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cellioWe started by playing Talisman, which was probably a decent game before they published the gazillions of expansion sets. This is a board game based on fantasy role-playing; in the basic game your character progresses through the three rings of the board, until someone reaches the center and (usually) wins. (Other players can still interfere with the leader; it's not an automatic win. But the player who gets to the center certainly has advantages.) The original game had around a dozen different characters, I think, and a balanced set of encounters, magic items, spells, and special events.
The expansion sets added several game boards, new characters, and new cards (encounters, items, etc). We only played with one additional board (the dungeon), but we didn't sort out all the extra cards other than to kill one identifiable set as we encountered them (Timescape). I don't own this game and I don't know what expansions were involved, but the result was pretty weird, and it was the most unsatisfying game of Talisman I've ever played. (I was so-so on the game before today, so I don't know when I'll be willing to play again.) We all experienced a lot of thrashing; after two hours I had yet to have a fight with a monster, for instance, and I never succeeded in raising any of my stats. We saw a lot of cards of the "this card remains on the board for the rest of the game" variety, which reduced the number of spaces on which cards could be drawn, which made it harder to get monsters to fight. After about four hours we gave up. One player was having enough success that we could all believe that he would win if we were willing to play it out, so we declared him the winner.
Someone else had brought a chariot-racing game that he said can work well for three players, so we split into two groups. Four of us played Puerto Rico (one first-time player), and this, too, turned out to be a weird game. When we ran out of settlers (ending the game), we were not as advanced as we should have been, and the final scores ranged from 20 to 31. (I had 28.) Usually in a four-player game all the scores are in the 30s and 40s, at least in my limited experience. It wasn't just that people were playing the mayor too often, though there was some of that. There wasn't a lot of money in the game, which limited building, which trickled down. I'm not quite sure how that happened. It wasn't the total lack of satisfaction that Talisman was; I had fun even while realizing that it was playing oddly.
The chariot-racers were still going, so then we pulled out a game that was new to all of us, called Tsuro: The Game of the Path. This is a nifty game, and I'd like to play it more. Play is on a 6x6 board; most of the 36 positions will ultimately be occupied by tiles. Each square tile is divided into 9 sections, so there are 8 edge positions, two on each side. Each tile contains a different set of paths connecting those 8 points in some ways -- so the simplest pattern is a tic-tac-toe board, but most of them involve curves that criss-cross or connect points on adjacent sides. Paths can cross each other but not fork; there is always one unambiguous connection for each of the eight positions.
Player tokens start on the edges of the board (any edge point you want). On your turn, you play a tile adjacent to your piece and then move all affected pieces as far along their paths as you can. (So if someone else is also adjacent to the tile you play, both pieces move.) If you go off the board, you're out -- so you're trying to control your path, but as the tiles start to come together you can find yourself pushed to places you never expected to be. A game takes about 15 minutes, so this is a good "waiting around for other people" game, though I would happily play it for its own sake too. It also supports up to 8 players, which is useful.
Finally, we played a few rounds of Trans Europa, a quickie train game. It's the same game as Trans America, which we've played several times, but on a differnet map. Cities on the board are divided into five (color-coded) zones; at the beginning of each round you draw one card of each color and those are the cities you have to connect together with track. The zones in Trans Europa feel more spread-out than they do in Trans America; maybe it's just that we haven't learned the quirks of this particular map. As with Trans America, a game takes about 20 minutes.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-29 06:36 pm (UTC)It felt like the worst distributions in Trans Europa would be worse than the worst ones in Trans America, but the game is not fundamentally different in any way. The page on BoardGameGeek for the game has photos of the game board, by the way.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-29 07:05 pm (UTC)Ah, if they have a photo, then I can easily simulate the game with some nice hex paper (http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/71817.html), using the old Trans America pieces. Excellent -- that'll take up a lot less room!
There was some European rail game I played once that was quite excellent, but it was a 3-4 player game, and took ages. Both building tracks and delivering cargo. I think that crayons were involved. One of these days I'll track it down...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-29 07:27 pm (UTC)The other game you're thinking of sounds like Euro Rails. This was the first of the crayon/rail games I played, and it's one of my favorites. The publishers have produced similar games in other settings, including a fantasy one called Iron Dragon. With these ones, unlike the Trans games, the variations do sometimes introduce new challenges or at least interesting quirks. I've heard that the Australian and Indian games aren't very interesting, but the Japanese one was a challenge with its limited access points the one time I played it, and Lunar Rails is unusual in playing on a (simulated) globe, not just one continent. Iron Dragon introduces ships and also foremen, which give you different advantages in rail-building. (Which one you want is governed by where you're currently building most of your track.)
In all of these games, you are both building track (that's where the crayons come in) and moving goods. Delivering goods gets you money (with which you can build more track); the victory condition is both a certain amount of money and your own track connecting most of the major cities. Over time you learn when to build (you'll need it again, or you need it for those connections) and when to rent time on other people's tracks. Naturally, payment for goods goes up as the distance required to get them there goes up.
All of these games support up to six players. I think it takes at least four players to produce a satisfying game. Our rule of thumb (based on Euro Rails and Iron Dragon, the ones we play most often) is to allow one hour per player.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-29 07:59 pm (UTC)As my current gaming is with just one other person, I'm probably not going to rush out to buy it. Most strategy/economic games don't work well at all with just two people. But it's nice to know the name so I can stop worrying about that.
If you like rail games, Ticket To Ride is a nice game, somewhere between Trans America and Euro Rails in terms of complexity and game length. I believe it is limited to five players, but plays well with two. A two player game takes maybe an hour.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-29 08:51 pm (UTC)Thanks for the pointer to Ticket To Ride. I hadn't realized that it was a candidate for smaller numbers of players; that and my liking the games you compared it to suggest I should check it out.
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Date: 2006-05-29 10:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-03 07:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 02:28 am (UTC)I can see that. I've only played Japan once, so I don't have much experience with it. (I find that the first two or three times I play any of these, I'm learning the specific properties of the map and routes.)
I've never played Great Britain. (I'm not sure I knew about it, now that I think about it.) Thanks for the heads-up.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-04 05:05 am (UTC)