Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
November 26 & 27, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor

Games Played:
TransAmerica, Puerto Rico, Wallenstein, Mamma Mia, Kohle Kies & Knete, Funkenschlag

Players:
Todd, Bill, Everett, Joel, Sara, Matt, Joe, Steve, Tim, and Mike

This was our first time we tried a Tuesday session in addition to our normal Wednesday session, and it seemed to work pretty well. We had a couple of people who showed up both nights, and a couple of people who couldn't make it one of the nights show up on the other. It was also a very good week for me for playing Internet Top 100 games. I was able to play 3 of them that I hadn't played before (Mamma Mia, Kohle Kies & Knete, and Funkenschlag), and they were all good games; ones that I want to play again.

TransAmerica: Todd, Everett and Bill

Myself, Bill and Todd were the early birds on Tuesday, so we played a quick game of TransAmerica while waiting for others to show up. I'll admit it's not a deep game, but for what it is, and the fact that it scales well and takes almost exactly 30 minutes no matter how many people, it is a great filler game. Not something that I'd want to play 5 times a night, but something that is great for filling in the gaps.

Score: Everett 12, Bill 5, Todd 3

Ratings: Everett 7, Todd 7, Bill 6

Puerto Rico: Joel, Bill, Todd, Everett and Sara

Sara and Joel arrived right when we were starting Samurai, so we switched to Puerto Rico. Sara had never played before, and Joel wanted to show her this gem. Matt arrived right after we started, so he watched. I was glad to get my second chance in as many weeks to maybe win my first game of this, which I deem much easier when John isn't around :-). But no such luck. This was the closest game of Puerto Rico I've seen, with Todd and myself tying for second, and only one point behind Bill. I went for a corn/wharf strategy, but it took me too long to buy my wharf. Joel went for the quarries, and Sara and Todd both had fairly balanced approaches. Bill went for the attack Everett strategy ("What, are you crazy? Why did you make that play? It doesn't hurt Everett at all!"), and obviously it worked for him as he snuck into the lead. (I'm going to have to start wearing a disguise.)

Score: Bill 41, Todd 40, Everett 40, Sara 35, Joel 27

Ratings: Bill 10, Todd 9, Everett 9, Joel 8, Sara 7

Wallenstein: Todd, Matt, Sara, Joel, and Everett

Todd and I had been wanting to play this game since we first tried it a couple of weeks ago, and Joel wanted to give it a try based on my recommendations, so Wallenstein was our next pick. Bill, on the other hand, despised this game so much that he decided to go pound his head against the wall rather than play with us. Mike arrived just after we started, but stuck around and watched. I still think that it is a neat little game with elements of both german-style and war games. Last time we played I won by getting the most monopolies on palaces, and this week Todd won with the same strategy. This got good ratings from everyone again.

Scores: Todd 48, Matt 44, Sara 41, Everett 39, Joel 35

Ratings: Sara 9, Todd 8, Everett 8, Joel 8, Matt 6

Mamma Mia: Todd, Everett, and Joe

Wallenstein was our last game on Tuesday, and on Wednesday Todd and I were among the early arrivers, along with Joe this time. Todd had brought Mamma Mia, one of the Internet Top 100 games that I hadn't played yet, so I immediately jumped on the chance to play it. This game is a memory game, where players play either ingredient cards or order cards from their hand onto a common discard pile, until the ingredient cards run out. Then you go through the discards. When you come to an order card, you check to see if there are enough of the correct ingredients under that order card to fill that order. If so, they are removed from the pile, and the player scores a point; if not, the ingredients remain, and the order card goes back to the player's stack of order cards. A game consists of three rounds of this. This is not one of your deeper games, and the memory element of it might turn a few players off, but if you don't mind that part, it makes a nice filler game. Again, not something I'd want to play a lot of, but it makes a good warm up game.

Scores: Todd 6, Everett 4, Joe 4

Ratings: Todd 8, Joe 7, Everett 6

Kohle, Kies, & Knete: Todd, Everett, and Joe

We were still waiting for people, but I couldn't put off trying one of my prized new acquisitions: Kohle, Kies, & Knete. This is a rare Sid Sackson game, only produced in german. It gets very good reviews, and is ranked highly on the Internet Top 100. However, it usually sells on e-bay for over $100. I was lucky and found a copy on the German e-bay site which I won for $50, including shipping from Germany. So now I must admit I was wrong: all those years of being forced to take a foreign language in high school and college were worth it. (Now I've become addicted, and have purchased two other games from the Germany e-bay site.)

Kohle, Kies, & Knete is a negotiation game. The board consists of 16 spaces, each one representing a different deal that can be made. Each deal requires a different set of investors, and is worth a different amount depending on the number of investors needed. Normally you won't have all the investors required to complete the deal yourself, so you try to make a deal with the other players, offering them part of the money of the deal in exchange for them using their investors. But that's not all. Everybody has a hand of cards, which consists of: relatives of the main investors, who can make deals as well; vacation cards, which can make an investor or relative unavailable to make a deal this round; bribe cards, which allow you to steal an investor (even in the middle of a deal); "I'm the boss" cards, which allow you to steal the turn, and become the main person making the deal; and stop cards that can cancel out any of the other special cards. Just when you think you have a deal set, someone will play a travel card on a crucial investor, and then you have to scramble to replace him. The only thing I didn't like about it was that we had some difficulty with the boss calling the deal closed and someone wanting to play a card at the same time. I also think that this would be a much better game with 5 or 6 players, but could get a little loud.

Scores: Todd 100, Joe 91, Everett 64

Ratings: Todd 8, Joe 8, Everett 8

Funkenschlag: Joe, Steve, Mike/Tim, Todd, and Everett

This was the third game on the Internet Top 100 that I got to play for the first time this week. Unfortunately, the first thing you notice about this game is the poor quality of the components. The map and the score card are too big for the box, and so they both have a permanent bend in them. In fact a couple of people mentioned that the game would have gotten a higher rating from them if it had better components. I'm going to try to find a cheap monopoly game or something and transfer the game to a bigger box. As far as game play goes, it has a mixture of several different mechanics. It is part crayon-rail game, as you are building power-lines to connect cities. It is part auction game, with power plants of different sizes and types (oil, coal, garbage, wind and nuclear) being sold each round, and part resource management, not only regarding the fuel for your power plants, but the power plants themselves. Since you can only ever have 3 power plants at one time, you have to choose when to dump your efficient plant that can only power 2 cities for a more expensive one that can power 5. It is a long game, 2+ hours, but since the amount of time between your turns is short, it goes quickly. I was able to get the wind plants early in the game, which is nice as you don't need to buy fuel for them, so you have more money to connect your cities. However, Joe was able to counter this by cutting me out of the cities I was going for early. Mike showed up after we started, and he tagged-teamed with Tim as Tim had a telephone call. They got good mileage off of a couple of efficient plants. They made a mistake by connecting to their 18th city (which triggers the endgame), without being able to power all of their cities. Joe won by having the biggest power plants, and hence being able to power the most cities.

Scores: Joe 14, Steve 12, Mike/Tim 12, Todd 10, Everett 10

Ratings: Tim 7.75, Joe 7.5, Steve 7, Mike 7, Everett 7, Todd 6

TransAmerica: Tim, Todd, Mike and Joe

This week's gaming ended as it started: with a game of TransAmerica. This was starting up just as I had to leave for work (thanks to Steve for giving me a ride), but Todd dropped off the results.

Score: Mike 11, Tim 6, Joe 5, Todd 0

Ratings: Tim 10, Mike 9, Joe 8, Todd 7