Billabong Boardgamers - 9th January, 2001
Present: Debbie, Tim, Alan, Andrew, Donna
Debbie Pickett writes:
Newcomer Tim - another acquisition from the Billabong website - turned up this week to our small, half-of-us-are-still-on-holiday meeting. We expected more people to turn up in a bit, so started with a little filler.
DAVID & GOLIATH
We only got one hand of this card game in before Andrew arrived. Tim picked up the game quickly, and managed to lump a wad of cards onto Alan, who could not relinquish the lead.
After one round: Debbie 47, Tim 39, Alan 19.
CARCASSONNE
Shortly after Andrew arrived, Donna too appeared, so out came one of my new acquisitions from my Canadian holiday. This game is apparently impossible to find yet in Melbourne, so my copy has made a lot of appearances.
Many have compared this tile-laying game to Entdecker and El Caballero, depending on which of the three games they like. There are certainly similarities in the area-control aspect of the game, but I think that it provides more choices than El Caballero and Entdecker, making for a deeper game.
On your turn, you draw a tile, place it on the board, optionally place one of your playing pieces on it, and score anything that you just completed, receiving any scoring playing pieces back into your supply for later use. When you place a tile it must be consistent with the tiles adjacent to it, so your placement choices are not limitless, but there's enough decision-making to make the game interesting.
Tiles contain two or more of four types of topography: open farmland, roads, cities and monasteries. You can place one of your playing pieces (or "Meeples" as they are affectionately called) onto one of the parts of the tile, provided that it isn't connected to another Meeple in the same road, farm or city on a previously-played tile. This ensures that (usually) only one player will score one feature on the board. Each type of area scores differently, usually when the area is completed (e.g., a road is terminated at both ends, or a city wall is finished, or a monastery is entirely surrounded by other tiles); farms only score at the end of the game, however, depleting your supply. Cities and roads score more points the bigger they are, monasteries score a flat amount when completed, and farms may help you to score an amount of points for each completed city at the end of the game. Incomplete areas still score points at the end of the game, but not as many as if they'd been finished.
In our game, players understood the importance of farms early on, with new opportunities for placing farmers somewhat limited. Monasteries also typically scored big for the lucky players who drew them. Roads were seldom encountered early in the game, which again served to emphasize the importance of farms. A couple of unfortunate placements stopped Alan from completing one of his cities, robbing him of quite a few points.
The final score was close between Donna, Tim and me, but Donna's extensive farming enabled her to pull away comfortably for the victory.
Final scores: Donna 63, Debbie 51, Tim 46, Andrew 37, Alan 31.
My rating: I'm quite fond of this game as a two-player tactical showdown. It doesn't work quite so well with five, but it's still quite enjoyable. There's a little more luck with more players (as Alan noticed), but still plenty of opportunity to play well. I give this game a 7, with two players an 8.
ATTILA
The first time I played this game, it was with two players, to get the mechanics down. It left me completely cold. Even though the box says it works for two, I strongly disagree; this is a game that needs at least three, and I suspect is best with four. But I'd heard a lot of good things about this game, especially about its inappropriate theming, so I wanted to give it another go. No one else had played it, so I was happy to play again.
I still don't really comprehend the mechanisms in this game, so I will avoid discussing them in detail lest I get them wrong. Essentially, players are moving tribe markers into regions of Europe, hoping to spread their colour around the continent as much as possible, while earning "influence" points in these tribes. Four times in the game, the board is scored, Union Pacific-style, and the leader and second-place player in each tribe get victory points for how populous the tribe is on the board. Confusing the matter is the occasional conflict, which wipes out some tribe markers.
At least that's how it appears on paper. How those mechanisms actually earn apply to game strategy is still a mystery to me. I tried to focus on a couple of tribes, getting first and second place as much as I could in them, and trying to wipe out the tribes that I didn't have a stake in. It apparently worked, though I am still not certain if my strategy is the right one.
Final scores: Debbie 73, Tim 70, Andrew 67, Donna 54, Alan 51.
My rating: It's still too early to tell. I want to give this game a good rating, because it looks like the kind of game I like, but I just can't comprehend it fully yet. Right now it gets my default German-game-score of 6.
The main complaint I have about this game is the colours. Players are coloured red, yellow, green, blue and white. Tribes are coloured red, yellow, green, blue, black and grey. There's no relationship between the red player and the red tribe, so it gets awfully confusing for the scorekeeper. ("Was that two points for red in the blue tribe, or two points for blue in red?" was a common cry.) A Durch die Wüste-type system of pastel versus bright colours would have worked much better.
BOHNANZA
Tim brought along his favourite bean-trading game, and it was interesting to see the English language version of this game finally. It did confuse us at first, because of the long Billabong tradition of calling the bean types by really silly names; this was no longer necessary as they beans now had English names. We made a compromise, abandoning the Hippie Bean in favour of the Soya Bean, but steadfastly refusing to call the Blue Bean anything but a Cowboy.
Most of us ended up buying a third beanfield this time - though I held out to nearly the end - a big mistake brought on by the lure of the Cocoa Bean (which I didn't get anyway). Tim, with his own non-Billabong trading conventions, whipped us all.
Final scores: Tim 18, Donna 14, Debbie 13, Alan 13, Andrew 13