Billabong Boardgamers - 17th October, 2000
Present: Doug, Janet, Alan, Asher, Julian, Debbie, Donna, Craig
Doug Adams writes:
HELLRAIL 2nd ED
Asher, Janet, Julian, Doug
What an unusual little game! The immediate impression is that it's a tiny card game and I guess that's not far from the truth. This one is a bit of an enigma clouded in mystery.
We run railroads in Hell - straight from Dante's Divine Comedy. The nine circles of hell are railroad "stations" deployed on the table as cards. Our object is to connect these cards up with track and run trains across them in the hope we can pick up/deliver passengers for points.
The playing deck of around 50 cards is cleverly designed. Almost too clever! Each card can be used as:
- track, removing it from the deck and possible reshuffles
- movement, to move your train
- passengers, with pickup/dropoff/points for delivery information
- redraw, discard to draw the "brimstone" number of new cards into your hand
There may be even another function of cards, but it escapes me at the moment.
Play is very free-form. You may play as many cards as you like, in any order, however if you redraw then you must end your turn. Chaos is injected in the form of circle events - when you enter a circle you may choose to invoke the event which can lead to nasty suprises and the dreaded derailment.
Janet began and suprised us all by moving to circle 1 and playing the 2 point "deliver from 1 to 9" passenger onto her train. For two points? :) Asher delivered a passenger on his first turn, banking five points. From that point on, the game slowed down as a lot of track was played to the "board" and various chaotic circle events were invoked. Julian quickly picked up on the fact that ending a turn by not fanning the flames (redraw) is a bad idea, as it leaves you very card poor.
As we all bumped along, not really sure how to interpret the game, Doug rumbled into circle 6 and dropped off two seven point passengers, to join his six point delivery earlier. Holding a couple of lucrative "pickup at circle 3" passengers, on his next turn Doug slapped down three track segments to like circle 3 and 6. A quick fan the flames emptied the deck, giving Asher nothing to draw at the beginning of his next turn. As far as we could tell, that ended the game - rather an anticlimax!
Doug: 20
Janet 15
Julian: 12
Asher: 9
I'm not really sure what to make of this. Ingenious, but rather light. I think we were all expecting more "game value" from the clever mechanics and interesting setting. I think the game would improve as a three player game, as I felt as though we only had five or six turns each. I give it a tentative 5, but it needs a bit more investigation.
Julian Warner writes:
OHNE FURCHT UND ADEL
A game which is difficult to say and which I had trouble translating using my rather inadequate pocket German dictionary.
Played by: Alan, Asher, Janet & Julian
Although the box for this game contains only a few cards and some "gold" chips, there was a lot more complexity to this game than I first expected. You start the game with just three cards. Someone gets to be Koenig (Yes - King but we all understand basic German don't we?) and you get to choose a "character" but the Koenig gets to choose first.
The basic idea is to build a city of eight buildings, with cards representing individual buildings. Each building costs a certain amount of gold to build (from 1-6 chips) so you have to get gold to do this. On each turn, you can either take two gold to spend as you please or take two cards from the top of the deck and return one. You undertake whatever actions are available to your specific character and you may build one building at the end of your turn. At the end of the game, points are scored for buildings in terms of cost to build with bonuses for having buildings of each of the five possible colours and for having built 8 buildings. As everyone gets a turn in the final round, it is possible for more than one person to build all eight buildings.
The complications in the game arise from the different abilities of the individual characters and the order in which they are played. The characters are Assassin, Thief, Preacher, Magician, King, Merchant, Architect and Mercenary. Some earn extra gold, some have abilities which negate others', some get extra cards or swap cards etc. The King is powerful in getting to choose a new character first but can be easily negated in effect by the Assassin, who can "kill" one character per turn (i.e. that person does not get a turn). However, as characters are revealed strictly in turn, you do not know exactly who you will affect by your actions - you have to guess to a degree.
In our game, the Assassin wreaked the most havoc - Janet being a favourite victim - and hence she was the person who lost the most opportunities to build. She came last. There is a certain amount of luck in the cards you are dealt - particularly if you get two of the same type of building as you cannot build two identical buildings. Getting new cards is slow except for the Architect. As the Magician, you can swap cards with someone else but you may get their rubbish instead. The slowest part of the game was the agonising over which character to choose each turn. Once that is done, play is quite simple and fast and fairly vicious. The purple buildings have special abilities and there seemed to be some advantage in getting some built early on - but you had to be dealt them. Gold gets spent very quickly and there was rarely much lying around for the Thief to steal - making it a fairly weak character.
Our game started fairly evenly as we all tried to keep each other at level pegging for the first three buildings or so but Alan and I managed to jump to five buildings quickly and were both theoretically in a position where we could win in a single turn with enough gold and with the Architect's special ability (to build up to three buildings in a turn). However, this would have required having exactly the right cheap building cards as well. Asher managed to sneak up to five buildings while I wasn't really paying attention and started to look dangerous as well.
Alan was first to build eight buildings (despite the usual mid-game w****e or three) and I was able to get to my eight as well. At the end I just pipped Alan on points for the value of buildings. I was a bit puzzled by a rule which prevents the destructive mercenary from wrecking the buildings of a person who has built their eight - this had the effect of victimising the lesser players in the last round - and hence Asher ended up with a smaller score than he might otherwise have had.
I'd like to try this game again but I have no confidence that I would be as lucky next time.
Julian: 29
Alan: 26
Janet: 22
Asher: 18
RAZZIA
(Italian for "Raid" but it can also mean "insect-powder"!)
Played by Alan, Asher, Craig, Doug, Janet & Julian.
Most definitely a "Beer & Pretzels" game. Differing amounts of money are gambled at different coloured nightclubs. Each player gets to simultaneously reveal a card on each round. If they play the highest point gambler of a particular colour, they get to keep the money gambled at the club of that colour. However, if a cop card is played, the cop takes the money from the gambler. A cop played on a club with no gamblers gets no money. Where there is competition between gamblers or cops at a particular club, the higher value cop or gambler gets to propose a profit-sharing deal which the junior parties can either humbly accept or have a shoot-out with dice (of course!) Basically, it's a slightly more complicated version of Paper, Scissors and Stone. There are more gamblers than cop cards and the cop cards seemed to have the edge in taking the best earnings. Because you have to have a card of the right colour to play on the right club, there were occasions when the club with the most money had no cards played on it and the money jackpotted to the next round. There were very few upsets in the shoot-outs and basically the high number cards took the bucks. No skill required I suspect.
Final results in thousands of dollars (or Lire?):
Julian: 345
Alan: 325
Janet: 275
Asher: 270
Doug: 240
Craig: 225
(I suspect that I should never play any game more than once so that the beginner's luck doesn't run out. Having played Rail Baron countless times simply means that I have lost at Rail Baron more times than the average bear - er game player.)
Alan Stewart writes:
MU
Craig, Alan, Janet, Julian, Doug
Craig 5 (partner) +21+30=56 (chief)
Alan 24+15=39 (vice) +11 =50 (vice)
Janet 5-30=-25 (chief) +10+30=15 (partner)
Julian 19+15=34 +0 =34
Doug 7+15=22 +18 =40
Game called on account of time.
Debbie Pickett writes:
ACQUIRE
(Debbie, Craig, Donna, Doug)
I tend to be notoriously bad at this game, usually getting involved in a battle for the majority of shares in the first company that finds its way on to the board. This time it was no exception, and as a result I became practically broke partway through the game. The same fate befell Craig, whose money was largely locked up in the shares of just two companies, one of which was safe from almost the start of the game.
Doug and Donna, on the other hand, were getting a huge turnover throughout the game, building and merging lots of medium-sized companies and making a stack of cash.
The only saving grace for me was that I managed to start the first four companies on the board, earning me several free shares as the founder's bonus. In the end, that was what made all the difference: Craig and I got huge payouts for our locked-in safe stock.
Final scores:
Debbie $51 300
Craig $50 300
Donna $40 200
Doug $27 400
My rating: No one was more surprised than me at this victory. It just goes to show how carefully the payout table has been crafted. I give this game a 7, which by my scale is a game that I'll usually play quite happily if someone suggests it, and one that I'll sometimes suggest myself.
TWILIGHT
(Debbie/Alan, Craig/Donna)
Crazy. That's what I must be for wanting to play a trick-taking game with the great triumvirate of M? players at Billabong. But this is no ordinary trick-taking game. In fact, apart from the fact that it involves taking tricks, "trick-taking game" is a somewhat inappropriate term for Twilight, since it is so different from anything that we've ever played before.
In this partnership game, each side has a deck of 14 cards, with each side having different backs on them (sun and moon). Some (the soul cards) are low in value during trick taking, but high during scoring. Some (the various cleric cards) score only one point at the end of the hand, but are more powerful in taking tricks. The third category of cards (the sanctuaries) have the effect of multiplying your side's score by a factor of between one and six (and if you don't capture any of them, your score is multiplied by zero!). Finally, each side has one card - the purgatory - which holds the current trick until the next trick is played out, the winner of the second trick getting all the spoils.
Now, it would be too simple to give each team its own cards, and Twilight doesn't disappoint. All 28 cards are shuffled, and dealt at random, seven each to a player. All you know about the other players' cards is what you can tell from the back of the cards - how many suns and how many moons. When it is your turn to play a card, you either play one yourself - of the kind matching your side (sun or moon), or you ask any of the other players to play one for you, out of their own hands! It's this last bit that makes Twilight so totally strange to play. The cards you have in your hand may not even be playable by you, since they are for your opponents' side. Instead you have to wait until your opponent asks you to play one for them. Tough luck if it's the highest card in the deck and it's the only card you've got!
We really didn't have much idea of strategies in our game, as witnessed by the huge score shifts in the game. I was starting to get some ideas by the end of the game. I think a lot of the game has to do with signalling to your partner what kinds of cards you have - which isn't always easy since you only have seven cards to start with. A lot of it is also knowing when to throw the opposing valuable cards and when to put out the vulnerable low-ranking sanctuary cards. Another big thing that probably changes the entire way the game is played is how many of your cards are your own (and thus cards you want to capture) and how many are your opponents' (and thus cards you want to be tossed away).
Our random walk through scoreland ended with Craig and Donna slightly ahead:
Alan/Debbie 141 + 318 + 84 + 26 + 0 = 569
Craig/Donna 52 + 14 + 195 + 34 + 300 = 595
My rating: I think this game probably has a limited playing life, but it isn't over yet. I especially want to learn more of the tactics in the game. I give it a 6 for the moment.