Madison Board Gamers

Madison Board Gamers

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Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
December 3rd & 4th, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor

**Session 1**
Date/Location	12/3/2002 Memorial Union
Session Length	270 min.
Attendees	Everett Proctor, Todd Jensen, Jenni Friedberg, Joel Uckelman, Sara Friedemann, Mike
Games Played	Drake & Drake, San Marco, Trans America, Samurai, Trans America, Trans America, Res Publica, Res Publica
Summary	This was the second week in a row that we had a Tuesday night session in addition to our Wednesday night games. However, the Memorial Union was full, so we got sent off to Helen C. White. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult to find us. We even had a new member show up. Hi Jenni, good to finally meet you. BTW, I am using a new database specifically designed for recording game sessions to write this report, so the format may be a little different from past session reports.
Drake & Drake
Played By	Everett P. Todd J.
Summary	As usual, Todd and I were the first ones there, so we gave another one of the new Euro Descartes two-player games a try. Like all of them, this is played on a 6x6 grid. The grid represents a desert island that each player's pirates are fighting over. Most of the squares are just regular land, and are each worth 10 points, some squares have rum barrels, and are worth 30 points each, and some squares have treasure chests worth 50 points each. A common deck of cards is split into two: one deck for each player. From their deck, each player gets a hand of cards. Most of the cards are yellow, and represent pirates, and when played allow you to place one of your pirates on the board. The other cards are orange, and give you special actions, such as pushing an opponent's pirate off of the board, or causing him to switch sides. Each player plays simultaneously chooses four points of cards to play, with the yellow cards worth one and the orange cards worth two. After those cards are resolved, each player refills their hand from their decks, and then plays another set. You keep on doing this until one player cannot refill his hand, then you score. You score points for each square your pirates are one, plus each group of our pirates (connected orthogonally) scores two times the number of pirates. Some of the action cards are much more powerfull than the others, and can cause a huge shift in the game. So to be fair, after playing one game, you should switch decks and play again. In the game that we played, Todd had the plague card, which destroyed 5 of my pirates, and I never recovered from that. Overall, it's not a bad two player game, but in my opinion it doesn't measure up to most of the Kosmos two player games.
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. (350) 2-Everett P. (285)
Ratings	Everett P. (5) Todd J. (7)
San Marco
Played By	Everett P. Todd J. Jenni F.
Summary	Jenni arrived while Todd and I were playing Drake & Drake. It was good to finally meet her, as she had inquired about our game night several months ago, but she is not able to come on Wednesdays. It is because of her request that we decided to give Tuesdays a try. With three people, we decided to play San Marco, which works very well with three. Many people on the newsgroup claim that this is a near perfect three player game, but that they don't like it near as well with four players. I disagree. Whereas I do think that this is one of the few games that work particullarly well with three players, I slightly prefer the four player version. It's all in how you divide the pies. In the four player game, you most often divide the pie into two sections. This will sometimes allow you to divide it in such a way that you can make one pile that you know your oppenent will take and the other pile you can make a little bit sweeter for yourself. In the three player game, you are most often dividing the pie into three sections. This makes it almost impossible to be able to make a pile that you are fairly sure you will get. I really like this game, and wish I got to play it more. We did miss one rule while playing this game, (I've been doing that a lot recently) we forgot the free banishment that the person with the fewest penalty points gets at the end of each day. It was stupid of me to forget this, as I normally play to get the fewest points just for this reason.
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. (64) 2-Jenni F. (64) 3-Everett P. (60)
Ratings	Everett P. (8) Todd J. (8) Jenni F. (8)
Trans America
Played By	Everett P. Todd J. Jenni F. Joel U. Sara F.
Summary	When we were through with San Marco, Jenni could only stay for about another 45 minutes, so we decided to play a quick game of Trans America. I did pretty well this time, going out first on both rounds. Todd really got burned on the second round, and was short by 9, causing him to fall into the ocean.
Winner(s)	Everett P.
Finish	1-Everett P. (13) 2-Joel U. (10) 3-Sara F. (8) 4-Jenni F. (5) 5-Todd J. (0)
Ratings	Everett P. (7) Todd J. (7) Jenni F. (6) Joel U. (5) Sara F. (7)
Samurai
Played By	Everett P. Todd J. Joel U. Sara F.
Summary	After Jenni left, Joel wanted to show Sara Samurai, and I was more than happy to as this is one of my favorite games. Todd had also never played the game before, so it's good that we got to correct that. The new players inexperienced showed though, as I was able to get all three of the pawns on Edo and set up the neighboring cities without any compitition. After that, I had a huge lead and nobody could catch up with me.
Winner(s)	Everett P.
Finish	1-Everett P. (7) 2-Todd J. (0) 3-Sara F. (0) 4-Joel U. (3)
Ratings	Everett P. (9) Todd J. (6) Joel U. (8) Sara F. (4)
Trans America
Played By	Joel U. Sara F.
Summary	Sara and Joel played a couple of two player games of Trans America while Jenni, Todd and myself were playing San Marco. Here are their results.
Winner(s)	Joel U.
Finish	1-Joel U. (12) 2-Sara F. (0)
Ratings	Joel U. (5) Sara F. (7)
Trans America
Played By	Joel U. Sara F.
Summary	Joel and Sara's second game.
Winner(s)	Joel U.
Finish	1-Joel U. (13) 2-Sara F. (0)
Ratings	Joel U. (7) Sara F. (5)
Res Publica
Played By	Everett P. Todd J. Joel U. Mike
Summary	Sara had to leave to write papers for your classes, but was replaced by Mike. We had some trouble deciding what to play, but settled on Res Publica as those of us who had played it before hadn't played it in a long time. This is one of the weirdest trading games I have played. The game consists of two decks of cards: a people deck, and a technology deck. Each player's turn consists of trying to make a trade, playing a set of five cards if possible, drawing 1 to 3 cards. At the beginning of the game, you only have access to the people deck, and can only draw one card. When you lay down a set of five people, you gain a city (worth 3 points) and get to draw an additional card from the technology deck. When you lay down a set of five technology cards, you get a monument (worth from 9 to 4 points, depending on when you build it). Once the technology deck runs out, the player with the highest score in cities and monuments wins. The thing that makes this game interesting, is the way that trading works. When it is your turn, you get one chance to propose one side of the trade: either what you want, or what you are offering. Then each player has one chance to propose the other side of the trade. If one of them makes an offer that you like, then you can make the deal, otherwise you don't make a trade that turn. And there is NO negotiating. So for example, if I needed one Roman card to fill my set, I could say "I want one Roman" and that's it. I can't say what I have or am willing to trade for that Roman. Then each player gets a chance to say something like "I'll trade you a Roman for a Wheel technology card." The thing is, he has no way of knowing whether or not I have a Wheel card or not, except by possibly remembering earlier offers I made. This restriction on trading takes some getting used to. To really be effective in this game, you need to pay attention and remember what everyone's bids were previously. So when a player says that he wants one type of card, if you can remember his earlier bid, you know what he has in his hand he would be willing to give up for it. The game does provide a neat sort of intelluctal problem of trying to convey the most information within a limited framework (sort of like Bridge bidding), but isn't something that I'd like to play very often.
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. (31) 2-Mike (29) 3-Everett P. (19) 4-Joel U. (14)
Ratings	Everett P. (6.5) Todd J. (8) Joel U. (5) Mike (6)
Res Publica
Played By	Everett P. Todd J. Joel U. Mike
Summary	This was our second game of Res Publica.
Winner(s)	Everett P.
Finish	1-Everett P. (29) 2-Todd J. (25) 3-Joel U. (23) 4-Mike (20)
Ratings	Everett P. (6.5) Todd J. (8) Joel U. (5) Mike (6)

**Session 2**
Date/Location	12/4/2002 Memorial Union
Session Length	270 min.
Attendees	Bill Palecek, Mike O'Brien, Todd Jensen, Everett Proctor
Games Played	Kardinal und König: Das Kartenspiel, Die Händler, Elfenland, Metro
Kardinal und König: Das Kartenspiel
Played By	Bill P. Todd J. Everett P.
Summary	Bill, Todd, and myself arrived first. We were waiting to see if anyone else would show up, so we played a quick three player game of the Web of Power cardgame. I still think that the law cards should be either all beneficial or all harmfull. That way there is either an incentive or disentive to go for them, which would effect people's strategy. As it is, since you don't know if the law card you are going to get is going to help you or harm you, it just adds an un-needed element of randomness. Next time I play, I am going to suggest that we treat the -2 point cards as +2 points, making all of the law cards beneficial. The scores in our game were fairly close, with Bill only lagging behind because he did not get any chains.
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. (57) 2-Everett P. (55) 3-Bill P. (48)
Ratings	Bill P. (4) Todd J. (8) Everett P. (7)
Die Händler
Played By	Bill P. Todd J. Everett P.
Summary	This was the last game from my Boulder games order that I hadn't played yet. The first thing you notice about it is that it has a lot of neat bits. There's three wooden wagons, 6 different types of goods, a secret wheel for each player (like El Grande), and each player gets their own money bag. Besides having a lot of bits, this game as a lot of different mechanics: there's bidding, negotiation, resource management, purchasing and selling, variable player powers, and price manipulation. The board has 6 cities, connected to getherm by roads. Each player has a warehouse in each city. Before the game, each player gets two special abilites. These abilities allow the player to do special actions at certain phases of the game, such as moving the wagon an extra space or adjusting the price of one good. The first phase of each round is purchasing, where each player can purchase up to three goods and place them in any of their warehouses. Usually you will want to place your goods in cities where there is a wagon, or where you expect the wagon to arrive this turn. The second phase is a blind bid to determine who is the wagon master for each wagon that is in a city. The wagon master gets to load up to three of his goods into the wagon. The other players then negotiate with the wagon master to allow them to also load goods, but the wagon master can set whatever terms or whatever fees that he'd like. These negotiations can get pretty cutthroat. The third phase is moving the wagons. Each player has 4 tiles with the numbers one through four on them. During the movement phase, each player uses one of their tiles to move one wagon that many spaces. The tile gets flipped over and cannot be used again until a player has used all of his tiles. Also during the movement phase, there is a courier piece on the board which is moved by the player that has the courier special ability. Whenever the courier and a wagon crosses paths, the moving player gets to draw one of the special event cards. The fourth phase is adjusting the price of the goods. There is a place on the board where you keep track of the current buying and selling price of each good. During this phase, each player picks up their secret wheel, which has a picture of all of the goods and two hands. Each player selects two goods, and all of the wheels are revealed simultaneously. Each good goes up one space on the value track for every player that selected it. However, if it reaches the top of the track and gets selected, it goes to the bottom of the track. This results in some second guessing, where players when choose their opponent's goods, hoping to send it over the top. The fifth phase is sellling your goods that arrived in a city this turn. This is fairly straight forward, just look at the price your goods are going for and add the city bonus (which goes up each turn that city hasn't been visited). The sixth phase is maintain and increase prestige. Gaining prestige is the main goal of the game. There is a special prestige track on the board. During this phase you must pay to maintain your current prestige, which gets more expensive the higher you climb. Then you have the opportunity to increase your prestige, which gets more expensive as the game progresses. After this phase you start all over with phase one. This game does an excellent job of combining many different mechanics into a coherent whole. However, the different special abilities don't seem to be very balanced, and there didn't seem to be many crucial decisions. Bill declared that he could tell that he wasn't going to like this game while we were still sorting the bits, and the fact that he wasn't enjoying the game made me enjoy it less than I may have otherwise have done. I'd have to play this again before I come to a firm opinion about it.
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. 2-Everett P. 3-Bill P.
Ratings	Bill P. (3) Todd J. (8) Everett P. (5)
Elfenland
Played By	Bill P. Mike Todd J. Everett P.
Summary	Mike arrived, and Bill had really been wanting to try Elfenland, so we gave that a go. Bill got off to a great start, collecting seven cities on the first round with his 8 cards. However, Todd and I stayed right behind him, and in the end all three of us had visited 19 cities, and I won the tie-breaker by having the most cards left in my hand. While this is a neat little game, I find it a little on the light side. I do prefer playing it with the Elfengold expansion, which adds to the strategical element of the game.
Winner(s)	Everett P.
Finish	1-Everett P. (19) 2-Bill P. (19) 2-Todd J. (19) 4-Mike (17)
Ratings	Bill P. (8) Mike (7) Todd J. (6) Everett P. (7)
Metro
Played By	Bill P. Mike O. Todd J.
Summary	I had to catch the bus, so Bill, Todd, and Mike borrowed Metro. Bill's notes: "Metro-the Very Clever Paris Subway Game. It's unlike any game about the Parisian subway you've ever played."
Winner(s)	Todd J.
Finish	1-Todd J. (81) 2-Bill P. (66) 3-Mike O. (61)
Ratings	Bill P. (6) Mike O. (6) Todd J. (5)

Maintained by John Richards and Everett Proctor.