My wife and her friends have become huge Bohnanza fans after I introduced them to the game a month or two ago. She is also a big dice game fan, so she ordered an import copy of Wurfel Bohnanza from Germany as soon as I told her it existed.
Played last night and it's a fun game. It's got the Yahtzee-style rolling to complete a sequence of goals (sets of die results). You can complete several goals in one turn, but must complete them in order. The risk/reward is whether you want to bank dice needed for goals #2 or #3, leaving you less chance of getting what you need to actually complete goal #1. If you fail to do that, you get nothing.
There is no "push your luck and lose it all" aside from that. If you complete a goal mid-turn, there's nothing you can do to lose it. The nice twist they have is that other players can complete their current goal using the dice you roll on your turn, so if you keep banking the minimum and re-rolling, you are giving your opponents a chance to score.
It also keeps the Bohnanza feel w/ how it structures your goals. You are given six goals on a card, and after you complete each one, the card is more valuable when you cash it in. You also can see your upcoming set of six goals, so you can cash in the current card at an opportune moment if the dice really favor your next set of goals.
There are 7 dice (3 of one kind, 4 of another) and the two types have different distributions of the beans on their faces, allowing for some light odds crunching to drive your decisions.
So my copy of 7 Wonders came in the mail, did not realize how shit the box design was. So much space wasted with their three deck splay on the lower half, and no extra room for the expansions either. Guess I know what I am going to be doing this weekend.
So my copy of 7 Wonders came in the mail, did not realize how shit the box design was. So much space wasted with their three deck splay on the lower half, and no extra room for the expansions either. Guess I know what I am going to be doing this weekend.
But the cards are huge and don't fit in typical card collecting boxes. Gotta make your own.
Yeah I recommend doing something along those lines. That vacu-formed insert does not hold the cards in for shit once you start moving the box around. You'll be resorting all the decks every time you bring it somewhere.
Yeah. Put the cards in deck boxes. All the expansions fit in said box and works perfect for us.
Any recommendations about those deck boxes? I was thinking either a magician shop or the dollar store to find the oversize things but then again I am still on the quest for non clear jungle speed sleeves.
Normal cheap deck boxes people put their CCG decks in. We still use the baggies for the chits, but we are considering getting more Really Useful Boxes.
Normal cheap deck boxes people put their CCG decks in. We still use the baggies for the chits, but we are considering getting more Really Useful Boxes.
I bought two of these for my 7 Wonders cards. They are SLIGHTLY too small, and the clips on the lid will bump into the top of the cards, but I ground the clips down with a dremel tool and now they fit perfectly! I even cut up a manilla folder and made dividers so that each of the ages, expansion cards, and randomizers are separated. Combined with a plano and a few golf pencils, the box has plenty of room now for any upcoming expansions.
Really Useful Boxes and a couple regular CCG deckboxes are the only things that make my copy of Agricola organized and playable. Even if the lid no longer closes.
I like using Really Useful Boxes over a Plano box because you can arrange them in different areas of the table, so you can avoid having to pass around a whole box full of bits (like my Eclipse set).
No new games this week, but everything got played at least twice:
6x Mage Knight: The Lost Legion, all solo games, with 4 losses on the easiest difficulty. Barring some great spells or artifacts, it feels like you need to get a core tile revealed at the end of night 1 (for elite units on day 2) to maximize your chance of victory.
4x Android: Netrunner against a fellow NBN player. My Andromeda deck feels like it's firing on all cylinders, but my NBN fast advance ultimately folded to Kit's R&D lock (and a Maker's Eye run worth six points). Mostly a piloting error on my part.
3x Trains, winning every game by prioritizing Lay Rails and using other people's stations. After five games, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that making grabs for other people's stations is the push for endgame, analogous to greening in Dominon. It gives you swingy points and control over when the game ends. Like engines that rush out the piles in Dominion, there will probably be games that end in other ways, but Lay Rails into other people's stations is the default.
2x Suburbia, including a game where the other player lapped the board after playing five airports (6/7 of them were in the game). Of course, I went for airports in the next game, and only three showed up. Caveat emptor.
2x Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm. First game I took Merchant World and used it to grab the "five shipping VPs" goal a turn early (which secured my victory). Then, I actually played Gambling World in the second game and whiffed every time. You don't really understand just how many 2-cost cards there are in that deck.
2x Glory to Rome, including one where I threw the game by calling Merchant, allowing the Forum player to my left to think, discard the Architect they needed using a Latrine, then Patron it on their turn for the victory. Went down in the books as "the ol' Crapper-Clientele one-two punch."
2x Ticket to Ride, including one of the most pathetic losses ever, where a single decision to take tickets instead of trains led to a 60 point swing when I didn't complete a 17-point ticket from Portland to Nashville, simultaneously missing out on a six-train meld and the longest contiguous route.
2x Fairy Tale - what a great game. Teach it in five minutes, play it in ten. At the moment I'd play this over 7 Wonders.
And finally, 2x Skyline. Indifferent to it, but not indifferent enough to refuse in polite company.
Very curious about Suburbia. Sounds like from your experience the game is not very tight. Also somewhat curious about Trains, but it's AEG, so I start off with heavy skepticism.
Go: I remember that I really suck at abstract games
Caveman the Quest of Fire: Won both games simply by being the second person that could trigger fire, also card counting plus teeth counting is essential
Parthenon Rise of the Agean: Won 1 lost 1, also will never play this game with anything outside of 3 or 6 people again.
Puerto Rico: Two n00bs made the game go from 60 minutes to 2.5 hours, needed to hold composure to not hit them to move quicker
Castles of Burgundy: I won 212 over second place at 198 by pulling the Hail Mary at the end to score over 42 points on the last turn.
7 Wonders: I now have it all nice and re-boxed! Also came in Second since I needed to deny science to the science man right next to me but no one did the same for Blue Building hoarder.
Suburbia's got a decent amount of randomness in the tile distribution, it's relatively light, and it uses variable goals to provide a strategic goal and keep the game from becoming a purely tactical exercise (extra points for most residential buildings, lowest income, most airports, etc).
Trains is also good - it's a simple deckbuilder (on the level of Dominion + Intrigue) mixed with a simple train game, that is greater than the sum of its parts. It's going to need an expansion to give it staying power, but the game by itself has at least as much play as the Dominion core set.
Also forgot to mention: I sold my copy of Copycat. Overall a solid game that is fun in how it combines elements together, however I was able to see the two paths to victory in the game and able to reliably get the end with the most amount of points easily. To save super spoilers on it you either need to be fit and lean or a fat cat.
I passed on Dune (sadly passed simply due to the potential time constraint and my need of sleep). To teach two games:
Alhambra: We played with my slight house rule of adding two random expansions.
They were 5-4 and 5-3 in which multiple of the same building cost will give you culture which you can use actions to advance for more points, and a money card that gets cheaper when you diversify your buildings.
Sadly I had pairs of buildings that did not have culture while everyone else did and could not complete mondo awesome wall.
Puerto Rico: My parallel dimension explanation won again as we taught one new person how to play, I also won over pence by sitting to his right, while his friend (name escapes me at the moment) was on my right.
Although if Pence didn't make a critical mistake at the end of the game he would have had it, unless I did another action earlier which would have given me another point looking back.
I totally earned that loss, I threw away three points by not shipping my tobacco. My friend's name is Dan, but I totally forgot the noob's name, even though he's played with us before.
I hadn't played Alhambra before, but there was a crazy point spread that game. Seems like the victory will go to the person who has to rearrange their Alhambra the least (barring crazy expansions I haven't seen).
I hadn't played Alhambra before, but there was a crazy point spread that game. Seems like the victory will go to the person who has to rearrange their Alhambra the least (barring crazy expansions I haven't seen).
The spread is normally much closer as the goal is to either share in the points with each color plus have an awesome wall. I usually throw two in so you get the idea of how much the rules can change the base game and to keep me and other people from steamrolling new players.
So I was just given the assignment to do a news story for the TCG "The Spoils." An alumni of the college is the "Director of Organized Play" for the tournament and currently located in Korea. Has anyone played this before that could give me any thoughts on it?
Puerto Rico - Did a lot of teaching with multiple groups, also had the realization that even in the worst position in seating order, with a bunch of new players I could be doing victory laps by mid-game.
Gloom - I find it funny that as soon as I joined the game everyone immediately went after me instead of the person in the lead because I was good at games. Needless to say I lost that one.
Tichu - We did one hand to go and explain the rules of the game and everyone had the "I have no idea what is going on" feeling about it. Trick taking games are not for everyone.
Caveman The Quest for Fire - Another nice game that I won at again due to the opponents not understanding how to count my thought.
Castellan is fun, but has some limited replay-ability due to the symmetry of the decks, as well as not being able to influence your opponent's keeps after they are built (we played it wrong). I am going to see if I can make a couple of house rules to make it a but better. If not, then I will probably try to sell it to a friend. The price we paid for it was $34.99, and with tax, just under $40.
I also was able to do a lot of play testing of my board game, Blockade Blitz (which will be going through a name/theme change) and got a lot of great feedback. I am going to be doing some more work on it this week to implement the changes that we came up with, and I will post a new print and play.
Comments
Played last night and it's a fun game. It's got the Yahtzee-style rolling to complete a sequence of goals (sets of die results). You can complete several goals in one turn, but must complete them in order. The risk/reward is whether you want to bank dice needed for goals #2 or #3, leaving you less chance of getting what you need to actually complete goal #1. If you fail to do that, you get nothing.
There is no "push your luck and lose it all" aside from that. If you complete a goal mid-turn, there's nothing you can do to lose it. The nice twist they have is that other players can complete their current goal using the dice you roll on your turn, so if you keep banking the minimum and re-rolling, you are giving your opponents a chance to score.
It also keeps the Bohnanza feel w/ how it structures your goals. You are given six goals on a card, and after you complete each one, the card is more valuable when you cash it in. You also can see your upcoming set of six goals, so you can cash in the current card at an opportune moment if the dice really favor your next set of goals.
There are 7 dice (3 of one kind, 4 of another) and the two types have different distributions of the beans on their faces, allowing for some light odds crunching to drive your decisions.
I like using Really Useful Boxes over a Plano box because you can arrange them in different areas of the table, so you can avoid having to pass around a whole box full of bits (like my Eclipse set).
Go: I remember that I really suck at abstract games
Caveman the Quest of Fire: Won both games simply by being the second person that could trigger fire, also card counting plus teeth counting is essential
Parthenon Rise of the Agean: Won 1 lost 1, also will never play this game with anything outside of 3 or 6 people again.
Puerto Rico: Two n00bs made the game go from 60 minutes to 2.5 hours, needed to hold composure to not hit them to move quicker
Castles of Burgundy: I won 212 over second place at 198 by pulling the Hail Mary at the end to score over 42 points on the last turn.
7 Wonders: I now have it all nice and re-boxed! Also came in Second since I needed to deny science to the science man right next to me but no one did the same for Blue Building hoarder.
Trains is also good - it's a simple deckbuilder (on the level of Dominion + Intrigue) mixed with a simple train game, that is greater than the sum of its parts. It's going to need an expansion to give it staying power, but the game by itself has at least as much play as the Dominion core set.
Alhambra: We played with my slight house rule of adding two random expansions.
They were 5-4 and 5-3 in which multiple of the same building cost will give you culture which you can use actions to advance for more points, and a money card that gets cheaper when you diversify your buildings.
Sadly I had pairs of buildings that did not have culture while everyone else did and could not complete mondo awesome wall.
Puerto Rico: My parallel dimension explanation won again as we taught one new person how to play, I also won over pence by sitting to his right, while his friend (name escapes me at the moment) was on my right.
Although if Pence didn't make a critical mistake at the end of the game he would have had it, unless I did another action earlier which would have given me another point looking back.
I hadn't played Alhambra before, but there was a crazy point spread that game. Seems like the victory will go to the person who has to rearrange their Alhambra the least (barring crazy expansions I haven't seen).
Puerto Rico - Did a lot of teaching with multiple groups, also had the realization that even in the worst position in seating order, with a bunch of new players I could be doing victory laps by mid-game.
Gloom - I find it funny that as soon as I joined the game everyone immediately went after me instead of the person in the lead because I was good at games. Needless to say I lost that one.
Tichu - We did one hand to go and explain the rules of the game and everyone had the "I have no idea what is going on" feeling about it. Trick taking games are not for everyone.
Caveman The Quest for Fire - Another nice game that I won at again due to the opponents not understanding how to count my thought.
I also was able to do a lot of play testing of my board game, Blockade Blitz (which will be going through a name/theme change) and got a lot of great feedback. I am going to be doing some more work on it this week to implement the changes that we came up with, and I will post a new print and play.