Games at Greg's: Marvel Heroes, Midgard, Power Grid

May 6th, 2007

At the Dune game the weekend before, we had discussed getting a group of Durhamites together for some gaming in town, hopefully running out Greg's copy of Mutant Chronicles: Seige of the Citadel. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the requisite five players together, with just myself, Chris, and Greg available. We decided to still get together, and just play some other games.

When I got there, Greg and Chris were looking at Marvel Heroes, an FFG big-big-box game, based on the Marvel comic book universe. We were all feeling pretty relaxed, and decided to make that our first game.

Marvel Heroes is pretty fiddly. It has a lot of different rules, decks of cards, things that happen every turn, rules exceptions, etc.. However, it plays just fine as a sort of diversion type game... I think more competitive gamers would be frustrated by the degree of randomness.

The basic theme is that each player has control of a group of superheroes. Each group combats evildoers by troubleshooting headlines around New York City. The bigger the headline, the nastier the potential villain your opponents can play against you, and the more victory points, representing your groups fame or notoreity, you get.

Chris had the X-Men, Greg had the Avengers, and I took the Fantastic Four, as the big headline for our game was Galactus. Avengers have some big combat hitters, X-Men have a great specialist in Jean Grey, and FF seem like a pretty well-rounded group, who can deal well with "danger" headlines.

Greg was beating up on the villains, and Chris had a couple good rolls reducing the "trouble level" of his headlines, so he didn't have to fight at all. I solved a headline, and then had a couple really high trouble rolls, from which I failed to triumph over the respective villain. I managed to finish one more headline on the last round, only to have the Thing ko'd by my arch-nemesis, Dr.Doom, right after finishing.

Chris ended up winning, with Greg in close second and myself in a pretty distant third. I thought the game was OK, although there's not much long-term planning, and there's a lot of randomness. I had fun. I think you fun level with this one would be enhanced/limited by your familiarity with Marvel comics. Of course, now, with all the movies, I think many people have at least some familiarity with this publisher.

After this, we decided to try out Midgard, a game I acquired recently as a gift from Snoozefest. This is a game that combines elements of card drafting and area control for points scoring over three rounds.

Each player drafts a set of six cards, from cards of three different types, each round. Then, cards are played in a succession of turns to move around vikings on the board, or onto the board from an off-board supply. After the various movement cards have been played, everything is scored. Players earn points for controlling provinces in the regions, as well as for controlling Asgard. They also earn tokens, of which they are trying to complete sets. After this, vikings in "doomed" areas are sent to Valhalla, earning their players even more points. Then, start a new turn, putting out new "doomed" tokens and dealing out new sets of cards from which to draft.

We exercised the "first game" option, keeping the first hand we were dealt, rather than drafting. I made some mistakes in my round planning, and Greg got off to a great start with lots of Jotunheim movement cards, taking complete control of the region for a big early lead on points. I sent a lot of guys, all of them in fact, to Valhalla every round. I would have done a bit better if I'd just left one or two on the table. After the first round, we started to make up ground on Greg. After the third scoring round, Greg and I were tied, and Chris was just a bit behind us. End-game scoring has a round for province token sets, though, and Greg had one more set than me, giving him the win by five. Even though he had lots of tokens, Chris's plans to get the right ones had been unintentionally scuppered by the regions that Greg and I chose to fight him over on the last turn, so he ended up in a pretty poor position at the end.

I enjoyed this game, and am actually pretty excited to play it again. It has a nice weight/time ratio, with a feeling that you are actually playing a game with some planning/strategic thinking, while still coming in at around 45 minutes or so in play time.

We didn't feel done yet. However, Chris and Greg weren't as anxious as myself to play Midgard again, so we settled on a good "gamers' game" - Power Grid.

My strategy in Power Grid is to try for cheap connections, and make sure that I'm able to be the leader, or with the leader, in the number of cities that could be powered. With the random nature of the plants that come up, you never know if you're going to get a big one at the right time, so you have to make sure you get one, slightly ahead of time, even if you have to pay a bit much or take a plant that is a little sub-optimal on resources. I also like to buy resources first early, to make others pay more, and then move into the lead when I feel pretty set up.

I ended up the the four plant, and had the first buying position for the first several turns. I added a 2 for 2 oil plant, and a 2 power wind plant. I went for my first five plant a little early, taking the 3 coal for five plant While I could only power 6 cities that turn. I did this because it had come up while there were still lots of low value plants (probably) left in the deck, and Chris had gotten a very lucky pull with a two oil for five plant very early.

From there, I went into the lead on my second five plant, and then came back down. We were all heavily into coal early, and then people started to diversify. Greg failed to get into the bidding for a five plant early, and got punished for a few turns as neither Chris nor I wanted to buy anything, and he was stuck with a tableau of small (3 or less power) plants. T this time, I was certainly quite happy to have bought my five a little early...

I pushed straight into phase two, as Greg and Chris had cornered me a bit, and it was either make phase 2 or be cornered on six cities until someone else did it. In a couple more turns, I was up to twelve cities, all powered. After a turn of doing nothing, and getting the first buying position back, I payed a lot for the six wind plant, and then built up to seventeen, giving me the win with 16 powered cities. Chris came in second, but we didn't bother to finish his or Greg's turns, as neither of them had the cash (in Chris's case), or the power plants (in Greg's case) to catch up.

This was a fun game. I have always enjoyed Power Grid, and it's nice to put up a W. Interestingly, we turned out even on the day, with each gamer having a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finish. I look forward to doing it again.

GG, GL,
JW