Gwen and I spent some of our time this weekend trying out a few games which are new to us.  I thought I'd give my initial impressions of each as well as a brief description of play (as well as I can remember, anyway).

The Pillars of the Earth -
 
I picked this up a couple of weeks ago based on the great reviews it had from Essen and pretty much everybody that had played it since.  It is a gorgeous game with an absolutely beautiful board, lots of high-quality cards with nice art (even though they are a little small for my tastes... and difficult to shuffle), and tons of colored wooden bits (traditional blocks for resources, disks for VP and gold markers, large "pawns" for the "Master Builders", and lots of cool "advanced" meeples for the workers).  And then there was also the nice, wood-block cathedral, which I'll talk a little bit about later.

It took a little time to set up, because you have to put all the blocks in the right places and remove a certain number of cards from each stack to "randomize" the game a little.  Like most "euro"/modern boardgames, it was a lot more complicated to explain than to play, so I went through the rules quickly with my wife and we got started.  From the first turn, we each seemed to fall into a basic strategy.  I spent gold pretty liberally and tried to be balanced in the craftsmen and resources I obtained.  Gwen hoarded money and focused more on wood and metal.

Now, I had purposely not read through the craftsmen, event, or priviledge cards so that Gwen and I would be on equal footing.  So each turn we would flip over the apprpriate cards and read them together, and then try to react to what we saw.  I could see that after several plays you could build more strategy based on the craftsmen and other cards that you would expect to see later (although that could get you in some trouble with the cards where some are randomly not used in each game).  Anyway, I jumped out to a pretty big lead in VP's, and Gwen started to get a little discouraged.  

Backing up a little, I had picked up the priviledge card that gave me an extra sand per turn as well as the one that let me have 6 craftsmen.  My craftsmen were the Architect (+1 VP/turn), the Sculptor (2 VP for 1 Stone, x1), the Mason (1 VP for 1 Stone, x2), the Mortar Mixer! (1 VP for 2 Sand, x3), the Carpenter (1 VP for 1 Wood, x2), and finally the Glassblower (3 VP for 1 Sand and 1 Metal, x1).  So I could turn all resources into VP, and I tried to balance out my resources by getting the lower value resource cards (which seemed a little more efficient to me).  Gwen instead went for the Tool Maker (2 Gold per turn as long as you own a Metal) and the Woodworker! (4 gold for 1 Wood, x2) early on.  I can't remember exactly which other craftsmen she had, but she mainly dealt with Wood and Metal.

So anyway, back to the action.  I assured Gwen that there had to be a way later in the game to convert gold into VP, and when the Goldsmith (1 VP for 3 Gold, x6) came out I was proven right.  We kept up our strategies right up to the end, and Gwen tried to figure out on turn 5 (when she finally got the Goldsmith) how much gold to leave herself to be sure that she converted as much as possible without limiting her opions.  After I scored in the last turn, I was up 50 VP to 25 VP.  Then she started up the gold-eating VP machine that left her with a total of 46 VP, losing by only 4 VP!

So, what do I think?  Pillars of the Earth is a very solid game.  While it "looks" pretty complicated, both Gwen and I found the rules to be very easy to understand.  There are lots of choices available each turn, and there is a good mix of chance and skill involved.  It appears that there are several different viable strategies that are at least semi-competitive, but a significant amount of tactical skill is also needed to change your strategy on the fly in response to the random elements in the game.  There were times, however, when I felt like I really didn't care too much about most of the "Master Builder" choices, but that may have been just because I didn't really understand the game well enough yet.  Overall, I really liked it and hope to play again soon with more players, to get a more full understanding about the game.  If I had to rate it right now, I'd probably give it a 7.5 on the BGG scale, and I'll be interested to see how that changes.

To Court the King -      



I borrowed this game from Hypermind (my FLGS), and finally managed to convince Gwen to give it a try.  It took only a few minutes to explain, then we got started and talked our way through the first few rounds.  Essentially, the game comes down to rolling three dice over and over, trying to get certain combinations of numbers to "influence" different characters.  Once you have a character, you can use it to modify your dice roll in one of three basic ways: adding dice, rerolling dice, or directly manipulating the number on the dice.  As you get more characters, you are able to use more dice and and manipulate them more precisely.  The eventual goal is to be able to roll seven dice of the same number, which then influences the King to your side.

Once we got into it, we really started to like the way the game played.  Between figuring out which character to go for and how to use the characters we already had, there was a lot of creative thinking involved.  In the end, I claimed the King, but Gwen managed to take him away in the "roll off" that follows.  Thanks to the Queen (which you get when you are the first to claim the King), I was able to roll 8 of a kind and still pull out the win.  If it hadn't been so late, we probably would have played again beause Gwen really liked it. 

This game is all about managing and mitigating the randomness generated from rolling dice.  It is pretty challenging to figure out not only how to use your characters, but also which dice to set aside and which to reroll.  But at the same time, the game is still quick, light, and approachable.  I definitely want to play it again soon, and I will probably add it to my collection when I get a chance.  My initial BGG rating will be a 7. 

Chez Geek - 

I've owned this for a long time, but never found opportunity to play.  So when Gwen and I had a few extra minutes one evening, I pulled it out and made her give it a try.  Now, I know that it's a Steve Jackson game, so I wasn't expecting some fine piece of eurogaming genius (because his games are usually more about the humor of the theme than about elegant gameplay).  What I found was a game that was only slightly less fun to play than it is to just sit and read the cards... mainly because when you get tired of reading the cards you can just put them down, but you'd feel bad just quitting a game.  I suppose there may be some situation when I'd play again, but it would certainly only be with other real "gamers" and only is one of them really wanted us to.  My initial (and final) rating on BGG is a 4.