games day: an experiment

[cellio]

We were invited for a day of (board) gaming yesterday. We had seven players. There are good games that work well for seven players, but most are pretty long (Advanced Civ) or have enough of a learning curve that you want to bring new players in gradually (Seven Ages). One of these days we'll try a renaissance game for seven that jducoeur once told me about (URL safely stashed...somewhere), but I wasn't thinking far-enough ahead for that.

We improvised and played a seven-player version of Iron Dragon. All of the "crayon rail" games are nominally for up to six; we scard up another crayon and pawn, and we declared that the first and last trains were available for everyone (so the last person to get to the big train wasn't screwed).

A seven-player game was crowded but worked. I think it would not have worked with cut-throat players; we were playing a friendly game where people didn't deliberately interfere with others' track-building or refuse to build small spurs that would help other players rent track.

We went through the entire deck of cards once and a bit, so all of the disasters came up. We got the rainbow bridge, a magic connection between two cities (one in the old world and one in the new) very early, and I think that made a huge difference.

With seven players and each of the four entry points to the underworld being restricted to two connections, only one player gets to build a path through. I didn't get cards that would motivate me to go there until pretty late in the game, so I ignored the underworld except to build track to connect the major city. (Yes, it was easier to connect to the underworld than to the southwestern "E" city. I completely blew off the southwestern part of the map.)

Foreman are more constrained in a seven-player game. Elves and dwarves are most popular and in a six-player game you can always get one or the other; in a seven-player game you can't. People tended to hang onto formen for a long time rather than casually trading them for a short-term benefit of a few dollars, because you might not be able to get your original one back by your next turn.

All in all it worked well and I would do it again (with the right players). One note for future reference, though: banish the yellow crayon from the game! Even in a six-player game, find something else to use. Yellow crayon + incandescent light + sub-optimal vision = problem. (I staked out black, but it was hard for me to see where the yellow track had already been laid.) Yellow -- what were they thinking?

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Have you played Citadels? It's one that works for 7, and there isn't much of a learning curve. Plus pretty art.

[cellio]

I don't know Citadels. Thanks for the tip. (What's it like?)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Citadels is a game where you're trying to build a city of a certain minimum size to win. Buildings that cost more are worth more (and some have special extra powers, too). You build them using gold, which is distributed equally... sort of. Because each round, everyone chooses a character (thief, architect, merchant, king, etc), which changes what you think you'll get. The trickiest part is figuring out which character to choose that round (and hope that it's still available when the (hidden) choice comes round to you).

[dr4b]

Citadels takes forever with 7 players too, though :) It is a simple game, but I think it's ideal with 4 or 5.

Iron Dragon with 7 sounds pretty crazy. I think the most I have ever played it with is 5, and that itself is pretty crazy. Maybe that's why I don't remember having yellow crayon issues -- I think usually someone uses the yellow gamepiece and the brown crayon...

[jducoeur]

One of these days we'll try a renaissance game for seven that jducoeur once told me about (URL safely stashed...somewhere)

Medieval, really -- it's from the Alfonso MS, so it's 13th century. (Assuming you're talking about Astrological Tables, which is the only specifically seven-player game I know.)

The reconstruction can be found here. It's a lot of fun, but does call for very specialized materials -- the board and dice are both very non-standard...

[cellio]

The board and dice would require work in order to play in an SCA setting. For a random non-SCA games day or for play-testing, a paper board and d8s (re-roll 8) would be fine. :-)

It appears that all pieces play in one ring along the outside, and the rest of the board is decorative. Is that right? Your picture shows pieces lined up as in spokes, implying concentric rings, but your description says each player's pieces start all on one point. Is the spreading just to make clearer how many pieces are there? Or did I misunderstand something?

[jducoeur]

The spokes are really just a side-effect of laying seven men on a single point. It's typical in tables games to not stack pieces deeply, instead lining them up as far as space permits.

So yes, you're understanding correctly -- there is no significance to the spoke-like arrangement. It would play the same if they were all stacked on top of each other...

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I hate those yellow crayons. You would think that with black, three primary colours, and two other secondary colours, that they would not need to use it for six players. But they always seem to leave either purple or green out instead.