by John
Last night the local FLGS had a gaming event (smallish town, we are trying to drum up interest in board games so these events are in the work-in-progress category), I showed up with a couple games from the personal stash in tow (Love Letter, Innovation, 7 Wonders: Duel, and Cosmic Encounter). I had been sitting on a copy of Cosmic Encounter for nearly a year now and it has never made it to the table, so I was hoping that this would be the night it would finally get it's first ounce of attention.
------------------------------------------------When I arrived a few folks were nearing the end of a play through of
Betrayal at House on the Hill. They played another round after that one finished up and I was able to jump into the fray. Let's just say that I need to play this one again, or multiple times before I could give it a positive review. Ultimately the problem for this play through was that the planets and stars had aligned to make the game so easy that it just wasn't what I had expected. We drew Haunting 42, the one with the statue that you have to give a specific item, afterwards it will manifest and deal with the invincible (to conventional attack) traitor in your midst. However, the player that ended up pulling the omen triggering the haunting had one of the required items on them, and it happened to be the item that corresponded to the traitors weakest stat. To top that off, prior to becoming the traitor, the soon-to-be-traitor player ended up trapped in the basement after falling through a hole in one of the ground floor rooms. So... Threat that can't get to the players, victory conditions instantly completed due to fortuitous circumstances... Game was basically on auto-win mode once the end game started. I found this disappointing, but I realize that a good portion of that the whole situation was luck based. It could play out completely differently in the next iteration of that same haunting. So I'll just move on realizing I have no real opinion of this game and it needs a few more plays before I would feel comfortable giving it a rating.
------------------------------------------------A short while later I ended up running through the rules and playing a game of
7 Wonders: Duel, and in typical fashion when I teach this game I got rolled. The way the age I cards came out I had a tough go of trying to get resources and ended up being severely crippled in basic resources the entire game. It was manageable, and I was able to limit my opponents ability to get wood, but he had an abundance of stone and clay so the wonder I had drafted at the beginning of the game that destroys a brown resource card was basically worthless for that particular aspect. By the third age neither of us had taken a single science card, the military track had been moved almost equally by both of us and was close to the center of the board, so I tried to focus on victory points exclusively. After acquiring nearly all of the blue cards in the round I had padded my point differential 30-9 in the blues, everything was looking good from my seat. Unfortunately for me this game was won by victory points from other sources due to how the cards had come out. My opponent had taken the card "Moneylending Guild" and was sitting on 10 points (30 coins) in currency at the end of the game. That doubles with the moneylending guild and that 20 points shot him to a 46-60 win. So, yeah he would have won without the card, and I cant for the life of me remember all the details of each age during this game. It would be interesting to see how those early decision cost me points later in the game. Once of those times where it would have been great to document each age before starting. Anyhow, while I have only played this a few times this was not my best showing.. I really like how fast and interesting this game is, I've got the expansion on preorder and I cannot wait to roll that into the game and see how it plays.
------------------------------------------------The next game was the abstract strategy game
Onitama. Neither of us had played this before so we pulled it out, read through the rules quickly and had a go at it. Wow, five moves that cycle between us over the course of the game, and each game can have a different variety of moves from a deck of possibilities. Having young children that are not even old enough to be classified as "soon-to-be gamers", this is the kind of game I can imagine playing with them when they get a few years older. Simplistic, everything is laid out for both players to see, and overall I think the games would play out fairly fast with limited analysis paralysis potential. I would like to play this one again, it seems really good as far as abstract strategy games are concerned. Not that I have much experience with those, but I could see this being a nice compact game to have available and it perfectly capacitates the usual number of players that we have when playing games at home. I had to look up The Duke after I got home to see why these two games were compared and while The Duke looks quite complex, this game felt very simple to grasp the entirety of what was going on around the board.
------------------------------------------------So.. after a couple two players games (we had a lull in board game participation), we picked up a player and started a game of
Innovation. Each game of this I play makes me like it a little bit more than the last, and that definitely has to do with my increased understanding of the game. There are a few cards here and there that cause a problem with how to use them correctly, for instance, during this game we had a question about the card "City States". We ultimately played the card correctly, but there was some uncertainty on my part during that portion of the game. My strategy during the last few plays was to race through the ages and it definitely seems to help get more scoring and dogma opportunities up and rolling. I ended up winning this game after pulling the age 7 card that allowed me to score an age 8 card and return a card from my score pile. This shot me up in score quickly and I was able to finish the required achieving in the following few turns. One of the aspects of the game that I like is how the end of the game approaching is obvious to everyone and the rest of the table usually has a turn or more to attempt to counter. I have yet to see this work, but my total number of games is rather low, so.. I'm sure it will happen sooner or later. My one complaint about this game is that the box does not even come close to holding the cards after being sleeved, and this is a game you probably want to sleeve. So, Innovation found a new home in a clear plastic container that fits sleeved cards, and fortunately also can capacitate the player boards and rulebook.
------------------------------------------------And finally, the night ended with a few six player games of
Codenames. What a fun party game... My team won one of the three games after our opponents mistakenly guessed the instant lose space. Otherwise, the other two games were very close but we came up just short in both. I was able to be the spymaster for the first time and it is quite a bit tougher than I had imagined. I'm am now a bit envious of others that can link three or more words together cohesively with a single clue. I was able to give concise clues for two words at once, but I could not come up with any way to link Aztec, time, eagle, snow, bark, witch, circle and a few other oddball words together in a group of 3 or more that I felt was likely to be correctly guessed. I gave Coven 2, and Iditarod 2, as clues before the other team guessed the black space.
------------------------------------------------So after all was said and done, Cosmic Encounter never got it's time in the spotlight. I'll keep toting it around when I have the opportunity. I think once I can get it played people will really enjoy it. But until then..
