December 27th, 2004 |
Dan, who is fresh in the middle of a week off from work, wanted to hang out and play some games, so I called him up and he came by, and we played some two player stuff.
| Goa |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 44 | 1 | * |
| Dan | 41 | 2 | * |
Notes: Karla's dad actually gave this to me for Xmas - and I didn't even ask for it. He went out on his own and found out about games I'd like, and he came up with this cool game. It was a cool surprise of a gift.
In Goa, everyone is a Portuguese spice trader. Basically, each player tries to establish plantations and ship the spices back to Europe. Shipping them back to Europe makes one's production and profits improve for the next time a player ships the spices back. At least, that's the theme. The theme is a little...tacked on, and the game is entirely unintuitive. Dan listened to me explain the rules, then, when it was time for his first turn, he kind of looked at his playing mat with a "Now what do I do?" look.
I won't go over the rules exactly, just give a quick over-view. The game has been called a "Heavier Puerto Rico", which is sort of true, I suppose. There are 8 rounds. In each round, everyone auctions off one of 25 tiles in the middle of the board. These tiles don't dictate turns, they provide bonuses of various types. After the tiles and the starting player flag are auctioned off (a total of n+1 auctions, where "n=# of players"), starting with the starting player, each person performs one of 6 actions, 3 times each, one at a time.
The six actions are:
1) Ship spices back to the Old World (in order to do the other actions better and for victory points)
2) Get ships (which are required to ship the spices)
3) Harvest more spices (required to get the VPs needed)
4) Collect money (needed to buy more tiles)
5) Get Expedition cards (which provide all kinds of bonuses, including game end ones)
6) Start a colony
Typically, a player starts out trying to get a plantation or form a colony, both of which produce spices, then to start shipping them to get points and make each later action more productive. That's about enough for the rules. Here's how Dan and I played it out (Karla was watching her Live Aid DVD, another present from her dad and Carol).
Unless someone totally f***s up, the game is really close, like New England or Power Grid. Dan and I progressed about evenly, though I was having more luck on forming colonies. There is a part where you flip over cards to get "helping" colonists - sort of like in Vom Kap bis Kairo - and I would get 4 or 5 on average, while Dan managed 2 or 3 (out of 6) quite a bit. This was probably the difference in the game, as getting the colonies on one try each gave me extra turns. Of course, I was also getting extra colonists as part of my auctions, so that helped, too.
I was also getting an extra ship each turn while Dan was getting an extra spice each turn (due to various auctions). Neither of us really had a good crop of expedition cards, and I had managed to advance one spot further than Dan in the progression chart. We both founded all 4 colonies - Dan on his very last turn. One thing that I noticed was that the Extra Action cards (giving a player an extra turn for each card in a round after everyone has gone 3 times) seemed really useful, and I always tried to get one in order to stock up cash, spices, or ships for the next turn.
It's hard to go into more specifics, as the game is really tight, and it's hard to describe the various actions. The only real difference between how we played was that I founded my colonies earlier and Dan used more expedition cards than I did, though neither of us used a lot of them. I'd like to try it again with 3 or 4.
| Memoir '44 |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 5 medals | 1 | |
| Mike | 3 medals | 2 | |
Notes: We played the Sword Beach scenario, Dan being the Axis, I being the Allies. I started off really well, with both my right and left wings moving forward and doing some good damage to the infantry units in the bunkers. Dan invested in moving the tanks on my left flank forward and tried to take out my tanks first.
In a concentrated effort, I took out the units in the bunker on my right flank first, and I seemed to be in good shape. Then Dan moved some infantry from the forest in the rear up to the empty bunker. This was probably the move of the game.
I managed to weaken the Axis armor and infantry units on my left flank, but casualties began to grow. On the right flank, my Armor was almost useless (just one die vs. bunkers), and my infantry tried to root out the new bunker units at incredible cost, as the Axis unit from the city came up in support and really damaged my British Commandos, who were wiped out in the crossfire. Some more nice dice rolling by Dan had already cost me my armor unit on my right flank. When the tanks were gone, this enabled the city unit to come up without fear.
The Axis' victory was secure on my right flank, so I went for the middle flank, trying to get the bunker unit on my right flank surrounded and overwhelmed. They exchanged fire with the bunker units, giving zero hits but getting tagged for 3 hits. Ouch. In a desperation move, I tried to take out his remaining city unit in the center. Had I been able to wipe them all out, I would have probably won, but it was a slim chance, probably about 20% - I would have needed both dice from my infantry to hit, plus the one die from a tank (the unit was at 3/4 strength). I did get him twice, but then my one remaining guy was devastated by Axis artillery. That did it, as Dan managed medal #5.
It was fun, but it was amazing how quickly my men were devastated by the second round of bunker units on the right flank. I never did weed out the left flank bunker units either. In retrospect, I should have advanced aggressively with my infantry in the center and kept my tanks in the rear to scare off his infantry units. I do think I left myself too vulnerable to the right flank bunker, and didn't change my tactics to deal with it. That and I didn't have the right cards really.
| Twilight Imperium |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | Republic | DNF | * |
| Mike | Republic | DNF | * |
Notes: It was 8:30, and as Dan was going to leave by about 10, I thought we'd just play a 2-player version of Twilight Imperium, just to whet the knife on it. I've had this glorious game for over a year (Christmas 2003, to be precise), and was eager to try it. Finally got a chance.
Dan was the Emirates of Hacan (a trading race), and I was the Sardakk N'orr (a warrior race). Hacan was behind the 8-ball from the beginning as we drew a card that disallowed trade agreements - one of the Emirates' big strengths. Soon we were creating units and each trying to gather a niche in our side of the galaxy. In a two-player game, there are a ton of unclaimed worlds, so you can just zip around and claim them. We each grabbed a bunch of them, and Dan was scared s***less of my military prowess, so he stockpiled a ton of planetary defense systems to scare me off. He then increased technology to the Deep Space Cannon, which lets your defense systems shoot into the next space.
In a threatening gesture, I sent 3 cruisers over to destroy one of his carriers, and blew it to smithereens. He needed a 10 (on a die 10) to strike back and blow up one of my cruisers, and he did so. Lucky bastard!
The Emirates had an advantage in raking in money, so I voted on a proposal that would base money on Influence rather than Resources. This gave the N'orr 15 credits more per turn than the Hacan, but it also gave the Hacan control of the senate. The very next political phase, there was a vote to eliminate all DPS and ground units on a planet. Had I still been in control of the senate, the N'orr could have wiped out the Hacan's planet with 5 DPS on it, then pretty much tore into his empire like a rabid dog into a squeaky toy. Instead, he took out some ground forces on one of my planets and our stalemate continued.
At about 10, when Mike called Dan, we stopped. It would have been close down the stretch and the game probably would have been decided by action cards and money. We both had 8 of the 9 required planets for victory, as well as all the influence and resources needed. The only thing we needed was technology (9 total), and I had 6 to Dan's 4 at the time we stopped. But Dan had more capacity for expansion, and I was going to have to amass a huge armada and devastate his DPS planet, which would have been a costly and immense production, but one the Sardakk N'Orr could have handled.
The game is sweet and moved more quickly than I thought it would. We just need to get some more people to play with us...