How are the Mighty Fallen

over Niagara in a canoe...

Saturday games this time involved two of my more recent acquisitions, both light and attractive "Eurogames": Deadwood and Niagara.

Unlike my first playing of Deadwood (which bills itself as "A Game of Wild West Duels") this time there were actually some gunfights. Though none of them were initiated by me, I did manage to put a couple of cowboys in boot hill.

The game is very simple but took us all a little while to grasp. It takes place in a growing town and one has to lay and exploit various building tiles as the railroad heads towards town to bring prosperity to Deadwood.

The gameplay can be summed up as place or remove cowboys but this is complicated by the variable effects of taking over (annexing in the words of the rulebook) different buildings. It was this aspect and learning the meaning of the iconography used on the building tiles that took a little while to master.

In the end my skilful gun-play (or lucky die rolls) did not result in my being king of Deadwood and while I made the move that ended the game it turned out that I was only the kingmaker who crowned Paultro in his first victory of the evening.

Deadwood not being a big game (though perhaps too meaty to be described as a filler) we had plenty of time for a game of Niagara. This was new to the Goldstone Gamers but they picked it up quickly. Perhaps more than can be said of me as I forgot that I wasn't my customary blue and carefully made plans based on that erroneous assumption which when used on my actual green canoes resulted in disaster.






Indeed, there was a great deal of over-the-falls action in this game but then that is half the fun and what the "moving river" design of the game is all about. It was a lot of fun and I still managed a respectable haul of gems which would have resulted in a win on the next turn if it hadn't been for Paultro skilfully obtaining one of each type of gem and winning again.