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Chief EGG Head
United States
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Just thought I'd jot down a few thoughts about some newer games to me. First up Pergamon. This game has a nice archeology theme and is light to mid-weight in complexity. The goal of the game is to gather pieces of artifacts, complete them and exhibit them for victory points.
The board is nicely done and the components are nice cardboard chits, the game comes in a nice, smaller sized box.
The game consists of 12 turns. The first part of the turn involves placing your archeologist meeple on the track which accomplishes three things 1)collecting money to pay for excavations and polishing exhibits 2)determining the depth of which level you can excavate and 3)player order for excavations.
Starting with the meeple farthest to the right on the track played will collect money. Guesstimating how much money you can earn is part of the game. Each space on the track has a number of coins you can collect from none to 6 with none being the farthest right. At the start of the turn 2 money cards a red drawn and placed face down. Small money bag cards have coins in value 1-4 and money chests have coins in value of 5-8 on them. After everyone has placed a meeple the cards are flipped and starting with the meeple farthest right the money is paid out. Depending on the sum of the two cards and where the meeples are played, sometimes, the left side players may get less money or no money than their position. If the sum is large the left most player collects any extra money left over.
Next the player farthest to the right will have the opportunity to excavate one of the 5 levels. The levels that they player is allowed to excavate is determined but the ones on the space that their meeple is on. The player must also pay coins equal to the level they choose ie level 3 pays 3 coins. Then they may all the artifacts in that level.
Next the players may put on exhibits.
The value of the exhibit is equal to the age (in the picture the value of exhibit I is 5 and exhibit II is 8. Tiebreakers are the smaller numbers followed by AC. When you put on an exhibit you can pay 1 coin to "polish it" and make it worth one more in value. You also earn 1 victory point which looks like these.It took me a while to figure out what they were for! 
The value of the exhibit will earn you VP at the end of the game. The other little tricky point is that the older exhibits lose value when a new exhibit worth the same or higher value is displayed. You can also earn bonus VP for having the oldest of each type of artifact and the oldest show.
I found Pergamon to be a pleasant light weight game that is fun to play with one of my favorite themes. The game fits the theme nicely too.
Uluru is a neat puzzle game for 1-5 players. There is a timer involved but players do not race against each other. Each player takes a set of Dreambirds (one of each color) and a board with Uluru or Ayer's rock in the middle of the board.
Next one card is placed under each color. Each of the cards contain one rule which applies to the color above it. For example the red bird wants to sit next to the green bird or the pin bird wants to sit across from the orange bird. The players then have to try arrange as many of their Dreambirds around the rock in such a fashion as to fulfill each rule. The trickiest part of the game is remembering what rule each card stands for!Here is the designer's explanation of the cards.(go to the image page to see his explanation)
Next the timer is flipped and each player tries to come up with a solution. When the time is done each player gets a stone to represent a minus point for each card that was unfulfilled.
the end result in my example So if you like puzzle games you should give this one a try!
Olympus was released last Essen but I had put off trying it. I finally got around to playing it as mentioned in a previous blog at GameX 2011. I found it pretty interesting, sort of a worker placement crossed with favor tracks and buildings. The main board has the gods with their favors listed on the left and common buildings which may be built by players on the right.
Each player also gets player board and each player has a set of their own buildings here are some examples.Of course each building gives a player a benefit as well.
Each player starts with 3 meeples and at 1 on every track except population which starts at 2.
The start player places a meeple in the alpha space of one of the gods, earning the favor. Then the other players my choose to go in the beta space of that god earning a slightly lesser favor, such as building 2 buildings vs building 1 building. This is a pretty interesting mechanism especially with 4 players. Then the next player places in a alpha space and so on. The players advance up the different tracks.
Culture allows you to build better buildings as you advance on the track and you get an extra meeple at 8. It is the only track where your marker can be advanced ahead of your population marker and stay there.
Population lets you get an extra worker at 6 and in addition the population markers is as far as the other tracks may be advanced.
Military lets you attack other players and you get a resource if your military is greater.
The last 3 tracks are different resources needed to build with.
You earn VP for buildings and for Glory cards which are given to the first player to reach the end of each type of track. The game is over when 4 of the Glory cards are taken.
The game seems to have multiple paths that can be explored so that makes it interesting to me. The only reservation I have is the downtime with new players as they try and learn all the cards/buildings.
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Here is the designer's explanation of the cards.
(go to the image page to see his explanation)
Of course each building gives a player a benefit as well.
ROFL!Yes and the resources were shares!
