Well, we had another great Sunday of board games. Didn't get in a
ton, but having three kids to juggle makes it harder. We did get in
three good games though and I introduced my friend from work to our
wonderful boardgame world.
The first game we played was World Without End by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Sadler and published by Mayfair Games. World Without End is based on the bestselling novel by Ken Follett. And boy, this is a nasty little game, but very innovative. The way you win is by scoring victory points. The best way to score those is to help build different projects in the town by donating building materials to them. Also, half-way through the game, the plague hits and you have to help save people from it for more points.
A lot of wool early on meant no money problems late in the game.
The best part of this game is the first thing you do every turn. You draw a card read the event and deal with it. Sometimes it can be quite nasty and cause you much grief. There are also four icons of different things you can get off this card and an arrow. You orient the card with the item you want pointing at your seated location and then everyone else gets what's on the icon pointed at them. Pretty neat mechanic there. But you also have to pay attention to that arrow, because there's a track at the bottom of the board and the pawn there will move the number of spaces that the arrow is pointing to on the card. There are 4 numbers where you place the card. It will be 0 to 3 spaces and then you get the bonus or negative of the space the pawn moves to. You really have to be careful with this, because there are outlaws on the bottom track that will otherwise take your money. So you may take something you don't want as much, but you avoid losing money.
Mike is quite the charmer, I assure you!
This game was pretty close and I thought for sure my wife was going to
win as she had gotten a ton of points curing people. However, Karen
balanced it all out very well and was able to make some key donations
at the right time. There's tons of other interesting mechanics in this game, but I won't go into them. I didn't do too well at the game, but I didn't do too terrible either. Like I said, a pretty close and evenly matched game here.
Mike, Karen and I would then go on to play Caylus. I had to break this game out as I hadn't played it in a long time and I love it for some odd reason. I can't remember when the last time was that I won. Heck, have I ever won? I had to teach Karen the rules real quick and we're off. Supposedly there are multiple paths to victory in this game, but I always end up going in different directions and not doing any of them well. I always tell myself what I'm going to focus on and then suddenly, oh crap, I need to build part of the castle of lose two
points. Is losing two points that much of a disadvantage? If I took a strategy and stuck to it, I might do fine.
Early on in the game. I just love pictures of Caylus even. Great game!
In this one, Mike was a bit nasty during the first turn with the provost and I'm going to claim that it caused me to lose. But really, building the place where you can buy gold and then letting Mike have the first turn that round and him buying two gold pretty much caused the tide to turn. I thought I should do it, but reality isn't a street on which I travel. I really thought he might ignore it and I could put my money into this thing, net six more points and potentially win. Didn't happen, stupid move, but Mike played well. I still love this game a ton! Other people don't like it as much, but it has some painful, but important decisions to make. I love building things, collecting resources, the pink "meat" cubes, and just the feel of it. Still the best worker placement game there is.
Finally my friend Noah came over. He, my wife, Mike and I played
Stone Age. I figured that Stone Age would be a great intro game for
Noah to play. I think he really liked it too. The rules explanation took a little bit longer than I thought it would, but we dove in with much gusto.
My favorite thing about this game is the dice rolling to collect resources based on the amount of people you have there. It kind of
makes sense, but some bad dice rolls can make things tough. That's
why I usually invest heavily in tools. This game I took the card strategy route and focused specifically on the ones that gave you
points for your food production and the amount of tools you had. Then
I collected the different sets of items as well. I really found that just collecting any card that comes up isn't the greatest idea unless it's cheap. I really focused on just those particular cards and improving in those particular areas. I scored 200 points and left everyone in the dust.
We’re both very deep in thought. Can you tell?
To be honest, some of it fell into my lap. Some people weren't focusing on increasing their food production and I would usually get the cards early that allow you to roll the dice to get a random item and improving tools and cultivation that way as well. Noah went towards more of a construct huts area and did pretty decent at that. My wife had to put the boys to bed so she had Karen take over for her. To say that Becca left Karen in a bit of a car wreck was an understatement. Mike had some decent points in the end, but not
enough to counter my insane point run. I think it got Noah interested
in the type of board games I play, which is good.
After that Mike and Karen left. Noah and I went through some Heroclix
duplicates he brought and sold me some on the dirt cheap side of
things. Now I can amass some decent themed teams. I was pretty
excited to get Black Flash and Flash from the Justice League set. I
love my speedsters! Beta Ray Bill is definitely sweet as well. The
next day my awesome wife who is getting out of scrapbooking cleared
out her scrapbook cart for me to use for my Clix. They sit in there
pretty well. So thanks to my wife for helping out there! How awesome
is that?
So Sunday was a pretty excellent day for fun and gaming. I, at least,
won a game. I'm hoping to get Noah addicted to gaming in general so I
can add more people to this excellent hobby. Now I just need to hook
more new people.
Looks like you guys had a great sunday afternoon of fun family board games. With all this technology out there it's nice to see people are still out there enjoying boardgames especially instant classic board games such as Caylus. Love that game!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing - keep the board game fun alive!
Mark! Your blog is getting spammed you have finally made it!
ReplyDeleteAt least he read the article. That's what I care about in the end. But my blog is starting to get more visibility, which is nice. It takes more work than you would think.
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