Boardgames, Card Games, Gaming
Knavecon 4 is coming, Saturday August 30th, tell your families you won’t be home, hydrate, spread the word, shower, get your game on.
10am the Castletroy Park Hotel. It’s going to be good. Don’t dare miss it!
https://www.facebook.com/events/245146505668518/
Dramatisation, actual euphoria may vary
I’ve played some bad games in my time. I’ve often bought some honkers of games but it’s certainly been a while. Snake oil is a return to bad form. It stinks. Really really stinks. Two games is more than enough for a lifetime. One is bad. I played it twice. I’ll never get that ten minutes back
The idea is fine. You play the part of a snake oil salesman and try to use a combination of two single word cards from your hand of six to pitch a sale to another player. Players take it in turn to be the customer by drawing a customer card which sets them in the role of a Student, Builder, Policeman or some such. Having listened to each pitch they decide who’s was best and that player scores a point. Yes you can see the canyon like flaw in the rules. It’s not a hidden pitch nor can it be
I remember playing a game called scruples donkeys years ago and it was the same sort of thing and just as much dog shitty as this
I can’t help but feel a few things would make the game better (brain damage being one of them). Maybe if it had an adult theme like cards against humanity. A change to the rules to stop players from blatantly cheating, being able to flog multiple cards to empty your hand. I don’t know
I loved the idea of the game but the execution is terrible. Opening the box was a big “is that it?” moment.
However not one to give up easy, I’m going to try and improve on the game. I really think I can’t make it worse and I’m going to make it a long term project so expect results in the next twenty odd years but I may push that out
Snake oil. Don’t ask for it by name. I’ve saved you buying a turkey. Yes yes we’ll play it next thur
Don’t thank me
Huzzah!
Vic
Once again the good folks at Brocon put on a fantastic Convention. A big thank you to the hospitality of the guys, the entrance and the rather sweet T-Shirt. Great days gaming and it’s still rocking on the whole weekend. Get down there tomorrow (Sunday) and you’re guaranteed a good time. Great to catch up with the gamers from all around the country and do our thing. a report on some of the games I got to play on the day soon
Huzzah!
Vic
Constonopolos is the grown up cousin of Puerto Rico. Bohemian and edgy, what Puerto Rico wishes it could be
If you’ve played Puerto Rico you’ll be in familiar territory. It’s worker placementy but with a different cock blockery. If you haven’t played Puerto Rico you’ve missed out on a classic game and should get thee to a game shop and try it.
Constantinopolis is a five player game that in theory can be played in 90 minutes, by a silent order of monks on speed who have spent the last several years learning the rules. Our group didn’t tick any of those boxes. I refuse to be drawn on how long it took to play out and I ask the jury to disregard any evidence they may have heard
The game plays out over ten turns in which a number of sub steps happen. The first is like Puerto Rico where you pick a role however in this case roles are bid on so it’s very possible to force others into overpaying
Buildings are bought which come in a variety of forms and functions. Resource producing, ones you cash in resources for money and fame (the games score), ones that give you a few extra swapping abilities or cost reduction. Ones that score you bonus points at the end
Key to the game as well are contracts which are drawn in various quantities and take the form of supply this or that resource or transport this person. In what you wonder. In ships of various sizes I say which you previously purchased.
Each turn ships are loaded and launched with contract goods and previously launched ships move closer to harbor and payment in fame and money
There are half a dozen ways of scoring fame and money and no foolproof strategy to secure victory. It’s fast (ha) and scoring is close from start to finish which I really like.
I got to play this game a few months back and was instantly hooked. I acquired a copy of it soon after as a swapse. My copy was in German but it’s multilingual and all icon driven. We as per tradition got a few rules wrong but not enough to effect our evenings entertainment.
I prefer this game to Puerto Rico and I’m a big fan of Puerto Rico so I highly recommend it. If you only buy one worker placement Puerto Rico type game this year make sure it’s Constantinopolis
I’ll be wheeling it out at brocon if you want to take it for a test drive
Huzzah!
Vic
Brocon,
Limericks Games and Anime convention is rolling around once again on the weekend of the 19th July in UL. Bigger and Better than Ever
Myself and some of the Knaves will be there running boardgaming sessions if anyone wants to drop down and say hello and try a few games out.
See you there
Huzzah!
Vic
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
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
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
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
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
Victor Gannon Games 