Carson City

This game has been staring at me from the game shelf since Essen begging to be played. I don't know why it has taken 4 months to get it to table; maybe some unfavourable reports from my games group, maybe the plethora of new games that have grabbed my attention.

Well i regret the wait because i really enjoyed my first play. The first round or two were a bit odd because it is a worker placement game (with guns) I and my opponenets were playing it Agricola style i.e not contesting the action spots. Then half way through all hell broke loose and colts were drawn at every opportunity. We played with the Indian expansion, and first and second place went to the players who had chosen him twice as their role. The biggest cowboy in town came last. In the analysis afterwards (all new to the game) we felt that the game is going to take a few plays to fathom the strategies. The dominant cowboy did not bully the other players enough by nicking their income from buildings and the land grabbers did not change gear by using their income effectively. I keep thinking about the game, i particularly like the cash limits on the characters, the progressive cost of buying VPs and the interactions between the building types. I think the next time i try it it will be with the 'might is right' variant to eliminate the luck of the die rolls.

Thank the lord Counter magazine only comes out four times a year

On the day my Counter magazine arrives i sit up till 2 reading, then lie awake thinking about whether i agree/disagree with the reviews. I think if it were a weekly i'd have to turn to sleeping tablets.

The February issue is my favourite as it lists the contributors top 5 games from the previous year - it always provokes a lot of mental debate about what my own top five would be (and when i have finished playing the highlight 2009 games i'll post them on this blog)

I was delighted that the editor of Counter, Stuart Dagger, selected 'A Brief History of the World' as his number one. It's retro, it's more about the experience than winning ,it eschews clever mechancics for straight forward game play - in short everything that a game should be.

War of the Roses - Can you judge a game by the components?

War of the Roses arrived today and i have just had the best 'punching out the bits' experience i can remember. The box weighs about 4 Kilos and is just a litlle bigger than a standard bookshelf size game. So what's in there? Lead or gold? Gold! It might be only February but i think i can safely predict that this will win any award going for the best produced game of 2010. The quality of the components are staggering. The board is six folded, very thick and with superb clear artwork. Turn it over and it has a map of the historic battles of the subject matter. Each player has a screen and an order planning board - both are made from the thickest card, the player screens are huge with summaries of important rules and a history of the Wars. The chits and tokens are up to the same standard. The only niggle is that the picture of the Captain of Calais token is a scanned picture of some modern day bloke (Peter Hawes?). I'd hope that nonensense was not going to be repeated after the design mess of 'Heads of State'. I pray that the game play is as good as the bits!

War of the Roses - can you judge a game by the rules?

The last time i read a set of rules for a ZMan published game deisgned by an Antipodean i dismissed the game as derivative, simplistic and poorly themed. The game was 'Endeavor' and how wrong could i have been - it's one of my top 5 from 2009 and i think it is a masterpiece of clear and simple board game design.

Now i have read the rules to 'Wars of the Roses twice' and and i am attracted and put off in equal measure. On the plus side it's about a period of history i find interesting (three years of studying the period did not put me off). It looks greeat. It has some intersting mechancis, especially the simulataneous move programming.

However, it's a Euro game (area majotity) with a bit of conflict thrown in and i'm worried that Euro mechanics and The War of the Roses are not amarriage made in heaven.

Secondly there are some historical inaccuracies that i find annoying. If you play with four then two players are Lancastrian and two Yorkist. It only matters for an area majoirty calculation and you can't confer with your 'partner' about tactics. Secondly for Area Majority calculation players get votes in Parliament - not in synch with political dymanics of the 15th century at all.

The other thing that worries me is that with the hidden planning but sequential actions that game play might be a bit too chaotic.

Despite my reservations i am still looking for a scuccessor to 'Kingmaker' and however remote the possiblity this is it i'll give it a go.

Zman and the UK distributor seem to have learnt form the pricing mistake of Peter Hawe's previous game, 'Heads of State', and have set a RRP of £49.99 for 'Wars of the Roses'. It's still on the pricy side but i hope it won't end up in the bargain bin with 'Heads of State' which was priced at a truly absurd £59.99. 'Heads of State' is an ok game, ironically well worth the £14.99 i sell it for, but a complete waste of money at full RRP.

RuneWars - A review by Nigel Buckle

I won’t detail the mechanics of Runewars, you can look at the rules for that First impressions are this is a lavish game with a price tag to match, huge colourful box and expectation of lots of great components. That’s where the disappointment hits, opening the box to find the major element is air - you get a massive insert used to hold the large punchboards, with the pre-bagged minatures in protective cardboard ‘sleeves’ to the side along with the card decks. Once you’ve opened it all out you’ll discover a misprint for the elves and the cities has been fixed and an additional punchboard included. Read the punchboards before punching and make sure you keep the right bits. Then once you’ve punched it all out you’ll realise the huge box is unnecessary and the insert completely useless as you’ll struggle to get all the bits back in the box unless you turn it over or throw it away. However that’s the main disappointment for me - the huge box, both in terms of expectation of it being full to the brim with cardboard and plastic, and in terms of storing and transporting the game. Really it could have come in a Runebound sized box with no problem. Game wise there is quite a bit going on with various sub-systems all driven by a card flip mechanic, no dice here. The map is made up of geometric hexes, so each game will be a bit different, and most of the hexes are populated with neutral units that you can try to get to join your side (good luck with that) or attack. Each player controls a race, and they are all subtly different, which is nice. Each has unique units and resources, giving each a unique feel without having a pile of special rules. There are a bunch of heroes, all with their own unique power too. The game last 6 years (4 seasons per year) maximum and once you know what you are doing you can finish the game surprisingly quickly. Unlike other conflict games of this type the combat system is very straightforward and very quick, just fight 5 rounds (one per unit shape, often you’ll only resolve 2 or 3) and then see what units are left standing, side with the most wins. Central mechanic is all players simultaneously pick an action card for the season and they activate in order. This helps reduce downtime and increase tension - will your opponents be attacking, recruiting, or harvesting? In the early games it is easy to lose sight of the requirements to win - you need 6 runes and you start with 2. Heroes can find more by questing, winter will often bring 1 or more additional rune into play and you can take them from your opponents. Once everyone understands the pacing of the game things get quite tense as you have to optimise your actions, units and heroes - the game plays so fast it is hard to recover from a major disaster (such as losing a fight to a neutral you expected to win). For some people looking for a Leader/Personality dominated game where Heroes run around as the main focus this game will be a disappointment - you need your armies to win and most of your actions will centre around them and your empire. The heroes are a bit of a sideshow, but an important one - the runes they can collect are often what you need to win. What you have is an area control game with planning. You can only fight with your armies once a year (you activate an area, place a token in it and move units into the area - and they are then stuck there until spring comes along), meaning there are hard choices about when and where you attack and can you defend a counter attack back? What I like: Games will be different - at least for a while, the sides are different, the map is variable, the seasons have different effects, the heroes are different - and you can add in encounters as a variant adding more variety (or chaos, depending on your viewpoint). Combat feels epic, despite the fast resolution - do you use fast units that aren’t very good, or spell casters, or your big guns that might get routed before they even get a chance to fight? The card mechanic works well, and combat is over in a very short time. Deep game play without huge amounts of downtime - most of the ‘planning’ side of the game is done simultaneously with everyone thinking about card play at the same time. Then actual turns roll along fairly quickly. Simple mechanics - for all the elements the game includes: Different unit types, resources, strongholds, development, heroes, quests, duels, etc the actual rules and mechanics are remarkably simple. You will not need a pile of reference sheets and help cards to learn and play this game, but you will need a few games to learn what works and what doesn’t, how many units you probably need to win that battle etc. Objective cards - each player gets one and they are coded by alignment (half the sides are ‘good’ and half ‘evil’, the objective cards encourage you down one of those paths, do the objective get an oh so important rune as a reward. It is fun - early on you are beating up neutrals and building your empire, in the last couple of years you’ll be bumping into your opponents and possibly fighting over crucial territory. No long slow build up, if anything the game ends too quickly - but if you find that is the case the designer has included an ‘epic’ version which lasts 8 years and has you starting with less runes. There are multiple approaches to victory - build your influence and win that way (dominate the influence bids, grab the role cards, even use diplomacy to get neutral allies), concentrate on heroes, grab items, find runes, duel (and kill) your opponents heroes, concentrate on tactics cards for sneaky tricks, or just flood the map with units and grab territory. What I don’t: Box size and that the winning condition is just dragon runes, I would have liked to see more race and alignment specific victory conditions - the objectives go part of the way there, but more would be nice. The game is screaming out for expansions - if nothing else to help fill the huge box. You’ll get through most of the quest deck in a single game (as most of it is not used, you only include quests for the map tiles you are playing) and most are very similar, go to hex X, take an ability test (flip cards = the relevant attribute) look for successes. Multi-part quests etc would add variety. You’ll get through most of the season cards, and some effects are repeated, again I’d like to see more variety, even to the extent each player gets a subset of cards and picks which are included (so you know some of the possibilites and can adapt your strategy). More heroes, more races. For the hefty price tag I would have hoped for just a bit more in the original game. Overall, if you want a fast playing epic feeling fantasy conflict game you won’t go far wrong investing in Runewars - but if you are looking for a game where heroes are the main focus with armies in the background you probably need to look elsewhere.

Assyria and Homesteaders

Homsteaders first. I'm now up to three plays and my ability to play the game is going down in proportion to how much my liking it is going up. It's the dang auction which is throwing me - twice a game i have a mental 'all in' moment and win an auction i did not want to win, then build a building i did not need. I think the key is to plan to pass in advance and don't panic if someone else picks up a cheap auction. You can score about 29 points by not participating in the auction (Advance up the RR track to the 3pt square, picking up a trade chit , a cowboy and a gold on the way, and score 1 pt a round on your Homestead, ) so scores in the early 40's (mine) are pretty lame. Never mind there's always another game.

Assyria. The theme put me off (as did a sight of the board at Essen) It's about ancient stuff - ziggurats, camels et al. However i opened a copy after a customer sang it's praises and i'm glad i did. It's got a nifty card drafting mechanic to feed your villages , the rest is fairly standard fare of sacrificing Vps for income, going for short term vp gains against longer term aims. However, it pulls together into a (for want fo a better word) solid Euro. I'm not sure whether my liking of the core drafting mechanic will stand up to repeated plays but i have enjoyed the two games (2 and 4 player) to date. Maybe a try before you buy.

Homesteaders

I played Homesteaders twice over the weekend and i believe it lives up to the hype.

There are some production problems; there is damp in the box, the printing on the tiles is off set and the auction board feels like a week dead kipper.
However, the game is not priced at a premium and it is a debut from new publisher Tasty Minstrel. But most important the game play is fantastic.

At heart it is a classic 'turn stuff into better stuff with buildings and ultimately into loads of VPS' game follwing in the footsteps of Caylus and Le Havre. Homesteaders has a delicious twist - there is an auction for the right to build which adds a valuation to every planned building and conversion you plan to make. The twist is further spiced by the fact that there is one less auction than the number of players. One player will have to pass (they get something for passing ). The game is played over 10 auction rounds and you might be building between 5 and 8 times over the course of the game, so knowing at what point to pass but also not letting other players win the right to build makes the game very tense.

Thouroughly reccomended!