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viktor_haagThis weekend was a fairly good one for the playing of the boardgames. Not, however, a tremendous amount of variety:
• Medici twice
• Agricola three times
• Age of Steam once (the Montréal Métro map, actually)
• Race for the Galaxy twice
Medici
This is probably my favourite light auction game. It has lots of advantages: it has randomness to help even the playing field; it scales reasonably well all the way up to six players; with quick-ish players, it plays through in under an hour; there's very little downtime; the path to victory is not tremendously clear or easy to game; it can be had in an inexpensive edition (although the art direction on just about every edition yet produced has been problematic).
Agricola
I have leapt on this game in a way that makes me believe it'll get lots of play in the coming years. By comparison, only these games in the past have evinced as much immediate re-play: Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Age of Steam, Settlers. That's some pretty darned good company. Getting a copy of this game right now is probably going to be challenging; however, I doubt that collectability will be a long term problem as it has been with Age of Steam. If you have played, and enjoy, Puerto Rico, this game should definitely be on your list of games to add to the collection. It has a similar bootstrappy-economic feeling, with the same delightful spicy-ness of subtle player interaction. The only thing that I think Puerto Rico does better than Agricola is the lack of randomness (Agricola's staged-actions, improvement, and occupation card-draw will present a bit of a sticking-spot for some), and the speed of play (although, it's possible that Agricola in the hands of a group of well-experienced players may approach the quick involvement of PR). If I could keep only five games, Agricola would (at this point) be one of them, along with Civilization, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, and 1825.
Age of Steam
Played late on Sunday evening as a warm-down game, after having played three other games. It astounds me that I would think of it as a warm-down game, but I was playing at a table with two of the fastest players I know, all of us well familiar with Age of Steam's systems, and with me being the weakest, slowest player. We finished somewhere close to 75 minutes on an expansion map that presented a reasonable amount of difficulty (Montréal), specifically built for three players. I inched out a win by two-thirds of a point, which was quite a coup, but clearly demonstrated the danger of three-player games: I was granted the luxury of snatching a top corner of the board and being left mostly unmolested. I tried to keep the chances of being left along high, with constant partial link completions on the board to try and keep the others away from any interest in pursuing me. There were a few times when I made a move that would have been stabbed, but wasn't because I immediately retconned into the "correct decision".
The bowbing that appears in Age of Steam is about at my far limit of fun, and combined with the challenges of the game itself (money management and track building madness), it easily falls into the most frustrating game experiences I've had. But, when you do well, that frustration can turn around and feel rewarding (as you do after a hard workout). AoS was once very high on my list of games, but is no longer in my desert island five: Power Grid has, for me, almost as much as AoS, with generally more average levels of fun (mostly because it has a lower average level of bowbing and frustration, I think).
Race for the Galaxy
This is the lightning fast and fun filler game that San Juan rather wanted to be and somehow wasn't. It would be nice if Tom Lehman did a "big-brother" version of Race for the Galaxy that provided a Puerto Rico-like experience, with the same vague space opera background found in RftG. This card game is not a classic, but is certainly good, quite fun, and if you have ten to twenty games, you should give it a look especially if you like Puerto Rico and have less quick fillers in your collection than you want.
• Medici twice
• Agricola three times
• Age of Steam once (the Montréal Métro map, actually)
• Race for the Galaxy twice
Medici
This is probably my favourite light auction game. It has lots of advantages: it has randomness to help even the playing field; it scales reasonably well all the way up to six players; with quick-ish players, it plays through in under an hour; there's very little downtime; the path to victory is not tremendously clear or easy to game; it can be had in an inexpensive edition (although the art direction on just about every edition yet produced has been problematic).
Agricola
I have leapt on this game in a way that makes me believe it'll get lots of play in the coming years. By comparison, only these games in the past have evinced as much immediate re-play: Puerto Rico, Power Grid, Age of Steam, Settlers. That's some pretty darned good company. Getting a copy of this game right now is probably going to be challenging; however, I doubt that collectability will be a long term problem as it has been with Age of Steam. If you have played, and enjoy, Puerto Rico, this game should definitely be on your list of games to add to the collection. It has a similar bootstrappy-economic feeling, with the same delightful spicy-ness of subtle player interaction. The only thing that I think Puerto Rico does better than Agricola is the lack of randomness (Agricola's staged-actions, improvement, and occupation card-draw will present a bit of a sticking-spot for some), and the speed of play (although, it's possible that Agricola in the hands of a group of well-experienced players may approach the quick involvement of PR). If I could keep only five games, Agricola would (at this point) be one of them, along with Civilization, Puerto Rico, Power Grid, and 1825.
Age of Steam
Played late on Sunday evening as a warm-down game, after having played three other games. It astounds me that I would think of it as a warm-down game, but I was playing at a table with two of the fastest players I know, all of us well familiar with Age of Steam's systems, and with me being the weakest, slowest player. We finished somewhere close to 75 minutes on an expansion map that presented a reasonable amount of difficulty (Montréal), specifically built for three players. I inched out a win by two-thirds of a point, which was quite a coup, but clearly demonstrated the danger of three-player games: I was granted the luxury of snatching a top corner of the board and being left mostly unmolested. I tried to keep the chances of being left along high, with constant partial link completions on the board to try and keep the others away from any interest in pursuing me. There were a few times when I made a move that would have been stabbed, but wasn't because I immediately retconned into the "correct decision".
The bowbing that appears in Age of Steam is about at my far limit of fun, and combined with the challenges of the game itself (money management and track building madness), it easily falls into the most frustrating game experiences I've had. But, when you do well, that frustration can turn around and feel rewarding (as you do after a hard workout). AoS was once very high on my list of games, but is no longer in my desert island five: Power Grid has, for me, almost as much as AoS, with generally more average levels of fun (mostly because it has a lower average level of bowbing and frustration, I think).
Race for the Galaxy
This is the lightning fast and fun filler game that San Juan rather wanted to be and somehow wasn't. It would be nice if Tom Lehman did a "big-brother" version of Race for the Galaxy that provided a Puerto Rico-like experience, with the same vague space opera background found in RftG. This card game is not a classic, but is certainly good, quite fun, and if you have ten to twenty games, you should give it a look especially if you like Puerto Rico and have less quick fillers in your collection than you want.
