Billabong Boardgamers - 7th November, 2000
Present: Alan, Debbie, Andrew, Donna, Craig, Karen, Janet, Doug, Steve
Doug Adams writes:
A pleasure to catch up with Karen from Seattle again...
LORD OF THE RINGS
Andrew (Frodo), Janet (Pippin), Steve (Fatty Bolger), Doug (Sam), Donna (Merry)
When a classy game designer collides with my favorite novel you end up with a pretty interesting game, at least to me :) Five players representing the "conspiracy" hobbits must pool resources (cards), navigate their way across four game boards and dump the ring in the magma of Mordor. Several Knizia features were recognised - the thrifty card management of Taj Mahal, the dreaded Ra tile draw (although here it is the dreaded "event"), and so on.
Players set out from Bag End, each with six precioussss cards. If Frodo wants to dally until September 22nd, then four more cards are dished out to the company, but the Black Riders romp into Hobbiton via a roll of Sauron's dice. The dice does horrible things five times in six - sending the hobbits along the Honeybears track of destruction 1, 2, or 3 spaces, or sending Sauron along the same path in the opposite direction. If hobbits and Sauron meet, then we get very tiny black riders terrorising the good folk of the west. If the Ringbearer meets Sauron, it's game over, and the bad guy wins.
From Bag End, Rivendell is reached in a matter of seconds. A little tooling up is completed courtesy of such goodies as Anduril, etc, a quick Council of Elrond (swap a card with each other), then all the hobbits must prove their faith by forming the Fellowship and discarding a handshake card - if they can't/don't then it's the dreaded dice of Boromir. Once this hobbit bonding has been completed, it's just a short patter of furry feet into Moria, and that's where the game, and our story, really begins.
The four boards, Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair and Mordor, are essentially a race. You have to get the party across them before the events swamp you. The events are drawn from a pool of tiles - some events can be prevented, some can be fought, etc. They are nicely weighted so they get nastier as the board progresses. If you hang around on a board, the events catch you.
So why hang around? Resources! If you do nothing on your turn you may either draw two precious cards, or "uncorrupt" yourself by retreating from Sauron. If you do play cards, but not on the main Activity track (the exit path from the board), then you most likely gain life tokens. These are needed to stave off corruption at the end of each scenario, and are limited. What do you do? A delicious problem...
We green Hobbits found Moria really tough, and didn't think we'd get very far at all in this game. But Hobbits are made of a stuff so tough, I have never seen the like. The tile draws were very unkind to us in Moria, and we ended the scenario board by completing all the events. We quickly realised Events = Bad, and we also quickly realised Pippin was one obstinate little hobbit. Young Peregrin was not willing at all to take one "for the team". Four weary hobbits were already on the 4 or 5 spaces of the Honeybear Track of Darkness, while Pippin the Younger was still frollicking on zero! Pippin received a fatherly lecture on hobbit values, then it was on to Lothlorien.
Lothlorien! Tons of cards, and as much lembas as a dwarf could eat. We brushed past the mirror of Galadriel and plunged into the Helm's Deep board. This time, we read the fine print and planned our assault. The event tiles cooperated and soon we had board complete, with the hordes of Rohan with us. We exited the board via the main Activity track, and we smiled, and many lines of care were smoothed away and did not return.
Shelob - an evil thing in spider form. This was a tense board, with players beginning to cooperate more as our cards were whittled away. The first four events appeared which severely weakened our defenses, but Merry the Ringbearer slipped the ring on and got us over the nasty spaces 46 and 47 (both dice of Sauron). We exited the board before the Shelob event (a real nasty looking one) caught us.
Mordor - a truly awful board and we were in an awful state. Merry (Donna) was holding the ring but looking very vunerable. Twice we committed resources to move Merry away from Sauron on the Honeybears track. The rest of the hobbits were very close to Sauron on the Honeybears track and the ring was getting heavy. The events quickly rattled through to the fourth event, and we were in serious trouble - time to call on Gandalf (which we hadn't used, perhaps foolishly). We hit the "Surrounded by Dark Forces" event, which Gandalf/Fatty protected us from. Then Frodo asked Gandalf to stack the tile draw, and at that point we realised we only had three turns to go... the third tile was going to take us to "THE RING IS MINE" and end the game (which the rules mention nothing about!). We stumbled to space 57, three from the end, then Merry slipped on the ring - it was our only chance to try and reach the elusive space 60 for the big slam dunk of the doughnut. Donna/Merry rolled three black circles, succumbed to the dark lord, and went screaming off down the Honeybears track past Sauron. Game over with the hobbits gaping after Merry, stuck on space 57.
We played badly, we admit it. We burnt our really good cards very early, we played Moria badly concentrating on us as individuals rather than making progress across the board. The "Faces of the Dead" event sucked away our precious Gollum card, hard earned the prior event, etc. That young scamp Pippin acted as if it was his own hobbit walking party, grabbing three heart life tokens on one board!
Very interesting game, tense, seems to capture the "meek against the mighty" of the book really well. While I can spot mechanics from other RK games, it really has it's own unique feel. For what it's attempting to do, it does well. I enjoyed it - initial rating 8.
STEPHENSONS ROCKET
Steve, Doug, Janet, Andrew
A new game for Andrew, second game for Steve. This game ended with all the track tiles being exhausted, with three lines still active. Doug, placing no stations for the game and concentrating on shares and tokens, tied with Andrew for red in shares and took the enormous green line in shares. Doug was trying desperately to get green to go into red to take pretty much the entire board via a majority in red. Janet thwarted that move, keeping green away from red and ensuring she'd get a massive payout from a lead in stations on the huge green line. That combined with good earnings picked up during the game gave her a comfortable win. Steve, in on the blue line early, saw several of his stations missed and his blue line merge into green, rendering his blue stock worthless. Andrew, learning the ropes of the game, will be a force in his return match! You need to play this once to see how it pans out!
Scores:
Janet: 63000
Doug: 44000
Steve: 43000
Andrew: 33000
Doug's rating: 8
Steve Gardner adds:
The key move in the game from my perspective came when I passed up the opportunity to merge the blue line into the green line. I passed it up because I didn't want it to happen, and since it was in Janet's interest, I figured "why not let her spend her move to do it?"
This was faulty reasoning. Had I merged the lines, the extra blue share would have ensured that it was me and not Janet who was the majority shareholder in blue. This would have meant $5,000 more for me, and $5,000 less for Janet. Moreover, I could have merged the lines without connecting Janet's station to it. At the end of the game, this station gave Janet a share of second place with me in the green line. Without it, I would have had $5,000 more, and Janet $4,000 less.
So, that one mistake resulted in a $19,000 turnaround between me and Janet. A costly error, and an instructive one! Janet would still have won, though - by $1,000. Well played, Janet! And nice to see you both again, by the way.
Debbie Pickett writes:
LA CITTÀ
My second game, as it was with Alan; Craig and Karen were new to this game but picked up on it very quickly. Alan and I had got some rules wrong last time, but we think we solved them all this time.
We played with the standard four-player setup. I was yellow (with my two cities in the middle of the board), Craig red (with the convenient food-factory site hidden behind one of his cities), Alan played the normally-lilac position and Karen was teal.
In our first year there were only two cities (Craig's and Karen's) which were near enough for citizens to flow between them - culture ended up being the important thing for the people that year. Everyone but me built a third city. I instead focussed on food, quarries and a couple of big three-arch buildings. The second year saw all of us build plenty of marketplaces as we hit our population limit. Culture ended up again being the voice of the people, despite early polls indicating it would be education. (Craig used a Poll the People card only to find out that the three cards he saw were all different.) By this stage, a cathedral in one of my two cities meant that I was drawing in an impressive number of citizens from neighbouring cities. Meanwhile, Alan and Craig were both living in a culture-poor corner of the board, not losing or gaining citizens at all. Karen had managed to grow her three cities to a nice size, sucking people away from my no-civics-but-lots-of-food city.
In the third year, things were really getting crowded. Craig kept losing buildings as his population went to Karen for culture - which yet again proved the important issue to the citizens. My mid-board metropolis grew even more, bringing in about four citizens a turn, mostly to Alan's detriment. Alan, Craig and Karen all felt the need for bumper crops most years, whereas I tried instead to build sufficient farms to not need the Bumper Crop cards. We all walked a very fine line, trying to provide enough food for our citizens - especially after most of the good farm locations were snapped up early.
About year four, several quarries were constructed while I lost one, meaning that Karen was now the rich player and I was the pauper. In this year, both education and health were on people's minds - not surprising after that huge culture overdose - and both Craig and I knew it from polling the people. This helped Craig to catch up some ground from Karen, and my metropolis to grow even more. All the while, Alan's cities were growing mostly through use of the Golden Times cards, and though he thought he was out of the running from citizen loss, I wasn't so quick to dismiss him as a threat. In the fifth year, I built a couple of cities - including Citt^` Central - towards Alan's sprawling suburbia, hoping to draw a few more citizens while protecting my weaker city from being encroached upon by other players (it was already losing a citizen a turn to Karen). I finally built a third city, mainly as a farm belt, and Craig built his fourth city. Craig was also using Bread and Games cards to improve his cities' attractiveness, and one of his cities was now starting to draw citizens away from me.
The game was close as it came down to the sixth and final year. Karen was busily building farms to feed her millions, Alan had much the same idea, and Craig was busy making his cities more impressive with some more buildings, or improving the ones he had. Unfortunately, this proved just a little too effective, as he drew one more citizen than he was able to feed - the first starvation of the game - and took a five-victory point penalty for it. This permitted Karen to sneak in to third place, and probably affected the other placings too. Personally, the final people's choice of health was very beneficial to me, as I actually lost enough citizens that I was able to feed them. I also snapped up a Master Builder card that I never thought I would get to build a hospital - my only chance for health in a city far from water. The bonus points this earned me for my second city to have all three civics proved invaluable. Fully twenty of my thirty citizens were in my central metropolis!
Final scores (citizens + three-civic bonus - starvation penalty)
(gold):
Debbie 36 (30 + 6) (2)
Alan 36 (27 + 9) (0)
Karen 33 (24 + 9) (2)
Craig 28 (30 + 3 - 5) (1)
My rating: This game enters at a solid 8 for me - though it is long (2.5 hours to explain rules and play four-player) it's very rewarding and plenty of fun. I love civilization-type games, and this one is a good one for those many times when I haven't got enough time or opponents to play Civilization.
Craig Macbride writes:
CANYON
Alan decided to introduce Karen and I to yet another trick-taking game.
The point of the game is to get to the finish line, which is achieved by moving your marker down a river. You bid how many tricks you expect to win each hand and movement is determined by how many tricks you win each game and, to a lesser extent, by a bonus you get for getting the number of tricks you bid. Towards the end, you enter the rapids and, once there, only the bonus, not absolute number of tricks, counts.
In the "Grand" (expansion) version of Canyon, we have some separate wild cards which alter game rules. We played with 3 such cards, one which allowed a player to choose how big the hand is, one which placed a log obstruction on the river and one which allowed a player to jump other players instead of go around them. Players, in order from last to first, choose which one they want each hand.
Alan took a quick lead in this game, while I followed and Karen trailed behind. I got to one square away from the rapids, with Alan one square behind me. He took the wild card to determine hand size and set that to 1. Being quite likely to lose this one trick, I bid 1. I won 0 tricks, got zero bonus, and stayed still, while Alan paddled past me into the rapids. Next hand, I won 4 tricks, which was my bid and shot past Alan to be almost all the way through the rapids, only 1 square from the finish. On the last hand, I bid 2 tricks out of a 4 card hand, got it and crossed the finish line. Alan was still a fair way back in the rapids. Karen hadn't made it to the rapids yet, much of that owing to poor cards and thus low numbers of tricks.