My streak of hooking up with extremely cool groups of gamers across the
USA continued this week. I’m in Dallas, TX
for Microsoft TechEd,
and managed to hook up with The Card Benders, a group of about 6-10 gamers that meets
twice a week. Member John Haley was kind enough
to respond to my query for groups on spielfrieks,
so I joined them at a local Borders.
Turns out my timing was perfect – they had 7 show up,
but 5 of them desperately wanted to play Mare
Nostrum, but were reluctant to leave the other two to fend for themselves. I
made three, so everyone was happy. I spent
the evening gaming with Tim Isakson and Charles Schwope. On
to the games…
We kicked things off with this game about dinosaur migration and plate tectonics. This
one reminded me of Clans, but I enjoyed this more. I think the theme works, and I
enjoy games with evolving playing surfaces. I
felt that I could wrap my brain around the shifting out of tiles, and I think I played
fairly well. I had a shot at winning, but Charles
pulled ahead at the end with some strong moves. Might
have to pick this one up.
I’ve been wanting to play this one since reading
the Gathering reports, so after spotting this in the bag-o-games, I requested we try
this one next. In Paris Paris you
are trying to open businesses in strategic locations in Paris to take advantage of
the tourist bus lines. Some call this game
light, but there’s clearly a strategic element to this game and I want to play some
more. Most likely I’ll give it a try on BSW a
few times before purchasing. I got crushed
in this game – don’t recall the score, but I was in third and down by at least 8 points.
This is a very unique trick-taking game. Rather
than just trying to take the most tricks, or trying to avoid certain poison cards,
players are trying to accumulate specific face values (the target changes throughout
the game) or melds of other face values. For
example, I might start the game trying to accumulate 3’s, but will of course accumulate
(by taking tricks) other numbers as well. The
goal is to consolidate the collection of other cards to as few distinct face values
as possible. Scoring at the end is calculated
by subtracting the number of “other” cards from the number of targets accumulated. After
each hand, players can exchange cards in their bad pile by sending a single face value
back to the deck. Players get to transfer any
cards in excess of three to their good pile. The
result is that early in the game players are trying to take tricks and accumulate
groups, while later in the game players are avoiding tricks, dumping cards from their
hand, and trying to take only tricks that help them get target cards or consolidate
their holdings. I was happy to score zero;
I believe Tim won.
This is a fun, light card game where players are trying to accumulate sets of
cards, and players get the choice of choosing one of a set of face-up cards or flipping
until a better one shows up. If a card is turned
up that is the same suit as an existing card, then that card is discarded and the
player loses a turn. Scoring is straightforward,
but just read the BGG entry to see more. I
just learned that the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones card game is the same game –
my kids will like this one. Tim won this game
easily.
The group playing Mare Nostrum finished at about this time, so we sat around
chatting about gaming, geekness, and Oregon. We
somehow got on the subject of train games, and Randy Shipp shared a hilarious story
about a letter he wrote to the designer of Tracks
to Telluride (John Bohrer)
about what he (and the group) thought were some design flaws. Apparently
John didn’t think too highly of Randy’s comments and questioned the sophistication
of his American gaming audience. You’ll have
to ask him yourself for the whole story and the punchline.