Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Garrett's Games & Geekiness #95

What follows are "addendum notes" to my appearance on Doug Garrett's excellent podcast, Garrett's Games & Geekiness. If you want to listen to it, you can check it out at Garrett's Games & Geekiness. This was recorded on December 28th, 2007, and was intended to be broadcast on December 30th (which explains some of my references during the interview.)

Race for the Galaxy

I've played 7 games now (4 with four players, 1 with three players & 2 with two players)... and my opinion of it is only going up. I would not be surprised if this joins my Top Ten games in the next few months. I'm also becoming aware of what Brian Bankler calls "pioneering" & "leeching" strategies.

I realized another reason that Puerto Rico has a slightly less steep learning curve is that everything is visible - you can ask questions about the powers of a particular building without revealing part of your hand. That's not true in Race for the Galaxy.

BTW, Rio Grande Games has announced the publication of the 1st expansion, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm in the 2nd quarter of 2008. Yippee!

Some helpful links: Agricola

Doug did manage to convince me to pre-order Agricola. It wasn't a terribly hard sell... I'm a big fan of Uwe Rosenberg's designs (most of which are card games) and I like well-themed building games. I'll let you know more after I've actually had the opportunity to play it.

Qwirkle

Nothing really new to say except that I'm happy to play again... and it's done a lot better in the Five & Dime tabulation than I thought it would.

Mordred

Just a rule quote to which give a real nice sense of how "heavy" the game is/isn't:

If you roll that number or higher then you remove the other person's piece, giving it back to them, and then you place the Mordred man in the space and gloat.

Pirates on the High Seas

Braeden & I made up a new version of the basic game - you have to get 6 different chips (there are 7 possible in the basic game) and return to your port. It makes the game a bit longer, which isn't a bad thing if you enjoy shooting stuff.

Here's a picture, btw, from BGG (nice shot, metamorpha)...

Days of Wonder

Dear Eric & Mark (the guys who own/run the game company, Days of Wonder):

I promise I won't steal stuff if you let me come visit the offices. But I may be sorely tempted...

Sincerely, mark jackson (aka fluff daddy)

Five & Dime Lists

I was NOT taking over the show... OK, maybe for a minute.

Surprisingly, I got Steve's name right: Steve Zanini.

The results are really interesting this year - and you still have time to get your entry in - the deadline is January 20th, 2008. You can find more information about it here... or here.

Command & Colors System

  1. BEST: Memoir '44... the perfect balance between bit-o-licious-ness & playability coupled with wonderful support
  2. AWFULLY GOOD: Battlelore... the gorgeous bits get in the way of making the game easy to set up, but it's still very, very good.
  3. WELL DONE: Command & Colors:Ancients... the rules & scenarios are great, but I still like minis better than blocks.
  4. FIRST GIRLFRIEND STATUS: Battle Cry... it's probably the weakest of the games - the least official support, the odd holes in the rules, the lack of expansions... but it's like your first girlfriend. You may not be dating her anymore, but you remember her fondly.
Settlers Whining

I've already written a post about this - Missing the Land of Catan... now I just need to ACTUALLY play the game. Sheesh.

Geek Supporter Badges

They made the 2nd goal (2007 supporters)... I like to blame us even though this didn't air until after the deadline. (He he he...)

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2 comments:

  1. ironcates10:42 AM

    I really enjoyed your guest star apperance in this episode of GG&G! Comments:

    Race for the Galaxy

    I really have to play this next game night. I loved Shogun that night but wish I could've played both. I heard there's very little interaction which makes me a little leary of this game. I heard its like Star Wars where the Empire and the Rebels ignore each other.

    Qwirkle

    I'm interested in this because I do like the Scrabble posistioning and lack the spelling knowledge.

    Agricola

    I really glad you're picking this up. It's definitely a must try for me. I picked up Kingsburg as it was the Essen release that seemed the most like my type of game but this is a close second. So, we'll have to do an Essen release night soon.

    Commands and Colors

    Can you believe I've only played Battlelore!? Love the system, the setup time is a small annoyance. I play on Vassal mostly now. The expansions have been a disappointment to me, except Epic. Hopefully, they can turn it around this year with the Heroes.

    Five and Dime

    Thanks for all your hard work.

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  2. Mark (aka pastor guy)10:55 AM

    Steve - thanks for the kind words.

    RACE

    There's very little interaction for your first few games (when you're just trying to get your head around the system) but 7 games in, I'm seeing that you need to read what other players have to do - it happened the other night against John, where his produce/consume empire would have neutralized my trade powers unless I made sure I traded before or when he was going to consume.

    AGRICOLA

    I pre-ordered... which means cooler bits & extra cards, but we have to wait till it's released in late March/early April.

    COMMAND & COLORS

    The expansions are expensive, but I'm having a lot of fun with them. The one I like least, oddly enough, is Epic. I think the "community draw hand" gives you too much flexibility.

    We need to have a Steve/Mark C&C night & play all four games back to back. (Talk about frying our brains!)

    FIVE & DIME

    Nearly 170 folks tabulated & the results keep coming in. Yikes.

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