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Tokaido – 8/10
Time. Waster. I’ll say it. But I liked this one. I liked the characters, I liked the art, I liked the board, I liked the pieces. I really did feel like I was on vacation. I think what I especially liked, though, was that this game played into my write-my-own-story-to-make-the-game-mine (and-ultimately-win) strategy. Because it was my vacation, and I got to choose how I spent it. Cute game.
Munchkin Gloom – 7/10
I thought this game was so cute. And I won. I think the idea of merging the art from one game with the, well, game of another is so epic. I’ve never played Munchkin, and I’ve never played Gloom. But now I feel like I got the best of each of them. I thought it was funny seeing how much we could damage our own players, and deciding when to lock in that damage to make sure they stayed damaged.
Two Princes – 5/10
I know that’s not what this game is called. But I kept singing that song while we were playing it, if you remember. And I won. Again.
I understand this is a class where we learn about how games work and how to create them. This game is a cool concept. But that’s all it is to me. And for that reason, I will likely never think of it ever again, and if I do it won’t be fondly. I will say, I had an almost supernatural knack for guessing my opponent’s cards. Even so, I think this game is a time-waster.
Dominion – 8/10
I didn’t get to play much of this game. What I did get to play was pretty fun, though. And I can only see it getting funner. That’s rare for this class; a game that gets more fun the longer you play it. I’d love to play through it again with some of the more expensive and destructive cards in play. I think it’s the perfect blend of logic, luck and awesome destructive powers.
Takenoko – 4/10
Not much to like about this game outside of the figurines. I’m not totally sure the guy who made it even tried playing it. Realistically, you could end the game in, like, six turns. I wish I would’ve. I understand games are a product of surplus and leisure and there really isn’t a need for any game ever, but this one definitely doesn’t need to exist.
I enjoyed the game Bohnanza, but found the trickiest/most compelling part of it to be that your hand order is fixed, and you have to play the cards in the order you have them in. It made the game more difficult, especially in the early part where you only had 2 plots to grow beans in, but also helped to “ensure” there was more player interaction. Because we wanted to remove certain cards before we had to play them we were more enticed to trade and give cards to each other.
This week we played Splendor, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had played it once before and got my ass kicked, but this time I had an inkling of an idea of what I was doing. I think the fun in Splendor comes from both trying to get to your goals and also trying to guess (and stop, if you wish) your opponents from getting to their goals. From past experience, I knew the points mattered more than the nobles, so I was going after gem cards that could be used to buy nobles but that could also be used as points regardless. In this way, I ended up with the most points (9) by the time class ran out. I would 100% play this game again and would even buy it for my own collection of games.
1. Diced Up is a game where players compete to collect dice by rolling higher than their opponent. The winner is decided when no more dice are left in the pool.
2. Retyrant is a game where players use cards as money and compete to see who can retire with the most.
3. Stockpile is a game where players have to work together to get rid of all of their cards (collecting in reverse) while still remaining competitive by collecting other cards to avoid nuclear war.
4. Elevation Is a game where players use dice to collect cards, and the player with the highest stack at the end wins.
5. Amazing Trace is a game where players have to trace an original drawing in a limited time and vote on whose is best. The first to collect five “best drawings” wins.
Thoughts on “Bang”
The premise of Bang is a spaghetti western movie, which is a wild west themed movie produced in Italy or by Italian filmmakers. In this regard, the game manages to capture the spirit fairly well. Every card is written in Italian as well as English, and they are themed after old western films.
In “Bang,” Each player has a different role to play, and a different way to win. There is a sheriff, some deputies, outlaws, and one renegade. The sheriff wants to maintain order, so he and the deputies win if the outlaws are all killed. The outlaws want no law, so they win if the sheriff is killed. The renegade wants to be the new sheriff, so he wins if he is the last one standing when the sheriff dies. You kill other players by shooting them. This is accomplished by playing a “Bang” card on your turn aimed at them. Every gun only does 1 damage, but different guns have different ranges. The winchester rifle, for example, has a range of 5, meaning it can hit a player 5 spaces to the left or right of the user. When a player is out of lives, they die. There are also cards that can cause damage to one or more players, give them items, heal them, and more. All in all, I think Bang is a simple game with a lot of depth to it.
I liked this game more than I thought I would. It was fun to see everyone try to figure out who was who as well as trying to kill the sheriff. I played with 5 people and I wonder If we played with more the guns would come in more handy. Some guns allowed you to shoot at certain distances but because there were only 5 you could pretty much shoot everyone with whatever gun you got. The mechanics of the game were pretty easy to follow and the instructions were easy to read and look back on if anyone had any questions about the cards. One thing I did notice was I found it odd that we used bullets as our lives when initially I thought we would use those to shoot other people. Otherwise, I felt this is a well crafted game where practically any age group could play and understand.
Game Reflections:
5 Game Ideas
Carcassonne
Dominion
Ronin, Delaney, and I played photosynthesis, the game about growing your trees to get points. It was a little strange at first, especially with the rotating sun mechanic, but I feel like it only took a round or two for us to get how the game worked. I had a lot of fun just trying to block the other two’s actions and generally planting my trees in annoying, obtrusive spots. Delaney grasped the objective pretty quickly and immediately went into gaining points. It was about 3/4 of the way through the game when we realized the rules said you could not use the same space in the same turn, which we had been doing. Despite Ronin’s monopoly on the four leaf square in the middle up to that point, Delaney ended up having the most points and winning. I of course had the least amount of points, but the greatest amount of ‘nyehehe’ energy.
Ames gave us a wee version of Carcassone to play afterwards. This one was really hard to understand because we didn’t have the rules in front of us, Ames kept getting pulled into other games, and we only had about 25 tiles. However, we did have fun collaboratively making a city in the shape of male genitalia before the game was over.
Game Reflection:
Tokaido: Tokaido had an interesting premise of going on a journey and seeing and doing as much as your can before the end. While the game was not overly competitive, each of us playing still ended up slightly competing against one another as we started to reach the end of the game. Each of us also developed our own strategies on how to gain the most points, I ended up going for as many complete panoramas as I could get, this however did not lead to me having the most points. Overall the game was a relaxing and fun game that we still ended up bringing a competitive attitude towards.
5 Collaborative Game Ideas:
I really enjoyed the game Pandemic. I don’t think I’ve played many board games where players are playing against the actual game rather than each other, so the collaborative element of it really stood out to me, and made it much more interesting and fun.
The game centers around a group of four different spreading diseases, and our goal as players was to cure the diseases. The first time through, we only managed to cure one disease, and also got caught off guard because we hadn’t realized that the game ends as soon as the cards run out. Realizing this, and having a bit of knowledge about the game now, we went into our second play through with a bit more strategy and managed to cure three of the four diseases.
1.Quicksilo is a card game in which players cooperate in teams of two to build a nuclear defense system before time runs out.
2. Appointment is a board game in which players cooperate to make it to an important meeting on time.
3. Sprawl is a card based city building game in which players cooperate to create the largest and most prosperous city possible by managing resources and construction.
4. Man on the Inside is a card game where everyone must work together to determine who among them is the Russian spy using deception, investigation, and espionage.
5. Stack is a dice game where players cooperate to build the tallest tower possible without knocking it over by stacking blocks.
Reviews:
Hanabi
Hanabi is a card game about creating a fireworks display. Everyone is on the same team for this endeavor, but players cannot look at their own hands, meaning teamwork is vital. During a player’s turn, he may play a card or give a single piece of information. He may also discard a card to return a token to the board, which must be paid every time information is shared. The game ends when the draw pile is gone, and points are earned based on the number of fireworks of each color that were placed on the board. The game is pretty quick and easy to learn, but the rules lead to some interesting situations. Managing information and holding important cards is a tough tightrope to walk.
8 Minute Empire
This is a more competitive game where players compete to build the biggest empire possible. Actions taken and bonus resources are based on cards that are drawn from a queue, with higher cards costing money. This means there is an element of uneasy cooperation as players draw cards to try and get the cost of the more valuable ones down while also trying not to give anyone else an advantage. The rules are not written particularly well, though, in my own opinion, so the game was not easy to learn, and it took us more than 8 minutes.