Tiago VIP
Brazil
Will you still look into my eyes with warmth even if you saw my shadows?
How many strips there are?
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55 Magic: The Gathering x 64 Chicago Express
Preliminary Rd 1: d. Yomi - 85 x 36
Comment: Chicago Express steam rolled over poor Yomi, the weakest of the contenders in Pre-Rd 1. Now it has a tougher opponent, can it win again?
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Andrew Kanis
United States
Indianapolis
Indiana
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Bought new and played twice. Everything is in great condition.
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Tiago VIP
Brazil
Will you still look into my eyes with warmth even if you saw my shadows?
How many strips there are?
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64 Chicago Express x 85 Yomi
Comment: Another train game! Can this came ahead of the others? But first it needs to fight Yomi.
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Played this week
Gamestorm madness!
Web of Power x 2
Tower of Babel
Unpublished Prototype
Oregon x 4
Cuba: El Presidente
Arkadia
Chicago Express
Age of Steam Expansion #1: England & Ireland
Kogge
Kardinal & König - Das Duell
Age of Steam Expansion: Mexico & China
Brass
Princes of the Renaissance
Manhattan
Kingdom Builder x 2
Amun-Re
Clippers
TurfMaster
Uptown
Get Bit! x 3
The Resistance
Manila
Texas & Pacific
Taught Web of Power to two new players on two separate occasions, and lost to them both times. Very displeasing, as I fancy myself a strong WoP player.
Met a couple who are friends of friends, and though they are somewhat familiar with boardgaming, the types of games I favor are foreign to them. I thought Tower of Babel might be a nice introduction. The guy part of the couple, in his words, is "a Dominion junkie" and "loves anything medieval and anything by Fantasy Flight". The gal part prefers "fun stuff without calculations". The guy never really caught on to the abstract nature of Tower of Babel scoring. The gal went on to beat us all.
Oregon online against Mikko and Anna, both of them managing to beat me. My reign in jeopardy!
Playing Puerto Rico got my euro juices flowing, and I had a craving to try the Cuba: El Presidente expansion. Plain vanilla Cuba fell kind of flat for me back when we first played it. This expansion certainly adds some other considerations, but the most important is the simplest: Increased game length by two turns. That alone might make it more interesting. We'll see.
A game of Arkadia at yucata with Mikko, and though both of us did some stupid moves, mine must have been less egregious, since I did end up snagging it at the end. Arkadia seems to be pretty good with two.
Gamestorm madness! And for the first couple days of the con, I was on fucking fire, astounding Claudio, Anna, and all other challengers with rampaging victories in 5p Chicago Express, 5p AoS Ireland, 4p Kogge, Kardinal & König - Das Duell, 5p AoS China, and 4p Brass. One of my typical patterns when playing, I've been told, is "whine, whine, whine, win". Well apparently the greater red flag is absence of whining, cause that means I am seriously crushing.
Some of the highlights in these games include:
--Outbidding chief threat Anna for a Locomotive action I really didn't need, essentially destroying her game and driving her to near bankruptcy.
--Raiding a city in Kogge and going on to do a double DP move my next two turns, abruptly ending the game.
--Counting up points in Brass with the dramatic climax of my winning by one point. Can't get that online.
Fortunately, I started losing from here on out, keeping my ego in check.
Though Princes of the Renaissance lasted far longer than normal -- about 5 hours with 5 very chatty negotiators -- it was still very much worth it. One of our most entertaining moments came when three of us colluded to combine Influence currency to secure the attacker and defender roles in a war, only to realize afterward that amidst the discussions, we had inadvertently swapped the roles for our intended actors, giving a result the exact opposite of what we intended. Ha. Damn. The big warmonger in our game came out on top, with me a decent 2nd.
Drunken, late night Godzilla variant Manhattan is starting to become a con tradition with me and the Portland boys. One thing I learned in this session is that I don't really like malty beer. I assumed "malty" meant "toasty, nutty", but it actually means "sweet". I don't like sweet. Still searching for my beer of choice. Here's what I favor, if any of you can help:
Toasty, nutty, roasted flavor.
Low fizz. Even almost no fizz.
Low on the sweet scale.
Not too cold. Even closer to room temp is fine.
Still loving Kingdom Builder, especially when played seriously with three.
Amun-Re with some newcomers, one of which ran out of money early in the first half. Come intermediate scoring, I deflected attention away from me, saying that he (as if!) was actually the one winning. Turns out he was. And he did. I guess the joke was on me.
I have to depend on the kindness of out of town strangers to get in a 5p game of Clippers. Yes, Claudio would have gladly joined in, but he was busy with Indonesia. Clippers is so good. Why does no one locally share my enthusiasm?
TurfMaster is hailed as perhaps the best racing game, bar none. Now that I've finally got a chance to play it, I'm inclined to agree. Granted, when you're trailing behind with no chance, it's a drag. But when you're up front with the leader horses, this game is pure racing tension with the added bonus of very minimal chance effects. Lorna, you have a copy. Let's play!
Tried Uptown with the recommended designer scoring variant. Seems an improvement.
Bottle of wine at our side, we played a few boisterous games of Get Bit!. The best one being when Claudio sat down for our third game, and we decided to not even explain the rules, just tossed him in the deep end and made him figure it out. It was still fun! In fact, even funner! My gag in this game was spreading out my little guy's arms and legs while everyone else had limbs nibbled away by the shark, declaring in whitey gangster voice, "I'm a splaya!"
Anna hates The Resistance. Or maybe she just hates being a spy in The Resistance. Because less than 10 seconds after we all opened our eyes at the beginning and before anyone had said a single word, I (one of the good guys) scanned the table of faces, and immediately correctly detected two of the three spies -- one of which being Anna -- at our table of seven. Anna told me after our Resistance win that she was flabbergasted at my ability to read players.
Claudio has convinced me that yes, there is enjoyment to be had with Manila, a game I rejected after a single play some time back. This one might be about who you play with...
Cruel, nasty 5p session of Texas & Pacific that left one of our players, a chaplain who had just acquired the game, disillusioned at just how unpleasantly cruel and nasty it can be. I consoled him with the suggestion that perhaps the 3p game might actually see trains Go West, especially if the three include more...kind and constructive types. Anna won this holding only two shares. She did manipulate the chaplain, though.
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I think this was the coolest game I've played and the one most outside my comfort zone. When I saw Alastair rifling through this box I bounded over about three tables to get in on it. Then he tried to explain it to me by comparing it to other train games I have never seen. And then Jason wondered over and offered to teach us, paragon of infinite patience he is. The explanation sent me into a stupor reminiscent of my attempts at schooling. Kylie jumped in before the start and once underway it all clicked instantly.
Well, the mechanics did. Despite the best attempts of our tutor the tips for playing competitively were ignored in favour of aggressive refinancing. I was amply warned about the end game scenarios but got a little share price crazy "Oh no! It's the last share in My majority owned railroad! I better put my entire savings into it for future development!"
And the game ended soon after that. Absolutely stunned with this one, I can see how the game could play out in many different ways as people get better. The play flow was so simple and yet so enthralling. I never felt like I was waiting for anyone to go. And the only non-deterministic thing about it was the inner workings of your opponent's minds. I want to play this again!
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Joel Eddy
United States
Coeur d'Alene
ID
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Stop laughing. I'm actually taking this to a family game night tonight. We played it a couple of weeks ago and went over extremely well. There are three possible actions that couldn't be more straight forward.
Yes people may stress about valuing the shares. But, don't let them stress about it. Auctions should be fun. You don't have to win your first time out of the gate. Wait for the second game.
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Jon Ben
Canada
Vancouver
British Columbia
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$35
Queen Games 2008
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Sicaria Occaeco
United States
Salt Lake City
Utah
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Condition:
Very good condition.
Smoke & Pet Free
Version:
Multilingual first edition
Language:
Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Shipping:
Free anywhere in U.S. first $12 anywhere else.
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Bought in the ultracomix store in Nürnberg for 15 Euro (traded away for Hazienda later)
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Dan Goodier
United States
North Smithfield
Rhode Island
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Queen Games Multilingual Edition
Includes Narrow Gauge & Erie Railroad Company expansions
Very Good Condition
Starting bid $15
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Jeff Koenig
United States
Eden Prairie
Minnesota
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Mark M
United States
Florida
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Purchased new and played a few times. Queen games English edition - may have a few other languages in rule book. Will ship to lower 48 only at no cost.
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Sicaria Occaeco
United States
Salt Lake City
Utah
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Condition:
Very good condition.
Smoke & Pet Free
Version:
Multilingual first edition
Language:
Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
Shipping:
Free anywhere in U.S. first $12 anywhere else.
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Lee Ambolt
Sweden
Lund
Skåne
Ingen Reklam Tack!
Linus Per Ambolt 13.12.2010
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Mixed feelings here, we really enjoyed it but we had no idea what we were doing. It works in a way that doesn't match our experience, we had a hard time just stopping to think what it meant to auction a share, who already had one, what happened if I won a 2nd, or if she won the other one, what the dividends would be, what its worth. Of course we also developed loads since we at some point ended up with shares in a company the other one didnt, and apart from track building we thought pushing up value in shares only we had was good. Seems that the expert players NEVER develop haha, and do something called "null auction", which I think means auction action but dont actually auction anything. I havent even begun to get my head round this yet. I really need to sit down and think about it, so I would be happy if anyone wants to shed some basic light on this game without spoiling the strategy. It was nice to play with 2, even though it obviously needs more, its quick, which Petra liked, and its nice to see the trains spread out across the map. We never made it over to Chicago. I played a bit meaner in terms of blocking the routes she was invested in but of course she won.
I am really interested in Paris Connection which I also have but isnt meant for 2, I think I am really falling for these winsome style quick games, I just hope I can get my head round how they work properly to get the most out of them, as I see there's a lot more cleverness going on than I am utilising, and it would be nice to get somewhat competent and play with equally competent opponents to really let the systems shine
A note about graphics though, and again, I have to slightly backtrack here,I think I might agree with ... clearclaw?... I really prefer the minimalist clean look of the Winsome maps, and in fact, I intend to print out my own copies of these maps, colour shaded to my own design and play with wooden cubes or discs and not trains. I think there's something really beautiful about them
I also have a huge amount of admiration for the homemade works of people like Cary (garygarison) and Peter (photocurio)
for example
are you someone who prefers this kind of clean and simple look, or the more lush and busy designs such as Michael Menzel? do you think its game dependent or do you have a strong preference for one or the other? What game do you love despite its graphical design, and what game do you love the look of, even though you dont much care for the game?
I understand that Winsome is a special company and more or less a 1 man job, but I am still not sure I understand the rationale behind artificially limiting the availability of these games. Why not charge a reasonable amount for a PNP hex map, the printable file must exist, its a trivial matter to make this available electronically and trivial for people to use poker chips and wooden cubes for the other bits.
Aside from "that's how they choose to do it", is there any other reason why this is so, is it not... a bit odd, from both a financial point of view, and just from the point of view of spreading the joy of these games to many more people. Is it the hardcore followers of the Winsome sets that want these to be closed group releases? I am having a hard time understanding the motivation for this when it seems such a simple thing to make available to the profit of both the company and the buyers.
your thoughts?
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Andy Evans
United Kingdom
Birmingham
West Midlands
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Don't think I've been to a Rosliston and not played this.
A lot of game in just 1 hour.
Would quite like to give the expansion a go this time round
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Matthew Lake
United States
Rochester Hills
Michigan
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James and I have played this twice. We wanted to try it with more people. It's a "train game" ... but it's really more of an economic game. The whole point is to try and make money buy developing trains like in the "robber baron" days. So you don't play as a train company, but rather a financier who owns a stake in any of the 4 companies in the game and can play with any one he/she owns.
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Tom Russell
United States
Dearborn
Michigan
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I've heard this/Wabash typically plays in about 45 minutes, and that it's a fairly meaty train game, especially given the playing time. I almost bought it, and then the guy at the store, a hardcore 18xxer, said that once you've played it once, there's no need to pay it again, as every game plays exactly the same as the last. I'm probably still going to hunker down and get it eventually, when/if I find myself more fiscally solvent.
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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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Andrew and Scott tend to break out a lot of train games, and this night was no different. I know this was Ethan's first time to play this game, and I do not know about Dan. It looks like Andrew dominated.
Andrew 87
Scott 55
Dan 52
Ethan 38
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Thomas Haver
United States
Columbus
Ohio
www.buckeyeboardgamers.org
www.buckeyeboardgamers.org
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Great gateway in its own genre.
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Give Me Gas In My Ford
United States
Elkhart
Indiana
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I traded Le Havre for this and never played it. Old owner played it a few times. There is some light wear on the rules and box.
Sweetened with Chicago Express: Narrow Gauge & Erie Railroad Company. The expansion has been removed from whatever packaging it came in originally and it now resides in the main game box.
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UA Darth
United States
Garwood
New Jersey
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Can teach in 5 minutes. Deeper than every game put on this list so far.
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Zsolt Szunyoghy
Hungary
Budapest
Unspecified
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Most láttam akciósan a Játékszigetben.
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I will see how that goes before hunting down a G,M and O.
