Saturday at Ravindra's: Antiquity, Das Zepter Von Zavendor

November 18th

I'm going to start out by thanking Chris, who is one of few people who has really responded to my efforts here. It really is nice to get some actual feedback. Maybe someday, there will actually be some game-related discussion here... Recently, I was very excited, noting that there were five responses (a new record!) to one of my posts (the one about online gaming). Unfortunately, only one post (Chris's) was genuine, with three others being solicitations for some sort of money making scheme, and one being a greeting from an individual who shares my name. Sigh. Back to gaming...

Occasionally, discussion on one of the game-related mailing lists I subscribe to actually culminates in some game-playing. So far, both times have been trips out to Ravindra's place, which is always a treat. Ravindra has an excellent collection that never ceases to provide quite a conundrum - what to play? Several recent acquisitions were offered to the table, and, since all present were strategy gamers who don't mind a long play, we grabbed the chance to engage in a game of that variety, and chose Antiquity.

Antiquity

This is another offering from the designers of Roads & Boats, put out by the same Dutch company, Splotter Spiele. This is a sort of mini-civ building game, involving constructing cities, gathering and managing resources, and damage control. It's a "big" game, with a modular, changeable board, and tons of chits. It looks, honestly, like a bit of a monster. And it is.

In Antiquity, you start with one city. You use your workers to go out and get resources: food/fish, stone/wood, luxury goods, that sort of thing. In turn, you use these items to build new stuff: more resource gathering, inns to expand your control area, new cities. New cities give you more space to build more stuff. The whole time, you produce pollution, ruining the land in your control area. At some point, you need to start working toward victory. You build a chapel, dedicated to one of four saints, each of which gives a different special power, and dictates a different victory condition. When you satisfy that condition, you win.

Most of this game seems to be played solitaire. You start off pretty isolated, and it seems it should take a while to really run into someone. We spent most of the early game just worrying about staying alive, playing almost cooperatively. We shared information about what buildings we thought we should build, ways of dealing with polution and famine, and wondered if we shouldn't have all went out exploring right away (immediately increasing the famine level).

We kept referencing the rules, and generally had things figured out, and kept playing. I didn't really feel like victory was really in sight for anyone, and it didn't seem that all the victory conditions were even really viable. Maybe I just need to play more. I certainly learned one important lesson: DON'T RUN OUT OF WOOD. The game suggestions mention this. And I even read them, aloud. Yet, I did it. I just flat out forgot. This basically stranded me, barely holding on, until Greg took pity on me, built a market, and traded me some wood. Ravindra had to go out for a while, so we decided to just solitaire through the last few turns. Brian was the only one who looked like he could realistically win in a few turns, especially with Ravindra out of the picture. I just wanted to see if I could find a way to stabilize my position and move forward. Brian just called it quits. Well, to make the story end more quickly, Greg found his way to victory, and I figured out how the alchemist worked, and the game, well, ended.

Brian had to go, but Ravindra returned, and the three of us were up for another one. We didn't want to play anything too heavy (Antiquity is a bit of a thinker), or too long (it was getting late). Ravindra pulled down Das Zepter Von Zavandor, which he claimed would "definitely probably finish in around two hours" (which did much to encourage Greg and I...).

The Scepter of Zavandor is a game about accumulating fairy dust and magic gems, to buy more magic gems, to get more magic artifacts, to get more gems, and advance your knowledge of certain things, which gets you more gems, all of which gets you some victory points. At a certain point, you use your fairy dust to buy yourself some sentinels, which give you more victory points, and when enough of them have been purchased, the game ends. There's a lot of game here, and a fair amount of theme. Resource management, auction for artifacts/sentinels, and a sort of tech tree. THis game realy didn't grab me, though. We had a pretty good time playing, and took turns running in the lead. There's a payment penalty for being in first, less for second, so later players get to "draft" off the leader, and judge the best time to surge forward. Ravindra did this, made a ton of money from monopolizing diamonds, and then went #1 with a bullet, repeatedly, consecutively, buying big sentinels.

Scepter is, for me, perhaps prone to a runaway leader problem, despite the handicapping mechanism. If someone makes a lot more money, you really can't stop them from getting what they want, which directly prohibits you from getting it. I'd heard good things about this game, but after this play I haven't found anything to encourage me to seek it out again any time soon.

GG, GL
JW