  That Lord you were assigned gives points at the end of game based on those, so pay attention.


Review:  I liked this game.  I have a feeling I liked it less than everyone else at the table last night, but I did like it.  The first game was brutal for people trying to figure out options, but it sped up immensely for the 2nd game.  There's some cool stuff going on, trying to figure synergies with your Waterdeep lord, quests and buildings.

There might be a Stone Age/Fresco type fatal flaw though.  Some buildings gives the owner adventurers when they activate.  7 or 8 free guys is a huge huge advantage.  Only one building can be built a turn, so that's often the first move.  Having said that, I have in no way played this game enough to know.  It's probably not runaway leader, because an equivalent building bought on turn 2 is only 12.5% worse, but in 5 player I suspect going 4th or 5th is a big handicap.

Anyways, I'd like to try with 3 or 4 players next time and see if that helps any.  Regardless, this will have at least a half dozen replays before we definitively decide if there is something broken.

F@#$ Games within Games

I can't believe I remembered this since Mike just IM'd me and didn't post a comment.  We were discussing Amun-Re and how the temple phase is a game within a game, so that got me thinking about other games with those layers.

Amun-Re

So leading off with the one in the intro, Amun-Re.  The phase with layers is temple donations.  You acquire money in the game, and one of the things you can do with it is donate it to the temple.  Alms do at least 3 things.

- Determine how much farmers and camels are worth in the harvest phase.  Farmers are a sliding scale depending on the total donations ranged 1-4.  Camels are all or nothing.  If the farms are only worth 1 or 2, camels activate and the province owner gets the corresponding camel cash.  Farms at 3 or 4 kill the camels.

- Get you free stuff!  The winning bid gets three free things, 2nd place gets two, and anyone who bid positive gets one thing.  3 of the same thing normally costs six bucks, a pair costs 3 and a singleton costs 1.  Oh yeah, you can drop the total by playing a -3 card.  This gets you 3 bucks automatically but you get no resource for free.






- Winning bid goes first and breaks ties next round.  At NF we haven't figured out if that is an advantage but turn order isn't the least bit predictable.



Analysis:  If/How to bid is kind of a deal.  The 2nd chance to acquire cards/farmers/stone is HUGE!  Someone who wins the temple for less than 6 just got a deal.  Simply bidding 1 to get a free item might be under rated, because number of items you can buy scales as 1-3-6-10-15-21-28-36-45, or a weak exponential function.

But at the same time, ignore farmers and camels at your own peril.  Money also buys provinces, and there are most definitely times you don't want to get stuck with the free one.  So income is kind of important...

 

Brass 

The game within a game is iron.

The pros:

Iron is probably a quick infusion of cash.  If the iron track is completely empty (a not uncommon event), you will always make money selling iron back, even if the coal track is completely empty.  If you flip (sell all to the demand track) the ironworks when played, it is probably a really cheap move.

Iron is really in demand in canal phase.  The easiest way to build your economy and finance your loans is through iron plays.

The cons:

There's a reason why iron is in demand during canal phase.  Developing is important.  Getting to items that score twice is a big big deal, especially L3 cotton and ports.  Supplying cheap iron with no regard to how other people will use it is a way to lose.

Iron can be overbuilt.  The single most devastating move is the L4-L3 iron over build.  It's a 16 point swing, +9 for you and -7 for the poor jerk you overbuilt.   The easiest way to avoid the overbuild?  DON'T PLAY AN IRON!







Suggestions for Comments.

I think there is a game within a game in Samurai, I just suck so bad at Samurai I don't know what it is.

Similarly, the produce/captain/trade dynamic in Puerto Rico might qualify, but I haven't played PR in years.