Day three began with a game I’ve wanted to play for a few years, Swedish Parliament 2014.
Each player represents a political party, and those not used by players are operated by the AI. The board represents 8 issue spectrums on which a party’s affiliation will fluctuate, and where certain voting blocks feel on those issues. Typically you are affecting the stance of the parties, as the voting blocks’ stances are fixed, but which issue they currently care about is variable.
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I can’t say enough how much I’m enjoying this con.
This morning started with Sidereal Confluence- for me, one of the titles I had been hoping to try, but did not schedule ahead of time.
My regular group and I are big fans of Chinatown, but I’ve never found another trading or negotiation game that clicked for me. As I’m not a fan of lots of little cards with text on them or many assymetric powers, so I also went into this with some trepidation.
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I started out the morning with Kogge which Edward had brought along for me, and was a title from last bggcon’s Not Hot Games Room.
There weren’t player screens, but otherwise this was the highest quality component Kogge copy I’ve played. Roughly, you’re shooting for 5 points and you start with 1. You’ll earn points by building trade houses, or trading in cubes to the provost. It’s tricky in a number of ways: when you sail from a city, you can only sail to one of the two numbers currently available at that port. You can launder a tile (facedown) into one of the spots, but this component is very multi-use, and you need to be judicious. If you do launder it, you place one face down, which will only be flipped up when someone commits to going there (or rather, has no interest in going to the other destination!)
For the next few days, I’ll talk about my experiences at HeavyCon, in Denver, CO. It’s my first trip here, starts tomorrow, and is already a stellar con.
At bggcon, I’m an 8 AM person- who has showered and eaten breakfast and is ready to play each morning by 8, and usually 7:55. However, Edward started this year off with a 5:30 AM hike on Wednesday prior to the con starting in earnest on Thursday. About 17 of us met in the lobby and carpooled to a site near Dillon.
So, it’s been a really long time since I just went out an ordered a game without knowing ANYTHING about it.  In this modern era of boardgaming, usually there is some sort of review or video or something out there to learn about a game.  Admittedly, I am part of that process, as this blog often gets advance copies of games to get that info out there prior to a game’s release. Continue reading
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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – May 2018
Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – May 2018
Without further ado, my new games this month include …
Elle Macpherson is a member of Patrick’s gaming group.
ALCHEMISTS
The historical knock on all deduction games is their fragility. Worst is if one player’s mistake hurts other people (a la Black Vienna), and this at least doesn’t do that. This takes fragility in another direction. Here you’re inferring opposites – it’s green positive so it can’t be any of the combinations containing a green negative, which you both mark on your sheet and place a matching chit on your player board. Now if the chit falls out of your player board and you can’t recall exactly where it was, hopefully you’ll be able to work it out backwards from your player sheet. But what if you’ve also made a mistake on your sheet somewhere because you’re tired? Not a lot of fun working all that out again, and realising you’re knocked out of the game and there’s little point continuing for the next 90 minutes. The other knock I had was what if you simply don’t get the cards to narrow down the last 50/50 aspect of a component. The game only goes 6 rounds so now you’re probably forced into some guesswork in the hunt for points. Do you trust what others have inferred, or have they been making some educated guesses as well? On such can the game depend, and I’m not really in the fun camp on that one. The game is LOOONG, and I was as much a culprit as anyone, checking and re-checking inferences, working out optimal things I wanted to test next based on what was available. Not only does that length increase the chances of frustration escalation (at mistakes and incomplete knowledge), but it doesn’t accordingly increase the level of satisfaction gleaned from correct inference-making to compensate, compared to games of half the length. I can appreciate the game – the thematic linking to academia is brilliant and the rules clever and fun – but there’s too much risk that I won’t enjoy any given playing, either through my own mistakes, or apologising for the game for other players who’ve made mistakes given its length, or through card and choice frustration. Further it requires all the players to really love the core mechanic – there’s too much risk that those I’m gaming with on any given night aren’t all in the love-it camp, so how often will it find play? Continue reading →
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