Board Game Club: Steel Driver Torres

 I had a great time at today's board game club (yeah, the baby's still waiting for a nice day to be born perhaps next week?). I started with quick five-player game of Fortissimo, which is a simple speed test pattern recognition puzzle.
Cards have images with different attributes. 30 cards are laid on the table and every player gets one. Then you just have to find a card with a picture that has at most one attribute different from the card you have. Continue finding new cards until you can't, then say stop. Everybody who hasn't made a mistake scores one point per card.
It's simple and really fast. A round can be over in seconds and a whole game is done in five minutes or so. With five players, it was perhaps too fast. The task is fairly simple, though it's also fairly easy to make mistakes. This won't replace Flix Mix or Set, but I'll play this again -- but preferably with just three or four players.
My Milan-Spiele order arrived last Friday after just two months of waiting. The delivery itself was very swift, as the parcel was posted on Monday. We just had to wait for Duck Dealer... Obviously worth the wait. That game seems interesting. I also got Formissimo and Steel Driver in that order, so it was time to get Steel Driver on the table again.
Last time I played Steel Driver was in Helcon. Again we had five players. The game is quite easy to teach, which is nice. We also played fast, finishing the game in just 60 minutes.
It was a good game, with players using interesting tactics. One of the players figured out that since he doesn't know much about the end game works except that it's huge, he tries to make as much money (points) during the game as possible. He pretty much always paid all his money to buy the share he wanted and then developed the railroads a lot.
In the end he was second to last, so it didn't quite work out, but I think there's some potential in that strategy. It's just that his shares weren't good enough in the end. I did well and bought a total of eight shares (the practical maximum in five-player games is ten). That included about four really good shares, which was enough to secure my victory.
I like Steel Driver. It's a refreshing change from Wabash & Co that you use a fixed income of cubes to bid and the shares produce different currency, that's what makes Steel Driver interesting and worth playing.
According to my stats, the last time I played Torres was in August 2002. Six and half years ago, that is. The game has lingered in my mind since and I often thought about buying it. I think somebody thought about publishing it in Finnish, which made me hopeful, but that didn't happen. Finally I got the game in a math trade, I traded Chinatown for it. I even got the old version, I prefer the Crematoriums art of that version. We had four players in our game, with fairly little experience. So, of course we had all the action cards available for everybody. That way nobody has to remember what the decks contain. To me, that seems like the best way to play the game anyway, though I could try the version where everybody has a personal deck and the cards are drawn -- now it seemed like people had few action points too much at times.
It was a fun game. I was slightly annoyed by the lack of interesting building options in the end -- why do anything less valuable when I could simply expand my main castle with two tower blocks for eight points? Everybody thought I would win, and I did have a great castle 11 blocks wide -- but I was on the fifth floor and Riku and Toni were on the fourth floor, so that was just 11 points for me. In the other hand, those guys got 51 and 42 points from the king's castle, while I got just 18 points -- a loss of 33 and 24 points for me.
That was enough, I didn't win but I did place second. In what I understand is typical for Torres, the final scores were 238, 236, 235 and 193 -- so the difference between 1st and 3rd is just over 1% of the total score. Can't feel too bad about a third place like that.
Hopefully I'll get to play Torres again before 2015.

Good Older Games I Have Not Played Before

 Die Dolmengötter - I skipped this one in Essen 2005 because it looked ugly and not very interesting. I shouldn't have, because it's one of the real highlights of 2008 for me. I bought my copy from Tommy, since JC Lawrence said nice things about in Geek and I wasn't disappointed. I even upped my rating to ten after some hesitation - the game is really, really good, but only with four players.
With four the game certainly nears perfection. It's 20 minutes of absolute bliss. Interesting tactical decisions, a hint of overall strategy and some luck or player interaction chaos - make sure you max out your highest dolmens and you're set for glory.
If I ever want an arts & crafts project, I might consider doing a nice-looking re-theming of Die Dolmengötter. The theme is completly bogus and the board is somewhat ugly - I think it could be nicer. I have no idea of a suitable theme, though.
Preference - A traditional card game. There are actually several similar games with the same name, usually identified by the country of origin. We play the Russian variation, which I believe is slightly more complicated than the more usual Austrian game. It's no Bridge, but a nice three-player game that is just challenging enough while being easy to teach - very easy, if the student has ever played a trick-taking game with bidding.
Preference also plays fast enough. It's a charming game and though it only works with three players, it's become a very likely choice if there are three players including me and Hannu and someone who doesn't hate traditional card games. This one's definitely worth trying if you're looking for a trick-taking game for three and want something more casual than Skat.
Tolstoy was a fan of the game. Oh, and when we play Preference, it looks just like in this painting by Viktor Vasnetsov. The archive copy of The PrefPage is probably the best source for rules in English, though it's slightly vague. Wikipedia has more.
Le Truc - This is another traditional card game that has gained local popularity. Ok, so Hannu likes it. Sid Sackson saw the greatness in this game and listed it in his A Gamut of Games. It is truly a great game. Very simple on the surface: three-card trick-taking with suits having no significance at all. However, the scoring system is where the game shines.
The possibility to raise the stakes mid-hand makes Le Truc work slightly like poker. Many elements are there: bluffing, slow-playing, going all-in. Le Truc is simple, but makes for a great two-player filler, since after all, everybody is carrying a 32-card pack with them all the time anyhow (what? You don't? I know I do). The game is best played in rubbers, at least the best two out of three, preferably even more, since there's plenty of luck involved and getting to know your opponent makes for a better game.
I should probably rate this one a ten, since I expect it has a good chance to stay in my standard repertoire for the rest of my life.
1825 - I went and bought the whole shebang - well, almost, I'm missing some expansions - in the Spring, the basic sets from BoardGameGeek marketplace and the rest from Leisure Games and Northumbria Games. I'm still missing the Phase 4 expansion, so if anybody has a spare copy, name your price.
I've only played three times - two two-player games of Unit 3, one three-player game of Unit 2 - which is a shame, but these longer games are hard to play. 1825 is just too long to fit comfortably in our weekly game nights. However, I can easily say this is my favourite 18xx game.
Qwirkle - Let's put Qwirkle here, even though the Finnish edition came out this year. Qwirkle is a really solid game: I rate it as eight, but I listed it on my Christmas Good Games list as the general recommendation (I list games I've reviewed and have various categories: for adults, for gamers, for families, whatever, and one general for everybody recommendation). This is a high honour, but I think Qwirkle deserves it.
Why? Qwirkle is simple, has enough luck and skill involved, looks nice, feels nice... It's non-offensive and perhaps a tad bland. I don't think many people are going to list it as their number one favourite, but I don't think many people hate it, either. It's an easy-going, fun game, with enough new and enough familiar. A solid game, with just one flaw - that's the score-keeping, which is somewhat clumsy.
Glory to Rome - I finally ordered this from the States, thanks to cheap dollar and Brian Bankler's constant mentions of it. It didn't cost much, buying just this one game. It was well worth it, as the game is wicked fun. It's like Race for the Galaxy, but wilder... I like the ways the cards interact and how the combos can get outrageous. It's slightly tough game to teach and some people just don't like it - so, not an excellent game, but a definite keeper, I like it myself a lot.

Games I've kept on enjoying

Mahjong - I got back to mahjong this year, enough to do a mahjong web site in Finnish. That was - and is - a fun project, and something that was missing from the web. The site isn't tremendously popular (less than thousand visits a month these days), but at least the few visitors are really active with the Google ads.
I've played few games, experimenting with new rules instead of the good-old Japanese classical rules. I've tried the Chinese official rules, modern Japanese rules and the World Series of Mahjong rules. It's the WSoM rules I like the most, they are simple yet give the player enough options. I will play with just about any rules, though, as long as only the winner of the hand is paid. That's where I draw the line.
I also spent some quality time with Four Winds Mahjong, as I had to buy a Windows laptop to do my new job properly. They haven't released a new version, but the old one is still highly functional and an excellent tool for getting used to different mahjong rule sets.
Age of Steam - Good old Age of Steam. I managed to reach my goal of playing five games, but unfortunately didn't get any more in. For some reason Age of Steam is slightly difficult to get on the table. Well, I had fun with the few sessions I played, and got to try few new maps. Of course, I bought more maps than I played, so I'm still in trouble.
The Secret Blueprints of Steam maps intrigue me a lot. I tried them once, but the company wasn't the best possible - it just isn't a newbie-friendly way to play. I'd really like to try the blueprints with experienced players.
I also got to try New England Railways, an ancestor of Age of Steam. There are interesting differences and similarities, and while my opponents weren't excessively interested in this game, I found it rather charming.
Tarock - We've continued playing tarock - and it is definitely tarock we play, not tarocco or tarot, as we mostly play the Slovenian game with four and Strohmann with two. With three we play Preference, though Cego might be worth trying. We've only played Cego once, and that was with five if I remember correctly, and I get the feeling Cego is a three-player game.

The Not-So-Good, The Disappointing, The Plain Bad

 Eketorp - This game looks good, but it combines all sorts of elements I don't like. Double-guessing is the worst offender, and the fact that this game took 90 minutes to play. Eketorp looks great, but it looks like the mechanics don't really mesh with the majority of Board Game Geeks: the game has just two 10s and nine 9s.
West Riding - I got something of a Winsome Games mania and purchased a set of Winsome Games when I found them at Northumbria Games. Of the three, West Riding was the disappointment. Dutch InterCity, an ancestor of West Riding in a way, is an odd game I've played only once, but it's a short game so I'd like to try it again at some point. West Riding, however, was kind of ok, but definitely not worth the three-hour play time. Were it in the same one hour slot as Wabash, it'd be another story. The third game of the bunch was New England Railways, which I already mentioned.
In the Year of the Dragon - This is a popular game, probably one of the more popular games amongst my friends I just can't stand. I've played this once on board and once on SpielByWeb and I don't want to play again. Something in this game rubs me the wrong way. It's kind of like Amun-Re - I can see why some people like it and I kind of think it's a pretty good game, but just not for me.
Animalia, Kingsburg, Airships, Thief of Baghdad - Meh.

Quick look on the good games of the previous report

Agricola - Five games this year. Requires will to get this on the table, and I'm slightly wary of playing the game with newbies. I would like to play more.
Caylus Magna Carta - Played once. Not a huge hit. Should probably sell this one. Magna Carta felt better than Caylus, but in practise isn't. In the end Magna Carta isn't short enough - were it more like San Juan, it would be better.
Combat Commander: Europe - Gone after few games. Too long, too fiddly, high resale value.
1960: Making of the President - Played once, sold. Not my cup of tea.
Phoenicia - Thinking about selling. Didn't play once in 2008, but I like it - then again, 2008 was the year of selling good games I just don't play (off went Memoir '44, Finstere Flure, Tigris & Euphrates, Combat Commander and several others).
Race for the Galaxy - I still like it a lot and I played it, too, but it wasn't quite the hit I expected. Hard to teach, too slow for my tastes with newbies, not a huge hit with the club.
Through the Ages - Bought the new edition, played it once, definitely not going anywhere (but I wished it got on the table).
Ubongo Extrem - Nice, but... one play of Extrem is all Ubongo I played this year. I like the games, but don't play them. Perhaps I should sell them, or sell the basic version and keep the Extrem, as I like it more.

Totals

Fives and dimes

Games played ten times or more in 2008:

• Dominion (28)
• Le Truc (14)
• Die Dolmengötter (11)
• Wabash Cannonball (10)
• Black Vienna (10)

These games were played five to nine times in 2008:

• Tier auf Tier (8)
• Race for the Galaxy (8)
• Qwirkle (7)
• Mahjong (7)
• Preference (6)
• Strohmann-Tarock (6)
• Set (6)
• Battle Line (6)
• Flix Mix (5)
• Bondtolva (5)
• Agricola (5)
• Age of Steam (5)

Pretty good lists, a lot more games than last year. I like these lists, I'm always happy when I get repeat plays for good games. Missing Age of Steam from these lists would've been a major disappointment.
Totals come to 284 games of 114 different titles.

Month metric

Top games on this list were Die Dolmengötter (six months) and Le Truc, Qwirkle and Preference (five months).

Year metric

1. Battle Line (7/8)
2. Attika (6/6)
3. Gang of Four (6/6)
4. Age of Steam (6/6)
5. Modern Art (6/7)
6. Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (6/7) *
7. San Juan (5/5)
8. Ingenious (5/5)
9. Lost Cities (6/8) *

I didn't play games marked with an asterisk this year.

Huber Happiness metric

Dominion, Mahjong, Age of Steam, Wabash Cannonball and 1825 brought the most Huber Happiness this year.

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Thursday Session: Tier Auf Tier, Attika

  Actually, I'll start with another session report first. Wednesday we went to see some of our playground friends. The kids - 5 and 7 years - don't mind Nooa much, but they are all over me. Well, Nooa had great fun playing with their toys (Bob the Builder Duplos, a guaranteed hit) and I played some games with the kids. It was fun, if a tad chaotic. We started with some roll and move games. Duck Pond, a Ravensburger game by Heinz Meister, was one of them. We played it wrong, and it was terribly boring. When played correctly it's still almost decision-free, but at least three times faster and thus much better. Players move ducks in a pond to pick up cards; we had each player controlling a duck, while actually everybody can move every duck. For four-year olds, but adults will be nevertheless be bored dead by this game.

Tier auf Tier aka Eläinpyramidi is my latest acquisition. This Haba game won the Finnish Game of the Year for kids this year and when I saw it for just 15,16 euros (a strange price), I had to buy it. It was a great purchase, as Nooa loved the game immediately. He was all over it, playing with the wooden animals.
It's a simple dexterity game for kids. Everybody gets a set of seven different animals, a crocodile is placed on the table and players take turns putting animals on top of the crocodile. If something falls, the player who made the mistake collects up to two animals and game continues until someone is out of animals. Simple and fun.
The kids weren't thrilled. We played a game, but they didn't want to try it again. They were really keen to play with the animal pieces, so that's what we did - it was fun, though I prefer actually playing the game. Well, maybe other kids like the game more. I sure did.
We did play the game today, while waiting for more players to arrive. When Hannu and Sonja joined us, the first thing they wanted to do was to try the animal game, so once more... And why not, because this is an excellent little dexterity filler. It only takes about 10 minutes, tops, and while the game is really simple, it's also rather entertaining enough. The dexterity part is fairly easy, until the pyramid gets tall - the pieces are quite slippery.
So, a top-notch game: a nice small box, really gorgeous components, really easy to teach, plays fast, works with (at least some) kids, is fun enough for adults to play without children - what else can you wish from a game that costs 15 euros? I just hope Nooa likes the game as much as he loves the bits.
Back to Wednesday. We also played Candy, which is a rather entertaining quick perception game. A bunch of multi-colored candy tokens are spread on a mat. Three colourful dice are rolled and the players must race to grab the piece of candy with the correct colours. Simple, yet fun.
Here's another game that suffered from not playing by the rules. We played until the very end, or would've except we had to leave. The rules suggest playing until someone gets five, and I can see why: as the pieces are taken, more and more rolls are blanks, pieces that are already taken. It gets a bit boring. But if the game stops at five, it works much better (and then you start again and play for best out of five or something like that if you want a longer game).
In any case, this is a good game for kids, nice practise to make the kids ready for more adult reaction test games. The publisher, Beleduc, seems to be one of those companies making quality children's toys and games, like Selecta and Haba. It's a German company, no surprises there... The components in this game were nice, the candy is wooden and the mat is nice cloth.
Then, today's games. After Tier auf Tier, we played a quick game of Dominion - the less said about my performance, the better - and after endless discussions of what to play, ended up playing a three-player game of Attika followed by a four-player game.
Attika is one of those fairly rare games I've played constantly - it, Gang of Four and Age of Steam form a trio of games I've played every year for six years now. Not much Attika for the last few years, true, but still - every time the game hits the table I'm reminded of how good it is. It's such an elegant game, my rating of 9 is definitely valid.
In the first game I showed the novices Petri and Hannu how to play, in the next one first Petri was really close to win by a temple connections and then Hannu did it, right out of the blue. I'm actually fairly sure Hannu will eventually buy a copy, he seemed to like the game a lot.
We wrapped up the evening with a quick game of Die Dolmengötter. I was on a roll, played well and eventually won the game with few points over Sonja. Hannu seemed certain Sonja would win and she did play a good game, but I knew I did well, too. Funny enough, only Petri was left with dolmens, so it was fairly close game.
I now have 11 games of Die Dolmengötter logged and I really like it. I'm seriously contemplating a 10 rating. If the game was as good with three or five as it is with four, a rating of 10 would be close to obvious. Now Die Dolmengötter is simply one of the very best 20 minute games for four, full of wonder and clever moves. My record is strong: I've won 7/11.
Ok, so I did it: Die Dolmengötter is now rated 10. It simply is that good.

Thursday Session: Erie Railroad, Secret Blueprints

  When I arrived, the guys were waiting & hungry. It was Wabash Cannonball time. Hannu & Petra, the two main Wabash fans in our group wanted to give the new Erie Railroad expansion a go. Tapani both newbies to Wabash, joined us for another five-player game.
The Erie is a small expansion. It's just a single-share company with, what, 13 cubes. Once a certain trigger is reached - railroads have expanded enough - Erie can be capitalized. It starts in Buffalo and has enough cubes to reach Chicago. It can also build to New York to grab eight income there. Simple, rules-wise, but this has plenty of subtle effects on the game.
Tapani played a rather excellent game for a newbie, beating us hands down. The final scores were 106-84-66-64-41. The Pennsylvania was distributed completely on the first round, after which the company headed straight to Chicago. That was brutal. Tapani and Hannu, winner and second, were both invested in Penn. So was Petri, but he played too carefully and didn't buy enough shares - he went most of the game with that single Penn share - and I was able to cut to the third place before him.
I ran the Chesapeake & Ohio on the southern edge of the map, taking it to Chicago with - who else but Tapani. Hannu got both Wabash and Erie, and played both of them well. Tapani did a great job with Baltimore & Ohio, too - he didn't develop it, so no shares where sold until late in the game.
Five-player Wabash is a tough beast. There aren't many actions per player, so choosing what you want to do is very critical. It also led to problems with certain not-so-useful yet very important actions, such as diluting B&O and Wabash. You want to see that done, but you'd rather use your own actions for promoting your agenda - so nobody does it. Next I force the others play Secret Blueprints of Steam. This is a curious expansion that is unlike any other. Each player has a personal board. All boards are identical, except the layouts are mirrored and the cities have different colours. Bidding and action selection is as usual, but building and moving goods happens simultaneously. Everybody builds on their own map and moves goods and announces the results. Very simple! The maps are kept secret from other players, mostly because of the Production action: instead of drawing the cubes from the cup, the player with the action announces a colour and everybody else must give a cube of that colour from their maps.
It's very solitaire-ish, but there's some interaction. The auction is still there - and more brutal, too, as First Move and First Build are not available and Urbanization is really important - and the Production gives some interaction, too. But it's a lonely game and loses lots of the good fighting there is in Age of Steam. However, whatever is lost is gained in time: our game took about 90 minutes, but that included some really serious thinking and newbie players. With experienced players, finishing a game in less than an hour is likely.
So, it's pretty neat, with few caveats. Total Age of Steam newbies and Secret Blueprints don't mix. Just don't do it. Also, if there's any reason to doubt the honesty of your fellow players, this just won't work. The same goes with mistakes, if somebody makes mistakes, it's impossible to notice or fix afterwards. But that's not a huge deal, really, in casual play, and I wouldn't worry about it much. Just, you know, teach the newbies with something that has a public map.
The results weren't really interested, I won hands down and that's it. What is interesting is that Hannu did learn something from the last week's session - his second place was as strong as my victory and he managed to build quite a track.
While Secret Blueprints didn't win everybody's heart, Age of Steam is still requested for next week. I'm more than happy to comply.
Rust went flying when four very rusty Die Dolmengötter players met. It's been a while from the previous game, but from now on Dolmengötter will return to my every-week game rotation. It's a bloody excellent game. (Ok, so I got a surprise victory here.)
A quick hand of Strohmann and a game of Dominion wrapped up a rather splendid afternoon of games.

Thursday Session: Age Of Steam, Dominion, Le Truc

 It's been too long from my last game of Age of Steam. Today I got some railroad action in the form of the Scotland scenario. So still no Secret Blueprints, unfortunately, but at least something. I played against Hannu, who has played one game of Age of Steam, about year ago. He was a bit rusty, that is. I got two 2-link moves on the first round, which pretty much sealed the deal. I managed to build a nice track on the easy west coast of Scotland, then come down on the east coast. Hannu fought me a bit, but it was a pretty easy ride. At the same time, Hannu didn't quite realize the value of long connections. The final results were pretty clear.
This was a bit of an extreme case, but I'd still say the recommended eight turns is probably one turn too much. We finished the game one turn early (but could've quite probably two turns earlier, it was that obvious), and at that point the map was pretty much completely built. Age of Steam isn't the most exciting two-player game there is, but this was certainly a fun way to spend 60 minutes or so.
Dominion is a hit. We played four games in a row, and that's rare. It was pretty fast, too, all were three-player games and moved fast. We used random setups every time and that worked well: we got some pretty interesting setups. Witch with no Moat or Chapel (but with Remodel) was interesting, but not as nasty as it could've been: we were all fairly high in positive points, even though the Curse pile ran out.
Thanks to a tip from the Board Game Society forums, I did some remodeling to the Dominion box insert. I cut the four bits that stick out from the bottom and removed few millimeters of the bottom edge. That way the insert is slightly lower in the box and the sleeved cards fit in better. Now it's just about excellent. The sleeves made the game more pleasant to play, I just like shuffling sleeved cards.
Dominion is excellent fun, now I just need to figure out how to win the game against non-newbies. We played four games and I wasn't really close in any of them...
I wrapped up the evening with some Strohmann-Tarock and Le Truc with Hannu. The tarock was a disaster, but the Truc game was really, really good. I won the first game 12-0, then lost 12-8 and finally won the decisive round 12-11. It was close, but I had good cards and nerves of steel.
Truc is an amazing game, but it takes a while to appreciate it. Random game with someone you don't know isn't going to make it. It gets much better once you play repeatedly against the same players and start to get inside your opponent's head a bit. Excellent fun, particularly with Hannu...
Someone should introduce Truc to all those poker pros who play Chinese Poker a lot for amazingly high stakes. That game's complete rubbish, after all... Truc is much less luck and much more bluffing, personality and skill. It's trick-taking, but I'm pretty sure most serious poker folks should see the shine.

Thursday Session: Dominion, Container

 After a quick hand of Le Truce with Hannu, Petri arrived and Container hit the table. Petri is interested in modern-day business games and Container hits that niche pretty well. After all, the setting is definitely contemporary and the game is all about buying and selling.
This time I managed to avoid embarrassing blunders and actually everybody made pretty good money. When we started, the guys were slightly confused, but figured out the works before the game was over. I think my one-game experience gave me enough of a head start to win the game, but Petri got close (115 vs 92). Hannu had the wrong colours of containers floating around and lacked cash in critical times (and didn't realize to take a loan), and ended up with 56 points.
Three isn't probably the sweet spot of Container - I think more is better, as there's more action going around, but the game works this way, too. It was a pretty fast, too, clocking in at 60 minutes. Petri loved the game and Hannu seemed to enjoy it, too. My rating is also on its way from 7 to 8.
Thursday's board game club was a Dominion party, pretty much. I played three games of Dominion during the afternoon, first two times in a row and then a third game just before leaving with some other folks.
It's a popular game, let me tell you. Ok, everybody didn't love it, but the game got some "I've got to have this" response, which is after all fairly rare. In the first game we used the basic setup and I beat everybody else hands down, in the second one we tried a randomized setup and things were much closer. Hannu won that one. I tried using a Chapel and didn't do it quite efficiently enough, but it was an interesting experiment. In the last game we used the Village Centrum (or whatever it's called in English - the difficulty with translations...) setup which was nice, too.
I'm enjoying the game more and more. I've still got it rated as eight, but nine is probably closer to truth. The game has plenty of potential, but the question is will it become stale? The designer has played it a lot, which would suggest there's enough staying power. Well, I'll just have to see and I'm definitely going to enjoy the game for now!
By the way, I just sleeved the game today. Based on some of the complaints, it would seem like a really difficult task, but I got the Ultra Pro basic soft sleeves, 1,50 euros per pack, and put the cards in those. The cost was minimal, the size of the cards matches the sleeves well enough, the sleeved cards fit in the insert and the box lid can be shut. Works like a charm, that is.
I also played a game of Russian Preference, a three-player favourite of me and Hannu. We got Gargoyle, another friend of the game, to join us. It was another reminder of why I don't play games for money. I lost badly: 130, 99, -229. I was deep in the hole after the fairly quick game was over.
Despite my terrible performance, I still really like the game. It's one of the better traditional card games and my favourite when there are exactly three players around.