Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/19/13: City of Horror

City of Horror is a game where each player has a group of three people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse.  There are a number of buildings around the board which have distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Each turn, the players move one of their characters to a different location where there is a space or to the overturned food truck if there is no space available.

Along the way, you try to have as many of your people survive.  Not only must they survive, though, you need to acquire an injection and victory points where possible in order to board the helicopter that arrives at the end of the game to carry off survivors.

My team consisted of a male police officer, male punk rocker, and female business woman.  The woman stayed in the bank most of the game, and the police officer stayed in the hospital, so it was up to the punk rocker to move around, although he was mostly in the church.

After the players move, the zombies are added based off of the card chosen and can move.  Each location has rules around zombies and when they will kill someone.  The players have special abilities and cards to try to fend off the zombies, but few of each.

In our game, one player controlled most of the game, however, his controlling of the game did not end up to his advantage in the end as he had not made many friends and a fairly sly trade of mine while he was attempting to secure a trade that he thought would win him the game, crumbled his plan in one action.

In the end, the game took its slotted 2 hours to complete and every player had at least on survivor make it to the chopper. The scores were as follows.

Anna – 9

Scott – 9

Ron – 7

Francois – 7

Me – 7

Moishe – 2

Aaron – Zombie GM

Final Thoughts:

This game was fun, but the symbols and gameplay are a little tough to pick up on.  You really need to pay attention and figure out some of the meanings to get the most out of your gameplay.

Due to the fight to stay alive mentality of the game, people can get pretty competitive.  In our game, we had one person really get into it and get angry a few times and another person pretty much check out of the game at times.

City of Horror was a fun game with different scenarios to keep it interesting.  I’d like to do a bit of reading on it and get a better understanding before playing it again.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/19/13: Ra

It had been a good morning of gaming and it would continue with my first playing of Ra.  In Ra, tiles are laid out one at a time on the board.  Players can choose to either to draw a tile from the bag to place on the auction block or start a round of bidding.  Each player has four bidding tokens with a number on them.  The bidding only goes around once, so they have to decide how high they are willing to go in a round from the start as it will never come back to them.

In the game, there are five or six different ways to score as determined by the tiles you take, some of these are gathering the same buildings, gathering different buildings, getting lands and a flood, along with others.

As tiles are added to the board, there are some that are red and automatically trigger bidding.   However, if nobody bids, you keep going as normal.  Once everyone has used their bidding tokens once, you count victory points for what you currently have and move on to the second half of the game.  Some cards, such as floods and straight scoring pieces are only used in one part of the game, so would be discarded here.

Everything else stays and you start the second half.  Part of the fun is that when you win a bid, you get all tiles currently on the board as well as the bidding chip from the last person to win an auction.  So, when you start the second half, you use those chips.

Once everyone has used their bidding chips in the second phase of the game or when the final red tile is drawn, the game is over and you add your second phase victory points to the first for an overall winner.

I was able to pick up on this game pretty quickly out of the blocks and did well gathering a ton of buildings.  

Overall, I thought that I did a pretty good job and finished third.  Cory, however, dominated in the end as shown below.

Cory – 57

Dan – 37

Me – 36

Leigh – 23

Eric – 23

Final Thoughts:

Much like the other early Egyptian themed game of the day, Ra was a really fun game that would be a good transitional game from party to strategy as the elements are quick to discover, while the strategy can be much deeper than you would think at a glance.  The bidding process leads to allot of fun banter around the table, which keeps the game fun and moving along.

A few of the tiles were a little tough to distinguish between in the beginning and a few of the mechanics took a little trial and error to figure out, but it only takes a couple of bidding phases to be right in there.

A good group willing to talk and laugh is a big bonus here, as are players who pay attention and keep the tile bag moving around with a good pace.  This is definitely a game that can drag needlessly if one or more people are not engaged and let the bag sit for no reason.

Luckily, we had a good group and did not have any issues, which led to me thoroughly enjoying this game, maybe more than any other that I played at the convention.

I look forward to playing this one again in the future.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/19/13: 7 Wonders

From what I can ascertain, one of the top 10 most played games at the moment is 7 Wonders.  It is a game that is somewhat easy to get started with, but takes a few games to really be able to start formulating a strategy and capitalizing on it.  My wonder was The Lighthouse of Alexandria.

The mechanics themselves are fairly simple, take a card and pass the rest to the left during the first phase, the right in the second, and the left again in the third.  You can generate components needed to build other things if you choose and play those cards when they come to you or you can purchase them from the player on your right or left.

You are using these to build things to give you bonuses and to build your wonders.

You are trying to collect sets of card types, win battles with those on either side, and overall gain the most victory points to win.

My strategy was really just to learn the game a bit, so I tended to choose victory point cards early on.  This was very bad as it kept me from gaining any resources to build things early on and I had to use all of my gold to buy what I needed.

I also didn’t take any fighting cards, which did not end up hurting me, but it was something I could have done to gain more in the end.  The worst though, was due to my last of buildings early on, lack of resources, and money, I found it impossible to use the better cards at the end of the game..

It was no surprise when the points were totaled at the end that I got stomped.  I knew I would be nowhere near the lead.  I did ok with fighting, had a bit of gold, finished all three of my wonders, had a decent amount of straight victory point cards, but then the bottom dropped out.

The final score was as follows:

Moishe – 58 (strong in military, wonders, civilian, and guild points)

Randy – 52 ( by far the most civilian, strong in guild and wonders, weak everywhere else, and terrible in military)

Josh – 52 (best in military, strong in gold and wonders, weak in civilian)

Nate – 42 (best in science by far, strong in guild and civilian, weak in commerce/wonders/goald, worst in military)

Matt – 36 (best in wonders and commerce, weak everywhere else)

Me – 35 (good in wonders and civilian, weak everywhere else

Final Thoughts:

This is a fun game that I think would get even better with a few more plays.  I didn’t really get most of it through the first phase and this killed me late in the game, but I still had allot of fun playing it.  I really would like to get some more experience with this one.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/19/13: Amun-Re

After winning my first play of this game at Unterspielstadt the previous week, it was time for a retry with one carry over player and a couple of new ones.  It was the first game of my day pretty early in the morning and was a good way to get things going.

In this game I started getting scoring cards off the bat and gained a number of them throughout the game.  So, my strategy changed from pyramids and temples to segments of the board and farmers.

I quickly discovered that this was not the best strategy, actually a fairly weak one.  I learned that farmers and segments are good, but only with a strong base of pyramids to get you a good base of scoring.

However, the scoring cards kept coming and I played it out to see how things would end up.

The answer… not very well.   It ended up being a probably average to low scoring game overall, which meant that I did not lose by as much as I probably should have.

End Results:

Moishe – 38

Chad – 37

Eric – 31

Me – 29

Final Thoughts:

In two games, I managed to come in first and last.  However, the game is much more about strategy than luck, so it appears to be pretty well balanced.  There are a few major strategies that can be used, but mostly, it will come down to the minutia of the different aspects of the strategy you use, or in my case of the first game, stumbling upon a something that works at the time.

This is a really fun game that can be learned pretty quickly, but seems like it will retain its fun and replay value for quite some time.  I’m looking forward to playing this one again.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/18/13: Elder Sign

The first game up for me in the convention was Elder Sign.  I had played the board version once before and had a good time.  I have played the app version a few times and really enjoyed it.  I wanted to play with a few more people, though, so I made sure to get to this event.

Azathoth was the Elder God to keep from awakening and we had a group of four lion-hearted people to keep him from doing so (Ann - Vincent Lee, Sam - Mandy Thompson, Me - Gloria Goldburg, Aaron - Monterrey Jack).

We played a nearly perfect game.  The dice rolls were in our favor and we took the build up and knock it out approach.  So, with our first couple of rounds we gained a few trophies and elder signs, but we gained allot of items, spells, and clues.

So, once we started pushing for elder signs, they were much easier to get.  We were able do defeat a few different double elder sign cards within two rounds which built them up very quickly.  At this point, the dice started to cool off a bit, but we already had so many trophies that we were able to turn them in for the few elder signs still needed.

Overall, I was a little disappointed in the ease of defeating the game for the second time in a row.  I'm assuming that it can be much more difficult than what we have experienced so far, but I just haven't seen it yet.

Thankfully, with the great theme work in the game, the fun mechanics, and really cool dice the game remains fun in each play.  I am starting to get a little worried, though, that after a few more plays, it may start to see a decline in my rotations of it.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/18/13: Evil Baby Orphanage

I had a really good time playing Elder Sign with some people that I had just met during that game.  Since I had a big gap between games, we decided to fit in a fun, quick card game that they had brought along with them called Evil Baby Orphanage.

In the game, each player is running an orphanage for babies of evil individuals throughout history.  You choose new babies and gain cards that help you to keep them under control, if you want to each turn.  If not, they have special effects that will trigger.  You need to reach a certain power rating of combined babies to win.

The babies are constantly moving around from orphanage to orphanage with the play of different cards and the special features of certain babies.

In the game, Sam got out to the quick lead with a number of high power babies.  This made the rest of us gang up on him to steal his babies and move them around.  Aaron and myself began to build up our baby power as Ann was a bit behind.  However, she played a card that randomly placed all of the babies in orphanages and with some shrewd workings quickly came out on top.

It was a devious plan, which was all the better and she and her evil babies emerged victorious.

Final Thoughts:

This was a goofy fun little card game that leads to lots of laughs as new babies come out.  The icon abilities are fun, but take a little bit to get used to.

I would play this one again in a minute.  It was fun, light, and quick to play.

Ruling the Board: MWGC 1/18/13: Tales of the Arabian Nights

Tales of the Arabian Nights was my last game of the evening.  In the game, we played adventurers from the stories.  We had a goal to achieve for extra points, but the overall point of the game is to reach a certain number of story and wisdom points and make your way back to the starting city.

In our game, our goal was 16 and I chose my goal of eight of each.  We chose our adventurers and our skills.

Chad – Ma’aruf

Anna – Scheherazade

Stanley – Sinbad (seamanship, weapon use, luck)

Frank – Aladdin

Karen – Zumurruel

Aaron - Storyteller

My quest was seek knowledge and my cities were placed on the board.  We all began and quickly were put to the test.  A couple of players started out strong with a number of points in their favor, I was not one of these people.  I made my way to my first city and then quickly thereafter was ensorcelled.  This was the beginning of a theme for me on this night.

In a game where you have to deliberately move to specific places on the board and others are able to move you instead of you choosing, things become a bit difficult.

Others were dealing with their own issues such as marriage, running away after not marrying, and being imprisoned.  As a weapon user, I tried to fight allot, which did not end up being a very good strategy.  Not only could I not move my own piece, but I was also quickly wounded.  This later led to death.

I quickly discovered that death is fairly rare in the game, so I would achieve at least something in the game.

I was reset and started from scratch with Sinbad.  I was quickly then ensorcelled again.  I was then wounded and ensorcelled yet again.  I got some really bad results in my final couple turns and even though my wisdom and storytelling were skyrocketing as the others didn't see me as a threat, there was no way I was going to win.

After four hours, Anna finally had reached her goal and returned to the starting city for the victory.

Pros:

There was some fun storytelling.

“Camel Babies”

Cons:

The game took a long, long time to play, especially for what it was.

The options chosen seemed too often not make any sense with the story that then followed.

There seemed to be too many really bad effects in the game that helped to convoluted it and drag it out.

Final Thoughts:

Not a bad group, but we had some really bad rounds where the game seemed to crawl.  There were some fun things that happened like the “Camel Babies” running joke and the crawling through the hole in the grave to the pit of diamonds where the person picked up some before hitching a ride taunton style in the body of a dead beast to get out.

I’m not sure if I’d really want to play this one again.  I usually like storytelling games, but in this one, the storytelling is done by the storyteller and not the players, which negates it for the most part.  Also, the game often not making sense story-wise from chosen options and skills made them somewhat pointless.

It was a fun game that introduced me to a few people that I would be gaming with a few more times throughout the tournament, so I was glad to get to meet them and get to know them a bit.