We had two families over for the entire shabbat, and another one plus a single added to them for lunch. All of the adults steadfastly refused any sort of games (guests, harumph!). Luckily, one of them has a teenage son (Shlomo) and daughter (Adi), both of whom were willing to play.
Shlomo had come to my group once and played Puerto Rico and Tigris and Euphrates, so was ready for just about anything. Adi had played Settlers with me last time she came over and was looking forward to play again.
I taught them my game prototype (gp#1) two player and three player and we played multiple times. When I went out, they continued to play without me several times. I think the game is basically done, mechanics-wise. I made a few changes to the rules after the very first few times I played, and since then I have played 30 or 40 times and it is basically my favorite filler card game. Somebody help me get it published, please. I am currently waiting on a response from Gamewright.
I then tried them out on another game prototype I had made (let's call it gp#2) which didn't work. It is another card game built around a simple mechanic of picking and giving away cards which seemed like it should make a clever little game, but it didn't work at all (well, not three player, anyway). Back to the drawing board.
We also played Settlers (first time for him, second for her), which they also played two-player twice while I was out, and a game of Traumfabrik. I won the first SoC game by being merciless to Shlomo (very unlike me, and it was only because he was being merciless to me, first ;-) ). Traumfabrik was an easy win, as I played conservatively, which I think is probably the basic key to winning.
Yehuda
Showing posts with label traumfabrik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label traumfabrik. Show all posts
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Saturday, February 12, 2005
PR, Oceania, Traumfabrik
The thread of the strategy discussion about Puerto Rico continued on the Tao of Gaming (http://gaming.powerblogs.com/). I won't reproduce the entire discussion here. In fact I thought we had beaten it to death, so I took it off the board into email.
A good discussion with polite people who disagree is a wonderful thing. Good discussions with people who agree are easy to find. Rude discussions with people who disagree even more so. Aside from the occasional anti-Jewish/anti-Israel vandal, most people I converse with on the Internet are very nice, like most people everywhere, I guess.
Thursday morning I received Oceania, and Thursday evening I played it with my wife, Rachel. It plays, as expected, like a Carcassonne light - very light. There are thirty tiles. Each round is basically:
1. Choose the tile on the board next to which you be adding the new tile.
2. Pick the new tile at random, and place it if you can. If you can't, place in front of you.
3. Place one of your scouts on the tile, if you want.
Two other rules:
- If you already have tiles in front of you, you can replace step 2 with: sacrifice a scout and place a tile in front of you.
- Every time a single square is surrounded on all side by placed tiles, fill it in with a reserve tile.
At the end of the game, whoever has the most scouts on any land mass scores the number of tiles in the land mass. Minus two for each unplaced tile in front of you.
Impressions: Quick and light is what they were aiming for, and it really is. Ten minutes should be enough for a game. Your scout supply is correctly limited, so that sacrificing one to place an unplaced tile is painful.
Tile placement is not too difficult, however - the random nature of the tile draw is more frustrating than fun for me, but the ability to rectify a bad draw by sacrificing a scout makes up for it.
All in all, it is a pleasant game which suits a nice niche for a ten minute diversion while waiting for others to finish another game. I will have to play it a number of times to see if it is the sort of game that "plays out" or that can hold continual interest with some sort of subtle strategy.
In other news, I continue to lose PR games - ironic considering my boasts that I am "in the zone", or "discovering strategies", as I have previously posted about PR. Blah.
This Saturday I played Traumfabrik with my lunch guests and discovered that it is pretty easy to teach, which makes it almost a crossover from a party game to a strategy game. Sweet. Still, conversation among the non-gamer guests made me realize all the more how sorely I need to branch out and get a few party games so as to "hook" people in. All I have is Apples to Apples - not enough, I fear. I hear good things about Time's Up and Beyond Balderdash. Time to look into them.
Yehuda
A good discussion with polite people who disagree is a wonderful thing. Good discussions with people who agree are easy to find. Rude discussions with people who disagree even more so. Aside from the occasional anti-Jewish/anti-Israel vandal, most people I converse with on the Internet are very nice, like most people everywhere, I guess.
Thursday morning I received Oceania, and Thursday evening I played it with my wife, Rachel. It plays, as expected, like a Carcassonne light - very light. There are thirty tiles. Each round is basically:
1. Choose the tile on the board next to which you be adding the new tile.
2. Pick the new tile at random, and place it if you can. If you can't, place in front of you.
3. Place one of your scouts on the tile, if you want.
Two other rules:
- If you already have tiles in front of you, you can replace step 2 with: sacrifice a scout and place a tile in front of you.
- Every time a single square is surrounded on all side by placed tiles, fill it in with a reserve tile.
At the end of the game, whoever has the most scouts on any land mass scores the number of tiles in the land mass. Minus two for each unplaced tile in front of you.
Impressions: Quick and light is what they were aiming for, and it really is. Ten minutes should be enough for a game. Your scout supply is correctly limited, so that sacrificing one to place an unplaced tile is painful.
Tile placement is not too difficult, however - the random nature of the tile draw is more frustrating than fun for me, but the ability to rectify a bad draw by sacrificing a scout makes up for it.
All in all, it is a pleasant game which suits a nice niche for a ten minute diversion while waiting for others to finish another game. I will have to play it a number of times to see if it is the sort of game that "plays out" or that can hold continual interest with some sort of subtle strategy.
In other news, I continue to lose PR games - ironic considering my boasts that I am "in the zone", or "discovering strategies", as I have previously posted about PR. Blah.
This Saturday I played Traumfabrik with my lunch guests and discovered that it is pretty easy to teach, which makes it almost a crossover from a party game to a strategy game. Sweet. Still, conversation among the non-gamer guests made me realize all the more how sorely I need to branch out and get a few party games so as to "hook" people in. All I have is Apples to Apples - not enough, I fear. I hear good things about Time's Up and Beyond Balderdash. Time to look into them.
Yehuda
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Rules mistakes, games played.
OK, it turns out that I'm not the best rules reader. Someone else should really check me.
Traumfabrik: Reading more carefully, it seems that the extra indivisible amount of contracts ends up in the middle of the board, and not on each particular space. These extra contracts are added to and divided along with the next bid.
Geschenkt: The original rule was that the player who wins the bid starts bidding on the next card. We all seemed to think that this is a terrible idea, because if you take a card with no tokens, and you have no tokens, you must take all of the remaining cards in the game. Well someone on BGG pointed out the should-have-been-obvious to me: This is impossible. The first player to play has 11 tokens. Every time you take a card, if you weren't the one that flipped it, it must have at least one token on it. Ergo, you will always have at least one token to play.
Last Wed's session report on my website, as usual.
Thursday I played my usual 2 player PR with expansion buildings with my wife, Rachel. Some buildings are just included standard, now: Large Business (privilege of Captain and Builder) instead of Harbor; Small Wharf, or something equivalent, instead of Large Warehouse; Small Fashion District (sell indigo at +2), or equiv, instead of Construction Hut; also replacements for University and Office, whatever comes up. Very typical buildings include Large General Production Building (8/3, produce two of anything with corresponding plantations), Exchange House (swap barrels with Trading House at the ed of the Trader phase (a good answer to LGPB, but somewhat powerful in 2 player)), Surveyor's House (2/1 choose any plantation from supply, instead of turned up one), plus a few variant large buildings (vps for building types, or plantation types, of empty spaces or circles, etc...)
Shabbat I played.
- Traumfabrik twice, this time with the correct rules. The first time intruducing my daughter aged 11 and her friend and my mom to the game. They enjoyed it. The second time introducing my friend and several other guys in their teens. They also liked it.
- Anagrams, twice. Tough games, playing with my friend, who won the National Scrabble tournament, once. I lost the first game, closely, but won the second game even more closely (something like 49 to 47 tiles). While he has a ridiculously larger vocabulary for dumb words (like eau, aquae, and zoea), I am a hair quicker on the draw, better prepare myself for particular letters I am on the lookout for, and not bad at anagramming, myself.
- Dvonn. First time play, I was wondering if it would suffer from the same problem that I have with the games I tend to design, namely that there are so many choices that it seems random. Fortunately, while it did seem a little random, that was more because I had no idea what I was doing, rather than that I had too many choices. Nevertheless, any game where all pieces are essentially shared, is very hard to wrap your brain around. For the rules, see BGG.
We place our pieces, and I thought I was doing better since I had more pieces on the outside and therefore more liberty and choices. It didn't help, as gradually all of my pieces were either recaptured or simply removed from the board. I had a wipeout at the end, with no pieces left. Ugh.
- Torres. My friend tried it, and surprisingly to me, didn't really like it.
Yehuda
Traumfabrik: Reading more carefully, it seems that the extra indivisible amount of contracts ends up in the middle of the board, and not on each particular space. These extra contracts are added to and divided along with the next bid.
Geschenkt: The original rule was that the player who wins the bid starts bidding on the next card. We all seemed to think that this is a terrible idea, because if you take a card with no tokens, and you have no tokens, you must take all of the remaining cards in the game. Well someone on BGG pointed out the should-have-been-obvious to me: This is impossible. The first player to play has 11 tokens. Every time you take a card, if you weren't the one that flipped it, it must have at least one token on it. Ergo, you will always have at least one token to play.
Last Wed's session report on my website, as usual.
Thursday I played my usual 2 player PR with expansion buildings with my wife, Rachel. Some buildings are just included standard, now: Large Business (privilege of Captain and Builder) instead of Harbor; Small Wharf, or something equivalent, instead of Large Warehouse; Small Fashion District (sell indigo at +2), or equiv, instead of Construction Hut; also replacements for University and Office, whatever comes up. Very typical buildings include Large General Production Building (8/3, produce two of anything with corresponding plantations), Exchange House (swap barrels with Trading House at the ed of the Trader phase (a good answer to LGPB, but somewhat powerful in 2 player)), Surveyor's House (2/1 choose any plantation from supply, instead of turned up one), plus a few variant large buildings (vps for building types, or plantation types, of empty spaces or circles, etc...)
Shabbat I played.
- Traumfabrik twice, this time with the correct rules. The first time intruducing my daughter aged 11 and her friend and my mom to the game. They enjoyed it. The second time introducing my friend and several other guys in their teens. They also liked it.
- Anagrams, twice. Tough games, playing with my friend, who won the National Scrabble tournament, once. I lost the first game, closely, but won the second game even more closely (something like 49 to 47 tiles). While he has a ridiculously larger vocabulary for dumb words (like eau, aquae, and zoea), I am a hair quicker on the draw, better prepare myself for particular letters I am on the lookout for, and not bad at anagramming, myself.
- Dvonn. First time play, I was wondering if it would suffer from the same problem that I have with the games I tend to design, namely that there are so many choices that it seems random. Fortunately, while it did seem a little random, that was more because I had no idea what I was doing, rather than that I had too many choices. Nevertheless, any game where all pieces are essentially shared, is very hard to wrap your brain around. For the rules, see BGG.
We place our pieces, and I thought I was doing better since I had more pieces on the outside and therefore more liberty and choices. It didn't help, as gradually all of my pieces were either recaptured or simply removed from the board. I had a wipeout at the end, with no pieces left. Ugh.
- Torres. My friend tried it, and surprisingly to me, didn't really like it.
Yehuda
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