so this is the first day of Sporecon 2012! Sporecon is an annual boardgame event (only one in Singapore alas!) held by a FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Shop) PI at Pasir Ris East Community Center. For 2 days, there will be tournaments and space to play boardgames. Tournaments typically are miniature gaming (with Warhammer 40k seeming to take most of the space) however this year there are more boardgame tournaments. Still, Sporecon is rather small scale and I expect Gencon 2012 will definitely be an eye opener! Can't wait for then :P On to the games we played today.
Age of Industry (Japan Map expansion)
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| Not a lot of need for Iron or Coal mines in this map |
We started off with Age of Industry that seems to be quite a hit with the gaming group I am with. I am the Blue player btw and you can see that I am not doing very well :p I started off with a lot of Cotton mill cards and was planning to capitalize on that. Often I do not realize the importance of railways and have to catch up with the other players much to my detriment. I suspect that I will get the hang of it after a few more plays but I doubt I will get it into my collection. Graphically its not very exciting to me and quite fiddly at setup. Component wise it could have been better (I dislike the plastic money and player mats). Still if you enjoy such economic games, do take a look!
Livingstone
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| Doctor? Are you there I presume? |
Next we tried Livingstone a game that my gaming buddy got. This is an easy game to teach and is primarily an area control game with a little bit of push your luck. Game turn is indicated by the wooden boat and once it reaches the end of the river, players perform a final scoring and the player with the most victory points win (no surprise there). A final twist though is the amount of coins each player have played into their box. This indicates the amount of money that players have donated and the player or players with the least amount will automatically lose. This mechanism reminds me of Hab & Gut a game that I recently obtained. Components wise, this game is top notch. A lot of other games can stand to learn from this. Overall it is a fun game, quick and fun to play. I like it quite a bit.
The Big Time
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| My acts which unfortunately did not allow me to win the game alas.. |
This is a Print and Play production game that my gaming buddy (from here onwards the games are all owned and introduced/taught by the same gaming buddy :P ) and its quite a light game as well and involves the players bidding to purchase troupes for a performance which we will be putting up in each round. The game lasts for 4 rounds and each round, players will have exactly $24 to bid to purchase 4 troupes and 1 headliner act for our show. At the end of each round, players will then tally up how much "star power" the entire show has and the lowest score will cause the show categories represented by his/her show on a chart to decline in rating. The winning player of that round will improve his/her categories. Then all players will score for the categories depending on their final position on the chart. Apparently, the name of the acts are based on historical popular acts. The graphics is quite cute and fun to look at and the components are rather well produced for a print and play produced game. Still, since the game has this rustic feel, I felt that if the cards have the authentic picture from that era and based on the actual person as depicted by the name, I think it might be quite good to look at as well. I found it quite tough to figure out just how much to bid. My strategy was to calculate the total of the people I want to hire and add $1 or $2 but i found it difficult to keep track of the categories (6) and plan and strategize. May need a few more plays to see how it goes. Not a bad little game.
Mai-star
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| I am this Geisha |
I have heard of this game before but kinda forgotten about it till i saw it today in the bag of boardgames. We played this next and it is quite an easy game to learn and play. Players play a particular Geisha (there are several for us to choose from with different characteristics) and the game lasts 3 rounds. Each round ends when a player has no more cards in his/her hand and you can only do that by placing "guest" cards down in front of your Geisha character. You can only place guest cards that your Geisha can meet the criteria of (there are 3). Otherwise, you can place "advertisement" cards to the side of the Geisha to improve her criterias which can allow for more valuable guests to be entertained. Okay its kinda tricky to explain this game without getting some form of giggle or another :) There are cards as well that allow you to mess with another player's tableau. The player with the most points after 3 rounds win. The graphics, as you can see, is rather interesting to me and card stock wise is pretty good. It comes in a very small box, easy to teach and plays fast and is a good filler so far to me. I am not too sure about replayability though as the strategies seems to be pretty standard. Still for what it is, which is a light filler, it is rather ok.
Trajan
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| Brain melting but not so bad this time... |
Last game of the night before we stopped was the brain burning Trajan. Teaching it is a rather tedious affair (but I think Vinhos and Bios megafauna can match it) but when you actually play it, it is not that difficult to play. For me especially, I found it easier to predict and strategize the player mat portion and I could play the game much faster. However I think I need 1 or 2 more plays to tie that into my overall strategy on the map and against other players. I tried to go with the strategy of completing the most Trajans and moving my Leader and Legionnaire but I neglected the ships and orange tiles much to my detriment I think. Trajan still feels like a game that consists of many mini games that all serves to give you points. Thematically I don't feel it is there but game mechanics wise I am certainly getting a lot for my money's worth. Setup is also quite fiddly and I will probably not get it for my collection. I don't mind playing it though.
Last but not least.....
I was pleasantly surprised when I received a gift from the gaming buddy that I have been mentioning in this blog and I was even more surprised when it turned out to be a boardgame that was on my wish list! So cool!!! And I am really very touched and grateful for his gesture. AWESOME!!!! :D Now to get it played :P
Thanks again!
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