quelf elf
Spain
North Pole
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It really works!
RE is one of the few games I rank a 10.
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Ian Harris
United Kingdom
Chester-le-Street
County Durham
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I've read and re-read the rules, downloaded the simplified help sheet, watched all the videos, and I still can't get my head around it.
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Tegs
Australia
Canberra
ACT
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This is my favourite game, and something I'd recommend to you as fitting your preference as 'Medium complexity', 'High Depth'.
The complexity probably feels high in the first game, but that's just a matter of having a lot of options of things to do, and not really knowing why you'd do them until you're familiar with the strategies. As the depth becomes apparent, the complexity goes down, as it alls starts to make sense.
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Tegs
Australia
Canberra
ACT
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I bought it because I like the biological theme and the lovely artwork.
I had absolutely no idea it would go on to be my No. 1 favourite game.
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Jens Granseuer
Germany
Frankfurt am Main
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Games played
Monday
_6_ Babel (new!)
_8_ Commands & Colors: Ancients
Wednesday
_6_ Airships
_8_ Reef Encounter (new!)
Thursday
_6_ 7 Wonders x2 (with _5_ Leaders (new!))
_6_ Flash Point: Fire Rescue (new!)
_6_ Ghost Stories (new!)
Friday
_7_ 1870
Saturday
_6_ Brawl (new!) x2
_4_ Island Trader (new!)
_7_ Lancaster
_8_ Reef Encounter
Quite a few new games this week.
Babel is quite a confrontational Kosmos 2p game which is somewhat unusual. It's also fairly light and quick. I'd say it occupies pretty much the same gaming space as King of Tokyo does (just swap out dice for cards), but does so in much more interesting ways because it actually allows for clever play instead of rolling well. Of course that doesn't mean the cards cannot screw you over (they will).
C&C: Ancients is one of those games that I don't get to play as often as I'd like, and if I do it's very often with new people so I often restart from the beginning. I've never actually managed to go beyond the second scenario so far. At least my opponent this time seemed to like the game so I'm somewhat hopeful that I'll get to the third eventually.
Reef Encounter had been sitting on my shelves unplayed for about 1.5 years so it was about time to pull it out. I'm glad I did. I found it highly opaque on first play (I lost very badly) and it seems to be gouverned by butterflies (jellyfish?) more than I'd have expected but it was very enjoyable. And fairly short, too, which is a nice bonus and likely improves the chances to get it played again soon-ish. The second game we played on Saturday even prompted me to raise my initial 7 rating by another point.
7 Wonders: Leaders is nice in that it provides some strategic focus that was missing before, but not so nice in that it (potentially) makes starting positions rather more imbalanced. Not really necessary, but not necessarily bad, either.
The cooperative duo of Flash Point and Ghost Stories proved too tough for us. In Flash Point the building collapsed on us just as we were carrying the last victim towards safety. It was particularly terrible because we were only playing the family rules (which clearly was a mistake; they are very snoozy. The advanced rules open up a lot more options and seem like the only way to play). In Ghost Stories it looked pretty good until shortly before the final battle. As soon as that had started, however, some unrelated hauntings quickly killed off two of the Taoists and we had to abandon the village. So close...
The play of 1870 saw a rare (for our group anyway) occurrence: The final 5T (non-permanent) was never bought, and the game ended with the 3Ts still running. It was fairly obvious who was winning, but he would have been in the best position if the bigger trains had hit, too, and everyone else would have taken a huge (and likely fatal) hit by buying the last 5T, so nobody did.
Brawl is a cute real-time fighting game. I like that it's not just about mindlessly slapping cards down faster than your opponent, and also that it's over after a minute or two. 
Lancaster is another game I promoted after the session on Saturday. What can I say, I'm feeling generous right now. I blame the fantastic spring weather.
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Adam Skinner
United States
Seven Hills
Ohio
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You ain't playin' in your own sandbox here, baby.
You are constantly guarding against attacks by your opponent. Since each piece that you score is valued based on color, and you can modify that value and even lock it in before the game ends, there is fighting on multiple fronts.
It's actually pretty similar to...
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David Call
United States
Mesa
Arizona
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I have 3 salt water fish tanks.
1 with corals
1 with Fish and corals
1 with seahorses
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Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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Against the only game featuring wooden prawns I think!
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Corey Ellis
United States
Gainesville
Florida
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I know Kevin should be up for playing this. I haven had it on my want to play list for a while.
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Jason Santos
United States
Norton
Massachusetts
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Opened but unplayed. Z-man edition.
Free shipping in the Con US, first $10 to Canada, AK, HI.
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John Gallant
Canada
Musquodoboit Harbour
Nova Scotia
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Edition: Z-man Games English Edition
Condition: Contents opened and organized, but not played. Comes from pet and smoke free home
Shipping: will ship for free to Canada and I will pay the first $10 to anywhere in the world. The remaining shipping cost will be sent to me by receiver via paypal, at which time game will ship
BGG Description: Reef Encounter is about life on a coral reef! Using polyp tiles, players grow different types of corals, which they can protect from being attacked by other corals through judicious placing of their four shrimp counters. To be successful players must consume polyps from neighboring corals in order to acquire the 'consumed' polyp tiles that are the key to the game. The consumed polyp tiles have a myriad of uses (and have a similar effect to the action points in games like Tikal and Java). Most importantly they can be used to flip over or lock the coral tiles, which determine the respective values of the different types of coral at the end of the game.
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Sheldon
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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Purple shrimples
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Maarten D. de Jong
Netherlands
Zaandam
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I figure this list could do with some wetness, it's drydrydry out there, with the occasional green sprig struggling in the scorching heat... Apart from that this game is totally awesome, of course.
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Andrew Bond
United Kingdom
Banstead
Surrey
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Report to follow ...
I have the sheet with the scores on it. Unfortunately, it got soaked in the massive rain storm that occurred just as I got out of my car last night (amazingly, it was very localised to where we live - you may not have had the rain storm near you).
Anyway, the scores are not really readable anymore. They appear to be:
1. AndrewB2 score = 165000
2. Andrew-007 score = 31
3. Gordon score = 1
That sounds about right.
As the newbie to this game (and noting that AB2 has only played once before), I naturally decided to watch Gordon's play carefully and try to match him step-for-step.
Gordon played tiles, I played tiles. AB2 played tiles.
Gordon took tiles, I took tiles. AB2 played tiles.
Gordon passed, I passed. AB2 played tiles.
Wait ... someone seems to have a lot of tiles on the boards. And it isn't me (or Gordon).
Gobble, gobble, tiles consumed, colours locked, game over. By the time I had realised that following in Gordon's footsteps was a less-than-optimal approach to this game, AB2 had more purple, more orange, more everything on his score-box for me to recover.
Actual scores:
1. AndrewB2 65  
2. Andrew-007* score = 31
3. Gordon score = 18
*first time
Would definitely playe again, but may choose different player to follow
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Jack Kaye
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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Game Condition:
Excellent.
Box Condition:
Excellent other than a really minor lip along one about one third of one edge of the bottom of the box.
Version/Language Info:
R&D Games / English and German.
Shipping Policy:
Free to the U.S. and the first $10 elsewhere.
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robert cabrera
United States
Chesterfield
Virginia
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Z-Man edition (English)
Like new, played once
Free shipping to US
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M C
United States
Orem
Utah
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Z-man games edition, in shrink. Will cover shipping to the continental US, Alaska and Hawaii pay the difference.
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Nathan Rhodes
United States
Gainesville
Florida
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His scowl and scepter
Frighten all the French children
Prominent cheekbones
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Jens Granseuer
Germany
Frankfurt am Main
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Maybe we should have an outage more often so other people get a shot at the first page on this list...
Reef Encounter spent one and a half years on my shelf before I finally gave it a shot...
Reef Encounter (2 plays) - _8_
Reef Encounter is a tough clam to crack. The innocent, cutesy theme hides a pretty intense knife fight on the ocean floor. Direct conflict, resource management, and timing issues are the components which, looking at them in isolation, are fairly easy to grasp. In combination, however, they prove quite challenging. The final outcome of a game of Reef Encounter seems to be the result of a flock of butterflies flapping their wings (or maybe I should say jellyfish swaying their tentacles in order to not destroy the imagery). How to get them to sway in a way that benefits you is not something that is immediately apparent after the first play. An opaque and highly unusual game.
The Princes of Machu Picchu (2 plays) - _7_
Whatever your opinion of The Princes of Machu Picchu, there is no denying that it is a fairly unusual resource management game.
The centerpiece (and also the single most controversial game element) is the scoring that differs significantly depending on which of the two ending conditions is met. The major points of contention seem to be how well players can actually engineer a particular ending, and that the multipliers for the Conquistadors scoring are essentially based on hidden information. In both cases, experienced players seem to say there is no problem. I'll take their word for it right now, but I do have to admit I'm not totally convinced of it myself although the outlook is positive after the second play where we could have deflected the Spaniards fairly easily.
Babel (1 play) - _6_
Babel is an unusually aggressive game in the Kosmos two-player series. There is plenty of direct conflict and many of the special actions only exist to help you tear down the sand castles your opponent built. In addition, defensive options are severely limited and largely ineffective so in this case the best way to defend really is to attack.
Turns are very tactical, with the immediate actions often very much dictated by the card draws but that's not to say that amidst all the chaos and the collapsing temples a superior long-term strategy is entirely without its merits.
Brawl (2 plays) - _6_
Brawl is a cute real-time fighting game. I'm not usually a fan of (nor a challenge in) that sort of games but Brawl is good fun nevertheless, mostly because it isn't just about brainlessly slapping down cards the fastest. There is a good deal of interaction between the different cards, providing ways to annoy your opponent with clever plays, and even if things don't work out the fight is over after a minute or two. For a very quick match every now and then, this is pretty good stuff.
Ghost Stories (1 play) - _6_
Ghost Stories isn't all that different from most other cooperative games. There is a threat (evil spirits in this case) that increases as the game moves along. If the players get their priorities right and aren't too unlucky in their card draws and dice rolls they will likely beat the challenge.
The theme carries over pretty well in this one, but it is lacking a game arc apart from what the randomly drawn cards provide. Actions available to the players stay pretty much the same throughout. Admittedly, that is another trait that it shares with many other coops.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue (1 play) - _6_
While the family game is hardly worth playing, the advanced game feels fairly similar in style to Pandemic, including various specialists and attempts to put out fires wherever they flare up (more literally, however).
Yet another cooperative game that draws its pull more from the thematic integration than its novel gameplay. Quite a hoot for puzzle fans, I would expect.
D-Day Dice (1 play) - _5_
D-Day Dice may well be the best and most variable of the Yahtzee clones, although that is obviously not saying too much. It's quite challenging, often requires going after specific results, and still provides several different options to pursue.
Calling the game "cooperative" is quite a stretch, however. While there are very light interactive elements it's still predominantly a solitaire dice roller. And it does have player elimination which can be a bit of a pain even when a game doesn't last longer than 20 or 30 minutes.
Lübeck (1 play) - _5_
Light hand management game with a heavy dose of luck. Players steer trading vessels across the Baltic Sea and parts of the North Sea. The ships are moved along predetermined paths by playing a destination card for the next stop. Those cards are received in a mandatory draft at the beginning of a turn, and this is where the game is decided. On the one hand you need to get cards to advance your own (possibly shared) expeditions, on the other hand you don't want cards you won't be able to play in a somewhat timely manner since all cards you need to discard because of exceeding the hand size limit score negative points.
The game does allow for some clever play but there is very little you can do when the cards or the turn order conspire against you.
Island Trader (1 play) - _4_
Island Trader is effectively a pretty solitaire resource optimisation puzzle. Interaction is limited to supplying islands before your opponent can but while this is not entirely unimportant the easily dominating factor is the luck of the draw. If you don't get the goods you need for trading with an island (ideally without having to overpay too much) there is nothing you can do about it. Despite the very simple rules the need for optimisation can easily lead to overly long downtime.
New expansions
7 Wonders: Leaders (2 plays) - _5_
On the plus side, the leaders provide players with a strategic goal to pursue which is something has has been largely missing in the base game. The various leader abilities are fairly interesting and add a bit of variability.
The disadvantage, then, is that there is practically no influence on the initial leader draft, and players who, through no particular fault of their own, end up with a powerful combination of leaders have a definite edge over those who don't.
In short, the leaders add more strategy and variability at the cost of less balanced starting positions.
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austin power
Canada
Chambly
Québec
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Mario Pawlowski
Germany
Witten
Unspecified
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French / Dutch version. Components are language independent.
English rules are available on the geek.
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The mechanics! The theme! The shrimples!
One of the deepest games, in all senses of the term.
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Guido Gloor
Switzerland
Ostermundigen
Bern
The statement below is false.
The statement above is correct.
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English edition. I traded this for my Dominion set, which appears to have been a good trade for my partner so I'm happy with it. However, I'm not sure why I wanted this game in return, because it feels a bit too abstract for my taste
Condition: Seems perfectly fine, very minor wear. I never played it myself, but it was played by the previous owner.
Language: English
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Gordon Watson
United Kingdom
Banstead
Surrey
Beneath this mask there is an idea.....and ideas are bulletproof.
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With Chris and Russell in Middle-Earth and Gary setting up Ticket to Ride, a game I like with the family but find slightly on the light side, I suggested Reef Encounter. Andy B, Mark and Andy, none of whom had played before, joined me.
This game is a bit of an odd fish (groan) - it's a brain burning abstract which has wonderful artwork themed on a tropical reef, but which doesn't really match the mechanics. This can make picking up the game a bit difficult as the function the pieces serve is not obvious - what does a Larva Cube or an algae cylinder actually do?
The actual game mechanics are very good with a fair few moving parts all integrating to create some interesting decisions and tactics.
Essentially you are trying to deploy and control different groups of coral onto the board, and then defend enough of them (using shrimps, obviously!)to allow your parrot fish time to consume them for points. Along the way you can attack other groups of coral, and use captured coral, to manipulate the relative values of the coral colours - this affects both the strength of coral in relation to each other and how much the coral is worth in victory points at the end.
It takes at least half a game to start to get your head around what you need to do, so I suspect I was leading at half-way. However with 4 players it's quite hard to control the sea-board, which holds the relative coral strength tiles, and Andy-B was able to finish the game by grabbing some orange tiles and then bump their value as VP's. Andy was also catching up strongly but was slightly caught out by Andy-B finishing the game when he did. I think for the first time I remember Mark kept saying he'd just made a mistake and then didn't end up winning the game.
Andy-B* 40 (8.5)
Gordon 35 (9)
Andy* 33 (8)
Mark* 25 (7.5)
*=first game.
I really like this - it probably plays a little better with 3 - not quite so much down time and the board doesn't change so much between plays. Definitely worth a play.
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