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Madison Board Gamers Session Report,
December 23rd, 2002
written by Everett E. Proctor
Session 24
| Date/Location | 12/23/2002 Memorial Union |
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| Session Length | 270 min. |
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| Attendees | Todd Jensen, Steve Mading, Mike O'Brien, Jenni Friedberg, Everett Proctor |
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| Games Played | King's Gate, Vampire Hunter, Vampire Hunter, Gnadenlos, Gnadenlos, Kohle, Kie$ und Knete, Gargon, Gargon |
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| Summary | Our regular Wednesday session falls on Christmas, but since a Monday night room became available, we were still able to play this week. As expected, with most of the students gone, and everyone else being busy with the Holidays, it was a slow night, with only five of us showing (and Steve not arriving until late). However Mike brought pizza (nyah nyah to those of you who didn't come), and we all had a good time. |
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| King's Gate |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. |
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| Summary | Todd and I were the early arrivals, so while waiting for others to show up, we played one of the new games from Fantasy Flight Games, King's Gate. This is a re-make of Knizia's LOTR: The Kartenspiel, in English. The stripped the LOTR theme from the game (probably for licensing reasons), and changed the cards to tiles. Not having played the card game, I still believe that the tiles work better for laying the game out on the table than the cards would have.
Each player has their own stack of tiles, ranging from 0 to 5 points (with 1s being the most common), from which he draws a hand of 6 tiles. There are 10? city tiles that the players are fighting over. Each turn a player may play one of his tiles to one of the ten spaces around the city tile. Or he may play as many 1 value tiles as he'd like. If the city tile is an unsafe tile (about 1/2 are safe, 1/2 are unsafe), then you may play your tile on top of one of your opponents tiles, as long as your tile has a higher value. Each player also has a dragon tile in their stack, that can be used to discard an opponents tile. The city tiles have 3 values on them, and when a city tile has all 10 of the spaces around it filled in, the player with the highest total value of tiles around it scores the most points, the second highest player score the second points, and the third player scores the third. Some city tiles also award the highest player a special character. These characters can be used later in the game to protect the tile they are played on, and to activate their special ability, which are such things as allowing you to play two tiles, or allowing you to re-use one of your tiles. The last person to fill in the city tile draws the next city tile and places it on the board. You continue finishing each of the city tiles one at a time until all ten are used. The winner is the player with the most points.
This plays like a typical Knizia tile-laying game. Which is good in my opinion. Many of the elements remind me of Samurai (some of the tiles you can play more than one of, and there are special abilities that let you re-use a used tile), but without the fixed board or the funky scoring of Samurai, it is quite different as well.
For the 2-player variant which we played, each player plays two colors. Todd got off to a good start and led the entire game until the last city tile, where I took first place. This tied our scores, and gave me the tie-breaker (which is whoever scored the most points on the last tile). |
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| Winner(s) | Everett P. |
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| Finish | 1-Everett P. (417) 2-Todd J. (416) |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (8) Everett P. (8) |
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| Vampire Hunter |
| Played By | Todd J. Everett P. |
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| Summary | This game is all John's fault. He told me about a sale Shopko was having, so when I was in there last (buying crayons for Funkenschlag), I had to check out their games. I didn't buy any of the one's John bought, as I hope to be able to play those sometime (hint, hint), but he didn't say he bought Vampire Hunter, it looked cute, and it was reasonably priced, so I had to pick it up.
It is pretty light, standard Milton Bradley family game fare, but it does have a neat mechanism. You are supposed to play the game in the dark, with the only light being provided by the tower the game comes with, which shines red (for day) or blue (for night). The board, tokens, cards, and even the die changes depending on whether it's day or night. Secret doors appear and disappear, villagers turn to werewolves, vampires materialize, combat becomes tougher, and you move fewer spaces at night.
Besides the cool night/day changes, the game is pretty straight forward. Your goal is to collect all three weapons (you start with garlic, and must find a sword and a stake) and then go kill the Vampire. However, there is a time limit on this, measured by moving a ship toward the castle. On your turn, the first thing you do is to turn over a card that tells you whether it's night or day. This card also tells you if you need to move the ship forward. Then you roll the die, move that many spaces, and turn over any tokens you land next to. If you're next to a weapon you need then pick it up, if you're next to a monster then fight it. Combat consists of rolling a die that shows either a "HIT" or a skull. On a "Hit" you kill the monster, on a skull you get sent back to the entrance of the room you are in. Once you reach the Vampire, you must beat him three times (once with each weapon) before the ship reaches the castle, then you win.
This isn't a deep strategical or tactical game, but the "board is really cool" (Jenni's quote), and playing in the dark makes it a fun game. Playing it with 2 players, we easily defeated the Vampire before the ship arrived. |
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| Winner(s) | Everett P. |
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| Finish | 2-Todd J. 1-Everett P. |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (6) Everett P. (6) |
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| Vampire Hunter |
| Played By | Todd J. Mike O. Jenni F. Everett P. |
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| Summary | O.K., Vampire Hunter was fun enough, that we played it again later in the evening after Jenni and Mike arrived. This time it was a really close game with the ship arriving after we had defeated the Vampire with 2 of the 3 weapons. |
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| Winner(s) | |
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| Finish | Todd J. Mike O. Jenni F. Everett P. |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (6) Mike O. (5) Jenni F. (5) Everett P. (6) |
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| Gnadenlos |
| Played By | Todd J. Mike O. Jenni F. Everett P. |
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| Summary | Gnadenlos was one of the early Christmas presents I got that I didn't get a chance to play last week. Each player plays a businessman in a Wild West boomtown. You hire characters that have different ratings in three skills: minin', shootin', and gamblin'. Each turn you turn over an action card which tells you which skill area will be contested that turn. Then each player plays one of their characters face down. Once everyone's chosen their characters, you turn them over, and compare their skills in the appropriate area. If you win a minin' contest, you gain the highest amount of gold on the card, and the second place character gets the lower amount of gold on the card. If you win a shootin' contest, you get to take two IOU cards off of the board (more on those later), if you lose a shootin' contest your character gets discarded. And if you win a gamblin' contest you gain a number of prestige points depending on where you are on the track, and if you lose a gamblin' contest, you lose a number of prestige points. No matter which contest you were in, the winning character gets discarded. After the contest, if you have fewer than three characters in your hand, you then have to auction off some of the characters from the deck. You bid on these characters using a set of IOU cards each player has. If you win an auction, you have to put the cards you bid on the board. Once the board has a number of rows equal to the number of players, it's time to pay back your IOUs. A die is rolled, and the farthest IOU in the column is turned over, and the player that IOU belongs to must pay it back with gold he got from minin'. If he can't pay it back then he gets a vulture and loses 5 prestige. The game continues until there have been 7 shoot-outs, someone has 3 vulture, or someone has gained 21 prestige.
During our first game, we all over-bid for the characters, so when it came time to pay back the IOUs, we quickly ran out of money and collected a lot of vulture. The scores represent this, with only Todd ending up with positive prestige. |
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| Winner(s) | Todd J. |
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| Finish | 1-Todd J. (4) 2-Everett P. (0) 3-Mike O. (-5) 3-Jenni F. (-5) |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (7) Mike O. (5) Jenni F. (6) Everett P. (6) |
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| Gnadenlos |
| Played By | Todd J. Mike O. Jenni F. Everett P. |
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| Summary | When we realized that we had over bid in the previous game, we decided to try it again, and did a little better, but we still ended the game by collecting three vulture. Mike got an unlucky start, with 2 of his 3 starting characters getting discarded right away, and with his third character getting discarded for winning a contest. After that he had trouble keeping any good characters in his hand, and had to pay dearly for those that he did get. |
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| Winner(s) | Jenni F. |
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| Finish | 1-Jenni F. (7) 2-Todd J. (3) 3-Everett P. (1) 4-Mike O. (-5) |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (7) Mike O. (5) Jenni F. (6) Everett P. (6) |
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| Kohle, Kie$ und Knete |
| Played By | Todd J. Mike O. Jenni F. Everett P. |
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| Summary | Jenni had heard both good and bad things about K, K, und K, and wanted to give it a try, and Todd and I were more than willing to play it again. I've said pretty much all I've wanted to about this game in the last couple of session reports, so I'll just add some comments Bill had about Mike's comment last week about it being a race for cards:
"Pass this thought onto Mike if you see him before I do- he complains
that there's not enough incentive to not simply draw cards in KKK,
and the dealing really doesn't happen until people have 12 cards. I
disagree. I frequently started deals with fewer cards (once with as
few as three!) Yes, you'll lose some of the deals. You'll keep
most, and they'll tend to be convoluted. But one can make some
really sweet bargains. Even 50-50 splits are all right if you're in
most of them, and the general group think of the game I was in was to
give 1-5 to the extra participants. That adds up fast. I probably
started a third to a fourth of the deals in that game. The scores
show it.
So in short, the incentive to not draw cards is the time and the
potential deal you give up. If you see a sweet deal take it,
otherwise cards are your reward for not trying to make a failed deal."
Our game tonight was an example of this. Very seldom did we wait until we got 12 cards before trying to make a deal. It ended up being a very close game, with both Jenni and myself having $61,000, and Jenni winning the tie-breaker by having 5 cards left in her hand compared to my 4. |
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| Winner(s) | Jenni F. |
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| Finish | 1-Jenni F. (615) 2-Everett P. (614) 3-Mike O. (44) 4-Todd J. (34) |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (7) Mike O. (6) Jenni F. (8) Everett P. (8) |
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| Gargon |
| Played By | Todd J. Steve M. Mike O. Everett P. |
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| Summary | Mike and Todd both had only about an hour left before they had to leave, so after arguing whether or not we could play a game of Evo in that time, we decided to play Gargon, which we knew would be within our time limit. Explaining the rules and playing the game only took about 20 minutes. Mike easily won the first game, as he got 2 of the doublers in two different suits. Steve didn't even draw a doubler. Which brings up one of the main drawbacks of the game: if you are unlucky enough to not draw the doubler cards, then you have almost no chance of winning. In all fairness, this is a problem common with many card games, but seems more annoying in this game as it otherwise involves a good deal of thought during play. |
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| Winner(s) | Mike O. |
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| Finish | 1-Mike O. (81) 2-Everett P. (69) 3-Todd J. (51) 4-Steve M. (50) |
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| Ratings | Todd J. (6.5) Steve M. (6) Mike O. (7) Everett P. (6) |
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| Gargon |
| Played By | Steve M. Mike O. Everett P. |
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| Summary | Todd left, be the three of us left still had time for one more game of Gargon. The game does break down a little with three players, where the second player usually choosing to play colors so that the third player can't play and allowing himself to score all of the cards he did play. In this case, it comes down mostly to whoever draws the best cards, with only a slight bit of decision making on which cards to play. Once again Mike won by getting 4 of the doublers (only one suit with both of them though). |
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| Winner(s) | Mike O. |
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| Finish | 1-Mike O. (120) 2-Steve M. (114) 3-Everett P. (83) |
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| Ratings | Steve M. (6) Mike O. (7) Everett P. (6) |
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