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Rick Baptist
United States
Redlands
California
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Hi! Remember me?
I must take a moment and thank you for subscribing and reading this blog in its heyday. I really enjoyed it for a time. Oh, the plans I had for this thing! And so I have to apologize for letting it go for so long. Having great plans and then having reality dawn on me so much that I knew those plans wouldn't come to fruition gave me quite the downer. It really came down to this question:
"Do I want to play games or write about them?"
It was getting to be that much of a decision. I liked putting time into the articles and the big plans would have added a LOT more time. But I've come to terms with this whole thing. I love playing games, and I just like writing about them. So when I can write, I will. So on to the next adventure ...
     
So I'd like a vehicle to discuss what I've been playing recently and how I feel about it. The Incredible Rotating Thumb will magically provide me some space to discuss one recent exciting game (the thumb rotates up), one good game with perhaps some flaws (the thumb rotates sideways) and one that comes up less memorable (the thumb rotates down). Now that I'm a full-fledged geek I'm starting to know what I like and putting down a game isn't too hard for me to do these days. At the same time, discovering a lovely gem out of nowhere gets me more excited than anything (well, almost anything). On to the thumbing!
 - Memoir '44 Online
Absolute insanity. Let me just say that Days of Wonder is my favorite board game company. They put out some awesome work. Okay, Cargo Noir wasn't so good. But I love so many of those great, iconic titles. Now, I played a lot of Ticket to Ride online. I don't have an iPad, but if you just discovered the game on there, yeah, I know the feeling. It's a good feeling, right? Days of Wonder did it again with Memoir.
It took them years to program this and it shows. It just works. Great sound effects and music, too. What's more, they give you enough credits right off the bat that you can play literally 50 games without paying a cent. I haven't even gotten to the point where I would have to decide if I wanted to pay for the service, and I've played enough to know that I would. It's just a very intuitive system, user-friendly and a bunch of fun. The online client works without a hitch, it's easy to challenge other users to a game. What's more, it's really reminded me how much I love the Memoir system -- easier to get into than Battlelore, and yet there's a complexity there that I really enjoy. The funny part about all this is that I had absolutely ZERO expectations going into this. I logged onto it pretty late after it was released, even, just to see what it looked like. I'm a believer. It's a blast, and if you enjoy Memoir at all, you owe it to yourself to get online and try this sucker out. Great way to spend 30 minutes to wind down after a long day. A huge, giant thumb up for Memoir 44 Online.
 - Torres
Torres is bordering on the lines of an abstract strategy game, which means that right from the start, it had a disadvantage. My favorite abstracts are thematic ones, like Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (Deluxe Edition) and Taluva, so after reading the theme on this one (the king is dying and he encourages his royal lot to try and build the nicest castle in his name before he croaks, with absolutely no ill will involved) I wasn't too excited or crazed to play. What I discovered from my two plays was an attractive abstract that included some special powers and different ideas that won me over.
Torres has lots of those little castle thingies also seen in Arcadia, and you get a certain amount per round to build with. Players will be building their own castles and are allowed to sneak over to others to "help" build with them, all the while stealing victory points along the way. So there WAS some interaction here, a good amount actually, that was disguised upon first glance. You get the most points for putting your pawn at the highest point of the tower, along with getting points for the size of the castle in width and height. It's rather exciting watching your opponent build a castle up and getting to steal the top point from him next turn after all his hard work!
In the end, I enjoyed the game and would play it again, but decided to let my copy go due to a few flaws. For one, I'm not sure how much "fun" it was. It was interesting to be sure, and a very quality presentation, but I'm not sure I socialize with the correct type of gamers for this game. Another flaw for me was all the points you end up dealing out during the course of the game. Now I'm all for collecting victory points after a round, but counting out and doing tons of math and scoring every round isn't a joy of mine. The scoring track is one of the longest I've seen (look at the track above!) and you're hitting that thing a lot of times. I think we got into the 200s. Perhaps a silly complaint, but there you go.
So Torres gets the awkward "sideways thumb" for today. A good game for sure, and I'd definitely play it again, but just not enough for me to keep in my collection. A true "7" rating if I ever had one. And now for the stinker.
- Navegador
So the only rondel game I've played before this was Finca, and I'm not sure that really counts in the genre. I heard a lot of good things about rondel games, in which you have a wheel of different actions and can move a certain amount of spaces each turn to obtain them (1-3 in this game). It's a swell idea! One look at the board, which is quite stunning, and I went for it. Whoops!
My first mistake was not knowing how much of an economic game this is. Yeah, I'm not a big economic game fan. The first stock market-type game that I played that had a moving monetary value was Hab & Gut, and I thought it was pretty good. The next one I remember was Container, and while I loved the pieces and some of the way things worked, I can't say I was in love with it. So, this one actually intensified what I really don't like about the "moving market" in these types of games. It seemed to me that the market was determined in the first couple of rounds, depending on which good people decided to buy. We played a five-player game, so there was going to be three people getting gold and two people getting sugar at the beginning. Immediately, those two people jumped to the lead and it stayed that way throughout the game. They finished first and second. They were able to generate money quicker and buy improvements. That bugged me.
Beyond all that, though, is just the methodical way I was forced to approach my turn. It didn't really matter what kind of future planning I did, because the market was mostly poor for me by the time it was my turn. And then I was picking about the same actions every time around the wheel ... I haven't been bored with a game for quite a while, and I just don't understand the excitement about this one! I was truly bored by the end and wishing for someone to reach Japan to end the game. A big disappointment and this really sours my ideas to try out Hamburgum (dude on the cover notwithstanding), Imperial, etc.
Unless I missed something here? I'd love to know!
So that's the first of the IRT series -- and we're out for now. See you next time for more discussions.
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