1960 is ok
Nadine and I played 1960 on shabbat and I won at Nixon with 315 or so points. After my second game, I find the game to be ok, but not much more. Yeah, the decisions are fun, but there are too many mechanics around to pay attention to the theme, so we just end up pushing the same cubes back and forth.
I like the decision making on what to play and what to keep for the debates, but then the debates are just an ugly and boring mechanism.
And it's long, which subjectively means that the mechanics begin to repeat before I feel like the game has moved to the next stage. Despite the debates in round 6, the game has little story arc; it looks and plays the same at the beginning and at the end.
Still, it's not too too long, and the cards give you different cubes to push in different places, so it's not too too repetitive. Luck is not too too big a factor. And it's fun and tense. I wouldn't pick it over some other two player games unless I was an election or history buff.
Puerto Rico
Nadine, Rachel, and I played Puerto Rico, and I invited our friend Joan to join us. She is not a gamer and never expressed any interest in gaming, but she thought it would be fun to join us for a few hours.
Nadine explained the game to her in a way that boggled my head. It seemed to me to be the most convoluted method of teaching, more strategy information than rules information, and not in any order than made sense. When I told her this, she said that I have more experience in teaching gamers how to play while she has more experience in teaching non-gamers how to play. By round three, said Nadine, Joan would be up to speed. I was highly skeptical.
Nevertheless, by round three Joan was up to speed, which was even more head boggling. Of course she wasn't "up to speed" up to speed, playing against the three of us; it was still her first game. But Joan was smart enough and able to make a few of her own decisions. We helped here and there along the way.
Joan had a coffee monopoly during the early game, and then Factory, Harbor, and Wharf, and Custom's House to round it out. It wasn't a slaughter only because we're good players, but it was pretty obvious that she was going to win, although Nadine also looked to be in good shape mid-game. In the end, Joan had 60 points, one for each year of the State of Israel.
Nadine also had Factory, plus tobacco and a late Wharf, and ended with two big buildings netting 57 points. Rachel had a Harbor and a big building, but didn't think she was going to win fairly early on, and netted 55 points. I was first player and had a Large Market, the next coffee, an early quarry, and an early Small Warehouse. Not nearly enough, and I netted only 50 points.
It was fun. Joan said that she enjoyed the experience, but didn't sound like she'd be back to play on a regular basis.
Yehuda
Showing posts with label 1960. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1960. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Weekend Gaming
I had a great gaming weekend.
Talking About Games
I was invited out for both meals. In both meals, my hosts or the other guests were fascinated by the idea of someone interested in board and card games, and I ended up talking about them a lot. I wasn't trying to monopolize the conversation, I promise; they were just excited to talk about it.
Something about the idea of taking games and fun seriously just gives some people a thrill. Others think the idea is silly; for those people, I can talk about less important things like politics, religion, literature, and so on.
Word Games
After dinner, I had a willing group of participants eager to play games. Luckily, I always have a head full of games, the easiest of which are word games. No components needed, easy to understand, and fun for non-gamers. My group was two thirteen years old girls, a seventeen year old girl, and a mom.
The first two games I tried were Opposites and Alphabet Minute. Both of these games really need to be played with rigid time constraints for each move; otherwise they just drag on and peter off. That's what they did here. My trouble is that I let people get the feel for the game by taking as much time as they need to come up with a word/sentence on their turn, and then never force them into playing with the time limit.
It also didn't help that they had trouble remembering in which order the alphabet was and a hard time creating sentences starting with a certain letter of the alphabet altogether, let alone one that continued the conversation of the previous player.
I decided to move on to Password, which turned out to be a HUGH hit. I don't know if I'd ever gotten a chance to actually play the game, and I always suspected that it would be really good. And wow, it was really good.
Password requires 5 players, optimally. There are two teams of two players each, and one manager. The manager creates the words or phrases that have to be guessed and then whispers the word or phrase to the hint giver on each team. The manager also judges and penalizes play violations.
Each round works as follows: the manager whispers a word or phrase to one member of each team. Starting with the team that lost the previous round, the member who knows the word or phrase speaks a single word (can't be a word from the answer, of course) in order to help his or her teammate guess the hidden word or phrase. The other team member has one shot to guess. If he or she gets it wrong, the other team has a go, and so on until one team gets the correct answer.
The intriguing part of the game is that you can listen to the clues and mistaken guesses of the other team. And you get to laugh at the weird clues and guesses that everyone makes.
We had a blast; lots of great clues, lots of great hints, lots of great guesses. And of course, lots of really bad hints and guesses. We played twice. And from what I hear, they were still playing it the next day.
Board Games
The next day was at Nadine's. She brought out It's Alive for the first game, which was fun.
The second game was 1960: The Making of the President. This was my first play.
1960 is a two-player area control election game. The only other election game I have played is Die Macher, and there are some similarities, but not many.
I enjoyed myself. We probably played a few things wrong. There was a lot of strategy and tactics; yet, I can see how familiarity with the cards and possible events will lead to deeper understanding of the workability of some strategies over others.
Without that understanding - possibly with the understanding anyway - there was a tad too much luck with the card draw. Some cards are just too good to be allowed to end up in only one player's hand throughout the course of the game. It would be nice to draw twice the number of cards each round and discard half of them; but then the tight decision of which cards to play and which cards to save for the debate wouldn't work.
On the plus side you have lots of possibilities with each card, and even bad cards can be used in good ways; or they're bad in one way but better in another. There are dozens of avenues to explore. You get to learn a great deal about the events from 1960.
It's a tad longer than the two player games I tend to play. But first game: I'm fascinated. Enjoyed it. Looking forward to playing again.
Yehuda
Talking About Games
I was invited out for both meals. In both meals, my hosts or the other guests were fascinated by the idea of someone interested in board and card games, and I ended up talking about them a lot. I wasn't trying to monopolize the conversation, I promise; they were just excited to talk about it.
Something about the idea of taking games and fun seriously just gives some people a thrill. Others think the idea is silly; for those people, I can talk about less important things like politics, religion, literature, and so on.
Word Games
After dinner, I had a willing group of participants eager to play games. Luckily, I always have a head full of games, the easiest of which are word games. No components needed, easy to understand, and fun for non-gamers. My group was two thirteen years old girls, a seventeen year old girl, and a mom.
The first two games I tried were Opposites and Alphabet Minute. Both of these games really need to be played with rigid time constraints for each move; otherwise they just drag on and peter off. That's what they did here. My trouble is that I let people get the feel for the game by taking as much time as they need to come up with a word/sentence on their turn, and then never force them into playing with the time limit.
It also didn't help that they had trouble remembering in which order the alphabet was and a hard time creating sentences starting with a certain letter of the alphabet altogether, let alone one that continued the conversation of the previous player.
I decided to move on to Password, which turned out to be a HUGH hit. I don't know if I'd ever gotten a chance to actually play the game, and I always suspected that it would be really good. And wow, it was really good.
Password requires 5 players, optimally. There are two teams of two players each, and one manager. The manager creates the words or phrases that have to be guessed and then whispers the word or phrase to the hint giver on each team. The manager also judges and penalizes play violations.
Each round works as follows: the manager whispers a word or phrase to one member of each team. Starting with the team that lost the previous round, the member who knows the word or phrase speaks a single word (can't be a word from the answer, of course) in order to help his or her teammate guess the hidden word or phrase. The other team member has one shot to guess. If he or she gets it wrong, the other team has a go, and so on until one team gets the correct answer.
The intriguing part of the game is that you can listen to the clues and mistaken guesses of the other team. And you get to laugh at the weird clues and guesses that everyone makes.
We had a blast; lots of great clues, lots of great hints, lots of great guesses. And of course, lots of really bad hints and guesses. We played twice. And from what I hear, they were still playing it the next day.
Board Games
The next day was at Nadine's. She brought out It's Alive for the first game, which was fun.
The second game was 1960: The Making of the President. This was my first play.
1960 is a two-player area control election game. The only other election game I have played is Die Macher, and there are some similarities, but not many.
I enjoyed myself. We probably played a few things wrong. There was a lot of strategy and tactics; yet, I can see how familiarity with the cards and possible events will lead to deeper understanding of the workability of some strategies over others.
Without that understanding - possibly with the understanding anyway - there was a tad too much luck with the card draw. Some cards are just too good to be allowed to end up in only one player's hand throughout the course of the game. It would be nice to draw twice the number of cards each round and discard half of them; but then the tight decision of which cards to play and which cards to save for the debate wouldn't work.
On the plus side you have lots of possibilities with each card, and even bad cards can be used in good ways; or they're bad in one way but better in another. There are dozens of avenues to explore. You get to learn a great deal about the events from 1960.
It's a tad longer than the two player games I tend to play. But first game: I'm fascinated. Enjoyed it. Looking forward to playing again.
Yehuda
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