Archive for Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
1 , 2 Next »
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Vegas is a light dice game. I usually do bad at dice games, and this was no different. That doesn't mean the game is bad though. The addition of the white dice adds a nice level of strategy or even push your luck. But with 4 the game does have a lot of multiplayer chaos going on. I expect the game to be better with 3.
Initial rating: 6.2
After Venture Forth I wasn't looking forward to playing an other game by Minion Games, but I wasn't apposed to doing so. So when The Manhattan Project was proposed I did join.
It's sort of a worker placement game, but it is quite limiting as you get to use as many of your workers on your own player board as you like, but you can use a maximum of one place on the main board, where the most important actions happen. This adds a nice element of planning as you need to be ready for the action you want to do as soon as that action becomes available. Yes, the best spots are always taken, so player order is of importance. Hence the planning you need to do.
It might be because I won, but I found this a decent game. Unlike Venture Forth it didn't outstay it's welcome, and does have interesting choices and strategic decisions. Good first effort from Brandon Tibbetts!
Initial rating: 7.2
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
It's been a while since I posted anything here, and that's because I haven't played anything new in a while. This weekend that changed though.
Saturday we played Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, M, Eminent Domain (twice) and Crokinole (trice). So, nothing new.
On Sunday though, I did get to play a couple of new games.
The first one was Java. This wasn't actually new to me, I've had it in my collection for 7 years or so, but I hadn't played it in a LONG time, and didn't remember anything about it. So it was like a first play, for all 3 of us.
The game isn't short, there's plenty of AP inducing elements to it, and I think we topped off at around 2 hours.
One player was focusing on festivals a lot, and that seemed to pay off big time. I was doing horrible in that department, whatever I tried. About half way through I saw I had the 3 only 10 value temples locked for me, and spent the second half of the game making sure I had all the other value temples for me. And no one noticed. In the end I won by 3 points. The festival heavy strategy game in at third place with about 7 or 8 points less than me.
I think this might be the best of the mask trilogy, really solid, if a bit slow.
Rating: 8.5
Next up was Venture Forth.
I didn't really know anything about this, going in. It's a quite abstract adventure and combat game. But it doesn't really feel like a fantasy game, it is a real euro design.
I though the main idea worked fine, but the game was just insanely repetitive and it got boring fast. It certainly outstayed it's welcome.
What also bothered me quite a bit was that there didn't seem to be much benefit to slaying enemies. OK, you don't have to pay the penalty, but unless you happen to have the right fighter you don't score anything. And if you have a bad group of fighters, because it's the first time you play and don't know what to focus on, the game might fall completely flat with no chances of gaining anything. That should be fixed with repeated plays, granted, but still. Way too repetitive.
Initial rating: 5.5
Last up was Pergamemnon.
I hadn't bought this in Essen as I know this was mostly player to player combat. What I didn't know is that the game doesn't really work (at least not with three). It goes as follows. You have a weakness, so players only attack you with the weapons you are weak against. So you don't win any battle as a defender, so you don't get the cards you need to buy extra troops. So you can't buy anyone to help you defend the points you are weak at.
There's more to it, but let's just say that no one, even the player who won by a big difference, liked it at all. It just didn't work.
Initial rating: 2
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Since none of my regular gaming groups had anything planned this weekend, we took the chance to play some longer games.
On Saturday we finally played High Frontier, which we love, but doesn't hit the table as much as we'd like. We also added the expansion for the first time. The expansion makes things more complicated (not harder) and adds more options and choices, making long treks a better option. I didn't get to do a lot in this game, but I enjoyed what the expansion does.
We also played Pyramid which I had been wanting to play for quite a while. It's light, it's simple, it's for kids, but I enjoyed it. I do expect it to better with more than 3 though. Good stuff
Initial rating: 7
On Sunday we played a classic: Civilization, which none of us had played before. I was pleasantly surprised with the (relative) simplicity of the rules. We where totally ready for a long game, but with explanation and a break to eat, it took over 8 hours, and we didn't play all that short (that's with 3 players, by the way). That was a bit too long for all of us. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization can be almost as long, but it just feels more dynamic, while Civilization kind of stagnated a bit halfway through. Also, one player got ahead with the number of cities and overall map dominance, and with the high cost of destroying cities, it didn't seem like a good option to start combat, so the 2 other players focused on simply building their own new cities. With success, if not for the horrible event cards.
It was those cards that ruined the game for me. In 5 rounds, I got 2 civil wars, a volcano and a flood. And there was nothing I could do. I could see the red cards laying on top, but due to the previous cards, there was no way I could avoid taking cards first, so I could do nothing but simply sit through it and see my empire decimated for ready to build a 7th city to 3 cities and 6 ground forces. Not what I call fun, certainly not in a game this long.
Initial rating: 4
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
While I did get to play all of Friday evening and all of Sunday afternoon, I only got to play one new game.
I did, however, get to play some games I hadn't played for quite a while that I was more than happy to finally play again.
First one was Carson City. I only had played this game twice before, and remembered liking it, but not knowing how much I liked it. Now, having played it again after about 2 years of not playing it, my feeling remains the same, as the time in between plays was way too long. The game was quite close though, with my and Myriam scoring 50 and 51, the result being determined by a die roll. If I hadn't lost a certain duel in the last round by a completely crappy roll, I would have won the game. But that's how this game works, and I don't feel there is too much luck.
Next we played Ora et Labora again. Over the last few weeks we have played this quite a bit, always choosing the Ireland variant, to get a better grip on what buildings exist and how to use them. And this seems to be paying off, I have won most of the last couple of games. Liking this a lot, but I'm unsure if it 'll ever kick Le Havre off of the top of my list.
Sunday I finally got to try Baltimore and Ohio for the second time. It is a long game, but the fantastic tool on BGG for calculating payouts did help us a ton. The only thing it misses is a very much needed undo button. Will someone please make a mod?
I was in the running for the victory for most of the game until money of my best company ran out, which gave my payouts a delay at a moment I needed them the most. In the end I came in third out of 4.
Lesson learned: never ever let any of your companies be unprofitable. Glad it wasn't me who had to experience this 
The only new game I played was the new White Goblin Games release Little Devils.
Like most of their other tin box releases (I still don't like those, they don't stack well) this is a light card game filler. It's a trick taking game where you score points for the devils depicted on the cards in the trick. And you win when you're the player with the least points when someone goes over 100 points.
While there are some choices to be made, all of us had the same feeling: there is very little control with 4 players. With 3 I don't see this working at all.
I also think 100 is a bit too much, the game did outstay it's welcome a bit. 80 would be a better limit I think.
I had one hand where I had cards 33-36. That meant I had the 4 highest cards in the game, meaning I would have to take at least 4 tricks, unless I could lead with those cards. But you can only lead when you take a trick... and you don't want to take tricks. So you're quite dependent on what cards you are dealt.
Initial rating: 5.8
Mon Mar 19, 2012 10:16 am
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Wops, I haven't been good at updating my blog lately
 Let's do something about that now
I got to play 3 of the 5 new games White Goblin Games just released
First, we tried out Crooks.
This is a filler game where you play cards in a grid to get points if you played the most valuable card in the column. But you can play cards face down, or face up if you want to use a cards special ability.
It played fine, but it didn't get my juices flowing. Since most cards are being played face down, you don't have much information to work with, making it quite chaotic.
CORRECTION: It seems like we forgot a small rule where you have to pay to play cards face down. This makes for a much more chaotic game. So my comments might not be valid.
Initial rating: 5.5 (based on a play with the missing rule)
Next we tried GUBS: A Game of Wit and Luck.
This isn't a new game, but the Dutch edition is brand new.
In this game you score points for each Gub you have in front of you when the game ends. There are tonnes of cards to steal or trash other player's Gubs so huge swings occur on almost every player's go.
It's ultra light, and a pure chaosfest, but it's not annoying, thanks to it's very short playing time. And the artwork is very appealing.
Initial rating: 6
The final new game of the night was Crazy Creatures of Dr. Doom.
This game is also a filler, but it requires more thought and gives more control to players. For that reason I enjoyed it more than the other 2 games, although I found it to be a tad too long. Just a tad.
Any way, you're trying to get rid of your hand of cards in 4 suits and you can change the direction of the values to be played to help yourself, or annoy the other players
I wouldn't mind playing this again.
Initial rating: 6.5
On the game night the week before, I played just 1 new game, Essen release Colonial: Europe's Empires Overseas.
Colonial wasn't too high on my list of Essen releases to try. I'm usually not too big a fan of 'map of the world' games.
I'll make this short:
- I found that the game had some very interesting elements
- I found that some of the game's elements didn't seem to come in to play and could have been fleshed out a bit more, or removed from the game to streamline it.
I know some of these would have come in to play more with more aggressive play, but I also feel like that would have added a good chunk of play time, as that would mean people would have an even harder time of reaching the game end conditions.
- The die roll with exploration annoyed me a lot. Of my first 5 tries to conquer an area, 4 failed. I maxed the bonus track of that one as fast as possible (every turn until I maxed out) and always went for the lowest available region, each time only having to roll a 2 or more to succeed. I think there should have been a way to kind of 'buy' your win, if the roll fails or something.
- While we didn't play particularly fast, we also didn't play very slow, yet the game took over 3 hours, after the explanation, and that was too long for my liking (that was, with 5 players)
Would I play again? Maybe, but probably not with 5. But I don't expect to see my issues with the game disappear after repeated play.
Oh yes, did I mention I won the game? That didn't seem to influence my opinion of it though
Initial rating: 6
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Friday evening brought a couple of surprises. I got to play a couple of games I didn't expect to play (yet)
First up was Bullfrog Goldfield, a game which I had put on my Essen 2011 watch list, but it didn't make the show.
This game has the role selection mechanism of Twilight Imperium (third edition) (you get a different benefit from each role, but it also determines player order), has mines and trains like Brass and has a share system that reminded me of Chicago Express (your shares increase in value as you connect to more stuff).
At first the rules where a bit confusing, but I got the hang of them quite fast, unlike some other players involved. Even the splainer, who also happened to have done the Dutch translation, had a hard time of keeping track of what he could do when and what had which effect. It didn't help that the layout of the player aid was confusing and the data on it was incomplete.
Neither of us had any good idea of what strategy to choose, so some players went of a railroad strategy, others for a mine strategy, some for a mix of both. It was soon clear that we all made some serious strategic mistakes which mostly came from a misinterpretation of the end scoring or a misunderstanding of the rules. I guess we'll have less of that on repeated plays.
I liked some of the ideas in the game, even though most of them aren't that original, and would be willing to play again. I still don't have a good idea of what strategies to follow though. Weird game!
I didn't enjoy my play of this, but I am willing to give it a second chance. I won't write it off just yet.
Initial rating: 6.5
PS: what's up with that counter clockwise scoring track and the ugly artwork?
Next we played Palenque.
This is an abstract strategy game in an Inca or Maya theme thrown in for good measure. It's mostly an area majority game in which you get to play with the borders of the areas. A nice twist on the genre.
With the ability to swap 2 player markers on the board comes a good dose of chaos, but it didn't bother me too much. When the scoring cards come up adds some extra chaos, but this isn't outrageous. The rules are simple and there are interesting choices to be made.
One thing that did bother me was that not every player got the same amount of turns. It just so happened that I was the one getting shafted. I got one turn less than all other players, and that extra turn might have given me the win, now I came in second.
Fine, but nothing spectacular. I wouldn't mind playing again, but I'm not sure I would request more plays.
Initial rating: 6.5
Last up was Core Worlds.
I had been wanting to play this game since it came out. I'm a sucker for space themed games I am, however not a big fan of deck building games, which is why I didn't get a copy. Oh yeah, the price tag of $60 didn't help in that department either.
First off let me say that this is the second Stronghold Games title I've played recently that has these tiny cardboard token where I wish they would have used slightly bigger ones or, even better, wooden bits. The rest of the components are fine and the artwork is very nice, if you're in to that kind of style.
This is a bit of a mix of Dominion with Race for the Galaxy in that you build your deck and buy new cards, but you also get to play cards (especially planets) in front of you that stay there.
It played fine, rules weren't too hard. It does take a while longer than Dominion and isn't quite as streamlined.
It's a good thing that you know in advance which goals will come up in the last 2 rounds so you can plan for them, but I guess this will make for a less dynamic end game with repeated plays.
Initial rating: 7.2
Thu Feb 23, 2012 12:00 pm
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
This was a busy weekend. On Friday we gamed all evening, Saturday we started gaming in the early afternoon until midnight and Sunday we gamed from 11am till about 7pm.
On Friday we played mostly games I had played before (Survive with the Squid, Taluva, Yggdrasil & 7 Wonders) but there was one 'new' title: Priests of Ra.
If you like regular Ra you mostly know how to play Priests of Ra, as game play is 99% identical. The one change is that you have to choose which side of the double sided tiles to put face up. The other change is the scoring, which is familiar but different.
I'd say that if you like Ra (and I do) you'll probably like Priests of Ra, but I see no reason what so ever to own both. They're the same with mostly a change in scoring, which doesn't improve the game. I'd have to play a couple more times to see if it is as good as Ra or slightly inferior.
Initial rating: 7.5
On Friday we had planned a full game of Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. I'd been a long time since my last game of this. Myriam and I had played a couple of games (she more than I as she likes the game better), Jan had played 1 game of the introduction game and Fre hadn't played before at all.
I got off to a very slow start. For a long time I was at 1 VP income, while Jan and Myriam where at 4 and 5 each. Fre was also at 1 but he was taking a lot of VP action cards for one-of VP gains so he was still at a competitive score. I somehow managed to get my resource generation up before the others did, which gave me the ability to crank out wonders and fast and I also had quite some science points saved up so I had good theaters which I could now populate. I was however at about 20 VPs while Jan and Myriam where on their way to 50. So I had a long way to go. But by keeping my competitive advantage in resource generation (upgrading my resource cards every chance I got) I was able to increase my VP generation a lot, while Jan and Myriam's dropped off steep by loss of certain old leaders. I was now gaining about 15 VPs while they where gaining about 7 or 8 each turn. I was able to stay ahead on the VP gain track for the remainder of the game, going up beyond 20 per turn towards the end of the game. By the last half of the 2nd age I had catched up with Myriam, who was now ahead of Jan, and during age 3 I was able to get a small lead. The only reason I was able to have a decisive win was my last wonder, which gained me a whopping 26 VPs, sealing the deal. And Fre? He stayed at 1VP for the whole game, ending at about 50 or so, while both Myriam and I where beyond 250.
I like the idea of the game a lot, but what bothers me is how slow it goes and how tedious the bookkeeping is. And for that reason I find it good, not great.
We ended the day with an other play of PAX and 3 rounds of Crokinole.
For Sunday we had an other big game planned: Twilight Imperium (third edition) with the Twilight Imperium (third edition): Shattered Empire expansion. It'd been over 5 years so I had to reread the rules. I still forgot a couple of the smaller rules which messed things up a bit.
Twilight is yet another big, complex slow and slightly tedious game. It's not nearly as streamlined as Eclipse but is does offer a richer game experience. I'm not sure the trade off (longer game, more depth / shorter game, not as deep) is good though, it's WAY longer than Eclipse. That being said, I hope to play again soon, with less rules errors.
To finish the weekend with one last game, we had a go at Eurorails which was the first crayon rail game for all of us. The rules are simple enough, and I quite enjoyed it, but I did find that once every player has a good basic network and the amount of new track being built declines, that it's a bit repetitive, with all the pick-up-and-deliver going on. It took slightly to long.
I also found that the cost of using ferries is too high for the extra pay the contracts offer. Delivering from Spain to Poland will give you more money than delivering from Sarajevo to the UK, even though you do need to use a ferry twice (once to get on the island, once to get off again).
I found it interesting and I'd be happy to play again, maybe with 4 players (our game was with 3)
Initial rating: 6.5
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
As one gamer was a bit late, we decided to play a filler fist. One player had Familienbande with him.
It's a Colovini, not my favorite designer, but I'll always give his games a shot.
Play is simple: draw a card, play a card to create a couple or play a card as a child of a couple and score the aspects of that kid. Hope that your secret color comes out on top.
It's very chaotic and has quite a bit of luck. I only managed to win because I drew a card with 3 of my color on it and was able to play that in the 5 row, scoring me 15 points. The other colors could no longer make up the difference before the game was over. But if I hadn't been so lucky, there was no way I could have won.
It's fine, but only because it's as short as it is. Light, chaotic, big luck factor.
Initial rating: 6
We had planned playing a game of Outpost. I'd been looking forward to this, as I liked Phoenicia (since our last play I'm convinced the runaway leader problem will not occur with experienced players). I also own The Scepter of Zavandor but haven't played it yet.
We played with 4, and I was a bit amazed that it goes up to 9!
The rules are very simple: get resources, bid for cards, buy upgrades. Rinse and repeat until someone wins. The variation comes from the cards that come up, just like in Phoenicia. I was very disappointed though that there was a huge runaway leader problem in our game. The first 2 players to get the Titanium ability, got ahead. The one of them that got lucky enough to buy a second one the next round (better resource cards than the other player who was short 2) got ahead even more. And more. And more. All of us tried different strategies to catch up, some where more effective than others, but no one got close. After the game we debated for a while who could have done what to counter this problem, but each solution we came up with, was flawed and would mean you would be at least 1 turn behind that leader. Who is then again at an advantage to keep his leading position as he has more income and thus has more options for increasing that even more.
An other, minor quibble I had with the game is the die rolling for cards. If you roll a D12 and the lowest card on the table is an 8, chances are you'll be rolling the die over and over and over just to get 2 good rolls to replace the cards.
I was also a bit surprised with some of the components. The workers and robots are chose tiny cardboard tiles. I would have liked to have bigger ones, or better, differently colored cubes cylinders. A company that strives to offer the best possible components could have gone just a bit further. As it stands the components are decent but nothing special.
I have to say I'd play this again when offered, and might even request a game to see if our concerns are right, but I was quite disappointed.
Initial rating: 6.5
What I didn't expect, is that we got to play yet an other new title, Takenoko.
I knew this would be a lighter family style game, so I wasn't expecting any deep strategy. Rightly so, which doesn't mean you can't plan ahead or make good tactical moves. The options are simple and interesting enough, the components are quite nice (I don't really care for the panda and gardener figures though, give me wooden bits any time of day ) and the artwork is appealing.
It's a fine if unremarkable family game that I don't mind playing from time to time, but it's not remarkable in any way shape or form and thus won't be added to my collection.
Initial rating: 6.5
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Last Friday we got together to try out some more 'new' Essen titles
First up was Urban Sprawl.
I had played Dominant Species once and had enjoyed it, although there where concerns over the impact of the tundra strategy. But I was certainly up for an other game by the same designer, especially since it had a city building theme.
The basic rules are quite straight forward. And there weren't to many small rules. The spice was to come from event cards shuffled into the various decks. I was a bit weary of this, as most games with event cards have a bit more chaos than I like, and most event cards in most games benefit/hurt some players more than others. I was very disappointed though, when I found out that there where tons of event cards and they had sometimes severe impact. I was almost forced to give an other player 12 of my points. Which means the point difference would have been a whopping 24. Luckily that didn't happen, but it almost did. Also, a lot of event cards seemed to benefit the same person over and over. And yes, that person won by a big margin. On top of that, there was quite some rich-get-richer effect where the person with the most points got to perform certain actions only to benefit himself.
I had moderately high hopes for this one, but all of that was destroyed with the utter chaos. If the game lasted only 60 to 90 minutes, that might have been fine, but this amount of chaos in a 3 hour game with sometimes hard decisions? Nope, that's not what I was looking for!
Initial rating: 5.5
Since this game had lasted so long, we selected something shorter to finish up the evening: Kingdom Builder.
I had heard this game offers quite some variation, so that's always fun. And it's from the designer of Dominion! But I also had heard it was a light family style game, which is something I'll play from time to time, but I usually don't get too many plays in.
The rules sounded fine, and we got started quickly. Turns are short and easy, this plays very fast. The only problem is: more often than not I got stuck with the wrong landscape card, offering me NO choices. I got to fill up a whole corner of the board, with no chances what so ever to spread over the board, however hard I tried. If I didn't get to fill up the desert I was in even more, I got to start filling up the mountains or the grassland right next to it.
I was very disappointed with the amount of options I got in this game. I liked the idea, and it played well, but there simply too little options. Maybe giving everyone 2 cards to choose from improves this game dramatically, but with the written rule I didn't find this engaging.
Initial rating: 6
-
Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Belgium
Gijzegem
-
Good friends of ours love Race for the Galaxy just as much as we do. Except that we own and play all expansions, they hadn't played any of them yet. To we went over there to learn them the new expansions.
We kicked right off with the first expansion included, even though it had been months since they had played the base game. But it went over quite good, without much questions. So we went right on to the next expansion. We didn't use the take overs, we never do, and again this went very well, so as soon as the game was over I started explaining the third expansion. This is definitely the most drastic change to the game with quite some new features, but again, not to many questions. It will take some extra plays for them to get a good grasp on the new possible strategies, but I'd say it was a success.
We had a bit more time left, and they took out Castle Panic, which we hadn't played before. It's a co-operative game with only a single winner. Which is good. We came close to losing, or at least it felt that way, but in the end we made it with all walls destroyed, but all towers remaining.
It's very chaotic and has quite a bit of luck involved. If the monster/event tiles come out in a bad order, you can be seriously screwed without standing a chance. Which almost happened.
I liked it OK, it's an fine diversion, but I don't think I'd often request to play.
Initial rating: 6
Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:46 am
1 , 2 Next »
|
|
