Chattanooga, Tennessee
March 2 – 5, 2000
I suppose I should scream opinions on some of the new games:
WONGAR: I’d played this before at the Gathering and been rather fond of the game. The game we played at Gulf Games was just awful. Even Sandi said that she liked the mechanics but the game seemed broken. I sent an email off to Alan and Richard to see if there was something that we missed. We are now pretty sure that the copy at Gulf Games had a flawed card mix. (The original had only one Scorpion per region deck, and fewer cards which cause a ceremony.) This means that the game lasts longer, and there is more emphasis on building and collecting cards. You are not supposed to be able to cause a ceremony every turn. I was really fond of the mechanisms, but the production was far too busy graphically. Someone mayhap should have put a leash on the designer.
Vampire: Another one-upmanship card game, which struck me as rather more fun than Dolce Vita (which didn’t do much for me.) The length is good for a closer, though the game does require some tricky tactical decisions. And while the theme is pasted on, Sandi is going to make sure I buy it.
Taj MAHAL: Knizia is hidding his stride as a designer. Finally seems he has stopped doing auction games, and is producing more and more interesting games. While the theme is pointless, and the game is for the most part a card game, it is a damned impressive card game. About 2 round too long, but I’ll play this again very happily. The decision to stay or fold is often as nerve wracking as a good poker game, but with a lot more strategy.
ZERTZ: I can’t believe that this is going to be a $30 game after seeing the pieces. Large ceramic disks for the board, and oversized balls. The play is…..baffling. I was finally getting some idea of how to play the game by the end. (That is strategies, not rules.) It seems a decent short abstract strategy game, but nowhere near the brilliance of Tamsk.
KARDINAL UND KONIG: The phrase I heard earlier of 30 minute El Grande pretty much sums it up. It also reminds me a bit of Kahuna in that you have a hand of three cards that restrict your placement of pieces. And the game is pretty much, place pieces, and score when the deck runs out. I liked the short length of the game, which puts it above the wave of other point battle games. But I’m starting to get rather tired of this sort of game myself. (On the other hand, I actually won the game we were playing, so there…)
DAS RIFF: The fish sex theme is great. (Player must match male and female fish, and send them off into the weeds to make babies.) The mechanics about spending randomly generated colored action points is very clever (and a mechanic that seems to be used in Carolus Magnus, as well as a primitive design that I was working on a few months back. There are no new ideas.) But new cards are added to the end of a series of queues, meaning that cards constantly have to be slid down. The game also seems to run rather too long, as we were just hoping for it to end after a bit. So far, I think the weakest entry in the Kosmos 2 player line. (I happen to like Druidenwalzer and Rosenkoenig.) (I may, however, have to get a copy of this game, just so I can work out my Ally McBeel variant. Ok, so I screwed up and sent two females off into the weeds. Only a Freudian slip….)
MorgENLAND: A near reinvention of Keydom. It loses the Byzantine charm of the original, and the tense endgame. (Greg S. refers to it as kingmaking. We do not allow negotiation in most of our games, which so far has kept us from seeing horrible problems with Keydom.) But the rest of the mechanics are so much cleaner, that it makes up for it. The fact that treasures now give you an action every turn is great. (There have been complaints about the Camel/first turn marker. Similar to Keydom, the first player places first, but wins ties. The current HiG rule is that bidding for the first turn marker allows you to go first. The complaint is that going last is more of an advantage that winning ties. This is so not true. Because low numbers are often played up in the artifact claiming zone, winning ties is VITAL. In fact, I was making a point of only contesting locations of folks who were after me in turn order, so I would win ties. And scored 9 tiles, barely missing my 10th. Sandi, who went dead last for most of the game scored three and just got nailed by all of the ties.) Good game, GREAT production. (The Acrylic treasure tokens are very, very cool.)