I wrote this up for my local group but didn't get around to posting until now.
TGD 2013 Report
5 (excellent) Coup, Love Letter 9/A
4 (great) Suburbia+, Tzolk'in, Police Precinct, Yedo- 8/B
3 (good) CoPE, Hostage 7/C
2 (ok) Canterbury, Lost Temple 6/D
1 (bad)
I played 10 games, all new to me. I felt like I had a really good con getting to try lots of games that I wanted to play, not getting stuck in any games that I really didn't enjoy, and not having a lot of down time.
Friday:
Conquest of Planet Earth. Knepper invited me to play this literally as I was walking in the door. You are aliens all fighting over Earth. This is an epic game with a gazillion special powers and modifiers. Maybe a few too many. This was probably worse because we were using an expansion. Anyway it was enjoyable even if it was hard to keep up with everything that could happen. I got a Borg cube (which has a really big mini) from one of the special cards. It seemed really powerful although my opponents managed to kill it a couple of times. I think I came in second. In retrospect I should have stayed close to my base to minimize people messing with me but I was trying to take advantage of my special power to land new guys in any devastated area. This is the first time I have played a Flying Frog game. This game scores a medium on the fun/work ratio, meaning the special powers are neat but there is a lot to keep track of. [Here fun=blowing stuff up and using special abilities. Work=figuring out all the modifiers.]
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5). Don't need to buy but would play again.
Coup
A quick bluffing game that is really interesting for a very small set of rules. Lends itself to replay easily. I'm glad I bought this earlier.
Rating: 5 stars
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
This is an ambitious worker placement game. Going over the rules and figuring it all out the first time is pretty daunting. Once you get all the symbols it is probably a lot easier. This needs another play to figure out where this lands on the fun/work scale. [Here fun=building a bunch of stuff and work=all the advance planning you have to do to get all the pieces.] I think the system is pretty neat for a worker placement game. You can either put some guys on the tracks (wheels) or take some guys off the wheels and do their actions.
Rating: 4 stars (provisional, could go down but I think it will stay.)
The Road to Canterbury
Another one Knepper had. I had been interested in this since the Kickstarter for its unique theme. Based of course on the Canterbury tales and the corrupt Pardoners. Here you are trying to tempt pilgrims to sin so you can profit off selling them indulgences. In spite of the flavorful theme, this felt like just a majority game of putting cubes on areas. It was OK but did not live up to expectations.
Rating 2 stars.
Police Precinct
I introduced myself to Greg Schloesser, who is someone I have known online through reviews and messageboards ever since I started in the hobby 15 or 20 years ago. He taught us this coop game. We played with 6 players and the dirty cop variant. The game has a pretty interesting narrative where you are trying to find evidence about a murder but you keep getting distracted by accidents and burglaries and the ever present street punks. It was a lot of fun. Time will tell how much replay value it has but it seems promising. The dirty cop won about 1 or 2 turns before we would have caught the murderer.
Rating: 4 stars.
Saturday:
Indonesia.
I had signed up to play this but they replaced me while I was one table over explaining the rules to Tzolk'in. A bit disappointing but oh well...
Love Letter
Another simple but fascinating game in the vein of Coup. (In fact I played with some of the same people I tried Coup with and we enjoyed both games.) This time there is not bluffing but there are still secret identities. I hope I can find a copy of this soon.
Rating: 5 stars
Hostage Negotiator
I wandered around during some downtime and A.J. of Van Rider Games showed me this prototype of a quick solitaire game. I wasn't drawn to the theme at first but I figured I'd give it a try. It has a deck-builing mechanic but the cards go straight to your hand. (I guess you could call it hand building.) Every card has 3 results based on how successful you are, resolved by dice rolls. The number of dice you get depends on the threat level. You need to gain conversation points (stalling for time basically) to buy new cards which let you do things like get hostages released, or send in the SWAT team, or whatever. It was a fun and innovative game that I will support when it shows up on Kickstarter.
Rating: 3 stars
Yedo
In this game of feudal Japan, you represent a clan vying for power through intrigue, assassination, or whatever it takes. I am sure much of the mechanics came from Princes of Florence (a personal favorite) as it uses the same auction and bonus card structure. However instead of trying to hire the musician by getting Freedom of Travel, a concert hall, and a park, you are trying to execute a mission by getting a geisha, a ninja in a certain district, and a throwing star. The missions range from the benign (figure out who is coming to the shogun's party) to the sinister (a merchant is disrespecting us so KILL HIS SON!). A pretty neat game of juggling multiple system and resources. Maybe has 1 or 2 things going on than are really necessary, so probably a 0.9 on the fun to work ratio.
Rating: 3.5 stars, might buy depending on price (I'm not sure it is easily available right now)
Suburbia
Pretty much Sim City, town building with buildings that affect their neighbors (residential near the park is good, near the landfill is bad) and other buildings anywhere (airports help each other, restaurants make previous restaurants less profitable, office supply stores gain income any time an office building is built). The mechanics are pretty clever, with decreasing prices on new buildings in the purchase queue, and three tracked scores that your buildings can modify: population and income (self-expanatory) and reputation. Reputation is the population you add or subtract at the end of each turn. At certain population thresholds you lose an income and a reputation so you don't get a runaway leader. The winner is simply the person with the highest population (after adding bonuses for public and private victory conditions). A nicely designed game. While there is a good bit to keep track of, it is pretty easy to do so.
Rating: 4 stars, will probably buy
Lost Temple
It's like Citadels, only you are in a race instead of building buildings. While the theming is good (the various characters, collecting machetes to travel through the deep jungle spaces without stopping) and the role selection is well thought out (There are lots of ways to catch up, and there is a lot of interaction in the role selection), there is so much chaos here that it seems like the first 80% of the game doesn't matter. (One of the roles lets you swap places with a character that you name, so if you do that right you can go from last to first.) We had some good moments, such as when someone stole a boatload of gems from me and I stole them back 2 turns later, so I guess it succeeds at what it tries to do, but my basic reaction is there is just too much chaos.
Rating: 2 stars
TGD 2013 Report
5 (excellent) Coup, Love Letter 9/A
4 (great) Suburbia+, Tzolk'in, Police Precinct, Yedo- 8/B
3 (good) CoPE, Hostage 7/C
2 (ok) Canterbury, Lost Temple 6/D
1 (bad)
I played 10 games, all new to me. I felt like I had a really good con getting to try lots of games that I wanted to play, not getting stuck in any games that I really didn't enjoy, and not having a lot of down time.
Friday:
Conquest of Planet Earth. Knepper invited me to play this literally as I was walking in the door. You are aliens all fighting over Earth. This is an epic game with a gazillion special powers and modifiers. Maybe a few too many. This was probably worse because we were using an expansion. Anyway it was enjoyable even if it was hard to keep up with everything that could happen. I got a Borg cube (which has a really big mini) from one of the special cards. It seemed really powerful although my opponents managed to kill it a couple of times. I think I came in second. In retrospect I should have stayed close to my base to minimize people messing with me but I was trying to take advantage of my special power to land new guys in any devastated area. This is the first time I have played a Flying Frog game. This game scores a medium on the fun/work ratio, meaning the special powers are neat but there is a lot to keep track of. [Here fun=blowing stuff up and using special abilities. Work=figuring out all the modifiers.]
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5). Don't need to buy but would play again.
Coup
A quick bluffing game that is really interesting for a very small set of rules. Lends itself to replay easily. I'm glad I bought this earlier.
Rating: 5 stars
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar
This is an ambitious worker placement game. Going over the rules and figuring it all out the first time is pretty daunting. Once you get all the symbols it is probably a lot easier. This needs another play to figure out where this lands on the fun/work scale. [Here fun=building a bunch of stuff and work=all the advance planning you have to do to get all the pieces.] I think the system is pretty neat for a worker placement game. You can either put some guys on the tracks (wheels) or take some guys off the wheels and do their actions.
Rating: 4 stars (provisional, could go down but I think it will stay.)
The Road to Canterbury
Another one Knepper had. I had been interested in this since the Kickstarter for its unique theme. Based of course on the Canterbury tales and the corrupt Pardoners. Here you are trying to tempt pilgrims to sin so you can profit off selling them indulgences. In spite of the flavorful theme, this felt like just a majority game of putting cubes on areas. It was OK but did not live up to expectations.
Rating 2 stars.
Police Precinct
I introduced myself to Greg Schloesser, who is someone I have known online through reviews and messageboards ever since I started in the hobby 15 or 20 years ago. He taught us this coop game. We played with 6 players and the dirty cop variant. The game has a pretty interesting narrative where you are trying to find evidence about a murder but you keep getting distracted by accidents and burglaries and the ever present street punks. It was a lot of fun. Time will tell how much replay value it has but it seems promising. The dirty cop won about 1 or 2 turns before we would have caught the murderer.
Rating: 4 stars.
Saturday:
Indonesia.
I had signed up to play this but they replaced me while I was one table over explaining the rules to Tzolk'in. A bit disappointing but oh well...
Love Letter
Another simple but fascinating game in the vein of Coup. (In fact I played with some of the same people I tried Coup with and we enjoyed both games.) This time there is not bluffing but there are still secret identities. I hope I can find a copy of this soon.
Rating: 5 stars
Hostage Negotiator
I wandered around during some downtime and A.J. of Van Rider Games showed me this prototype of a quick solitaire game. I wasn't drawn to the theme at first but I figured I'd give it a try. It has a deck-builing mechanic but the cards go straight to your hand. (I guess you could call it hand building.) Every card has 3 results based on how successful you are, resolved by dice rolls. The number of dice you get depends on the threat level. You need to gain conversation points (stalling for time basically) to buy new cards which let you do things like get hostages released, or send in the SWAT team, or whatever. It was a fun and innovative game that I will support when it shows up on Kickstarter.
Rating: 3 stars
Yedo
In this game of feudal Japan, you represent a clan vying for power through intrigue, assassination, or whatever it takes. I am sure much of the mechanics came from Princes of Florence (a personal favorite) as it uses the same auction and bonus card structure. However instead of trying to hire the musician by getting Freedom of Travel, a concert hall, and a park, you are trying to execute a mission by getting a geisha, a ninja in a certain district, and a throwing star. The missions range from the benign (figure out who is coming to the shogun's party) to the sinister (a merchant is disrespecting us so KILL HIS SON!). A pretty neat game of juggling multiple system and resources. Maybe has 1 or 2 things going on than are really necessary, so probably a 0.9 on the fun to work ratio.
Rating: 3.5 stars, might buy depending on price (I'm not sure it is easily available right now)
Suburbia
Pretty much Sim City, town building with buildings that affect their neighbors (residential near the park is good, near the landfill is bad) and other buildings anywhere (airports help each other, restaurants make previous restaurants less profitable, office supply stores gain income any time an office building is built). The mechanics are pretty clever, with decreasing prices on new buildings in the purchase queue, and three tracked scores that your buildings can modify: population and income (self-expanatory) and reputation. Reputation is the population you add or subtract at the end of each turn. At certain population thresholds you lose an income and a reputation so you don't get a runaway leader. The winner is simply the person with the highest population (after adding bonuses for public and private victory conditions). A nicely designed game. While there is a good bit to keep track of, it is pretty easy to do so.
Rating: 4 stars, will probably buy
Lost Temple
It's like Citadels, only you are in a race instead of building buildings. While the theming is good (the various characters, collecting machetes to travel through the deep jungle spaces without stopping) and the role selection is well thought out (There are lots of ways to catch up, and there is a lot of interaction in the role selection), there is so much chaos here that it seems like the first 80% of the game doesn't matter. (One of the roles lets you swap places with a character that you name, so if you do that right you can go from last to first.) We had some good moments, such as when someone stole a boatload of gems from me and I stole them back 2 turns later, so I guess it succeeds at what it tries to do, but my basic reaction is there is just too much chaos.
Rating: 2 stars