-
Joe Gola
United States
Redding
Connecticut
Eleven.
-
I looked over my game acquisitions over the past twelve months and was surprised to see that I had picked up more new games than I would have thought.
Right at the end of December 2010 I got myself a copy of Steel Driver as a late Christmas present to myself. I had played it twice before and liked it, and over the course of the year I got my own copy to the table four more times. I really enjoy it, though it does have a flaw which can be off-putting to some, namely that the endgame is very unpredictable.
Around the same time I got a copy of Egizia as a gift, and this turned out to be one of my favorite games of the year. It's the perfect length and speed for a meaty euro-style game, and there's a good blend of tactics and strategy. We played it four times, which is respectable, though it deserved better.
In January I also picked up a copy of Prolix, a word game designed by my buddy Gil Hova. It's a much better game than Scrabble, in my opinion, though sadly it looks like I only played it twice. I think that was due to the fact that I was still pretty excited about Egizia, and also that I clobbered everyone and no one wanted to play with me again.
Apparently I got the new game itch again in March, because I picked up Knizia's Callisto. This turned out to be an excellent buy, since it ended up my most-played game of the year, coming in at thirteen plays. It's an extremely good gateway game, and I'm still ready for more.
I wasn't planning on getting anything more until the new big-box Knizia came out, but in May my pal Verkisto was selling off a bunch of stuff from his collection at reasonable prices and I couldn't resist. First on the list was Colovini's Atlantis, which I had played at BGG Con '09 and liked. I've played it six times since, and it turns out that I'm really quite bad at it.
The second purchase from Verkisto was Handelsfürsten, Herren der Meere, a short Knizia game. It's light but interesting and entertaining. We only ended up playing it three times, though.
Last but not least on the Verkisto order was the 1981 card game Dragonmaster. I had this one as a kid...or at least I think I did; I definitely remember having a trick-taking game with those gems, though my memory was that you had to assemble them together into a wand. Anyway, the fantasy artwork on the cards is really fantastic and somehow brings back the feel of the late '70s. I never did end up playing it though; that's what happens when you get a bunch of games all at once.
Finally in June came Star Trek: Expeditions, the game I had been waiting for all year. I've played it four times with the group and then three more times solo, and I like it well enough, though I've come to realize that cooperative games just aren't my favorite.
At the same time I got a copy of Knizia's Strozzi, which I had played with Morgan Dontanville earlier in the year and liked. It's a good middleweight that works well with larger groups. I've only played it twice since, though. Hopefully it will come back to the table in 2012.
Also on that order was Imperial 2030, but I haven't played it yet. In fact I'm not sure I should even count it since I haven't taken off the shrinkwrap yet. Does it really count as being in the collection if I haven't seen the board? Anyway, another project for 2012.
The last game buy of the year was four months ago in August, when I picked up another little Knizia filler, Sushizock im Gockelwok. I had played it at BGGer Warren dM's in June and enjoyed it, and since then it's seen a lot of action—eleven plays in total, second only to Callisto in 2011.
So, to sum up:
Steel Driver: 4 plays (6 total)
Egizia: 4 plays
Prolix: 2 plays
Callisto: 13 plays
Atlantis: 6 plays (7 total)
Handelsfürsten: 3 plays
Dragonmaster: 0 plays
Star Trek Expeditions: 7 plays (if you count the three solo plays)
Strozzi: 2 plays (3 total)
Imperial 2030: 0 plays
Sushizock im Gockelwok: 10 plays (11 total)
That makes a total of eleven new games which collectively saw 51 plays; not too bad, I'd say. Egizia was my favorite game in the 90–120 minute range, Callisto was the best middleweight, and Sushizock was our #1 filler.
Hopes for 2012? Definitely I'd like to explore Imperial 2030, maybe check out one of the new Essen releases? We'll see....
Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:53 pm
-
Joe Gola
United States
Redding
Connecticut
Eleven.
-
So, I had an idea for a special gaming project for 2012, which was that I would try to play all of the non-two-player games on my Top 20 list to see how they matched up against each other; I figured it would be a good excuse to get all my avowed-favorite games played, and I could see if there should be any adjustments to the rankings and what have you. I mean, I've never compared Euphrat & Tigris and Tower of Babel head to head, so who knows who would come out the victor in that contest? It would be an experiment for science! No...it would be an experiment for posterity.
Except it occurs to me now that I don't really work that way. Well, let me back up. When I first started getting back into gaming in the late 90s and early 2000s, I had the idea in my mind of putting together the Perfect Game Library. Find the best, get rid of the rest, and then you're left with a kick-ass collection that will keep you entertained forever. The problem is, what I've realized over time is that even if I think a game is perfect and endlessly entertaining, I still enjoy discovering new ones. Some games have short honeymoons and some games are a long love affair, but at some point I'll feel ready to try something new. Now, I know that all sounds a bit fickle, but I don't think it is; I'll gladly play any of my past favorites anytime, and when I look at them sitting on the shelf I'll smile and think about how great they are, but when I'm actually packing the bag for a game night I'm often looking to mine a new vein of gold. So, the development of my collection has turned out to be not so much a process of refinement as one of accretion—a gradual accumulation of good memories. My only regrets are for the times when I bought games too quickly and didn't have a chance to give all of them their due.
So, I've given up on my gaming project, I've erased the "Top 10" from my profile, and I've decided to retire my "Top 20" geeklist. Perhaps in its place I'll create a chronological "Hall of Fame" list for those games which lasted past the initial thrill of novelty and kept me wanting to play them for months on end. And I'll always keep the greats around in case they see a second heyday.
I think there's a life lesson in there somewhere, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it has to do with the importance of keeping in motion and the odd paradoxical balancing act of acknowledging the good things while still moving on to new ones. Maybe it's that nothing in this world lasts but memories, except that just might be good enough.
-
Joe Gola
United States
Redding
Connecticut
Eleven.
-
Another meeting of the Sandy Hook Beer & Games Society. Ready on the table when I arrived was a Dominion tableaux made up of cards from the Hinterlands & Cornucopia expansions. The new stuff all seemed decent enough but with one exception, "The Jester," an attack card which seemed exceptionally obnoxious because it gradually fills everyone's decks with garbage. There was another card that helped players deal with the problem by giving them more cards in hand ("Embassy"), but even so I felt like the fun of the game—the challenge of putting together a good deck—had been severely undercut. By the end I had something like fifteen or twenty copper in my deck.
Next on the docket was a quick game of Sushizock im Gockelwok before the younger generation was chased upstairs to bed. When all the sushi had been scarfed it was discovered that the ten-year-old had beaten the four adults. Grounded! I like the game because it's fast and accessible and has great components, but I've played it a bunch now and I think I'm ready to take it out of heavy rotation and make it an every-once-in-a-whiler. Cheeky Monkey continues to hold the title for World Champion Light Filler Game.
It was then decided that the rest of the night would have a Star Trek theme (is that a tricorder in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?), so we tackled Knizia's co-op game Star Trek: Expeditions at the "admiral" difficulty level. I would give a nice thematic account of what happened, but to be honest we're only barely reading the cards at this point. You could try to blame Knizia but perhaps we're just eurogamers at heart. Anyway, we employed our usual approach of focusing on the on-planet crises and letting the Klingon ship beat the snot out of us, though I suppose that this time we didn't have much of a choice since the first Supplemental Log card turned over was Klingon Cloaking Device. Things were looking bleak towards the end but then Uhura a.k.a. Chrissy had a killer last turn during which she piled on a bunch of extra actions and blasted through all the final challenges. All this happened when we were on the very last stardate and the Enterprise was down its final click! The next Stardate card had a Klingon attack symbol on it, and we would have probably been kerploded out of the sky.
Now, some people have complained that something seems out-of-whack with the descriptions of the final outcomes—how can I have won the game if there is a civil war and near ecological collapse and the planet has joined the Klingon empire? Well, the way I see it is that the game is trying to simultaneously accommodate two different play styles. If the players want a binary do-or-die win-or-lose experience similar to Pandemic, then they will want to play at the Captain or Admiral difficulty levels, depending on how experienced they are with the game, and simply try to avoid destruction. Think of it as though the doughty Enterprise crew has gotten themselves in way over their head and they are merely trying to avoid a complete disaster and escape with their lives. Alternatively, players can choose Ensign or Captain difficulty (again, depending on their experience) and try to not merely survive but actually pull off a favorable-sounding outcome. This is perhaps a more theme-oriented way to play the game.
Next and last was the new Star Trek Deck Building Game which Chris Brennan had brought. We had tried to play this once before but Eric and I ended up being too...uh..."tired" to properly grasp the rules, but now we were alert and ready for some hot 'n' raunchy interstellar action. We decided to play the "exploration" scenario, since it is the most straight-forward of the three. Unfortunately, the game didn't go over terribly well; it just seemed to go on and on and on as Eric, Chrissy and I struggled to meet the challenges of the Space Deck. Afterwards, however, Chris B. started talking about how the game seems to be like a Dominion clone but it's not, in that it's not so much about constantly acquiring cards as it is about crafting a deck. I realized that he was right and that my approach to the game may have been flawed; rather than improving the cards I had, I just kept buying more and more.
Anyway, as of now I'm withholding judgment. It might well be a better game than I'm realizing. Still, though, I wasn't crazy about having to stare at all the cheesy & butt-ugly aliens from the TV show for several hours; I can only look at a Ferengi for so long before I find myself wishing for a better life.
Beerwise I enjoyed a stout from a Connecticut brewery, Calvary's "Nomad," followed by a Heavy Seas "Loose Cannon" IPA. The Nomad is nice because it has a rich stout flavor without making you feel like you've swallowed a bowling ball.
-
Joe Gola
United States
Redding
Connecticut
Eleven.
-
Some time ago I was in an anti-materialist mood and was looking through my game collection to see if there were any candidates for sale or trade. Naturally I had to turn it into a semi-scientific exercise, so I made up a little table of "sub-favorite" games which included their BGG rank, number of users wanting, number of users selling, and a little notation about whether or not they took up a lot of room; basically it gave me a rough idea of how "in demand" any particular game was. So, for example, I was able to see that Shogun, a game which is frigging enormous and which I thought was just okay, would be pretty easy to sell off at a good price.
Another possible candidate was Power Grid, one of BGG's favorite games but one which had never quite grabbed me and gotten me excited the way a meaty game ought to—you know, that sort of hold-your-breath feeling you get while you're waiting for your turn to see if your Evil Master Plan is going to come off or not. I thought that maybe the problem was that I was playing it with too large a group, since all my plays were with either five or six players and there was way too much down time for my taste. I decided that I probably wouldn't be able to judge the game properly unless I played it with just four, but of course the problem there is that it's such a popular game that if you bring it to a big game day the table is just going to fill up, and I can't turn people away just because I want to play it with a particular number.
This past Friday I finally decided to bring it to the Sandy Hook Beer and Games Society, which is usually a foursome. Power Grid is a little more involved than the games we usually play, but really the only difficult part is the administration, and I would be taking care of that. The game went pretty well, I think; I only forgot to mention one little rule during the initial explanation ("par," according to Chris B.), and no one had any trouble understanding what was going on. Most importantly, there wasn't any downtime problem. I was a little rusty and didn't do very well at timing my power plant purchases, and so in the end Chris B. was able to light up Germany better than the rest of us.
So, finally I got to play Power Grid with a smaller number of players, and my verdict is: it's okay. Previously I had rated it a seven out of ten, and now I'm waffling between calling it a seven or a six and a half. My take on it is that there are Big Things happening during the game that have a major impact on what's going on, but at the same time players are required to spin their wheels on lots of of nickel-and-dime decisions that don't always amount to much. For example, players have to mess around in auctions for a difference of five or six electros and then groan in agony when a much better power plant appears in the market to replace the one they just bought. Players can be perfect little money managers, figuring out exactly how much fuel to buy so that they have just the right amount of money for the build phase, only to watch someone else go into hyper-expansion mode and ruin all their plans.
I also find the amount of power plant market upkeep and administration to be annoying. I know that's kind of a petty complaint, but I'm not going to lie, it bugs me.
The bottom line is that to me Power Grid is a game that feels a bit watered-down; in my favorite games—games like Taj Mahal, Ra, and Amun-Re—I feel like every moment counts, like the results of a decision is commensurate with the amount of brainwork I need to put into it. In Power Grid there is stuff to think about and do, but somehow the heart of the game lies elsewhere. Certainly it's not a bad game, but to me it's not the standout that it is to most gamers.
On the other hand, I'll definitely say that it's one of the best-looking games in my collection. Or was. I might have traded it to Eric for his last Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA.
|
|
