I recently got together with a group of my gaming friends. We played an interesting selection of games that we don’t normally explore, so I thought I’d post some comments on our session.
Wild Vikings - Haba
Wild Vikings – This is a cute Haba game that doesn’t really offer too much for an experienced gamer, but would be a great way to teach kids about bidding. There are three ship tiles (red, blue and yellow) lined up with the village tile. On your turn, you roll the die. If you roll the equipment card symbol, everyone gets to draw one card. If you roll a red, blue or yellow ship, you add one gem to that ship. If you roll a black ship, you add one gem to the ship of your choice. If you roll the village, then the ship closest to the village comes to port.
The players then bid, using the equipment cards that they collect. There are red, blue, yellow and wild cards. The bids go around the table and must match the color of the ship or be wild. Whoever winds the auction gets to take the gems from the ship. Then the ship falls back to the end of the line.
It’s a pretty innocuous game, but would be great for young ones.
The Great Dalmuti (3 rounds) – This is a glorified version of the game “Asshole” or “President” or “Scumbag” or whatever else you might call it. In this version, there are two “2s”, three “3s”, four “4s”, etc., up to twelve “12s”. I don’t really feel like explaining this game. You can look it up on Wikipeida if you’d like. I think I would possibly appreciate this as a drinking game, but at the sober hour of 1pm it seemed a bit stupid.
Jungle Speed – A real time game that involves identifying when your card matches someone elses card and grabbing a totem before they do. There are also some special cards that can cause the players to do different things. I wasn’t that into the game, but found it interesting that some of my friends who were making snide comments about how simple or silly the game was were also the people that were laughing and smiling the most.
Ca$h ‘n Gun$ – This is a violent and un-P.C. themes multi-player Russian Roulette game, where anyone who doesn’t chicken out or get shot gets to split some money. One of our players was eliminated on the first round, which was quite unfortunate. The game did finish quickly, which was my most favorite attribute. This isn’t a bad game, per say, it just takes a specific groups of players to flourish. Roleplayers who like to trash talk will love this game. None of us really did that, so it ended up being a pretty lackluster session. I probably will not play it again, as I have now played twice and really didn’t have much fun.
Alles Tomate – Kids and memory game enthusiasts will probably enjoy this one. If you can come up with a decent system for remembering the cards you will do fine. However, if you don’t fit into the aforementioned categories, I suggest giving this game a pass. Like all Zoch games, it was very cute to look at.
Byzanz - Amigo Spiele
Byzanz – Perhaps my favorite new game of the session. Byzanz is a card game that came out at Essen, and is the best game that Emmanuelle Ornella has released to date (in my opinion, anyway). I have always felt like his games have one or two too many systems in place. Byzanz has some great mechanics with no extra chrome. It involves bidding resources to buy more resources. The things you bid end up in a market, organized by type. The players get to claim one type at the end of the round, so some of what you spend can come back to you. Anytime during the game, you can turn in sets of three to score points. There are some fun timing issues and neat situations that come out of the auctions. I hope to keep playing this filler for the near future.
Railroad Tycoon – We played the base game again. I tried a totally different strategy, performed terribly and broke my undefeated streak in this game. I think I will move on to the Rails of Europe map now… some of the issues with the base game (random card reveals, random tycoon card, importance of the NE) are becoming frustrating for me.
Pingu Party (4 rounds) – This was a cute little game of staking penguins into a pyramid. We didn’t know the full rules for this Amigo German edition so played with the Fantasy Flight English rules, which are different and supposedly worse. I had a lot of fun and was amazed by one player’s ability to get rid of all his cards every single round.
10 Days in the USA x2 – I had not played this for ages and finally remedied the situation. I’m glad I did! This is a simple strategy game of connecting a route, but has some awesomely agonizing decisions and tricky maneuvering. I would like to pick up one of these titles, although I’m not sure which one to grab just yet.
Die Codeknacker – Another cute Haba game that was actually quite challenging! This involves real-time pattern recognition with a mystery theme that fits pretty well. Check it out if you’d like to play a kids game that can challege adults as well.
Gloria Picktoria - Zoch
Gloria Picktoria – This is, in my opinion, the most awesome publication of Alan Moon’s “Reibach and Co.” This game totally eliminates any desire I may have had to play Union Pacific. And the Zoch chicken art is so fun! I always go for the Golden Poop… how could you not?!?
If you don’t know, Gloria Picktoria is a stock market game where you are acquiring different types of goods that you put on display in “collections” for all to see. Whoever has the largest collection (majority shareholder) gets a large payout during one of four scoring rounds. Second largest collection (minority shareholder) gets less points, but some as well.
One interesting aspect that this edition adds is a fox meeple that travels around the table. Players can use one of their actions during their turn to manipulate the fox, but can also move him for free after using all actions. Whichever collective the fox sits on is essentially invisible during any scoring rounds. This adds a neat element of thought to the scorings, and allows you to mess with the opponent to your left in subtle ways.
All in all, it was a fun session where I tried many new games. Thanks to all for playing!
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