UK Games Expo
I've just got back from a great weekend's board gaming at the UK Expo in Birmingham.
I'd been checking the weather before I left and since the temperature was so high and there was no chance of rain I took the vented "air jacket" and I'm glad I did because even with that and just a shirt underneath I was still sweltering, especially when traffing on the M42 was backed up due to an accident. Even though I filtered through it, there just wasn't the airflow to cool me down.
I played lots of games and bought several including Citadels, Incan Gold and Medieval Mastery. Of the ones I played, the standouts were Trajan and Snowdonia.
Trajan is set (as the name suggests) in the Roman Empire and has a unique action determination mechanism. You have six circles on your personal play board which each start with a couple of octagonal "barrel" type tokens and there are two tokens of each colour. You pick up all the tokens in one cirle and redistribute them (one per token)in succeeding circles, a bit like the game Mancala, each circle also has a "move type" symbol on it which can be Military, Building, Ship Goods (for VPs), take a token from the Forum, advancing yourself in the Senate or take a "Trajan Tile" and place it on the next free space around your six circles.
The last part is where the colours of the tokens comes in, if the token you place last has a Trajan Tile next to it and there are two tokens of the colours shown on the Tile, you can collect that tile and it gives you extra VPs, allows extra moves or some give you a Token which lets you satisfy the public's demands...
Every token you move around your circle advances the "time counter" by one step and the time counter goes around in a loop. When it gets back to the beginning a "Public Demand" token is revealed which can be Bread, Circuses or Sacrifices to the Gods. The ones on the Trajan Tiles are kept permanently (but each can only be used once in each Quarter Year), others can be collected by doing the Forum Action. When three of these have been revealed the time counter goes around one more lap and then you have to satisfy public demand by using Trajan Tiles or discarding Forum Tiles with the right symbol on. If you manage to to this, you don't get a bonus, but if you fail to please the public and miss out satisfying one Demand you lose 4VPs, if you miss two, you lose 9VPs and if you miss three you lose 15VPs!
The good thing about the "mancala" mechanism is that you can actually plan your moves up to around three turns in advance without worrying too much that someone's going to interefere with your plans and once you're used to the game things tend to go reasonably quickly, so there's not too much downtime on each turn as someone plots what to do.
There's no one path to victory, I won by collecting lots of VP Trajan Tiles and also Building: if you build three buildings of one type you gain 10VPs (and I did this twice!) but another player who had actually repeately failed to satisfy the public losing 9VPs twice and 4VPs once almost caught up because he'd advanced himself in the Senate and also shipped lots of goods for bonus VPs. There's also the option to take the Military route and control lots of Provinces in Europe, so you can pick and choose the way to go.
It's a very good game, although at the moment it's £40 a copy, so if I'm going to buy it I might wait until it gets a bit cheaper.
The other game was Snowdonia which hasn't actually been released yet, but involves building the railway up Mount Snowdon, you get points for clearing away rubble, building track or building stations or advancing your Surveyor up the mountain. You also need to collect Iron Ore to build Rails, Stone to build Stations or Coal to power trains which can give you extra actions etc.
You have two workers you can place to select your move from collecting resources, clearing rubble, building track, moving your surveyor, converting Iron Ore into Track or picking up Bonus Cards and it has a lovely Weather mechanic, there are three cards revealed and the next one which is face down on the deck shows a symbol for either Sun, Rain or Fog. Sun gives +2 on clearing rubble and +1 on building track, Rain gives -1 on each and Fog means you can't do either, blocking the Clear Rubble and Build Track actions entirely.
You get to see the weather which is coming for the next two days, so you can plan your actions accordingly.
I also won the game of this I played because I got my Surveyor to the top of the mountain and also had two bonus cards which gave extra points for doing this getting a satisfying 56 points and a total of 116 points (only one person during the weekend scored higher and that was the game designer who in another game got 118! :-) )
All in all it was a most enjoyable weekend and, even better, next year's event will be at the Hilton Metropole (where Discworld is held) meaning there won't be the need to go from the Hotel to the Exhibition (which is currently in a different building) so everything will be under one roof.
I'd been checking the weather before I left and since the temperature was so high and there was no chance of rain I took the vented "air jacket" and I'm glad I did because even with that and just a shirt underneath I was still sweltering, especially when traffing on the M42 was backed up due to an accident. Even though I filtered through it, there just wasn't the airflow to cool me down.
I played lots of games and bought several including Citadels, Incan Gold and Medieval Mastery. Of the ones I played, the standouts were Trajan and Snowdonia.
Trajan is set (as the name suggests) in the Roman Empire and has a unique action determination mechanism. You have six circles on your personal play board which each start with a couple of octagonal "barrel" type tokens and there are two tokens of each colour. You pick up all the tokens in one cirle and redistribute them (one per token)in succeeding circles, a bit like the game Mancala, each circle also has a "move type" symbol on it which can be Military, Building, Ship Goods (for VPs), take a token from the Forum, advancing yourself in the Senate or take a "Trajan Tile" and place it on the next free space around your six circles.
The last part is where the colours of the tokens comes in, if the token you place last has a Trajan Tile next to it and there are two tokens of the colours shown on the Tile, you can collect that tile and it gives you extra VPs, allows extra moves or some give you a Token which lets you satisfy the public's demands...
Every token you move around your circle advances the "time counter" by one step and the time counter goes around in a loop. When it gets back to the beginning a "Public Demand" token is revealed which can be Bread, Circuses or Sacrifices to the Gods. The ones on the Trajan Tiles are kept permanently (but each can only be used once in each Quarter Year), others can be collected by doing the Forum Action. When three of these have been revealed the time counter goes around one more lap and then you have to satisfy public demand by using Trajan Tiles or discarding Forum Tiles with the right symbol on. If you manage to to this, you don't get a bonus, but if you fail to please the public and miss out satisfying one Demand you lose 4VPs, if you miss two, you lose 9VPs and if you miss three you lose 15VPs!
The good thing about the "mancala" mechanism is that you can actually plan your moves up to around three turns in advance without worrying too much that someone's going to interefere with your plans and once you're used to the game things tend to go reasonably quickly, so there's not too much downtime on each turn as someone plots what to do.
There's no one path to victory, I won by collecting lots of VP Trajan Tiles and also Building: if you build three buildings of one type you gain 10VPs (and I did this twice!) but another player who had actually repeately failed to satisfy the public losing 9VPs twice and 4VPs once almost caught up because he'd advanced himself in the Senate and also shipped lots of goods for bonus VPs. There's also the option to take the Military route and control lots of Provinces in Europe, so you can pick and choose the way to go.
It's a very good game, although at the moment it's £40 a copy, so if I'm going to buy it I might wait until it gets a bit cheaper.
The other game was Snowdonia which hasn't actually been released yet, but involves building the railway up Mount Snowdon, you get points for clearing away rubble, building track or building stations or advancing your Surveyor up the mountain. You also need to collect Iron Ore to build Rails, Stone to build Stations or Coal to power trains which can give you extra actions etc.
You have two workers you can place to select your move from collecting resources, clearing rubble, building track, moving your surveyor, converting Iron Ore into Track or picking up Bonus Cards and it has a lovely Weather mechanic, there are three cards revealed and the next one which is face down on the deck shows a symbol for either Sun, Rain or Fog. Sun gives +2 on clearing rubble and +1 on building track, Rain gives -1 on each and Fog means you can't do either, blocking the Clear Rubble and Build Track actions entirely.
You get to see the weather which is coming for the next two days, so you can plan your actions accordingly.
I also won the game of this I played because I got my Surveyor to the top of the mountain and also had two bonus cards which gave extra points for doing this getting a satisfying 56 points and a total of 116 points (only one person during the weekend scored higher and that was the game designer who in another game got 118! :-) )
All in all it was a most enjoyable weekend and, even better, next year's event will be at the Hilton Metropole (where Discworld is held) meaning there won't be the need to go from the Hotel to the Exhibition (which is currently in a different building) so everything will be under one roof.