Spiel: Boardgaming in the UK

 

This week, we decided to try Da Vinci Games’s Maestro Leonardo, which has received quite a bit of praise since it first appeared in the middle of last year.

The game is about great inventors in Renaissance Italy competing to develop and complete inventions. Players assign workers to research labs or to areas of the city to collect components, recruit more workers or upgrade your lab. Completed inventions bring monetary reward and, if first to complete a particular invention, a discount towards the research needed to complete further inventions of the same type.

Each round is played in four phases:
A) Laboratory Phase, where each player declares if he going to work on a new invention.
B) Assignment Phase. Players in turn assign workers to various tasks. C) Employment Phase. The benefits of each area are distributed. Each city area has a maximum of four rewards to distribute at increasing cost; research workers add to the amount of time spent on developing an invention.
D) Research Phase. A player who has completed the required time working on an invention declares it complete and collects the listed number of florins.

After 9 rounds, the game ends and cash bonuses are awarded to those who have collected invention cards in at least 3 different types. Most Money wins.

We decided to play the standard set-up for our first game and we all complained about what bad starting positions we had. In hindsight, I think they are reasonably balanced but mean different players have to approach the early rounds in different ways. Mark K was the component king, making sure he had ample supply of resources before really starting on any inventions. I ran with one lab for a large part of the game and managed to get 7 and 15 research week inventions completed before splashing out on a second lab. Nige kept picking away at the cheap inventions and had a fair bit of success. Mark G started with lots of workers and built up his band of followers even further. Annoyingly, he also seemed to decide to place workers time after time in exactly the places I had just played. John unfortunately also seemed to be having more than a fair share of bad fortune and didn’t spot a few threats from people meaning he couldn’t afford to do what he wanted. Money did seem pretty tight. It was difficult to tell who was doing well and the scores at the end proved why. Nige managed to get a 13 florin bonus and the two Marks the 8 florin bonus. I missed out on the bonuses and had to settle for second place on both my last two inventions. If either one had come through I would have won but it finished with Nige and the two Marks all tied on 45 florins. Nige was ecstatic when the tie-break went in his favour.

Leonardo is a very good game, with lots of routes to victory and plenty to get your teeth into. Being our first attempt, it took a bit longer than we would have liked but I’m getting used to our thoughtful approach and I’m sure a second playing would be considerably quicker. Another fine game: all three in 2007 so far have been winners to me.

A few days ago, Iain Cheyne showed what I thought to be a good amount of initiative by taking the content of the faq on the uk.games.board message board and posting it as a wiki on Boardgamegeek . The intention was to have a place to which people could be directed if they wanted info about boardgames in the UK. The use of a wiki meant that it could be easily amended and updated, overcoming a disadvantage of the old message board, which was several months out-of-date.

The response from those that saw it was very positive, me included, but what Iain hadn’t done was check with Chris Dearlove, who maintained the faq on uk.games.board, that it was ok to make use of Chris’s information. Unfortunately, Chris was a bit peeved when he found out and I don’t know whether this is going to be resolved or whether Iain will have to remove the information from BGG. I do sympathise with Chris, who may well have agreed if asked by Iain for permission to proceed, but I do feel that uk.games.board does not get enough visitors these days for such a valuable tool to be sited there.

That said, BGG isn’t ideal as it is very much international and, with the wealth of information on that site, you wouldn’t easily find the uk faq wiki unless you knew where to look. Now, the point of this post is to try and gauge whether we ought to try and have a dedicated site for this and, if we did, what should be included. Now, I’m not saying that I would want to take on such a venture, although my original aim for this site had been to develop it into such a resource, and I wouldn’t want to mess Iain or Chris about if they want to develop something. I guess my questions are:

Do we need a resource to collect the kind of information about the UK boardgames scene that has previously held on uk.games.board?

Is a BGG wiki the best way to host it or is there a better alternative?

What information should it contain? We don’t want a UK version of BGG – that site does a tremendous job – but what sort of stuff should a UK focussed resource include?

How should it be maintained and what degree of moderation / management would be needed?

I’d really be interested in hearing people’s thoughts.

This week, we tried out Imperial, the sister-game to Antike, by Mac Gerdts and published by eggertspiele. The game is similar in that it uses the innovative rondel mechanism from Antike to determine what actions are to be carried out. However, unlike the earlier game, there is more of an economic emphasis rather than conquest. Also, the players in Imperial are investors in nations rather than being the nations themselves and control of the nations can change as the game develops.

Anyway, the purpose of the game is gain the best return on your investments by issuing bonds in the six major powers of the time, earning interest as the game progresses and increasing the value of the bonds as the powers expand their influence in Europe. This is done by building factories, armies and fleets and expanding into neutral territories / seas. Once a particular nation has progressed to a certain level, the game ends and the value of bonds and cash is evaluated to see who was the most successful investor.

Imperial is quite a rich game with a fair amount of strategy. Our game started with most people opting to build a factory, producing armies/fleets and then moving into new territories. One downside appears to be if you lose control of a nation, it can be difficult to get it back and, in the meantime, you are just a spectator waiting for others to take their turn. Nige and Phil spent a fair bit of the early game playing ping pong with Italy. I controlled France for quite a while and made some reasonable progress but also looked to invest in Austria-Hungary and Great Britain. When I eventually lost control of France, I was also lacking cash which wasn’t looking good. However, after a fairly extended negotiation with Mark G (O.K very extended, as Mark wasn’t sure who was screwing him the most with their helpful advice – Me or Nige/Mark K), he made the right choice and opted to invest, bringing me some cash and the ability to issue another bond. Austria-Hungary looked for much of the game as though it was going to end up being the most powerful nation and Mark K was a heavy investor there. However, Mark G managed to promote Great Britain sufficiently to end the game in their favour and my spread of investments in the leading four powers gave me the win.

I enjoyed Imperial quite a bit but some of the others were less enamoured with it. It did take us about 3 hours and the potential problem with players having nothing to do and no cash to recover is an issue. The advanced set up is supposed to help in this regard and, with fewer than six players, the possibility of it happening is reduced. Still, it worked for me and I’d like to try it again particularly if there were only four of us.

The first session of 2007 saw us giving a first try to Tempus, Martin Wallace’s Civilisation-like game. The game is played over ten rounds (or eras) and in each round players get a certain number of actions according to how far their civilisation has progressed. At the start, you only get 3 but by the end this has risen to 6. Choices of action are between moving, having babies, fighting, having an idea and building a city. The ultimate aim is to spread out to as many parts of the island as you can and build cities, as these are the way you get victory points. Each non-mountain location you occupy is worth 1 VP and each city you have is worth between 2 and 4 VPs. The only other way of getting VPs is by developing the flight ability in the last round, which yields 3 VPs.

The game is intriguing and does a good job of building in intensity. At the start, you don’t get to do much but as you develop, you gain more flexibility and new innovations allow you to do other things. At the end of each round, the player who has made the most progress gets to move to the next level of development and this gives an advantage over everyone else for the next round. However, the advantage only lasts for one round as everyone catches up with the leader at the end of the round and before working out who progresses further. This is an elegant mechanism and ensures people don’t fall too far behind. The multiple use of the idea cards is also nice and gives a fair bit to think about in whether to use cards for their ability or to do battle or to try and win the progress advantage at the end of the round. All in all, a very good game and one we all enjoyed very much.

That said, we all agreed that we needed another game to really get to grips with it. The rules are pretty simple but the impact of some of them eluded us until too late. Nige and I made big mistakes in the placement of our first cities. Fighting was kept to a minimum as it seemed expensive but the advantages at the end are a bit more critical than I first thought. We did have one big battle against one of my 3VP cities. Mark G decided to try his luck and I picked the hill terrain for idea cards. This was the only terrain that did Mark any good and we thought he had won the battle much to the amusement of Nige until I realised, as we were removing my city, that I had miscounted my defence value and we’d actually tied (and ties fall in the defender’s favour). A sigh of relief from me. The end was extremely tight between Nige, Phil and me, but a last minute religious conversion of one of my followers by Nige proved critical and gave him the win by just a single point. Excellent stuff and this sets the bar pretty high for the rest of the year.

Although there were five of us tonight, John was busy on the phone for the first half of the evening so four of us tried the brand new Asmodee game, Mission: Red Planet by Bruno Faidutti and Bruno Cathala. And what an excellent game it is too.

The game is about sending astronauts to Mars and exploring the various regions for precious resources. Whoever is the most prolific explorer in each region at the end of rounds 5, 8 and 10 score victory points, more points being available as the game progresses. The mechanics are sort of a Citadels meets El Grande combination, which works extremely well. Each player chooses which of their 9 characters to utilise on a turn and once used, the character cannot be repeated until you pick the weakest character, the Recruiter, to bring all your characters back into your hand. Once everyone has chosen, each character gets actioned in a set order (as in Citadels) and this is where the fun really sets in, trying to work out what others are playing as earlier characters can impact on whether a later character can carry out its action or limit its effectiveness. The actions determine how many astronauts you are able to load onto a rocket that turn and give another effect to help you or hinder others. Once everyone has taken an action, full rockets are moved to a set region of Mars and the Astronauts deposited there. At the end of rounds 5, 8 and 10, whoever has the most astronauts in each region gets to collect the resources (victory points available there). After the tenth round, certain bonus points are awarded for fulfilling secret missions or making certain discoveries in the outer regions of Mars and then, whoever has amassed the most points wins.

This is a really interesting game with players faced with lots of gut-wrenching decisions, trying to take into account what others are doing. It really did have us engrossed throughout the game. Turn order matters more than at first seems apparent and timing when to use the Recruiter is an important aspect. Being our first play, none of us quite appreciated how things would develop and I’m sure a second game would see us all building on what we learnt from the first game. After the second scoring, it was interesting to note that three players were tied on 15 points with the fourth on just 6 but having an almost insurpassable lead for the 9 bonus points for most ice crystals. As it was, the Utopia region was critical in the final stage and Mark K engineered a majority, which was supplemented by a very useful Discovery tile to add to his points.

Mission: Red Planet is one of the best games we’ve played in 2006 (Nige was certain it was his favourite by far and promptly ordered a copy). It took us about 90 minutes but the first few turns were slow as we were getting to grips with the various character abilities: 60 minutes is probably not far of the mark once everyone knows how to play. The only thing that irritated me was the box insert was designed to hold the contents in place before all the bits were punched out and had absolutely no use for storing the various pieces once the game had been played. A very silly flaw that I would never have expected to have been overlooked. Still, that one niggle aside, a beautifully engineered design that we will certainly be playing again soon.

John was then able to join us for a first outing of Seerauber by Stefan Dorra and published by Queen games. Yet another pirate game, this sees players assembling a crew to attempt to raid various sized ships to plunder their treasure. However, treasure isn’t the main goal in the game, it’s money. This is because when a captain raids a ship, he has to pay wages to each of his crew. Players each have pirates that demand wages of up to 5 ducats. The raided ships have a certain amount of money but, if there isn’t enough to pay all the wages, the captain has to fork out the remainder from his own pocket. There are 5 rounds, during each of which 3 ships are boarded. After the last round, whoever has the most treasure of each type (candlesticks, cutlasses etc,) receives additional ducats but then, whoever has the most money wins.

In our game, Mark K got off to a very good start and was able to captain two raids that brought him treasure without paying out too much in wages. In the middle of the game, Nige “trapped” a goodly number of high-wage pirates that he declared he would hold onto and never board a ship (depriving those pirates of any future wages, as they only get paid when a ship is raided). Well, the rest of us thought otherwise and by covering Nige’s other pirates, forced him to board a ship and pay out about 10 more ducats than he gained. As this was going on, I became captain of a large crew, knowing that a lucrative ship was still to appear and gambling that it would come out on the penultimate round. I failed, as only modest ships appeared and John, who had three pirates on my crew, was able to mutiny and force me to board a ship, costing me a massive 16 ducats. I wasn’t pleased although everyone else found it to be highly amusing. By the end, Mark K was able to capitalise on his early fortune to run out a very easy winner.

Seerauber started off appearing a bit bland but, as time went on and the attempts at stuffing other players became more frequent, it got much more interesting. There is a memory element, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but it played pretty well and everyone was occupied throughout. A pity Mark K chalked up a second win but I guess it puts a bit more pressure on Steve in the Hall of Fame.

We started off this week with a game of Finstere Flure (Fearsome Floors). In the past, this has been a game where the monster has caused quite a bit of havoc and that is what has generated most of the fun. On this occasion, he wandered around aimlessly and although he messed with a few of the adventurers, these were back markers. Meantime, everyone was racing for the exit to try and get their guys through before the monster got diverted through a wall to appear by the exit. However, it never happened: maybe everyone felt they were in with a good shout of getting there first but the monster never went through a wall at all. I managed to set myself up for the win while simultaneously blocking Phil from doing the same and it ended up being very much an anti-climax. A bit disappointing really apart from me claiming the win and ending Steve’s winning streak (after he won all 3 games a fortnight ago). 

We then moved onto an old favourite. Phantoms of the Ice is a game I’ve played a lot and it is always terrific fun. Steve and Phil hadn’t played before but it’s so easy to pick up and we were soon constructing our unstoppable teams. Well, some of us were creating unstoppable teams: I seemed to trade bad for worse and John must have been doing the same, as he never challenged anyone to a match the entire game. The nice thing about the game is that the strong teams don’t stay strong for long as everyone wants to trade their dross for your superstars. Phil started with a dismal team and lost three quick matches but then managed to get a decent team and grab 3 wins later on. Mark K and Nige ended up in the final with Nige’s team looking the stronger on paper. Luck was with Mark though as he scraped a draw in regulation time and took the title in the sudden-death play-off.

 

Put the date in your diary: 2nd and 3rd June when a new ambitious games convention in Birmingham is set to take place.

Here is the latest information posted on BGG.

UK GAMES EXPO 2007
“Everything about games”
2nd to 3rd June 2007
The Clarendon Suites
2 Stirling Road, Edgbaston,
Birmingham B16 9SB

 

Just updating this information.
Latest news is that Ragnar Brothers, JKLM games and Burley Games are definately attending. Ragnar brothers promise a new board game released at the show – so come and play it before others do.Spirit Games and Bishop Games – both shops selling RPGs, boardgames and CCGs are attending so there will be plenty of chances to buy new board games.   

 

 

We aim to be the only UK Games Convention to present all aspects of the gaming hobby under one roof:
• Wargaming
• Card games
• Board games
• RPGs
• Collectible Minis and Cards
• Lan-gaming and online gaming
The goal is to raise the profile of gaming as a hobby that will appeal not just to a minority of gamers but to families and the general public.

The intention is to create a show along the lines of the US and German Games Cons where families and gamers can come and play new games brought by games producers and also enjoy many forms of entertainment:
• Tournaments in many game systems
• Latest releases and games
• A large trade fair
• Computer LAN games and the latest in on-line gaming
• Fun radio controlled games
• Participation and demonstration wargames
• Uk Games Expo 2007 will be open to the public and well advertised.

The Venue
The venue is a high quality Conference Centre on the corner of Stirling Road and Hagley Road in Birmingham. It offers over 2000sq m of space in a prestigious location. There is a large car park and the venue has many hotels nearby. It is also close to the restaurants and clubs of Broad Street for those who want evening entertainment. And it is next door to Tolkien’s TWO TOWERS.

Board gaming
This section is in development. We are in contact with marcus of JKLM and Mark Stetch of ManorCon to get interest from gamers and also the trade/ games producers.

Contacts
The organisers are enthusiastic gamers who will play any game. We are members of West Midland Games clubs and have previous experience of running wargames and general gaming shows.

For more information contact:
Richard Denning
Board games traders, RPGs, participation and demo games of all types-
richard@UKgamesexpo.co.uk

Kevin Townsend
Collectible Miniature Games and Card Games, Wargames & tournament games
info@Ukgamesexpo.co.uk

Patrick Campbell
Comic Books, publicity
patrickjcampbell@hotmail.com

website
http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

This website has no information on it at the moment other than dates and venue. Apparently, there’s “More information soon”. They need at the very least to get the BGG post on the site, even if it’s only a temporary measure.

I’ll definitely be trying to get to this and hope it proves successful for the organisers.

Well, in spite of there being some doubt as to whether I would get there this year, everything’s booked. Same hotel: Ypsilon, Best Western; flight out slightly later and back a few hours earlier, which means I get the full day on Thursday but only until lunchtime on the Friday.

Not scanned Rick’s Essen preview in any great detail yet but certainly very interested in Leonardo Da Vinci (da Vinci), Hermagor (Mind The Move) and Yspahan (Ystari). Bit annoyed I missed out on Hameln (Fragor) due to the house move meaning I didn’t read about the game until it was sold out on pre-order. Anything else I should be definitely looking out for? Also, is there anyone else who will be there that I should look out for?

If you are interested in general information about the fair, you can get details here.

I was unable to make it this week but Steve sent me a report.

The second game was a 30-minute filler called Trans Europa. This game is a map of Europe covered with a grid of triangles. Each player gets 5 cards; the cards have cities on them, one from each area of Europe. The players then build a railroad network using the triangular grid to get them to their goal of linking the 5 cities shown on their cards, but in doing so also will inadvertently help the other players achieve their goals. Each round someone links their 5 cities and the other players lose points based on how far they were from completing their link.

Mark G was the man for this game; his ability to link up his 5 cities whilst the rest of us were floundering was amazing. I was always 2 or 3 turns away from completing my route when Mark announced his success. I’m not sure were I went wrong as each time we played I felt that I had a reasonable chance of success and each time fell miserably short, although from the moans and groans of the other players I was not alone in my thoughts. We did have a new-comer playing called Adam and as the game was won when one player reaches zero, the game did come to a quicker end then perhaps it would have as Adam found himself quite some distance from his final objective after the second set of routes, so much so that he needed to win the next round to stay in the game. As the more experienced players were not losing at quite such a rate, we might have had more time to recover, but I feel that it still would have ended with Mark G winning, just taking a little longer.

I did like the simplicity of the game and I felt that I would have quite liked to start a fresh game straight away. For strategy on winning however, you would have to ask Mark G!

I wasn’t able to make it this week but Steve sent this report.

The first game played this evening was La Citta. This is a game that revolves around building cities.

We all initially looked for suitable starting places for our first two cities. Mark G positioned both of his cities in the centre of the board; the rest of us went for a mixture of positions. The game then started with all of us expanding our cities to claim the best possible choices of terrain to feed our citizens and with one eye on the type of city tile that was going to be popular with the citizens that year. It is the popularity of the city that is the key to this game, as at the end of a sequence of turns the citizens cast their gaze towards cities within 3 hexes of their own that provide the things they are looking for. It’s a bit like an election, but the populace quite literally vote with their feet and move to the city they like.

My strategy was to create a mega city full of different tile types that would draw in the citizens of all the surrounding players and have my second city as a kind of farm producing food for the ever-growing populace. The feeding of your citizens was for me always a problem. My success with the popularity of my large city was tempered with the fact that I suffered the penalty of lost action cards because I couldn’t feed all of my people. But overall I was willing to put up with this fact, as my large city had become a citizen black hole, expanding in size and swallowing up citizens at an alarming rate from an increasing amount of surrounding cities. As an example of this a new city started by Mark K that initially was at a safe distance from my metropolis soon come under the influence of it and as a result became another feeder city for me. Mark K decided to abandon the city after that and relocated it to a safer part of the board. Both Phil and Mark G lost people, although Mark G held off losing people for some time with a prudent selection of tile types. Ultimately my metropolis was considered by the others to be unbeatable and after 2 and a quarter hours the victory was mine.

I think that the length of the game was a little long for some people, but I didn’t find it to bad and didn’t realise how long we had been playing, which is usually the sign of an engaging game. It’s also not difficult to learn and with a different board layout each time it has a replay-ability factor.