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Chief EGG Head
United States
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So after a long and difficult work weekend I decided to take advantage of my Tuesday afternoon off and play some games. I have been trying to delve in the mysterious realm of 18XX and Cary is just the twisted cult leader I need to enter this deep and dark world of train games.
1825 Unit 3 has been high on my list of games to try and Cary had mentioned it so off we went. Well, ok actually we tried to play this last week as well and kind of had a test run through it but, we were about halfway through with way more questions than answers and so we called it good. This week we felt armed enough with answers from good ol' BGG forums to give it a real go. It turns out we were not quite as prepared as we thought but we more or less managed a whole game with errors.
I ended up with Arbroth and Stockton and Darlington and Cary started with Tanfield. Cary proceeded to buy NBR and I went for the CR. Since I had picked up the third private Cary was able to invest in the CR more than I was able to invest in the NBR. We managed pretty ell through phase 1 and I started G&SWR.
Phase 2 is where we started to have some difficulties in that we didn't follow the upgrades quite correctly. We didn't realize that single small towns or large single towns could be upgraded using the green double marker tiles. On top of that I didn't realize I was missing a green tile # 81 until after we finished the game. Needless to say our error made agonizing over tile placement that much worse! We pressed ahead with Cary picking up HR and GNS while I picked up the M&C.
This is where I think I messed up and withheld a few too many times trying to push the trains to the 5's. Cary used HR to build up money for his trains trashing the stock but letting his other companies increase their value. Cary went on to win pretty handily. I'm looking forward to a third try at this one with hopefully all the rules right!
After this the rest of the gang arrived, Bryon, Julie and Robert, and we had 5. Well we had the usual problem of figuring out what to play. Last time we had mentioned Ars Mysteriorum as a possible choice but passed it by. Ars Mysteriosum is a little known gem from Alan D. Ernstein now of Inca Empire fame.
The theme is alchemy as each of the players are trying to come up with the best recipes. The goal of the game is to earn money from completing the "recipes" at the different wizards' tents. The recipes are placed into a grid that will earn money via sets of the recipes in 3 axises. It involves each player having a hand of bidding cards 1-6 and blind bidding on turn order with one card and then using the other cards to blind bid for resources which you use to complete recipes. There are also "mystery" cards which can be played to affect the game play. Players have to pay resources to move to a different tent to collect other recipes and also just to stay at the same tent. The cost is also dependent on the number of other players at the tent when you go there. Players then pay resources to complete one of the 2 recipes at the tent and this is done in turn order.
We had recently played Aladdin's Dragons another game with blind bidding and magic cards so it was a nice chance to see the differences between the two games. Blind bidding in general is not one of my favorite mechanisms but I find it tolerable in these two games. I like AM a bit more as the set collection with it's potential to earn money is a bit more interesting. The game is longer but doesn't outstay it's welcome.
Ars Mysteriosum has lots of interaction with turn order being critical in certain situations as going first can mean first choice in recipes. I have only played it with 5 and this seems to be a great number as there is lots of competition for resources.
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