There was a freaky big thunderstorm going on as Gwen and I picked up Samantha from daycare, so they decided to just go on home rather than risk staying out in the elements.  This meant that I was able to get to game night a little bit early this week, and I enticed a few others to join me in a rousing game all about...

Poo [GeekDo]

Poo won the "coveted" Origins award for best traditional card game, so I took a shot with it.  And maybe that was a mistake.  Basically, the whole thing is a "last man (monkey, whatever) standing", take-that card game of flinging monkey poo.  You can block or dodge poo, play a card that interrupts the thrower's poo-flinging, or clean yourself off.  When you get 15 points of poo on you, you're out of the game.  Shawn, new to our game nights, did the best job of flinging, dodging, and washing off poo, so he took the game.

Time: 21 minutes
Score: Shawn* - Win; Alton*, Chris*, Matt* & Me* - Caked in monkey doo
Ratings: Shawn 7, Alton 7.5, Chris 6, Matt 6, Me 5.5


As long as people are laughing and having fun with the theme, this game is pretty darn good.  But it has a ton of potential to wear out its welcome and drag on if it doesn't end quickly.  More than anything, this seems like a game that was designed 20 years ago, because all of the "take that" mechanisms in it are just retreads of things that I've seen in a multitude of other games through the years.  But still, it is about monkies throwing Poo, so it has some appeal, and I'll probably play it from time to time.  It also makes me really want to get Lunch Money back out, because it seems to be almost exactly the same, except with disturbing pictures of a little girl promising lots of violence.

Cyclades [GeekDo]

Chris had been wanting to try out Cyclades (pronounced, if you'll remember, as "kick-laa-days") for a few weeks now, so we kept our little group together and pulled it out next.  Since colors are tied to starting positions, I changed to using blue (instead of green) this time, and used Britt's "use Poseidon to fan out and cover trade routes" move to increase my income on turn one. 

But as the game progressed, Alton built himself into a clearly powerful position, eventually generating the game's first Metropolis using the "four different buildings" route.  He also held two philosophers, so while I intententionally avoided "obviating" to the rest of the group, I went into prevention mode immediately.  I set myself up to have a chain of fleets over to the island in an invasion attempt, but couldn't get control of Ares in time before he got Poseidon and beat the crap out of my fleets with his own.  I did, however, manage to get ahold of the Pegasus a turn later and launched an attack (at a disadvantage, due to his metropolis) which actually succeeded in winning me the island and his metropolis.


Chris and I both had two philosophers, but he had more money (and the use of three or four priests), so he was able to gain Athena's favor on the next turn and get the philosophers he needed for his first metropolis.  He also had a couple of temples under his control, so he was able to use them to discount the purchase of a few creatures including, again, the pegasus.  He therefore invaded one of my islands, which contained the port he needed to complete his second Metropolis, and claimed the win! 
 
Time: 82 minutes
Score: Chris* - Win; Alton*, Matt*, Shawn* & Me - Lose
Ratings: Chris 8.5, Alton 7.5, Matt 8, Shawn 8, Me 8

I just participated in some discussion over at The Tao of Gaming about Cyclades, and while I still like the game, I'd definitely say that its flaws are becoming more and more apparent to me.  First of all (as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago), the winning conditions are just too simple and obvious.  I don't know that it's possible for the game to end without it coming down to a series of "stop him" moves to prevent the current leader from winning.  So the most "viable" strategy seems to be that you need to hang back and make a plan to get both metropolises in one turn (as Chris did). 

It almost reminds me of Tribune, actually, in how you need to take a couple of different paths to put together a relatively limited number of victory conditions.  But unlike Tribune, it's really obvious how you're doing in achieving that goal, and it's a lot easier to screw with each other, which can artifically extend the game, perhaps past its welcome.


But in the big picture, all that really isn't that big a deal to me in hampering my fun with the game.  The bigger issue I have with it right now is in the influence that the mythical creatures have on the game.  Early on, Cyclades is a slow build-up game of jockying for position with the gods and methodically setting up your plan.  But as incomes increase later on and people start to build temples (which reduce the cost of the creatures), people can start recruiting them all willy-nilly every turn.  And while some of the creatures have pretty modest abilities, some of them are significant rules breakers.  Pegasus, clearly, both stole the game from Alton and then gave it to Chris because of when it showed up.  It's like there are actually two games going on: the early game, which is all deliberate and calculate-y with careful auctions and small moves, and then this crazy random endgame where you pray that you get the creatures you need to win and/or stop the other guy from doing the same.

I'm still rating it pretty highly, and really like what you're doing in the game, but I'm just starting to grow a little worried about it.      

Notre Dame [GeekDo]

Since Chris and I both own Notre Dame, we split up for this game to give more people a chance to play.  Keith sat to my right this week, and he took my "VP-building" strategy, so I decided to try something different.  Instead, I tried to get a lot of cash early on and then use it at the cathedral to earn a lot of points (along with a few other points here and there).  Unfortunately, Alton did pretty much the same thing (although he did a better job of controlling his rat population), but was being fed cards by the two least-experienced players and scored 30 or 40 points on the last turn alone (being passed two cathedral cards, along with having 6 cubes on the park) to get the win. 

Time: 64 minutes
Score: Alton 77, Me 65, Keith 56, James 49, Shawn* 19
Ratings: Ratings


I'm still really loving Notre Dame.  It has become more and more obvious that (like many say of Puerto Rico) the person (or two) sitting to your right have an enormous influence over how you can play.  So it's really making me excited about playing in the "championship" game next week, where everyone will be experienced and able to see the big picture both about their own strategy and about what things they should keep out of their opponents' hands.

Tinner's Trail [GeekDo]

I picked up Tinner's Trail a couple of weeks ago in a trade, and was pretty excited to get it to the table.  Alton is a pretty big Martin Wallace fan, so he was excited about it as well, and Michelle and David were prettyeager to join us as well. If you don't know much about it, it's a game about tin and copper mining in Cornwall, England, and it was the first of the Treefrog line of games.  The game is all about buying land, building mines, and trying to manage your money and time as efficiently as you can while investing in foreign affairs (which is how you get victory points) in each of the four turns. 

Alton and I jumped out pretty aggressively, both cashing in a decent number of cubes on the first turn and picking up some nice VP spots.  I'm pretty sure that I invested a little too heavily in upgrading my first mine, though, because I had emptied it by the second round, and then it just sat there worthless for the rest of the game.  So with my extra distraction from increasing capacity a little too much, Alton got the best of the first round.

Michelle blew all her cash and was rather ineffective for rounds 1 and 2, while David kept up pretty well with Alton and me.  So as we went into the second round, we were already starting to turn our eyes toward the undeveloped territories on the map.  Overall, I think that I made up some ground on Alton in turn 2, but then lost it again in turn 3.  Michelle got on her feet in the third turn, and started to harvest some of the multitude of metal cubes in her mines.

In the last turn, I had kept the most money, and was able to buy up the last available area.  I and Michelle mined a crapload of tin and copper, but with the VP rate going for half of what it did in the first round, it still wasn't enough for Michelle to get back in the game.  And up until the final tally, I really thought that I had pulled the game out, only to find that Alton's early-game investments were a bit too much for me to overcome.

Time: 75 minutes
Score: Alton* 166, Me* 147, David* 124, Michelle* 114
Ratings: Alton 8.5, Me 8, David 8.5, Michelle 8.5

I really enjoyed this first play of Tinner's Trail.  The game is a nice, historical economic building game, but it's not really all that complicated or overwhelmingly taxing to the old noodle.  It probably won't quite have the legs of some of Wallace's deeper games, but it seems to be a little more "fun" and approachable.  I definitely want to get it back to the table soon, and hope that repeated play proves to be as enjoyable.


Felix: The Cat in the Sack [GeekDo]

It was late, but we decided to have one last go with this solid little auction game.  I had fun, but did terribly, and David managed to carry off the most cats and mice to win the game.

Time: 20 minutes
Score: David* 58, Alton * 45, Michelle* 37, Me 29
Ratings: David 7.5, Alton 7, Michelle 7, Me 7


Other Games Played

Catacombs
Time: 56 minutes
Score: Adventurers (Brett, Matt, Steve & Yarden) - Win; Catacomb Lord (Chris - Lich) - Lose
Ratings: Brett 8.5, Matt 8.5, Steve 8, Yarden 10, Chris 8.5

Notre Dame
Time: 63 minutes
Score: Adam* 56, Chris 54, Tom 50, Chip 43, Ken* 39
Ratings: Adam 8, Chris 9, Tom 8.5, Chip 8, Ken 7

Sultan
Time: ??
Score: Chip* 35, Ken* 34, Tom* 34, Milo* 31, Adam 17
Ratings: ???

Talisman
Time: 125 minutes
Score: Michelle* - Win; Milo, Josh* & David* - Lose
Ratings: Michelle 7, Milo 8, Josh 7, David 7

Thurn and Taxis
Time: ??
Score: Adam 22, Tom* 13, Chip* 13, Ken 11
Ratings: Adam 8, Tom 8, Chip 8, Ken 8.5

Tribune
Time: 65 minutes
Score: Chip 3, Adam 2, Ken 2, Tom 2, Steve* 1
Ratings: Chip 9, Adam 7.5, Ken 8.5, Tom 7.5, Steve 8

Unspeakable Words
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Chris 102, Steve 99, Brett & Matt & Yarden - Looney Tunes!
Ratings: Chris 8, Steve 8.5, Brett 7.5, Matt 7.5, Yarden 10

* First play for that Person