Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

This week, Nige brought along Container, a game he’d just picked up that was designed by Thomas Ewert and Franz-Benno Delonge and published by Valley Games. This is a game that simulates a simple supply and demand system, based around production, warehousing and shipping of some unnamed merchandise.

As we decided not to play with the beginner’s variant, we knew money was going to be very tight and that drawing loans was a bad idea. Nevertheless, all of us were forced to take at least one loan eventually. Initially, I chose to build a second and then third warehouse to try and attract people to more efficient loading of ships. However, the group-think reaction of refusing to use my dock lead me to having a number of turns with little to do due to lack of cash, until I broke down and took a loan – at which stage people decided that was enough screw tightening and the containers started to flow.

Our caution over cash lead to no profit being made on production and warehousing as people refused to pay more than the minimum price for stuff. Mark K tried to use his monopoly on one type of machine to set a medium price but, once things became critical, I broke his monopoly by building the same machine and bringing the price down. So, the only real money to made was in the island bidding. Seeing which shipments players really wanted for themselves was an interesting challenge but I managed to force John and Nige to pay more than they expected to by setting a relatively high bid myself. Eventually, Nige forced the end of the game by exhausting the supply of two container types as he judged he was far enough in the lead. He was just right because my next turn would probably have netted me enough cash from an island shipment to just go past him.

Container was a good game that suffered a little from the profit being made from just one aspect of the production chain. If the same group could be persuaded to take a different collective view, it will be interesting to see how the game plays differently but whether such a change is likely, I don’t know. However, a nice game that I really enjoyed playing.

This week’s session of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club will be on Friday 27th June at Garry’s house.

Just to let people know, my copy of Alhambra the Dice Game is up on Ebay (Item number: 140241420407). Two days left to go and only one bid so far. I’ll probably put several more games up for sale this weekend so keep an eye out.

For those that haven’t yet heard, the Spielfrieks user group has chosen the following three games for this year’s awards:

Race for the Galaxy (Tom Lehmann, Rio Grande)
Agricola (Uwe Rosenberg, Lookout Games)
Brass (Martin Wallace, Warfrog)

Congratulations to the designers Tom Lehmann, Uwe Rosenberg, and Martin Wallace, as well as publishers Rio Grande, Lookout Games, and Warfrog.

I voted for none of these, having not played either Agricola or Brass yet, and although Race was in my top ten, it didn’t make the final three. My three votes went to Kingsburg (which finished 10th in the overall voting), Notre Dame (5th) and Caylus Magna Carta (18th).

After a couple of weeks tied up with other things, this Friday’s session (20th June 2008) of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club will be at Garry’s house.

Got home tonight to find the latest issue of Spielbox waiting for me. The most interesting inclusion is the farmer sheet, an accessory for Agricola. It contains 70 stickers to put on the round person pieces. 35 stickers show an adult for the front side of the pieces, the other 35 the corresponding juniors for the rear side (and one or two of the comparisons between junior and adult characters are a little curious). I just need the game itself to turn up now – hopefully, sometime this month.

The issue also celebrates the 60th anniversary of Scrabble, with what looks like an ultra-modern version set to be released. Spiel-des-Jahres contender, Wie Verhext! also gets reviewed with several high ratings from the reviewing panel. The other game that seems to get good ratings is Hanging Gardens, published by Hans im Gluck, which I’ve passed on so far as it looked like a very dry pattern recognition type game – maybe I need to look at this a bit more.

We’re currently in the middle of voting on the Spielfrieks discussion group for the best games of 2007. From a long list of about 150, the final 25 have emerged for a second round of voting. The 25 finalists, from which 3 will be chosen as the award winners, are as follows:

1960: The Making of the President
Age of Empires III
Agricola
Amyitis
Brass
Caylus Magna Carta
Colosseum
Container
Cuba
Felix: The Cat in the Sack
Galaxy Trucker
Hamburgum
In the Year of the Dragon
King of Siam
Kingsburg
Notre Dame
Phoenicia
Race for the Galaxy
Thebes
Ticket to Ride: Switzerland
Tribune
Uptown
Vikings
Wabash Cannonball
Zooloretto

So, I have to vote for three of these and I’m struggling a bit: One game is a definite pick but there are four others from which I need to choose two and it’s not easy because they are all great.

I’ll let you know which ones I went for when the winners are announced at the weekend.

As I can’t make the session this Friday, 13th June 2008, it will be taking place at Nige’s house.

This week, we played the dice version of the 2003 Spiel des Jahres, Alhambra. However, the only real similarities with the board game are the scoring mechanism and the theme. Alhambra – The Dice Game was designed by Dirk Henn and published by Queen Games.

The game plays over five rounds with a scoring after the 1st, 3rd and 5th round. Victory points are awarded for majorities of allocated buildings (very similar to the original game). To get the buildings you roll 8 dice each showing the six building-symbols. Each player has 3 rolls on his turn to get as many of one symbol as possible. The results of the dice rolls from every player are marked on the game board so everybody can compare his dice rolls with those of the other players. Once each player has placed three markers (in a 5 or 6 player game), the round ends. After a round is completed, for each building type, the player with the highest dice-roll can choose between 2 buildings of the respective category or 1 building and a special counter giving a certain bonus. (Bonuses can be: additional 1-3 VPs, extra dice-roll, exchange one building, determine Starting player, etc.) The second best player in that category will get the other reward. After round #1, #3 and #5 the majority in each building category is awarded VPs. The player with the most VP’s after the fifth round wins the game.

This would have been a fun dice-fest if it had lasted 20 minutes but our game took way too long and I think everyone was relieved when it ended. After the first couple of rounds, once people had committed to which buildings they were after, the main decisions were already made. Your fate was then down to whether or not you were lucky enough to roll the right colours. Although seeing someone fail to get the dice rolls they really needed was fairly amusing, it just didn’t make up for the tediousness of the rest of the game. Nige won this by getting ahead on a couple of the high scoring buildings and then just protecting his lead.

After the disaster that was Alhambra – The Dice Game, we only had time for a short game to finish and we picked this push your luck card game from Reiner Knizia, which is published in Germany by Piatnik.

Double or Nothing uses a deck of 66 cards made up of 59 suit cards and 7 bonus cards. The suit cards show between 1 and 4 suit symbols and the idea is to lay a chain of cards with one or more suit symbols appearing on every card laid. On a player’s turn, he can decide either to cash out or to add another card to the chain. By cashing out, the player banks the points from each symbol still in the chain from first card to last but then drops out of the current round. If a player lays a card and the symbols on it continue an unbroken chain, the player remains in the round. However, as cards are laid the chain for certain suits will become broken and, if the card you laid breaks the chain for the final unbroken suit, you are out of the round and score no points. The twist in the tail is that, if you are the last player in the round, you are forced to play two more cards: if they succeed in continuing the chain you then score double points; otherwise you score nothing. The bonus cards add points to the current chain but, if two turn up in a particular round, the round ends immediately and those still in go away empty handed. Also, once the seventh bonus card is revealed, the game ends immediately and whoever then has the most points is declared the winner.

This is a very simple game with more than a passing resemblance to Zirkus Flohcati (another Knizia game) that plays quickly with a fair bit of tension in deciding whether to carry on or bank your points. It also appears to be a close cousin to Diamant, which is a great push-your-luck game.

In our game, Mark K struck out with an early lead after a successful double attempt. However, it turned out to be short-lived. As we were approaching the bottom of the deck, I cashed out early in a round, hoping that the seventh bonus card would appear before anyone could overtake me. However, it wasn’t to be and Mark G raced past my score just before the final bonus card was revealed. Well played.

Just a reminder that the second UK Games Expo is this coming weekend on 31 May and 1 June 2008. Chris and I will be there on the Saturday and will be looking to try out a few of the new releases: Monastery and Tinner’s Trail being the main ones in which I’m interested.

Rumour has it that Eric Martin of Boardgamenews will be there so I’ll be hoping to catch up with him while I’m wandering around. (OK so it’s not rumour, Eric emailed me to tell me he’ll be there).