TBGT Day 4 – Seven Games!

Ma Ni Ki, Sticheln, Ingenious, Amun-Re, Princes of Florence, Caylus, Hacienda

My eyes snapped open at about ten minutes to eight in the morning, despite having gone to bed only approximately six hours earlier. Who knows why it happened, but there was nothing for it but to get up, shower, write my post from the day before, get coffee, and head to the Comfort Suites RTP.

With convention badge proudly hanging from my neck, I strode into the meeting room looking for some game. There were a couple tables going already by the time I got there, around ten, and a couple people sitting around. Many of them were only staying a while, needing to check out of the hotel and hit the road or catch flights. We decided to play some quick ones while we waited for the hall to fill up.

Ma Ni Ki

Mike, a person I hadn’t met yet during the event, was one of the ones waiting for an event, and he pulled this down and taught it to Chris, Dwayne, and myself. It’s really a cute game, and we played pretty casually and had some fun. Basically, there are three neat wooden circus animals, and the game board has two spaces, signifying circus risers. You draw a card which shows a configuration of animals, and then use some preset commands to move the animals from their current position to the desired one. First person to come up with a working program takes the card. A nice warm-up game. I felt like I caught on pretty well, although at times Mike got sick of waiting for us and was blurting out programs while I was still re-reading them. I think in a couple years my niece will love this.

Sticheln

Next, Mike pulled down Sticheln, which he described as an “anti-trick taking game.” I had a similar experience with this as I had with Bottle Imp the night before – I developed a simple strategy, did fairly well, then flopped. We only played a few hands, with three and then with four when Eric joined. Things really went downhill with the fourth player, and I made at least one embarrassingly bad play. In this simple card game, you have cards in a few colors. At the beginning of the hand, you put down a card, the color of which will be your “misery color.” Any of these cards you end up with at the end of the round score their value, negative, from your score. All other cards are worth one point each. Consequently, you have to balance the cards you have to try to make it so that you can get rid of misery cards without taking them, but still take some tricks to make a positive score. Any color than the one lead is trump, and you don’t have to follow suit. Really, a pretty neat game, although it probably gets a little too hard to plan successfully when you play with more than three people.

The room was starting to fill up, and it was time for some people to get going, so we decided to abandon Sticheln in search of other games. There wasn’t anything we could really get into, so we started a game of Ingenious, with Christopher, Sarah, and myself taking part.

Ingenious

I haven’t played this in a while, and I’ve actually been kind of anxious to get it on the table again. This is one of the games that my track record is very poor at, though. I certainly need some work with my strategy on this one. In Ingenious, the players take turns playing tiles that take up two spaces on a hexagonal board, and have two colored symbols on them. They score for rays of like colored pieces that touch their edges when played. Your ending score is the lowest score you earn from the six or so colors. Consequently, you need to try to develop evenly, as one huge score and several very small ones won’t do you much good. We were all fairly even starting out. However, Chris and Sarah were able to explode to max out a color for an extra play much earlier than myself. Chris especially did a very good job of blocking me from colors that he knew he was ahead of me on. I think I definitely need to work on spreading the board more in the early game. I ended up making some big lines that other people got to capitalize on and cap before I could use them. I also need to do this to make sure I can keep my colors going. In the end, Chris took it, followed very closely by Sarah, with me bringing up the rear a considerable distance off.

A little after we finished, Chris wandered off, really hoping to get in a heavy rail game, which he seems to have become obsessed with. There were a couple 18XX games played this week, and I think he only got in on one of them, and really liked it. I don’t think he had any luck on Sunday, but I certainly started to have some from this point on. At least in some ways. I think it was, at this point, Sarah and myself, and David. We were looking for something that one of us could teach, and that we’d still be excited about playing. We were waffling over Amun Re when we were joined by LuAnn, who said she’d teach, and Dan. I had never played this game, but I’d played games with all these people, and I was expecting this one would be pretty fun.

Amun-Re

In Amun-Re, another Knizia game, this time a little less abstract, but with the familiar Egyptian theme that he somehow failed to paste onto Ingenious, players develop provinces in ancient Egypt and vie for the favor of Amun-Re. Provinces are bought in an auction, then pyramids and farmers are built on them, money is earned through farmers, and vp’s are earned in a variety of ways. Some are procured from pyramids and temples on the board, and some from special power cards, that are purchased at the same time as the other items. There are three rounds of auctioning, then a scoring round, then the board is wiped clean of everything but pyramids, and you do it all again. I managed a slim lead after the first scoring round, with the special worker card, the most pyramids in one of the provinces, and ownership of the two temple region. In the second round, I overbid a couple of regions, and found myself unfortunately short of cash. However, I was still able to have an effective turn, and pulled off some decent maneuvering. I scored more for pyramids, one less temple, and no special cards. However, I did have the third most money, and I ended up just squeaking the victory by three points or so. It was a very enjoyable game, and a good crowd. Sarah, at one point, referred to Amun-Re as “Amun-Joy,” which prompted a barrage of humorous comments, and resurfaced at the end of the game for even more laughs. I’d play again, and maybe pick it up. For me, important strategies involved being balanced between income and all the things you could buy or score victory points from. Pyramids were a big, big deal, especially being able to work into sets more easily in the second scoring round. The power cards were maybe a little too random for me, as I only ever saw one the whole game that affected scoring directly, which made some of the planning seem a little worthless.

Sarah and LuAnn dispersed to do other things. Dan and David and I were sitting around considering something they could play before they left when we were approached by a little lady from Georgia who wanted to squeeze another game in. Everyone agreed they had just over an hour to play, but we couldn’t seem to find a quick game that April, the nice woman from down South, would agree to. In the end, we acquiesced to her suggestion of Princes of Florence, even though it seemed like pushing the envelope on time a little bit. We all said we’d play fast to get through it, but this didn’t run out to be true in the end, unfortunately, as there were lots of slow turns. Dan ended up having to leave before the end of the game, which I felt bad about.

Princes of Florence

Similar to Amun-Re in that you have an auction round, followed by a development round. Very dissimilar in many other ways, though, as you make money differently, and are scoring victory points from various sources throughout the game, while you encourage artisans and scholars to create great works. I started off as second player, which is not bad. I won the jester on the first round, and bought a profession and a freedom. I had pretty much the exact same second turn. Things were going a little low, but I attributed that to there only being four players and to the aforementioned “fast play.” I think it may have had more to do with people just wanting to stick to an individual plan, though. I got both of the first two jesters for 900 each, and then picked up a third a couple turns later, for about 700, after I acquired the “most jesters” prestige card. Since I had such a big jester advantage, and also had taken extra profession cards, I was able to make good sized works. I won the largest work several times. Things were pretty tight up until twenty points or so, when April and I started to edge out in front. Dan had a bad turn, when he should have taken money, which put him behind. David was doing well. I made a mistake which was fairly costly. First, I didn’t anticipate any of the remaining people would fight me for the park I needed, but April did, and I ended up not having enough money to get it. Then, I bought a recruiting card, thinking I could recruit to get back something April had already taken from me. It turned out, though, that card was something I played early, and I didn’t have the building for it. I had taken a bonus card, so there was only one action left. I ended up scoring a work without the applicable building. I still got plenty of vps, and won best work. However, April and David were both able to build twice on the last turn, making fairly nice works and scoring lots of points. After they’d done all their scoring, it looked like they were tied for the lead, ahead of me, until I revealed the aforementioned prestige card, lurking in front of me, which put me one point ahead! A very good game with a near photo-finish. I just wish we could have finished ten minutes earlier so that Dan could still have been there.

Almost immediately after finishing Princes, I was approached by Geoff. They were playing Caylus, and one of the players had to leave, so they were looking for a player to take over. Now, I hate the idea of abandoning a game, and I’m not one to turn down a gamer in need, so I jumped over to the other table.

Caylus

The game was about two-thirds of the way done, and the guy I was taking over for was in the lead. We were, unfortunately, right in the middle of taking turns, going down the road. I made a couple of bad mistakes here, while I was adjusting to the game while trying to play simultaneously and effectively. I managed to keep the building on the plan, so to speak, and pick up a few points, just staying in the lead. I think everyone was starting to show the effects of gaming for several days straight, as we had a lot of minds wandering and people not concentrating (including me) during this session. Although I was in the pole position, I didn’t have much money, and wasn’t sitting on a lot of buildings that people would really feel the need to give me victory points by jumping upon. I did what any sane person would do and tried to push the provost forward, hastening the game end. On the last turn, I forgot that if I moved the provost back, past the point where peoples’ workers were, they wouldn’t get to do anything. Consequently, I was pretty much resigned to losing, as two people were going to build giant buildings, and one was probably going to build enough of a stone building to catch me. However, the player to my right didn’t forget, and made the move I should have, playing a worker to the move provost slot and passing, forcing people to pay more for their actions, and, consequently, be able to take fewer. I passed shortly after him, and, soon, everyone was out. We moved the provost back past the point where the big buildings could be built, and past the point where on of the players could get resources to build and score a lot. It was a masterful play, and, if I’d done it, I’d feel I deserved to win. In the end, though, I think I only won the game due to the excellent foundation laid by the first player. Good job, Tito.


Strange interlude

As we were finishing up the game, a voice behind me said “are you real?” Apparently, he was speaking to Geoff, who simply replied “yes.” The voice then said “am I real?”, and, at this point, I had turned to find myself looking at a very messed-up looking young man. We invited him to come and sit with us, so we could ascertain what sort of help he needed. He claimed to be paranoid schizophrenic, and off his meds. Thomas and I took him to the front desk, where it became clear he was checked in. I got the front desk guy to call his wife, to bring him his meds. While I stood there, the young man started talking about committing suicide, so I thought I should stay with him. He was clearly scattered on the mental front, and I was a little worried and, frankly, hoping that someone was calling 911. Thankfully, the desk had gotten through to his wife, who pulled up with his tearful mother, just minutes later. It came to light that he had been released from the hospital the night before, then snuck out, and left a suicide note. His mother was so happy to find him… I think it had been a very, very hard day for her. I have to say, it was a very strange way to spend a half an hour, but I’m glad the young man ended up in our meeting room, rather than someplace where he might have been ignored or treated even worse.

After that, it was just time for some clearing of the head. I sat around and talked with Paul and both of the Reinhardts for a while, just going over what had happened, as well as games in general, and the event. It turned out we weren’t done yet, though, as Rob spotted Hacienda in the box of games I was about to carry out to my car, and wanted to give it a go. Rob hasn’t, apparently, been gaming much the last year or so as he finished his graduate degree, and there really isn’t any way you can turn down a guy that nice. Before you know it, we had five players, and headed for the markets.

Hacienda

This is a game I picked up with store credit that I had, right before we left town. Of the games at Critical Hit, this was the one I wanted the most. I hadn’t gotten my copy on the table yet, though, as there has been so much else to play lately. I was pretty happy to give the cards a first shuffle, finally. Everyone seemed really scattered by this point, and the explanation took a while, as people chatted, got snacks, and gazed off into the distance longing for home. However, I think everyone got most of the game: buy lands or animals, add lands to your holdings or animals to your herds, connect your herds to market to make money, then have scoring rounds to make vp. Two things I learned I need to emphasize when I teach this game were, first – really take a look at the long term impact of connecting to multiple markets, on the scoring track. Second – haciendas only score land chains OR herds, third, and maybe most obvious most quickly, you score money from reaching a market edge, not victory points.

For all the stuff that individuals missed during the teaching, the game went pretty smoothly. I cut off a couple of players, but, in the long run, it forced them to get started connecting to other markets earlier, which the other players didn’t seem to be putting enough emphasis on. I rode it fairly tight on money, concentrating on the aforementioned connections. This was one of the better social games I played over the weekend – everyone was just really nice, even David, who really probably only said about fifteen words. The other players weren’t able to build one big herd, with the exception of Rob. On the other hand, even though he had the biggest herd, the biggest land chain, two haciendas, and more water than anyone, he had by far the fewest connections to cities. I think he’ll be quite dangerous the next time he plays. I scored a huge lead in the game, but, after me, the finish was pretty tight between everyone else, and I think that Rob, Lynn, Tom, and Dave seemed to have a good time. In fact, in spite of me being worried that I’d really messed up teaching them, they seemed anxious to play it again.

Well, it was past nine, and really time to call it a night. I rescued my copy of Santiago just as Lynn was about to get it on a table, which would have kept me there until who knew when. It was refreshing to walk out of the hotel and head for home. I felt pretty washed out though, and not ready for the week ahead of me.

What a week! Time to make a geeklist on BGG. I don’t think I’ll be gaming much for a while. Thanks for reading this far.

GG, GL

JW