Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
November 6, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor

Games Played:
Um Reifenbreite, Wettstreit der Baumeister, Stephenson's Rocket, Cosmic Encounter, Dragon's Gold, Bohnanza, Caracassonne

Players:
Bill, Joel, Dave, Todd, Ben, John, Everett, Sara, Mike

Good turnout tonight, and lots of good games. I brought Cosmic because I was kind of itching to play it, but since there were too many other games that I had never played before, I never got a chance to play it.

Um Reifenbreite: John, Everett, and Sara

Another one on the Internet top 100 games that I hadn't played yet. I bought this on e-bay and had it shipped from Germany. It is also a Speil des Jahres winner. It's a bicycle race game, where everyone controls 4 bicyclists. Each turn, a rider moves by either rolling two dice, or by drafting the rider in front of him (if there is a rider in front of him). Each player also has a hand of cards (move 5s or move 6s) that can be used in place of rolling one or both of the dice. On a roll of 7, you draw an event card. Since I had forgotten to cut out the english card translations, we played with Alan Moon's variant, where instead of drawing a card, you roll a die, and on a result of "1", you fall.

I must admit, I did not "get it" when I first played this game. It seemed rather pedestrian with few good choices to make: play a card, roll a die, move that number of spaces. There were a few decisions to be make, but not enough to make the game very interesting. However, having had time to think about it some, there are some things that we could have done differently to make the game more interesting. The obvious one is to play longer races. Both of our races were on short tracks, which usually finished after each rider took about 3 or 4 turns. This took the mechanic of card management out of the game, as there was seldom a reason not to play a card when you moved a rider. Another would be to have four players, making the track more congested, providing more obstacles that you would have to maneuver around. But I think that the major thing that we could have done differently, which would have had a big effect on the game was the way we set up our riders at the starting line. All of us generally concentrated on building our own lines of riders. This resulted in a game of whoever rolled best for their line of riders won. Boring. What we should have done, was to make sure that no player had two riders in a row at the starting gate. I think this would have made for a lot of decision making in the game. Instead of automatically playing a card on your move to get a good roll for you entire line of riders, you may want to not play a card, so that the rider following you won't get the benefit from one of your cards. And if the leaders aren't always playing their cards, then there is a decision to be made by the riders following them: when to play their cards and try to take the lead.

Immediately after playing the game, I wasn't really sure if I'd want to play it again, but now I would like to at least try to see if the above changes in the way we played would improve the game.

Oh, BTW, John blew us away in both games, have his riders place 1,2,3 in the first game, and 1,2,3,4 in the second game. In the second game, each players riders finished in a row: John's four crossed first, then mine, then Sara's.

Score (1st race): John 143, Everett 102, Sara 96
Score (2nd race): John 157, Everett 108, Sara 76

Ratings: John 5, Everett 5, Sara 5
(My rating has the potential to go higher, if the above strategy works the way I think it will.)

Cosmic Enounter (Mayfair Edition w/ More Cosmic): Bill, Joel, Dave, Todd, (Ben joined in for the second game)

This was the other game that we started out with. I wish I had perfected my cloning machine so that I could play in this one as well. I believe that they played with just one power, randomly chosen. I also think that they just played without any of the add-ons (no lucre, no moons). I don't have much in notes from the games, not even who played which power. I did hear Todd say that this was a silly game. Ben was the only person who hadn't played Cosmic before.

Bill's notes: "Game One: Bill-Vulch (takes discarded/played Edicts, doesn't discard Edicts when drawing new hand), Joel-Laser (opponent in battle plays their card at random), Dave-Aristocrat (chooses hand from draw pile at start of game AND can discard a flare to draw an unused flare. It's sheer madness, I tells you), Todd-Boomerang (makes an attack on the attacking player before he's attacked)
I felt I got a fairly lucky starting hand- 4 flares/edicts. I pulled off a lot of 'tricks' this game, something that Vulch seems to be particularly good at. Dave, rather than going for screwing everyone over by picking their flares at the outset and/or making a god hand just concentrated on getting a bunch of decent cards and not slowing down the game too much. I don't remember too much about the early game, but I used the Terrorist flare to coerce Todd into helping give me my fourth base, and soon after attacked Joel and used the magician flare to swap alien powers with him, thus lasering the laser and giving him a bad card.
Game Two: Bill-Gorgon (other people's guys on the Gorgon homeworlds or on planets where a Gorgon base is can't move unless they die), Joel-Silencer (makes one person unable to talk- no mime, no gestures, can only take in game actions that are self-explanatory), Ben-Prophet (can guess winner, gets a free base if he does, otherwise two of his guys die), Dave ?, Todd-Insect (uses power of other person-nasty if he's attacking, say, the Silencer)
I just remember being kind of screwed this game. One of my planets got nuked early on by Dave from some flare, taking four of my guys out of the game forever. I was still able to get up to four bases, but then I lost one when being at the recieving end of a Terrorist flare, and Todd worked his way to victory. He attacked Joel on more than one occasion, to humorous effect (silencing the silencer, thus preventing the silencer from silencing him, inviting allies, etc.)"

Results:
Game one: Bill won.
Game two: Todd won.

Ratings: Dave 10, Todd 8, Bill 7, Ben 5, Joel 2

Wettstreit der Baumeister: Everett, John, Todd, and Sara

Another German game that we hadn't played before (I'm not sure if John had played before or not, but it was his game). Players are each trying to build a walled city. Each turn the acting player gains money, then auctions off a card, representing one of the five different parts of the city: corner tower, center tower, gate, church, or town hall, and then he can build onto his city. The auctioneer gets half of the bid amount (unless he won the bid). Each card is worth a number of points, from 1 to 9, with churches and town halls being more valuable, but with gates giving you extra money, and towers protecting you from the saboteur. You can get a saboteur by rolling a "0" on the income die, and then you can play it to attempt to destroy a piece of an opponent's city. At the end of the game (when one of two stacks of cards runs out), there is one last turn of building (where you can build up to three cards), then the person with the most valuable city wins. Besides the points on the cards, if you have corner towers on both ends of your city you gain bonus points for having certain types of symmetry: having your town hall in the exact center, having the same number of churches on each side of your town hall, and having the same value for both of your corner towers.

Todd had a strong start, but this just ended up making him a saboteur target. Joel kept on winning his own auctions, so he had some money problems in the beginning. Sara had a strong city, but I edged her out by playing the three cards at the end that scored me all of the bonus points.

Scores: Everett 49, Sara 47, Todd 30, John 27

Ratings: Sara 9, Everett 7, Todd 7, John 7

Dragon's Gold: Bill, Dave, Joel, and Ben

While some of us were building cities, the rest of us were slaying dragons. Dave was the only one who had played this before. This is a negotiation game, where each player plays one of their warriors to try and defeat the dragons in the middle of the table. When a dragon is defeated, everyone who helped defeat the dragon has one minute to come to an unanimous decision on how to split the dragon's treasure, which consists of gold, silver, gems, and magic items. If they come to an agreement, each person takes their share. If they don't, then the treasure goes away. In general, there are two main complaints about this game. One is that many people don't like the magic item that lets a player steal treasure from the dragons until the player is caught. For many people, this adds an unwanted element to the game. The other complaint is that if a person is ahead, it is too easy for him to refuse to agree on an split and get the treasure thrown out, making it difficult for other people to catch up. Bill also did not like the timer, saying that it is not enough time to think.

Joel got the black diamond early (which is worth a lot of points, but makes the rest of his gems worthless) and won by always taking the gold from the treasures, letting the other players have the gems.

Scores: Joel 87, Dave 48, Ben 47, Bill 40

Ratings: Ben 5, Bill 5, Joel 4, Dave 4

Stephenson's Rocket: Bill, John, Everett, and David

Bill had never played Stephenson's Rocket, and the rest of us had only played it once or twice, so when he asked about it, we decided to give this another try. John called this Acquire with trains, which I hadn't recognized before, but now that he mentioned it, I agree (which explains why I do so poorly at it, I've never figured out the strategy to Acquire). Dave (yes, I blame it all on Dave and not my own poor play) kept on leaving John with the opportunity to force trains onto his stations, and John ran away with the game.

Scores: John 92,000, David 70,000, Everett 49,000, Bill 44,000

Ratings: John 6, David 6, Everett 6, Bill 4

Bohnanza: Mike, Ben, Todd, Joel, and Sara

Todd really wanted to go bean farming and talked several people into playing Bohnanza. Joel was the only other experienced bean farmer. They didn't leave me any notes, but I did overhear them call Sara "Evil", and she did win the game.

Scores: Sara 15, Todd 11, Mike 9, Ben 9, Joel 7

Ratings: Todd 8, Ben 7, Mike 6, Joel 6, Sara 5

Carcassonne (expansion, no river): Mike, Ben, Todd, Joel, and Sara

Sara had never played Carcassonne before, and wanted to see what all the buzz was about. I had to leave for work shortly after this game started, so hopefully someone will send me some notes on it (and take care of my game).

UPDATE: Todd brought me the scores and ratings for this.

Scores: Todd 65, Mike 59, Joel 54, Sara 50, Ben 50

Ratings: Sara 10, Todd 9, Mike 9, Joel 8, Ben 4