Category: Interesting Stuff

Second Place is First Place for Losers – Race Games

Yo, I got a need for speed. Racing games are always fun and tense as you all desparately push for the finish. Well, actually, not always as you will see with a couple of these.

Formula D/De

Its an oldy but a goody. Back in the day when there weren’t 300 new games released every day, there were leagues around town that played this game like a Formula 1 season, with 16 races recorded and final standings etc…because this was THE race game. Yes, it is luck ridden, yes the dice can screw you over because you decided to burn it down the straight using a D20, with the only roll that can ruin your race being a 20, which you then rolled, and everyone at the table pissed themselves laughing at your expense…but hey, when your not that guy and the other guy is that guy, its so funny when it happens to them, so don’t get mad. So yes, you roll dice. Starting with a D3, you gear up to a D6, D8 and so on (moving the number of spaces you roll). However, you must slow down to go around the corners, hence the burning tires to brake. It needs to be played fast like any race game to give the feel of actual racing. People should not over-analyse this, especially when playing with 6+ players, which is the best numbers to play with. It has numerous expansions for different maps, with the new edition having crazy alternate rules, like getting shot at when driving through the rough side of Chicago. We have it in the library, its the old version, but it has oodles of extra maps.

Snow Tails

My favorite race game and my wife’s favorite race game too. Dog-sleigh racing…YES! No dice this time, just cards. You have a hand of 5 and can play 1, 2 or 3 cards on a turn (the twist being that they must be the same number i.e. you can play one 4, two 4’s or three 4’s). 1 card for each dog and 1 for the brake. You add up the sum of the dogs and subtract the brakes to get your speed. If the left dog is a 5 and the right dog is a 3 though you will drift to the left, which is how you turn. There are all kinds of obstacles including trees, other racers, narrow straights to navigate around and every time you hit something you take a dent card which knocks your hand size down from 5 to less than 5, depending on how badly you smushed up your sleigh. Some people can get a heavy dose of AP (Analysis Paralysis) playing this as you try to figure out exactly how to play those cards, but the designers have dealt with this brilliantly by including this in the game: You give it to someone when they are having a Big Paws….

Jamaica

First around the Island of Jamaica doesn’t win, but does get a butt-tonne of Gold, which you need to win. Along the way you will collect treasures, guns and food to help pay the costs to move (its quite an expensive business moving a Pirate ship) and fight your opponents. The player on turn will roll two dice and place them in the morning and afternoon slots. Every player will then pick a card from their hand and will receive the gold/guns/food/movement depending on what is on that card on its morning/afternoon slots. If ever you land on the same space as another player a battle occurs in which the winner gets to steal a bunch of stuff off of the loser. Again, its best with more players because there is a greater chance of landing on each other and fighting, which is what a Pirate game should be all about. Aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr…..

Powerboats

Now we are talking! Tonnes of 3-sided dice and speed boats. Now that’s a racing game! Roll one dice to go, then speed up by rolling two, then three…faster you idiot, what can go wrong? Well, everything obviously, cos that would be a rubbish game if all you did was go faster and faster. Wait! A drag racing game, is there a game about that? Maybe it could be a real time game, involving a crap tonne a quick dice rolling…hmmm just braistorming here. Maybe I’ll suggest it to our Wednesday bi-weekly game design crew? Woah, did that get off-topic. So anyway. You can either add one dice, take one away or stay the same, re-rolling or keeping any number of those dice. So it takes a while to slow down, removing one dice at a time and its slow to turn as well (its water dude, a way less brakey/gripy material). There are lots of islands you have to zig-zag around, as well as annoying opponents as well. Similar to Snow Tails, if you crash to much into stuff you sink (well, you don’t sink in snow tails, but don’t be pedantic). This one feels like the most racey of the games I talked about, as people play quick and are trying to find the best lines to navigate around the islands. The dice has some luck, but because they are 3 sided and there are a lot, you can manipulate them cleverly to slow down and speed up by keeping and re-rolling the (hopefully) right dice.

Lewis and Clarke: The Expedition

This is my grey area game, is it a race game…really? Well, kind of, as the first person to get to the Pacific Coast wins, but then again, you could call any ‘first to’ game a race game, at its heart it is a hand management and worker placement game, but a very good one. How efficiently you manage your resources and workers will determine how quickly you move along the path to the Pacific. Your aim is to send your scout as far ahead as possible and then set up camp when you run out of cards to play. However, if you have excess cards, goods or workers in your boats your Scout moves backwards and you set up camp further down river than you hoped. Its a Grade A brain melter in its purest form, that will leave you unabashedly making weird, can’t decide what to do, faces as you try plan out the order in which to play your cards and workers. This is not one for the faint hearted. Its not overly complicated, but you will have some serious ‘I have no idea what to do’ moments, so if you are into that, get it, cos its one of the best. If you like your race games dicey and quick, avoid this like the bubonic plague.

Other goodies in the library:

Mississippi Queen Ave Ceasar Royal Turf Roborally Hare and Tortoise

Dice – Games with Meat on their Bones

Yspahan

Yspahan (said: Ees-pa-haan) was the first modern Euro game to use dice in such a way that allowed players to control the randomness, while using that same randomness as a way to promote replay-ability. The object is make points by filling areas of the city or a camel train with goods. 8 dice are rolled to determine what goods will be available, with the lowest set of numbers placed on the bottom row, highest dice on the top and then each set of numbers working from the second lowest up. This means that if every number is not rolled, some goods will be missing that turn. You can use goods to obtain buildings which will give you abilities, and if the dice left to choose from blow, then you can always choose to take a card, which gives you something groovy.

Its a quick game, taking about 40 minutes and has a number of strategies available, definitely worth a bash if you are down in the cafe.

Alien Frontiers

One of the very first successful board games that spawned from Kickstarter. Its a kind of worker placement game, where your choice of where to play your workers is slightly limited by the dice you roll. The object is to try and get the most victory points through colonizing the planet in the center of the board. As with any strategic dice game there are numerous ways to manipulate the dice you roll to allow you to get what you want, mainly using special power cards or abilities gained through controlling parts of the planet. Competition for stuff is ferocious and people will be blocking spots left, right and center to deny their opponents what they want. The board art is also fabulous with that 50’s sci-fi feel and the bits are also really cool.

Kingsburg

This one could almost be a gateway game, and I would put it up front with the other family friendly games (except Game of Thrones…although that depends on the family), but for the fact it runs a little long with 5, which is a shame because its best with more players. Whats the idea on this one Bill, I hear you ask? Well sit down Children and let me tell you….

“Roll three dice and placeth them on ye olde board decorated with destinations that range from the miserly 1, to the Kingly 18 (literally, there is a King on that spot). The grander the number the more you get”

“’But that’s not fair to people who roll rubbish numbers’ I hear you cry”

“Fear not! For if you roll lowest you place first and may splitteth your dice up, perchance to place them on 3 locations”

Enough of that. You use the stuff you get to make buildings that give you points and powers, as well as defense against incoming mosters that will attack you every turn. ROAR.

Its easy to pick up and there are a squillion buildings to buy, 2 squillion if you buy the expansion!

Space Cadets – Dice Duel

This is a team co-op game. Each team will control a space ship that flies around the board shooting at the other team attempting to destroy them first. Engineering controls the dice the team uses, for example if they roll a 1 they can give it to ‘Weapons.’ This is all done in real time, with players setting the dice aside, a la Yahtzee, when they have what they want and re-rolling the dice they don’t want.

Basically the faster you do stuff the quicker you’ll move, shoot and protect yourself. However, this involves a lot of co-ordination and will inevitably degenerate into people shouting at each other repeating themselves over and over again, while getting louder and louder in the vain belief that this will somehow expedite the matters at hand. It plays up to 8 and only takes 30 minutes and is a blast to play. Definitely worth a try.

Escape the Curse of the Temple

Similar to Space Cadets, this is a team game done in real time, but with an actual sound-tracked timer that plays spooky music counting down the 10 minutes you literally get to escape the temple. I played this with my 6 year old daughter, who in her second game, ran from the table claiming that it was too stressful and she couldn’t cope. You roll the dice to move from room to run, trying to unlock crystals to open the door to escape. If you roll a black mask then that die is cursed and you can’t roll it till you free it with a yellow mask. Someone WILL roll 5 black dice and start screaming ‘I can’t move’ while their team-mates are half a game away and will have to run all the way back to rescue them. It has a simple version as well as a complex one with curse and bonus tiles that help or hinder you (my favorite being the curse of being unable to speak, combined with 5 black masks and attempting to communicate with other players with vigorous hand signals while they totally ignore you). Its really fun, if quite stressful at points…

alien frontiers escape the temple curse kingsburg space cadets dice duel yspahan

Classic Euro’s – Gaming circa 2005

10 years ago Euros were all the rage. They involved low luck, simple rules, shorter playing time, slightly abstracted components and a lower level of player interaction that rewarded strategic play. We are talking pre-2005 here. When we were lucky to get 20 good new games are year (now we get hundreds). We still get ‘Euros’ today but often they will try and involve a little more theme and interaction. The great designers of that period were Reiner Knizia, Wolfgang Kramer and Andreas Seyfarth. The term often used to describe these games is ‘elegant’ and if you haven’t had to chance to play them, get on down to the cafe and give one a bash, we’re always excited to teach these classics.

They also have a lot of cubes…

Puerto Rico

– Andreas Seyfarth

This was rated the best game in the world by gamers on boardgamegeek (the main board game website) for 5+ years. Its main game mechanic is role selection (like in Citadels), whereby a player will choose an action to do, which everyone else also gets to do, but he gets to do it first and a bit better! The theme is creating a plantation in Puerto Rico (No!!!! Really!!!) to grow crops and sell them or export them for points. Building certain buildings also gives you certain advantages to direct your strategy. People would often complain about the ‘player to the right’ syndrome i.e. the game has so little luck, that if the player before you was weak he would pick sub-optimal roles and could throw the game to the player to his left. However, in general, people who complained about that were usually knobs and you wouldn’t want to play with them anyway! Its really good. Play it.

Tigris and Euphrates

(Written by Del our Friday Night Game Expert) – Reiner Knizia

Tigris & Euphrates is the most Knizia game ever Knizia’ed. Being from Knizia’s “awesome games” period, T&E has unique mechanisms seldom repeated in modern eurogames. It has the elements that made Reiner Knizia a household name:

collecting different kinds of points but you
pulling random crap out of a bag,
theme and mechanics
tiles Tiles TILES, and of course
getting all up in your opponent’s faces

Build kingdoms in the cradle of civilization, vying for influence amongst the 4 factions of early society. You can try to become a new trader-baron, ousting the previous one with the support of the church. Or you can attempt to merge two kingdoms and, in the clash of cultures, hope to profit and come out king.
Since it’s from the old-times when space at the old Interactivity was limited, Tigris & Euphrates is hidden in the “Through the Desert” box.

Ra

– Reiner Knizia

RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA, RA…..You get to say RA a lot playing this game. Its an auction game, where you get to bid for tiles that get you points and the token that you will use to bid with for the next round (they range from 1-16 and you have three to use each round). Its set in Ancient Egypt, but could just as easily be set in a sewer or a chicken coup or perhaps even dystopian future where children kill each other on TV. The fun of the game is in attempting to put a value your own bidding tile in relation to:

The bidding tile you’ll get next round
The tiles you’ll get for points
The amount of time you think the round has left
What other players want and need.

I like this one a lot, its pretty quick and fairly simple, but there is a lot to think about. Oh and did I mention you get to say RA a lot.

El Grande

Kramer and Ulrich

Did I mention low player interaction. Well I lied when it comes to this one. It’s an area majority game (whoever has the most bits in an area gets the most points) where you pretty much spend the whole game ganging up on the leader and pretty much anyone else who gets in your way. It has a big tower that you put cubes in and a huge King piece that looks like THIS…not phallic at all.

Its one of my favorite games ever, but is sadly out of print. But as it came out in 1995, I am hoping for a 20 year anniversary edition next year. Here’s a few words on it from Chris Rudram of Day of Board Gaming fame:

“If you really want to test how strong your friendships are, play this. If you like being ganged up on, unreasonably, or better yet, being the one to always claim you are losing while you win… play this.”

Princes of Florence

– Kramer and Ulrich

I was going to do write something nice about this one as well. A lot of people love it, but to me its dryer than a desert rock in the midday sun and I would rather grate my own eyeballs than play it. Jack, the other half of IBGC loves it and said we should add this, but he’s not writing this so…..err….here are a few words from Chris on this who has similar feelings to me:

“Fun, if taking part in a cattle auction before playing an obscure version of Tetris in order to have the chance to pick a scoring card is your idea of fun.”

Sorry PoF fans!

el grande Eurogames puerto rico ra tigris and euphrates

The Next Step – Life after Catan and Ticket to Ride…

A lot of people have played Settlers, Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne, but after that, trying to decide the next game to try gets a little bit fuzzy. There are a bazillion choices and trying to choose ‘The One’ is a daunting proposition. So lets give you a list of recent games that are vying to become the next gamer/family wonder-mega-hit!

Suburbia

This has been a hit down the old Cafe with just about everyone who has played it. They could have called it ‘Sim City the Boardgame’, but they would have been sued and lost a lot of money so they didn’t, but I do it when people come in and ask about it. The premise is very simple, take a hex tile from the row of choices an add it to your suburb and then adjust your income, reputation and popultaion. Person with the most population winneth the game, Huzzah! One downside to the game is the book-keeping element which can be confusing in your first game, but once you’ve got a handle on it its pretty simple. The thing that I think captures most peoples imagination is the ability to build something without other people messing it up. Even if you lose, its nice to see your lovely creation sitting in front of you, with its mixture of airports, lakes, housing associations and parking lots. You can take solace in the fact that the person who won’s Suburb was a dump and probably full of crack dens.

Rise of Augustus

Its like Bingo on steroids! Hmmm, that description never really goes down that well. It is really good though, a shortish play time that usually leads to people playing it 2 or 3 times in a row. The idea is someone pulls tokens from a bag and you put your little soldiers on the matching symbols on your objective cards. When you complete them Holla, ‘Ave Ceasar’ and you get the bonus on the card and points as well. There are communal prizes that everyone is competing for and the game ends when one person has completed 7 objectives. Its a nice relaxing game with the tension resulting from hoping the symbol you need gets pulled from the bag as well as the push your luck in trying to compete for the best communal prize available. Its, simple fun and the huge variety of objective cards offer the replayability.

Takenoko

STOP! Panda Time! That’s right it has a cute Panda. Not sold? What are you? Dead! The Gardner must run around the expanding board growing bamboo while the cheeky Panda eats it. You make points by creating patterns with the garden tiles and bamboo as well as for eating the stuff. Its simple, fun and uber-cute. Wil Wheaton likes it a lot as well.

Lords of Waterdeep

Its set in the Dungeons and Dragons Universe, but thats about as far as the D&D bit goes. Its a classic European style ‘Worker Placement’ game (you stick a guy on a spot on the board and you get something that you use to make points). It has some stick-it to your opponent mechanics to spice things up a bit, but its mostly about tying to get the stuff you need to complete quests for points. It’s simple, fun and thinky enough that you feel you’ve really played a solid game. Its frequently on the tables down here at IBGC, so far I think the record is one table playing it 5 time in a row!

Agricola

Its quite a jump from Catan to Agricola, but a lot of people make it and are very glad they did, so I’m going to include it here. It does have quite a lot of rules, but once you have it down it plays easily enough and is again a worker placement game. Your job is to build the best farm you can (Agricola means farming in Latin and its pronounced AG-RIC-OLA not AGRI-COLA) by collecting resources and ploughing fields and raising animals and growing crops and having a family to help and expanding your house and learning new occupations and fishing and baking and cooking and not begging and….you get the idea, there is a lot you can do. It does have a simple game as well as the complex one with all the occupations included, so you can learn the basics using the simple game and then add the other stuff in when you are ready. Its also a single player game as well, so if you have no-one to play with you can put on some Skrillex, bring out the chips and go at it by yourself. The beauty of the game is in the sheer number of occupation cards available. Over 300 in the base game, of which you will be given 7 and they will drive your strategy, meaning every game plays out differently. Its a beast, don’t get me wrong, but if your looking for something with some real meat on it, this could be the one for you.

agricola augustus suburbia takenoko waterdeep

WAR! Huh! What is it good for? War Games!

Risk. It has a lot of memories attached to it, to some it brings a glow to the heart for others a chill to the soul. Lets be honest, it is the war game that most people think of when they think of board games, but it doesn’t need to be. Lest we forget it was released in 1957 and games have come a long way since then. Here are a few games to scratch that itch, without the 4 hour timeframe and 300 units piled into Australia.

1. Small World

2-5 players
60 mins

Special abilities ahoy. Lots of replay-ability and importantly nowhere to hide. Some games with conflict allow players to ‘Turtle’, BORING, in this game if you don’t attack you don’t win. It does lack dice (Yes it does have one), which some people love, but it does have lots of, ‘Get him, he’s winning’ types of negotiation. Pretty easy to learn and plays in a reasonable time frame. A good one to bring out with new gamers and those looking for something relatively easy and fun.

2. Memoir 44/Command and Colours/Battlelore

2 players
30-60 mins

Based on the Command and Colours system, these games are all at their heart the same. Your preference will likely depend of your taste in theme:
Memoir 44 – World War 2
Command and Colours – Ancients of Rome/Greece etc…
Battlelore – Fantasy
Memoir 44 is the easiest to learn and the one you should probably try first down at the Cafe if you want to get a taste of the system. Lots of dice, combined with a decent amount of tactics and strategy. Its also a beautiful game with lots of miniatures and colorful boards. The C&C system is card based. You play a card from your hand which allows you to activate a certain type of unit or units in an area of the board. Managing the orders you have in your hand is the key to the game.

3. Kemet

2-5 players
60-90 mins

A blend of Euro and War games. You have a choice of 7 actions available from which you can only pick 5 each round. A tech tree allows you to upgrade your units and gain special powers. Its a first to X points type of game that rewards players for starting fights (Huzzah). If all your friends want to play a thinky game, but you want to smack the snot out of them, this may be the compromise.

4. Game of Thrones

3-6 players
60-300 mins

Released 5 years ago and based off of the books, as opposed to the TV show, this ain’t your pick up the rules in 5 minutes type of game. The first to 7 castles wins. The main mechanic is to play orders into the regions you control, using them to expand your forces and gain influence to try and claim the Iron Throne and a better selection of actions. You can make deals with neighbors and try to make sure you stab them in the back before they do it to you. Best played with more players, but that does mean more time, for an already long, but great game.

5. Eclipse

2-6 players
60-180 mins

A local favorite, designed by Touko Tahkokallio, who went to UVic and played games down at Interactivity games in its previous incarnation. One of the best rated games in the world, its a classic 4X game (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate). Lots of choice in how you play the game, players get point if they initiate conflict, but its not the only way to win. Develop technologies and apply them to your ships and build an empire but the bigger it is the more you have deal with the bureaucracy that comes with it.

5. Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear

2-4 players
60-180mins

The most complex squad level war game we have in the library, its beautiful design offers a rewarding experience and a tonne of tactical possibilities. As war games go it’s fairly light, but if games were animals, the average war game would be a hippo and Settlers a mouse, so this one would probably be an small sheep (makes total sense!). Its a great starting point for someone wanting to get into ‘real’ wargaming.

6. Twilight Struggle

2 players
180 minutes

A card driven war game and among gamers, rated as the best game in the world (they are wrong! See next entry). A Cold War theme , that pits the USA and Soviet Union against each other in an attempt to try and dominate as much of the globe as possible. Its tense, exciting and rewards multiple playings. After a game you feel quite drained with all the effort involved…and if you’ve lost, well I’ve seen people get divorced over less…

7. Ascending Empires

2-4 players
90 mins

I’m pretty sure I told you this was the best game in the Universe last blog and not one person came down to the Cafe to play it. I’m sorry if I’m not clear enough. THIS IS THE BEST GAME IN THE UNIVERSE! Don’t make me say it again!