Thursday 21 January 2010
The fun continues (part 2 of "The new golf")
By hub, Thursday 21 January 2010 at 00:20 :: Gaming (tabletop)
Let's continue from Part 1 about boardgames.
- Carcassonne (and its derivatives): Carcassonne is another successful game, to the point that, like The Settlers of Catan, I can find it in bookstores. It has several derivatives and several expansions. They are all based on the same principle: each player place a tile on the table, next to another (there are simple placement rules) to create areas (buildings, cities, markets, fields, roads, etc. depending on the flavour) and eventually place, if permitted, a pawn (called follower or more colloquially meeple) to mark the territory in order to score, immediately or later on. This game can be played with or without confrontation as you can either try to just score more that your oponents or to block them through the placements of tiles and meeples. All the variants deserve an article to themselves.
- Dominion: This is the game that came from nowhere end ended up in the preferred list of gamers. Dominion is a card game where each players buy and accumulate cards in their deck, cards that will come to play when the deck is reshuffled. There are 3 kinds of cards: money, action and victory. Each player start with a deck with a little money and a few victory point. Each turn the player take the top 5 cards of the deck and play them (or not) before discarding them all. These discarded cards are his and will be reshuffled when the deck is exhausted. Action card allow bonuses, "attacks", playing more, etc. Victory point are just this, and waste a precious slot in your hand. Money allow buying, with more or less value. The game ends when some of the cards available for purchase are exhausted ; then points are counted. While I like that game, I grew a bit tired by the hype and the very limited player interaction, even though Dominion Intrigue have some interesting new cards (you can combine the sets). I have been told that if you liked Magic The Gathering, you'd like Dominion, but I still have to play Magic.
- Fjord: This small two player game got my favors recently. Each player alternatively place hex tlles to form a terrain and eventually place one of their farms. When all the tiles are placed, each player place his tokens, to score. The placement of these token is determined by the initial placement of the farms and the placement of the opponents.
- Elasund, the first city of Catan: While this game has Catan in its name (branding it is called), it is a different game by the same author. No trade of resource, no road or settlement, but buildings to build to bring you gold (or influence) and victory points. And that's where it get interesting: buildings can be build over (partially) others withdrawing resources and point from opponents in favor of yours. And given the limited space on the board, it can be the only way to win.
To be continued...
