Games update

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Power Grid

I seem to have let this slip a bit. The Thursday games group met here, as usual these days, and we played my second game of Power Grid: The First Sparks. This did nothing to make me like it more, unfortunately.
I enjoyed the first game and like the nice wooden pieces. This game made me look a bit deeper though and I was less star-struck.

I did far far worse than in my first game (although about keeping pace with most of the others) despite not modifying my strategy. I can only account for the disparity by assuming that luck plays a much bigger part than I first thought.

In the end it was a deserved and run-away win for MaOldie with the rest of us far behind. I would be happy enough to play it again but I'm far less tending towards the desire to own it. I think that Power Grid itself (and its other less radical variants) is a much better game.

Power Grid: The First Sparks

We followed Sparks with some more of Mrwendell and Petra Pan's German buys: Kuhhandel Master and R-Eco. Both were enjoyable light card games...which I lost as usual these days. I never really got to grips with the rules of Kuh especially as far as the trading was concerned. Lots of hilarity though and a game that could well hit the table again with this group I think. Some of the atmosphere of a Bohnanza game I felt. R-Eco is a colourful recycling-based game, really completely abstract. I think I could get to like this one too as it has elements of the traditional card games I've always loved and play flows fast.

This week's Tuesday games day started with another session of Macao, a game both Crabro and myself admire. There is something satisfying about the way the mechanisms fit together and the game moves fast with progress easy to see as the cards are removed from round the board. I think we will have another game of this before long and I wouldn't mind owning it as I think that the Goldstone Gamers might enjoy it too.



Things went downhill a little from there as we tried out one of Crabro's new bargains: Royal Palace. I am at a loss to understand why Renaissance Europe and currying favour with kings and nobles is such an irresistible theme to modern game designers.

In this case it really made very little sense to me but anyway our servants dutifully queued up at the garden gate to woo nobles. We both agreed that it was essentially a good game with an interesting "mechanic" but for some reason it failed to fill either of us with the desire to play it again. In view of this lack of enthusiasm I expect Crabro will sell or trade it. I'm not sure why we didn't like it exactly. It seems popular, the partly modular board and the wooden servant pieces are attractive. You can't love them all I suppose and I'm sure the theme didn't help.


I have been trying to learn Assyria and fear that I may have similar feelings but we will see. One thing's for sure the ancient middle east is another popular theme and seems to appear, as here I suspect, as a thin veneer coating an obvious abstract. I mustn't pre-judge though - I certainly admire Knizia's Euphrat and Tigris.

To take the taste of a less than happy game away, we finished with a filler that is an old favourite that we would be happy to play anytime: Coloretto. I think this resulted in a narrow victory to me but if it did it was the only one of the day as Macao had been a narrow loss and Royal Palace a very clear victory for Crabro.

APPENDIX - Games session of (I think) 3/11/2011

There was a draft report of another games evening about this time floating around and I thought I might as well tidy up by dumping it in here: 

I was given a gift this evening as host of the Thursday games night. MaOldie had brought me back a game from Essen. I was very pleased. It is a Reiner Knizia design formerly known as Botswana but this edition is called, Thor and appropriate name for Thursday.

There were six of us this week and we played some of the Essen plunder brought back by Ma, PetraPan and MrWendell, starting with another crack at Power Grid: The First Sparks.

Once again I managed to get the Fire card and avoiding my food rotting. Unfortunately the way the cards, or my strategy, played out I never had much of it anyway. I had a couple of fields and a plow but failed to get a fishing rod, basket, spear or bow  to get my income to the levels necessary for a winning expansion. As it turned out it was quite a short game and MaOldie won very convincingly with 14 men out when I was only on five.

We then moved on to R-Eco, playing a couple of games of the recycling card game. It flowed quite nicely but the timing seemed to see me missing out repeatedly on decently scoring cards. None of the scores were particularly high I think but mine was one of the lower, if not the lowest ones. An attractive fast moving card game though and one I would be happy to play again.

The same could be said of the last game of the evening, although it didn't always flow as smoothly. I would definitely like another game of Kuhhandler Master as I didn't really get off the ground in this one. It wasn't taken to conclusion after someone noticed that it was well after midnight but I only had two animals so would have been way behind most of the others. It is a strange little card game revolving round collecting sets of animal cards. The auctions and trading make for quite a chaotic game at times but it is a lot of fun and I would like another stab at it now I know it a bit.

Added 23/5/2012 just to be tidy...