Coup the Gras Thur (Part 2)

In the same way as there’s something about Mary, there’s something about Augustus. It intrigues me and I was lucky enough to pick it up as a swapsee with one of the guys from the gaming group who shall remain nameless and Polish.

Augustus is a game I’ve spoken about before and had a neat pictures of Augustus Gloop to lead it in, Unfortunately apart from that there’s feck all other puns on the name so we’ll have to run without one.

Augustus is a card game with similarities to Stone Age, 7 Wonders and Iliad. It’s 6 players which is nice and it plays through in a relatively short time, say half an hour plus (or an hour maybe), so it’s at the upper end of filler games. There’s a bit to it. In essence it’s a grab what you can can before the other guy does with a little bit of push your luck. There’s a bit of offensive play it in where you can upset other players plans but it’s more about getting the best score you can before the others do.

OK It’s a BIT like bingo if I’m being honest (rare) without the smoking and blue rinses but there is a lot less luck involved although luck does play a part in it. It’s a good bit like bingo when the other players in the group shout BINGO! when they fulfil a card. Honestly, the gaming evenings just fly by

For your buck you get a very good quality game, that’s very well priced. It’s a fine game for filling in and I definitely see myself playing it again every so often

I didn’t win. I didn’t win by ONE point. Just barely losing is way worse than being hammered, having a little hope and seeing it crushed is a terrible thing when you’re on the receiving end.

It’s a good thing I don’t bare grudges…

Huzzah!

Vic

July 6, 2014 0

Coup the Gras Thur (Part1)

“When I get to your age I want my name to be a Verb too”. Quote of the evening. The Expression “To Drax it” came from playing Powergrid. It means to fatally overextend yourself. In the case of Powergrid to spend all your money on a fantastic powerstation but then realise you have nothing left over to pay for fuel for it. Fur coat, no plutonium if you will.

I have a love hate relationship with Powergrid. I love it, it hates me. Well that’s not true, I’m fond of it and it hates me. I have never EVER won a game of it and I can’t say why. Just like Modern Art the maths are complicated and unlike other games where I get a feel for them. I can’t put my finger on a way of winning Powergrid. That is all.

As as game it’s good. It’s been around as long as Adam’s fig leaf and it’s one of the popular kids like Catan, Caracassone. Ticket to ride. It’s a wholesome, safe, nice game. It hates me.

Drax had a new shiny copy of it so it was important to play it and put our mark on it. Guess who won! ? wasn’t me. Guess who came last?… good guess.

Powergrid is a worker placement game with a limited bit of map based conquest. Each player takes the part of a power company who bid and build ever more efficient power stations and try and expand the amount of households they power. Powering houses equals more income that can be spent on building more connections, better power stations and most importantly fuel to power them. The cock blockery (because it wouldn’t be a real game if there wasn’t some) comes in outbidding your opponents on power stations, making them pay more than they should for them in bidding, bumping up the price of fuel and sneaking in ahead of someone else and stealing a good spot on the map.

The game is pure attrition, make the others pay more than you for everything whilst you pay less and you should win… well I’m still waiting on a win.

the game has more expansions than Malibu Stacey has outfits, some of which I’ve played and have been good fun.

It’s a fine game. It’s NOT an essential game for your collection. If I wound up with a copy of it I’d be happy as a pig in muck. I’m quite happy to play it and one day I’m sure I may even win but there’s a lot of other games out there that are better. The Maths in the game are a bit of a pain especially later as you’re figuring out what to buy and it does lend itself to analysis paralysis if your group indulges it.

If you get your hands on this game at a good price go for it. If you get a chance to play it, go for it. Chances are it doesn’t hate you

Huzzah!

Vic

July 5, 2014 3

Hiving off work

Try and imagine this review being read in a David Attenborough voice or if you’re too lazy to do that I’ll imagine you are imagining it being read in a David Attenborough voice, either will work fine. It’s about a game called Hive and it’s got bugs in.

If you want to be doubly lazy just skip the next bit and go buy Hive it’s really good, it’s 1v1 btw

Hive has been described as being a bit like chess. I think it’s more a bit like jiu jitsu to be honest (but with way less punches to the head). It’s a Perfect holiday game. Quick. Simple. Cheap Portable and it won’t set off the security scanners leading to uncomfortable squatting and coughing. I’ve brought this with me on holidays for a number of years and it always gets taken out at some stage.

Unlike a lot of other games the theme does match the game. You can picture a big tangle of bugs battling it out complete with cartoon smoke and whiz-lines. Tasmanian devil style. If you’re having difficulty imaging it email me and I’ll image you imaging it and it will all be hunky dory.

The objective of the game is to capture the enemies slow moving Queen by boxing her in on six sides or her hexagonalilty (C) with any combination of friendly and enemy insects. (Yes it’s possible to finish the enemy off evil tyrant style with your queen or draw the game by killing both at once)

Your army of bugs consist of a motley crew ranging from handy (ants) to awkward (spiders) and just like any decent God they can all move in mysterious ways (and by sheer coincidence walk on water).

Each player starts the game with a dozen or so (count them in the picture) insects of various types and takes it in turn adding new insects to the tangle (called a swarm) or moving existing ones around to try and lock down the aforementioned queen. You have a limited amount of bugs on your side so tying up Two or more enemy bugs with One of yours is a good way to get ahead and give you more guys to surround the queen.

The game is VERY easy to learn, the rules could be written on an A6 and one game in you know what’s what. Strategy is another thing, you really need to think ahead and lead your opponent into a trap. It’s a very satisfying game I find as well to win. Most games are very close at the end and it can change quite quickly mid game. It’s also a little bit different, there’s no board, the pieces touch up against each other domino style (the game not the pizza) and there’s a lovely feel to the pieces. It’s available in a number of different materials, wooden, plastic, graphite and sapient pearwood. It’s also available virtually on a variety of platforms and if you keep your eye out it sometimes appears free on steam or the app store

This really is a game worth having, especially good if you have two too many at a games night and don’t want to kick them out.

Try it. Better still come to Knavecon at the end of August and I’ll play a quick game against you and you can see what you think.

Now hopefully Constonopolis this thur, but then again..

Huzzah!

Vic

July 2, 2014 1

A Welcome Break

Well then, I’m off on holidays for two weeks which will give you a welcome break 🙂

Huzzah!

Vic

June 13, 2014 0

and THEN my head Melted

If you want to bring on a head ache to avoid school or the draft or whatever Dobble is your man. It is of itself the simplest of all games however it’s frantic and competitive to the point where you want it to stop because Hulk Head Hurt. (Maybe it’s just me and I should get a check up). Anyhoe Dobble is piddly simple. It works as follows BOOM!

Look at the picture I’ve provided first… (not around the picture at the picture)

Each player puts a card in front of them with a number of symbols on it. Dogs, Card, Anchors, Krakens whatever

then the first card on the stack is turned over and it’s a race to shout out which symbol you have on your card that matches the one on the card in the center. ALL cards have one symbol that matches another symbol on every card. yes it’s true. I’ve checked. Go on get the grid paper out and work through it. You see! it’s true all cards related to each other in a family way.

So it’s Snap++. When you get a card you put it down as your play card and another is turned over from the stack and the process repeats. The person or persons (up to 4) who didn’t get a match have a slight advantage insofar as they’ve been staring at their play card longer than the player who just landed the last match.

With about fifty cards in the stack games usually end in five but definitely not longer than ten minutes (unless you’re taking part in a sleep deprivation experiment for a particularly evil group).

There’s a number of variant games in there, who can get rid of their stacks first, who can match with others and so on but the whole sizzle is matching symbols to another card.

To mix it up the symbols are often different sizes and orientations and (for me anyway) the brain has to spin up to full power to be competitive. It’s fast, there is no downtime, it’s frantic, there is no time to talk or think, it’s a very intense game and with four other people doing their damndest to beat you it’s hard work. Certainly not one to play for a long period with adults. It does however work fantastically with kids.

Kids love this game and you can vary the difficulty with them very easily. It’s also cheap (around €15 or so) and very portable. If you have kids and you want to introduce them to gaming, this is a great start, if you have a gaming group that consists of big kids this is a winner too. Personally I have a love hate relationship with this game (I love it, it hates me), not because it’s bad, but because it’s too intense. Quite a statement, I don’t like a kids game because it’s too intense….. To paraphrase every cheesy cop movie. I’m getting too old for this shit 🙂

Huzzah!

Vic

June 11, 2014 0

Netrunner

I’m really starting to like Netrunner. That us all. Nothing to see here. Move on

Funny enough I’ve been playing exclusively as corporation. Who’d have though I was a megalomaniac ?

Have the game since Xmas and to be honest it just didn’t beep my jeep when I tried it the first few times. Having played a dozen plus games I’ve cracked and am all in. Not sure it will ever be like the MTG days but it’s damn fine. Top marks to FFG for making this a living rather than a collectable card game. For me anyhoe that war is over

Expect a number amateur and Ill informed posts to follow by and by

Huzzah

Vic

June 10, 2014 5

Thursday Child is full of Win – Part 3 (finally)

Who doesn’t want to take over the world? Certainly I do and first against the wall would be those that insist I use the word WHOM at the start of a sentence like this

We got to play Imperial 2030 on Thur night too. For those who haven’t tried this or the earlier version (just plain Imperial) you are missing out. Imperial 2030 is a glorious map based conquer the world type game. Playing it is like being a football manager (without the chewing gum) insofar as you never know when you’ll be given the heave ho and another bungee manger will be appointed in your place. Them’s the breaks. You can be doing a fantastic job of managing Europe and WHAM! someone likes it so much they buy the company.

I’ve spoken before about Imperial, it’s a game that returns to our table again and again, with a good sized group (six) it becomes the ideal desert island game. It also plays out in a relatively short time for such an epic undertaking. It’s quite possible to get a game completed in under three hours and that’s no bad thing.

The mantra of this game which is oft repeated is that you don’t OWN a country….. you invest in it. Anyone who has the largest share in a country is the manager of it and controls it’s armies, production, taxation and pockets any bonuses associated with same. What I love about this game is it’s a valid tactic to allow another player to take ownership of your country and run it better than you can and still profit from the experience. The Ferengi would be proud.

The game is not so much about taking over the world (which is practically impossible), it’s about carving out the biggest empire you can and leeching as much tax money from it as you can before some other keen nation nips in and puts you back in your cage. Do it right and everyone will want to buy shares in your empire, do it too right and they’ll want to muscle in and take over your operation.

There were a few new players to the game on Thur and like me first time around they struggled to get a strategy. Although the mechanics are not that complicated and the tactics are fairly obvious an overall strategy to win the game is stupendously complex. Mine has always been black and white. Do your best. Kill Drax. It’s worked fairly well for me. I came second so maybe my strategy needs a tweek

As players invest in countries and take ownership of them it quite often happens that they wind up controlling two or more countries and some players wind up with none in which case they become Swiss bankers (I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere). As a Swiss banker you get to invest more often however it’s a dangerous limbo to inhabit as you no longer get bonuses for taxation when you don’t manage the country. That said you get to invest more, but you don’t get tax bonuses, invest, tax bonuses, invest/tax…. it’s a balancing act. I’ve seen players win purely as swiss bankers but it’s a tricky feat to do

That said owning multiple countries can be a burden, especially if they were two countries that were recently at war and you now have to untangle them and make them both profitable again.

There’s never a dull moment when you play Imperial. When you leave the table your mind is still spinning like a gyroscope trying to figure out how to play it better and THAT’S the measure of a really good game. /cheesy grin and wink

More of that next thur. Hopefully I’ll have learnt the rules for Constonopolis, but there’s a fair chance I won’t

Huzzah!

Vic

June 9, 2014 0

Thur Child is Full of Win – Part 2

Does anybody remember Big Trak the toy from the 80s, you gave it a set of instructions to go forward turn left, move back, fire it’s gun and so on then off it went and took you literally? Robo rally is a game of big trak with up to eight players running their big traks around the sitting room bumping into each other knocking each other into lasers and bottomless pits (I suppose every analogy breaks down sooner or later)

Richard Garfield has written some fantastic games in his day, the great Dalmuti, Magic the Gathering, Netrunner, Chess, X and O you name is he’s written it. We got to play RoboRally on Thursday night, it’s an old enough game by the afore mentioned but that’s neither here nor there when it comes to gaming. RoboRally is a fun little game, it’s fast, there’s very little downtime, it scales very well up to eight players and but above all it’s good clean no-one losing an eye fun.

Each person takes a robot (all of which are the same) and has to give it a set of instructions to navigate around the factory BigTrak Style. The factories made up of a grid of square with contain empty spaces and various traps like any good factory should. Hazards like conveyor belts, lasers, rotators, pushers, bottomless pits and so on litter the play area and it’s obvious that the same team that did the safety audit on the Death Star we’re signed up to do the one on this factory.

Each turn the player gives a set of five instructions from a hand of eight. The instructions are pretty straightforward like forward two squares, backwards one, left turn, right turn and so on. Care and consideration has to be taken of your robots current orientation, the obstacles near him and if some other dolt of a droid is going to blunder into you. It gets further complicated with conveyor belts that move you along if you wind up on them so all in all a bit like Kosmonauts if you’ve seen that other great game.

Where it becomes frantic is where you’re trying to issue your orders as quickly as possible before the others do. If you’re the last person and the very fast egg timer runs out than the others get to put whatever instructions they want into your robot. It’s a bit like having a drill instructor or in this case multiple drill instructors shouting at you while you try and strip your rifle but without the pillowcases, bars or soap and full metal jacket ammunition.

There’s a wee random element in there as well as the instructions for each robot get executed based on the priority of the card that you have, some cards that have high numbers some low so what can happen is you have a set of instructions to move forward however before you get to do that another robot has bumped into you and now of course that’s fantastic set of directions you gave your robot earlier all go to pot as you’re no longer going from the same starting point.

At the end of every move your robot fires it’s forward laser and anything in front is going to get the horns. Robots can take damage in the form of counters and as this takes it’s toll, it becomes more difficult to plot a route as certain instructions get locked in and cannot be changed. Not good.

Needless to say nobody in the group draws pleasure from other peoples problems. Seeing someone else’s robot going into a tailspin and damaging themselves even more is a time for great sadness in the group and not at all laughing. Paranoia style you get three lives and your damage resets or shutting your robot down for a full turn will cure you of damage to.

There’s a stack of maps and scenarios for the game along with extra cards for additional weapons and equipment.

The game we played was a simple get to the flag variety where each person had to run over tree flag square one after the other to win the game. Needless to say we only got as far as the second one before we all gave up or were destroyed

The whole thing plays out like an entrance exam to an insane asylum. Getting your orders in first before the other players is a head wrecker, That said if you have a logical brain this is a breeze. I like RoboRally I have one of those brains that’s messed up and lends itself to this sort of thing

With the exception of Kosmonauts I haven’t seen any games even similar to this (I stand to be corrected) it’s unique and very flexible, both in terms of length and difficulty. Even though it’s nearly 20 years old you can still get it. Like the top 100 movies it’s something you have to see (play). I’ll have it at the next Knavecon and will be happy to run through it with you. Just don’t ask me to play, I’ll beat you. Just like I didn’t do on Thur night, there were some other messed up brains at that gathering 😦

More soon

Huzzah!

Vic

June 8, 2014 0

Thur Child is Full of Win – Part 1

Why do we love zombies? There’s no denying that zombies are “in” at the moment. TV shows, movies (some of them good), games, books, marches, the real ones outside my window desperately trying to scratch through, calling me to join them in my sleep, we’ve all gone zombie mad! But what is it about zombies that we really like? Is it that they’re just misunderstood old ragamuffins that need hugs (and brains) or that we love the idea of being a survivor in a world that’s had it’s reset button pressed?

I’ve no idea, nor could I care less 🙂

I did however get to play Card of the Dead on Thur night thanks once again to our Polish connection and it’s good solid zombie fun.

Card of the Dead is a card game by AEG with fun cartoony artwork. It’s pure filler and plays out in fifteen or so minutes. It does have the potential to drag on since your move is often a choice between strengthening your own position or screwing someone else’s up. Wild guess which was the popular choice for our group (canned laughter)

Players start with a hand of three from an initial pick of eight and during their turn they draw one card and play. Draw a zombie and you place it in front of you. Draw too many and it’s goodnight zombieville. Other cards allow you to remove zombies, more importantly move zombies to other players or generally cause them headaches. Yet more cards have a foot symbol on them with a number. Get enough of them in front of you and you get to escape leaving all the other players to their grizzly faith.

It’s fun it’s quick, it plays not unlike a whole lot of other filler card games. The artwork is nice, the production quality good and it’s cheap as chips so if you’re bored of your current filler game and a fan of zombies (as if you weren’t) then you could do worse than this. Will I rush out and buy it? Nope, I have a stack of fillers and don’t need more, but it’s certainly welcome at my table any time

More Thur to follow

Huzzah!

Vic

June 7, 2014 2

Hobby Shack in Wicklow Town to close this month

I’m sad to say that the Hobby Shack in Wicklow town will close for the last time on the 21st of June 😦

Ian who’s run the shop for the last 3 years has decided to close up and move onto pastures new and perhaps get in a bit of gaming.

He’s having a closing down sale so now would be a great time to visit. I’m sorry to see him shut down, he provided a great venue for the local gamers, not least the last chancers.

Best of luck in whatever venue you decide to go onto next and see you Knavecon in August Ian

“Hi all
So this post may come as a bit of a surprise to you but sadly the Hobby Shack will be closing it’s doors on the 21st of this month.
I have not made this decision lightly but it is the right decision for me and the shack.
The last two years have been great and I have enjoyed the time in the shack immensely.
I have a new adventure ahead and I am looking forward to getting my teeth into this.

I wish to thank so many people customers, suppliers and gaming clubs for travelling far and wide. The town of wicklow has been very good to me and a heartfelt thanks to all the business owners for there help and support over the last two years.”

June 6, 2014 1