![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
viktor_haagThis weekend was good for boardgames. On Friday night, we played Wallace's recent redux published by Mayfair, Steam. On Sunday afternoon, Wallace's most recent Treefrog release, Automobile. (We also played Caylus, but I've not got much to say about that.)
Caylus
I'm starting to appreciate Caylus more, recently. I liked the look of the recently published premium edition enough that I purchased it, and passed on my previous copy to friends to add to their collection. Since doing that, I've played the game two or three times, which is two or three times more than I'd played in the twelve months previous. What I've discovered about the game is that, at least for me, Doyle's art direction on the premium edition makes the game a more inviting experience (I like the bags, the tile art, the revised board layout, the metal coins). I'm also now of a mind to think that Caylus is a good two-player game, and looking forward to getting more two-player turns on the table. It may get more work than Agricola in that regard, simply because set-up and tear-down of the game is so much faster.
Steam
I've now twice played Wallace's latest edition of Age Of Steam, called Steam and published by Mayfair games. (John Bohrer's latest edition of Age Of Steam, called Age Of Steam and published by someone else is, really, not a new edition, just a re-publishing, and there's plenty of commentary on that whole history on the net for those who want so I won't get into that here.)
The first play was with three players and the second with four players (both on the North American side of the board). Others will have a much more technical analysis of the effects of the rules changes; however, I do have some thoughts.
I like the components: Mayfair sensibly improved the look of the pieces where that would provide some benefit and utility (nicer track tiles, some with pre-printed towns), and sensibly stayed away from gadgetry (the silly plastic trains in Railroad Tycoon and, apparently, the new game from Bohrer).
The separation between income and VP tracks is interesting. I think it makes the game somewhat more forgiving (I think it's much harder to go completely bankrupt now, I think), without evening it out to the point where the game is forced to be too close. The (no-longer-)Resident Train Guru had made the comment about Railroad Tycoon that it only seems friendlier, and in reality is every bit as punishing of mistakes as Age Of Steam, and this probably applies to Steam as well. But what RT and Steam bring to the table is a way to keep everyone playing. As well, the simplification of VP accounting at game-end is welcome.
I'm not sure that, with Steam, the various player actions aren't even farther apart in utility. Locomotive is now, I think, an even more powerful action as there's not much of a penalty (as far as I can tell) for over-investing in it (i.e. pumping up your Loc without immediate pay off in longer deliveries). Urbanize and City Growth (Production) are, like-wise, more useful as well because you can see what cube allotments are available, and getting to the ones that are most valuable for you might be vital in the mid- and end-game (and the rule changes make the City Growth/Production action useful on the final game turn). Turn Order wasn't taken once in either of the games we played, and with the slightly easier access to money in Steam, I suspect it's even less useful than previously: apart from anything else, it's now the only action guaranteed to be useless on the final turn. (Even worse with Turn Order, as Karl Rainer has asserted on BGG, is that the action's optimally useful to those with tempo this turn--to those forward in the turn order--but likely won't be taken by them as there are other actions that are nearly always more important.)
Is Steam an improvement over Age Of Steam? It might very well be. I've enjoyed our two plays so far, and have the found the game more fun than AoS. This could be an illusion: it could be that part of the fun-ness comes from the "not worrying" so much, and that's thanks to having had some severe teeth-cutting done on AoS over the years.
If you own Railroad Tycoon (and only RRT, from this family of games), then I would recommend Steam to you. If you already own Age Of Steam, I think Steam might be a game different enough that you might want to consider purchasing it.
Automobile
Wallace's new, small-run game, "Automobile" is a business game all about supply and demand, and beating your competitors to markets. In brief, players build factories, use the factories to build cars, try to sell as much of their production as they can, and then must cover mounting debt from out-moded factories and leftover inventory. I've played the game once, as a three player game. I'm not sure that this game is really well suited to three players (although the game was reasonably close). There are three kinds of cars to sell, and with three players, it's not clear to me that a strange instance might be possible, where each player adopts one kind of car production and doesn't mess with the other players. In the game we played, I took steps to lock up the fancy car production, and the other two players fought over mid-range and economy car production. I'm not sure the final VP calculation was entirely accurate (I either won by a hundred dollars more or less, or lost by that amount), but it seemed to me after the fact that the other players hurt themselves by beating up on each other, and if they had settled into their own production monopolies, they might have pasted me by simply out-producing me.
The theme for automobile is interesting, but doesn't rest entirely elegantly on the game itself. Each turn, players get to "conscript" a "character" that gets them a particular power. These characters come back over and over again. So, who exactly are the players? Are they car company shareholders? Owners? Something else? It's not clear. If the "character" actions had been abstracted into "strategic activities" rather than "characters", this disconnect might not have been so prominent. There are some other aspects of the game that seem a bit odd: you invest vast sums in infrastructure (factories), and then you can later "close" these factories and recover much of your original investment (cost - 100 dollars); because the costs of factories escalates, this recovery efficiency improves over the course of the game. Again, there's a thematic disconnection -- you can think of the built factories as "investing in production capacity", and then later closing factories as "re-organizing your capacity at the cost of immediate production" or something like that.
But, in the end, this slight disconnection of theme didn't affect my enjoyment of the game. I liked the game a great deal, about as much as Brass (Wallace's previous "big money investment" game, about the rise of the industrial age in the Western UK), if not a bit more -- Automobile is slightly easier and slightly shorter than Brass, and this might get it more plays on my table. Of all the Treefrog games so far, I think this one might be my favourite or tied for favourite (with After The Flood), and is likely to see more play than After The Flood thanks to the length and player restrictions on it (exactly three players and three to four hours).
Like most Wallace games with some substance, I'm going to have to have at least a few plays of this under my belt before I can offer any more cogent thoughts.
As a small-run game, it's expensive. Is it worth it? Sadly, probably not: unless you are a fan of Martin Wallace's games; a fan of the production values/design of his games which have a hefty, traditional "German style" feel to them (masses of wood; simple but attractive art design); or, have a regular group that really prefers to play games with some brain-crunch that fall right in that two to four hour category but still don't fall into the territory of conflict simulation or the "American style" (for example, games from Splotter, 18xx games, Wallace's other games, the heaviest of the Alea "big-box" line, Agricola/Le Havre, Die Macher, etc, etc).
If one of these things is true, then you might find it worth the money: there's certainly enough depth and fun in this game (as with nearly all of Wallace's games) for you to get your money's worth back out again, provided you have a regular group to play with.
Caylus
I'm starting to appreciate Caylus more, recently. I liked the look of the recently published premium edition enough that I purchased it, and passed on my previous copy to friends to add to their collection. Since doing that, I've played the game two or three times, which is two or three times more than I'd played in the twelve months previous. What I've discovered about the game is that, at least for me, Doyle's art direction on the premium edition makes the game a more inviting experience (I like the bags, the tile art, the revised board layout, the metal coins). I'm also now of a mind to think that Caylus is a good two-player game, and looking forward to getting more two-player turns on the table. It may get more work than Agricola in that regard, simply because set-up and tear-down of the game is so much faster.
Steam
I've now twice played Wallace's latest edition of Age Of Steam, called Steam and published by Mayfair games. (John Bohrer's latest edition of Age Of Steam, called Age Of Steam and published by someone else is, really, not a new edition, just a re-publishing, and there's plenty of commentary on that whole history on the net for those who want so I won't get into that here.)
The first play was with three players and the second with four players (both on the North American side of the board). Others will have a much more technical analysis of the effects of the rules changes; however, I do have some thoughts.
I like the components: Mayfair sensibly improved the look of the pieces where that would provide some benefit and utility (nicer track tiles, some with pre-printed towns), and sensibly stayed away from gadgetry (the silly plastic trains in Railroad Tycoon and, apparently, the new game from Bohrer).
The separation between income and VP tracks is interesting. I think it makes the game somewhat more forgiving (I think it's much harder to go completely bankrupt now, I think), without evening it out to the point where the game is forced to be too close. The (no-longer-)Resident Train Guru had made the comment about Railroad Tycoon that it only seems friendlier, and in reality is every bit as punishing of mistakes as Age Of Steam, and this probably applies to Steam as well. But what RT and Steam bring to the table is a way to keep everyone playing. As well, the simplification of VP accounting at game-end is welcome.
I'm not sure that, with Steam, the various player actions aren't even farther apart in utility. Locomotive is now, I think, an even more powerful action as there's not much of a penalty (as far as I can tell) for over-investing in it (i.e. pumping up your Loc without immediate pay off in longer deliveries). Urbanize and City Growth (Production) are, like-wise, more useful as well because you can see what cube allotments are available, and getting to the ones that are most valuable for you might be vital in the mid- and end-game (and the rule changes make the City Growth/Production action useful on the final game turn). Turn Order wasn't taken once in either of the games we played, and with the slightly easier access to money in Steam, I suspect it's even less useful than previously: apart from anything else, it's now the only action guaranteed to be useless on the final turn. (Even worse with Turn Order, as Karl Rainer has asserted on BGG, is that the action's optimally useful to those with tempo this turn--to those forward in the turn order--but likely won't be taken by them as there are other actions that are nearly always more important.)
Is Steam an improvement over Age Of Steam? It might very well be. I've enjoyed our two plays so far, and have the found the game more fun than AoS. This could be an illusion: it could be that part of the fun-ness comes from the "not worrying" so much, and that's thanks to having had some severe teeth-cutting done on AoS over the years.
If you own Railroad Tycoon (and only RRT, from this family of games), then I would recommend Steam to you. If you already own Age Of Steam, I think Steam might be a game different enough that you might want to consider purchasing it.
Automobile
Wallace's new, small-run game, "Automobile" is a business game all about supply and demand, and beating your competitors to markets. In brief, players build factories, use the factories to build cars, try to sell as much of their production as they can, and then must cover mounting debt from out-moded factories and leftover inventory. I've played the game once, as a three player game. I'm not sure that this game is really well suited to three players (although the game was reasonably close). There are three kinds of cars to sell, and with three players, it's not clear to me that a strange instance might be possible, where each player adopts one kind of car production and doesn't mess with the other players. In the game we played, I took steps to lock up the fancy car production, and the other two players fought over mid-range and economy car production. I'm not sure the final VP calculation was entirely accurate (I either won by a hundred dollars more or less, or lost by that amount), but it seemed to me after the fact that the other players hurt themselves by beating up on each other, and if they had settled into their own production monopolies, they might have pasted me by simply out-producing me.
The theme for automobile is interesting, but doesn't rest entirely elegantly on the game itself. Each turn, players get to "conscript" a "character" that gets them a particular power. These characters come back over and over again. So, who exactly are the players? Are they car company shareholders? Owners? Something else? It's not clear. If the "character" actions had been abstracted into "strategic activities" rather than "characters", this disconnect might not have been so prominent. There are some other aspects of the game that seem a bit odd: you invest vast sums in infrastructure (factories), and then you can later "close" these factories and recover much of your original investment (cost - 100 dollars); because the costs of factories escalates, this recovery efficiency improves over the course of the game. Again, there's a thematic disconnection -- you can think of the built factories as "investing in production capacity", and then later closing factories as "re-organizing your capacity at the cost of immediate production" or something like that.
But, in the end, this slight disconnection of theme didn't affect my enjoyment of the game. I liked the game a great deal, about as much as Brass (Wallace's previous "big money investment" game, about the rise of the industrial age in the Western UK), if not a bit more -- Automobile is slightly easier and slightly shorter than Brass, and this might get it more plays on my table. Of all the Treefrog games so far, I think this one might be my favourite or tied for favourite (with After The Flood), and is likely to see more play than After The Flood thanks to the length and player restrictions on it (exactly three players and three to four hours).
Like most Wallace games with some substance, I'm going to have to have at least a few plays of this under my belt before I can offer any more cogent thoughts.
As a small-run game, it's expensive. Is it worth it? Sadly, probably not: unless you are a fan of Martin Wallace's games; a fan of the production values/design of his games which have a hefty, traditional "German style" feel to them (masses of wood; simple but attractive art design); or, have a regular group that really prefers to play games with some brain-crunch that fall right in that two to four hour category but still don't fall into the territory of conflict simulation or the "American style" (for example, games from Splotter, 18xx games, Wallace's other games, the heaviest of the Alea "big-box" line, Agricola/Le Havre, Die Macher, etc, etc).
If one of these things is true, then you might find it worth the money: there's certainly enough depth and fun in this game (as with nearly all of Wallace's games) for you to get your money's worth back out again, provided you have a regular group to play with.
