Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Spielnacht

Oh so many games... I actually felt beat by the end of the night.

Wits and Wagers: Played like 5 times. I'm overdosed, but it's a Keeper.
Stage II: Between not "getting" the "2-stage" element of the game until it was too late, and something just lost in translation...... I think I will get it! (facetious of course).
Perudo: Wow... this game just oozes psychology. Kendahl, jedi master of psychology games, had the best of me in one of the games eliminating my dice 3 times in a row. Played 3 times, never got tired of it.
Blue Moon City: Very cool game, with MANY paths to victory. Cool art, cool components. Even cooler if you know the Blue Moon "mythos", but not necessary to enjoy the game.
Colossal Arena: Love this game, but it had been a while since I last played it.....ergo, I forgot that it works better with 3 or 4 than 5.
Bohnanza: Forget the beans... it's all in the negotiations....Nothing more valuable than "Future Considerations".
Thurn and Taxis: "A true Euro" in Kendahl's words. Definitively more challenging with 3 or 4 players (vs 2). Scores high in my light to medium-weight euros list.

6 Comments:

At 5:05 PM, August 29, 2006, Blogger Simon said...

I played a lot of games, so I don't really remember them all or everything that happened, but of the things I do recall:

1) Blue Moon City is pretty damn good. It seems unusually simple at first but there's some real depth in cooperation and clever cardplay hidden away not to mention resource optimization. The way the cards worked for the races reminded me a lot of Blue Moon as well which added a little bit to the experience. I'll have to play Thurn & Taxis soon to see if BMC got robbed at Spiel des Jahres.

2) Chairs is still a really f-n’ hard dexterity game.

3) Perudo makes Michael really angry sometimes. We were halfway to the first die thrown in anger at SABG on Monday. It's too bad 'cause I could have totally added it to the geeklist of "guys who flipped out" over at BGG. To his credit, he got unbelievably screwed over multiple times by statistical near improbabilities.

4) Wits and Wagers’ initially stellar components took quite a beating. I can’t believe the box lid split on the first playing!

5) Hoopla gets officially raped with “experienced” party game players.

6) I do, in fact, NOT hate Bohnanza. I rated it a 5 or a 6 which isn’t bad in my opinion.

7) Stage II is hard to play when you aren’t into it or haven’t switched on the trivia reactor in your brain.

8) Al left his golden oldies after Michael tried to take advantage of him in bean trading. For shame!

All in all, it was a great day of gaming. It’s too bad I had to cut out in the evening for a few hours. I should have just skipped my first class. Stochastic variable models?! Snore…

 
At 5:44 PM, August 29, 2006, Blogger Rob said...

More thoughts

Yes, it was crazy the number of games we played. Forgot to add Vegas Showdown: A lot more fun than I expected. It's just another cool auction game with additional unique mechanics. Reminds me of Prince of Florence or Alhambra: little interaction except when buying stuff, but competing to build the most "prolific structure".

1. Perudo: where did u get it again? Great party game.

2. Stage II: I've never been fond of trivia games. Heck, even Jay Tummelson from Rio Grande Games doesn't like them (download interview here: episode 11 of The Spiel).

 
At 8:06 PM, August 29, 2006, Blogger Brian said...

Other games:

Michael and I tried two-player Indonesia. I'd try 2er again, but it's flat. We also got in two games of Roma.

Finally, we had a four player game of Reef Encounter. The rules aren't complex, but they are unique, which makes explaining them tough ...

I don't care for Abstracts, which Reef Encounter is, but I rather like it. Not great, but solid.

 
At 9:33 PM, August 29, 2006, Blogger Simon said...

Is that what most podcasts are like? -'Cause holy crap, that was hard to listen to. I couldn't stop cringing.

 
At 10:42 AM, August 30, 2006, Blogger Rob said...

hard to listen to? how so?

Out of the ones that I listen to, I'd recommend The Dice Tower (more structured, new top 10 games every week, latest news from boardgamenews.com, etc), and The Spiel (more informal, but through the different sections of the show, they talk about a lot of games that I've never heard of, which then leads to a BGG search, etc.).

 
At 12:54 PM, August 30, 2006, Blogger Simon said...

It might just be because one of those guys sounds exactly like Alex Jones of infowars infamy. A man who so easily grates on my nerves...

 

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