TieBreaker
Designer: Ted Alspach
Publisher: Bezier Games
Just last night, I finished a close game of Troyes with a score of 43 to 43 to 40. After looking in the rulebook, we found no rule telling us how to decide which of us with 43 points was the “real” winner. If only there were something out there that could help us! But wait, there is! Ted Alspach (game designer and comic square writer of Board 2 Pieces here on Opinionated Gamers) has designed such a tool.
Continue reading
Age of Steam Expansions – African Diamond Mines /Taiwan Cube Factories
Designer: Ted Alspach
Publisher: Bezier Games
Like the other AoS expansions in the Bezier Games’ Essen pack, this is a double-sided board intended to work with either the Age of Steam or the Steam base game.
Underground Rails in Diamond Mines
In African Diamond Mines, players build tracks connecting various underground diamond mine deposits (light gray hexes, each starts with 2 random cubes at the beginning of the game) to the mine entrances of a specific color to enable the most efficient extraction of the diamonds. There are only 5 delivery cities (diamond-shaped areas at the very top of the board), each with 2 (dark gray hex) mine entrances (the black/gray one in the middle has 3 entrances). There are links already established between the mine entrances and the delivery cities (white lines with white dots). No one owns them, and everyone can use them. Initial track building must start from one of the mine entrances. In general, the mine deposits closer to the delivery cities are shallower than the ones further down on the board. Each mine deposit cluster has a number indicating its depth. There are no cities or terrain differences, and each simple track costs $2 to build. If one has tracks leading to a mine deposit cluster, that player has access to all cubes in the cluster so there’s no need to build tracks into a specific hex in the cluster. Continue reading
Hi gamers, I take a break from my Interviews to be part of the usual pre-Essen hype. Here some last minutes notes for Essen. Nothing really enough to call it a real preview but something I really would like to share with other gamers. Of course, since I’m from Italy, most of this notes are about Italian publishers and/or designers … but not only Italy this time since I was lucky enough to have some first hand infos also by other publishers (some one is discovering that, with some help, I’m also able to write English previews/reviews!).
Here my notes in alphabetical order:
999 Games
Aquileia (999 Games, Zoch) by Pier Volontè (Cielo d’oro)
I already wrote about this game in my BGG news article and I’m really curious to see the final result. Winning Archimede Prize is not easy and the game has all the chance to make well. Having tested the great new Cielo d’oro prototype (Sestrieri is the actual name of the project), Aquleia, that seems to be a solid worker-placement title, is for sure in my “to buy” list.
Howdy all. Dale and co. have been doing an admirable job keeping you updated on all the cool new games, so I thought I’d do something different. I want to try and capture the sights, the sounds, but especially the smells of being a hard working Essen game mule.
This year, thanks to some unfortunate circumstances (the short version: If you want to hire a kickass project manager please let me know?) I figured Essen would not happen for me. I was all set to live vicariously through Dale’s tales of endless schmoozing and free games, BGG’s livestream coverage and other news outlets. But then, I got a chance to go after all. The catch? All the games I buy for myself are getting mailed home. You see, I’ve sold my soul (er, luggage space) and become a game mule. Continue reading
Designer: Gil d’Orey
Publisher: MESAboardgames
Players: 2 to 4
Playing Time: 90 minutes
Ages: 10+
Last year’s SPIEL fair at Essen brought us multiple games with winemaking theme: Vinhos, Grand Cru, and Toscana. This year’s show will welcome the latest entrant in the winemaking game, Vintage, from the Portuguese publisher MESAboargames. This time, the setting is the Douro River Valley of Portugal, the world-renowned port wine-producing region, and players are competing business owners vying to produce the highest quality (vintage) product.
Making Port Wine is a Process
Unlike last year’s wine games where production happens almost as a matter of course (except for impact of weather in Vinhos and maturation time in Grand Cru), in Vintage players go through the entire winemaking process from buying an estate, planting vineyards, harvesting grapes, transporting the wine to cellars located in Vila Nova de Gaia for aging, before the products can finally be sold for Vintage Points (VPs). Because players will most likely go through the estate start-up process twice and the harvest-transportation-selling process at least 5 times in the game’s 7-round duration, there is a great deal of tension and interactions among players.
In the beginning of the game, all players start with one estate in the Baixo (lower) Cargo sub-region. All the initial estates come with exactly the same 3 vineyards planted (ready to produce wine), have the ‘estate quality’ of 2 and can produce 2 barrels of port wine at each harvest. Players also start with 1 barrel of brandy, a required ingredient in making port wine, as well as a ship parked at the cellar of Vila Nova de Gaia. The only difference in the budding enterprises is that the first two players (the first player in a 3-player game) will start the first round with one fewer worker. Continue reading
