A big, long post about games

All of this visitation for the sake of helping us out has also had the side benefit of me getting to play a lot more games. I've actually had to do very little evangelizing, which is nice. Folks are beginning to get that this is one of my diversions, and actually offer to play a game, even when they've "never heard of any of these". And it's gone well, meaning that we've managed to pick the right game(s) to play with the right people. The following is a list of games (number of plays) from the past few months...

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers (7)
Lost Cities (6)
San Juan(5)
Samurai (5)
Ticket to Ride: Europe (4)
San Marco (4)
Mr. Jack (3)
Arkham Horror (2)
Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation (2)
Caylus (2)
Power Grid (2)
For Sale (1)
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization (1)
Amun-Re (1)
Ra (1)
Prophecy (1)
Citadels (1)
Starship Catan (1)

Far and away, the most popular game with newbies has been Ticket to Ride - Europe. We've had 3 friends track it down and buy it after one play. I know that these games aren't for everyone, so it's really nice to see the spark in a new person's eyes. You just hope that it's not accompanied by despair in their spouse's eyes...

The best new game that I played in the past few months is Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. It's a civilization-building game that's driven primarily through the economy of workers and resources. Unlike most civ games, there is no map, so there is no geographical or spatial element to the game. All civs start with rudimentary farming, mining, religion, philosophy, a band of warriors and a despot, all represented by cards. Throughout the game, then, you try to upgrade the various areas of your civ by drafting cards from a constantly changing display. However, you have to properly manage your food supply, resource production, population growth, and investments in technologies to take advantage of opportunities. Plus, you have to keep pace militarily, lest you become a juicy target to a hawkish opponent. Fun, fun, fun! A 3 player game takes about 2.5 hours, and it just flies by. The designer, Vlaada Chvatil, has really been distinguishing himself as a star over the past few years, with games like Prophecy and Galaxy Trucker.



My friend Chris recently hosted a games night, and I got to play some new stuff. First, the classic Set, which isn't really my kind of game. It's a speed game, and I suck at these. Then, a connection game that's based on the London subway, called On the Underground. You are trying to build the most desirable connections in the Underground, while taking advantage of scoring opportunities on the board. You basically chase points the entire game, so someone who jumps ahead early can be tough to catch. I'd like to try this again, now that I've seen what it looks like when you employ a series of failed strategies.

Finally, I played another train-type game, called Wabash Cannonball. Here, you're auctioning off stock in five different train companies. The winning bidder puts his bid into the company itself, to be used for building track. Thus, if there is more than one person owning stock in a company, the company has more money and can expand quickly. The catch is that the value of individual stocks is diluted by an increased number of shares in circulation (one share receives full dividend, two shares get 50% of dividend each, etc). On your turn, you may either expand (build track to get to valuable areas of the map), develop (upgrade one of the sites that you have connected to raise the value of your stock), or captalize (put a share of stock up for auction). The game lasts about an hour, and the winner is simply the person with the most money in hand. Stocks are worthless, as is any money in a company. The winner is the person who 1)didn't overvalue stock shares, and 2)made good use of opponents to put money into his/her companies. I've been thinking a lot about this game, and I can't think of a foolproof strategy, or even a good way of objectively valuating stocks at any given moment in the game. Must play again!