Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

Bison is another Wolfgang Kramer / Michael Kiesling action point game that combines area control with tile placement. It is published by Phalanx in Europe with an English language version from Mayfair.

The game is played over a number of seasons (four in a four player game) and the basic goal of the game is to build up your food production capabilities. Food consists of salmon, bison and game birds and each player starts with 10 of each. During each season, food is spent to build up your presence on the plains, mountains and rivers and at the end of the season, you obtain bison, game birds and salmon based on your relative strength compared to other players in each of the respective areas. Each player performs 4 out of 6 possible actions per season, taking one action at a time sequentially, and one of these has to be to place a map tile and add hunters to that tile. The others involve moving hunters around or upgrading hunters to teepees (on land) or canoes (in a river). Players start with a few hunters and low value teepees / canoes but then has to spend food to buy more of these as needed.

At the end of the season, scoring takes place. The player with the most influence in each area receives food equal to the number of animals displayed in that area. 2nd place receives half of the total animals in the region, rounded down and others receive only the animals on the tile placed. At the end of the final season, any stocks of food are lost and scoring takes place in the same way after each animal food track has been set to zero. The player with the highest total of food for all three animals is then the winner, with ties broken using the Euphrat and Tigris method.

The game was clever and there seemed to be a lot of thought required in terms of the order in which to take actions and when to place your tile. Even though you only had one action at a time, this still led to a fair bit of downtime. Food was very tight and there was a lot of competition for control of the largest areas. We did think, however, that there was a pretty significant advantage in going last in the final round as you were able to knock others down while not then having anybody do the same to you. Nige was able to make a large swing against Mark K that knocked him out of first place in the joint largest region while bringing his own score back towards something more respectable. This enabled Steve to sneak through for the win but then he had been practicing all week. The overall verdict on Bison was that it was ok but not as good as some of Kramer and Kiesling’s other collaborations.

 

We finished off with a game of Filou (or Felix: The Cat in the Sack), a little card game by Friedemann Friese and published by 2f-Spiele and Rio Grande. This is a bidding and bluffing game that is very simple but is good fun and can be played to completion in less than half an hour.

Each player starts with an identical set of 10 cards from which one is removed at random. In each of the nine rounds, all players add one of their cards face down to the sack and the start player’s card is revealed. Players then bid on the right to acquire all the cards in the sack. If a player passes, they receive a small number of coins and another card is revealed, thus giving more information about the value of the sack’s contents. When only one player remains in play, they pay their bid and receive the cards from the sack. These could be cats of positive or negative value or dogs who chase a cat away before you receive the sack, or rabbits that are worthless. After all cards have been played, the value of cats is added to your remaining coins and the highest total wins.

A bit of memory helps in this game towards the end in working out what cards are likely to be left but, as some cards are removed at the start, nothing is certain. Watching how many coins other players have is important especially if you can force them out of a bid due to lack of coins. Steve suffered from this in our game and never was able to recover. A good bluff can be very enjoyable when you know you’ve put rubbish into the sack but just pray you’ve not timed it when everyone has put in rubbish. Nige surprisingly came out on top in this one, although he had no idea how he had won (not that it stopped him from accepting the win). Good fun and a good selection for the end-of-evening slot.

The next session of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club will be on Friday 18th January and will be at John’s house.

Given how free-flowing the sport it is, soccer is quite difficult to translate to a board/card game and there are few examples of where the game works particularly well. Here are six of the best.

Street Soccer is a fabulous implementation of the five a side game. Even though it uses a die to dictate how the ball moves around the pitch, it can be played very tactically with the positioning of players and ball sometimes being critical.

Fireside Football is a card game based on Alan Parr’s play-by-mail game, United, that I played a fair bit of back in pre-email days. This one is more concerned with the managing side with players making team selections and managing their finances. Played in a league format, players also deal with injuries and overseas transfers. Good fun for up to six players.

Fastcard Soccer is perhaps more of a simulation than a game using team/player statistics to generate results. However, it is great fun and uses an ingenious commentary system on the cards that makes the game very atmospheric. It also has the attraction of being playable solo.

A list of this kind cannot ignore the granddaddy of tabletop football games, Subbuteo. Although I’ve not played in years, it brings back memories of trying to perfect those swerving flicks – something I never really got the knack of. A skilful game for those with the necessary dexterity to play well.

The World Cup Game just edges out the World Cup Tournament Football Game in the nod for the best knockout tournament. Guiding your teams through the group stages and then the knockout is often trickier than it seems, particularly if you’re playing Germany or Brazil as other players automatically target those teams for bad cards.

Zopp is my final choice and is another flicking game that is always great fun. The rubberised walls surrounding the playing area and the slick surface  mean that you can get your players and the ball whizzing around the pitch very satisfyingly and there is always a nice clink sound when the ball hits the back of the net.

These choices are not the games to turn your non-gaming family into avid gamers (that may be a future list), but they are the games that I have had the most success and fun in introducing to the family over recent years.

Diamant is a fantastic push your luck game that plays in 20-30 minutes. Searching tunnels for treasure, do you turn back early to preserve your loot or do you risk venturing into the next cavern. Lots of oohs and ahhs as the adventurers uncover diamonds, snakes or poison gas. Great fun.

Apples To Apples never fails to get people laughing as people try to match the subjects on their cards to the category for the round. Sometimes picking the most ludicrous answer can turn you into a winner if you think the person making the choice might think that way.

Igloo Pop is a frantic game of trying to work out the number of beads in the igloos simply by picking them up and shaking them. Guess correctly and you win cards for points, guess incorrectly and you lose playing chips.

Transamerica is a competitive and collaborative connection game where you try to link all your cities to the rail network before your opponents do. Games are always tight with a fair amount of tactical opportunities for such a simple game.

Wits & Wagers is a trivia game where you don’t need to know the facts to win. Good estimation is helpful but canny betting on which of the possible answers is closest to being right is usually the way to win. Played twice this year.

Tsuro is a simple game: Place your tile on the board to build paths that keep your piece in play while forcing others off the edge or into one another. Takes up to 8 players and a game can be played in about 15 minutes – so you can play several.

This week’s session of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club will be on Friday 11th January at Garry’s house.

The first session of 2008 and three of us got to try out Race For The Galaxy, at last. This was designed by Tom Lehmann and published by Rio Grande and can be succinctly described as San Juan in space.

Each player simultaneously chooses a role for the round and then those roles picked are carried out by everyone, with the player(s) who picked the role getting a bonus privilege. The roles range from Explore (gain cards), build Worlds / Developments, each of which gives both VPs and usually advantages in later rounds when certain roles are carried out, Produce a good on your built Worlds, and finally Consume goods for VPs or additional cards. The game ends when someone has built 12 Worlds / Developments or when a predetermined number of VP chips have been taken. Bonus VPs are awarded to players who have built certain 6-cost Developments and then most VPs wins.

This game has a much steeper learning curve than San Juan because there is a much greater variety of cards with lots more interactions between combinations of cards and also because the iconography used on the cards is not immediately obvious in many cases. Knowledge of which cards work well together is a big advantage and this only comes with familiarity of the game play and the cards. I don’t think you will get anywhere approaching optimum scores until you’ve played a number of times. That said, it does play very well and, after 3 or 4 rounds, we all had a good idea of what we were trying to achieve.

My initial world suggested I go down a military strategy which worked well for a while but ran out of steam towards the end. Nige went hell for leather down an alien technology route which towards the end saw him get lots of VPs through his Consume x 2 role. This made it critical that we end the game quickly and we did so that he only got to benefit twice. Mark K on the other hand managed to build two 6-cost developments and these worked well for him at the end giving him 18 bonus VPs and just enough to beat Nige by a single point. I knew I was lagging behind but wasn’t as far adrift as I thought when the final scores were revealed. We all rated the game highly and these ratings could improve as we try out different strategies. An excellent first game for 2008.

After outer space, we decided to help build the Hindenburg in Giganten der Lufte (Airships), designed by Andreas Seyfarth and published by Queen Games.

This is a similar game to To Court the King in that it involves rolling combinations of dice to gain cards that add or modify dice to your subsequent turns. Also, you can roll combinations to build an airship and later in the game part of the Hindenburg. These airships and the Hindenburg give the player the critical VPs needed to win the game. There is a balance, therefore, in concentrating on cards to improve your prospects in future turns while also grabbing airships for VPs. The game ends either when there are only a certain number of airships left to be built or when the four parts of the Hindenburg have been completed. The player with the most VPs wins.

If you like To Court The King, this is more of the same and you are likely to enjoy this as well. However, you are at the mercy of the dice and this can make or break your chances. Unfortunately, in our game, both Nige and I started out with two or three turns where we failed to achieve fairly modest die roll combinations whereas Mark K couldn’t fail for the first half of the game. This meant he always had better dice to roll than Nige and me and could get at the more lucrative cards / airships without challenge from either of us. I didn’t help my chances by accidentally upgrading one coloured card with 3 VPs attached to it to something else without VPs. Although it probably helped me in later turns a bit, I hadn’t intended to sacrifice the VPs (much to the amusement of Mark K and Nige).

It was obvious very early on that Mark was going to win and so we were glad eventually to see the game end with Mark completing the final part of the Hindenburg (his third section – I built the other one). The final scores were embarrassing and Nige’s rating clearly reflected how much he disliked this playing. Mark K and I thought it just ok and were surprised that the game came from a designer who had previously had an excellent record with us. I doubt we will be playing this again.

(Note: I added my score up incorrectly on Friday night – I’d omitted my points from the Hindenburg so I actually got 14 rather than just 8 points. No matter how hard I tried, though, I still couldn’t find more than 2 points for Nige!)

Steve Perkins has written a short review of Kingsburg on Boargamegeek. This was on the cards for being played last Friday at the club if we had had five turn up. As it was, there were only three of us so Kingsburg will wait to be played in the next couple of weeks. Steve rated the game an 8 so I’m sure we’ll all enjoy it (even though it does involve dice, Nige).

Steve’s obviously starting the year with the Hall of Fame in mind by continuing to play the newest games before we get them to the table. 🙂

The first session of the Shrewsbury Boardgames Club in 2008 will be held on Friday 4th January at Garry’s house.

Richard Denning has dropped me a line reminding me of the details for the second UK Games Expo. After the success of the first, it is back in 2008 bigger and better. The event takes place on 31 May – 1 June 2008 at the Clarendon Suites in Birmingham.

The latest newsletter is here and includes details of the highlights. I guess the major scoop is the appearance of the 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons a week before it is due to be published, which should keep the roleplaying crowd happy. The main thing of interest for me will be the debut at last of the Ragnar Brothers new game, Monastery. This was only advertised at Essen, after failing to be ready in time for that show due to the artist breaking his hand if I remember correctly.

For those wanting full details about the event, the main UK Games Expo site is here  and there is a Boardgamegeek forum thread here.

Hope everyone is having a good Christmas. My parents are coming over today and, if everything goes to plan, I should be getting a copy of Darjeeling from them. Darjeeling is a game designed by Gunter Burkhardt and released by Rio Grande and the theme is unsurprisingly about the tea trade in India.

I ought grudgingly to mention that after years of waiting (and in some games this year, it certainly seemed like years of waiting!!! – only joking), Nige has triumphed in the 2007 Hall of Fame. A tastefully designed note has been added to the Trickylight homepage to celebrate the fact.

Finally for now, over the break, I am working on a new feature for the site: Six Picks, which is sort of a recommendations area for various categories of game. The first one is likely to be Six games the family should play at Christmas, as I’m still feeling in festive mood.