I was late to game night for a completely different reason this week (having to teach an evening class at work), and the result was, unfortunately, that I missed the start of two games and had to sit around and watch for about 45 minutes.  Mostly, I saw almost one full turn of a Marvel Heroes game that never actually finished (since Britt had to go early). 


The game looked pretty cool and seemed pretty neat, but apparently all I've heard before about it being slow and confusing is mostly true.
Ricochet Robots [BGG]

When the other game (Domaine) finished up, I joined them all in playing a game of Ricochet Robots.  I actually play this pretty often with Gwen at home, but I don't think it has ever been played at game night before.  On the first turn, I also learned that I had always missed a little rule about moving the start locations of the robots, so now I need to go back home and try it again with Gwen.

Sceadeau had played before as well, so he jumped out to an early lead, but then Chris got his bearings and made a strong comeback.  I was distracted by confirming my rule mistake and then a phone call, so I'm sure I would have done better otherwise.  Adam checked out early though, 'cause it definitely wasn't his cup of tea. 


Time: 40 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 6, Chris* 5, "Norton" (Me) 3, Shawn* 2, Adam* 1
Ratings: Sceadeau 4, Chris 7.5, Norton 6, Shawn 6, Adam 3

Ricochet Robots is a pure puzzle game.  On each turn, you try to figure out a path to get a colored robot to a space with a particular symbol of its color.  Robots only move in certain ways (straight lines until they hit something that makes them stop and change directions), and you can actually move the other robots as well to fill in space, block paths, and do other things to help you get the target robot where it needs to go.  It's pretty cool for what it is, but if you don't like sitting quietly as everyone mentally traces a path and counts moves, then you're going to absolutely hate it.

Chronicle [BGG]

Someone (Adam maybe?) had picked up this new Z-Man card game recently, and even though it had already been played earlier in the evening, they tried it again with me.  It's a really interesting little trick-taking game with three colored suits and a whole suit of wild cards as well.  Each number (1-10) in the colored suits and every wild card also has a special power that triggers when you play it.  But the really cool thing is that a seperate deck of objective cards (pictured below) actually determine how you score on each hand, which will change how you play out your hand every time.  Finally, there's also this element of having "evil" cards (the three 1's and the Demon wild card), which prevent you from scoring if you hold one at the end of the hand, unless you manage to get all four, in which case you score 2 points (of the 3 needed to win the game) while no other scoring happens.


In a 5- or 6-player game, you actually play with 2 of the objective cards each hand, which the other players all agreed really made it a lot more interesting.  I was still trying to figure out the card powers and some basic strategy for most of the game, but I was really fascinated by this little game.  It's still a light, trick-taking card game at its core, but the interplay between all the different card powers, the wild cards, and the objectives each turn really add a lot more novelty and decision-making to the basic trick-taking chassis.  The overall lack of granularity in scoring is a little concerning (since you only play to 3 points and, as we saw here, it would be really easy to tie), but I think the game is interesting enough that you could always play to a higher point total to let things settle out a little more.

Overall, I liked Chronicle quite a bit and have already both added it to my wishlist and mentioned it to Gwen, so maybe I'll get it for my birthday or something.   

Time: 33 minutes
Score: Adam 4 (tied with) Sceadeau 4, Chris 3, Shawn 4, Norton* 2
Ratings: Adam 7.5, Sceadeau 7, Chris 7.5, Shawn ?, Norton 7


Some blue (Power) and green (Wisdom) cards - 
Each number has a specific power (like #8 above allowing you to make another player discard a card), which is the same across all colors
Oh, yeah, one more thing.  I was just thinking about how I could introduce this to my parents (who have played traditional card games like Rook and Canasta forever), and the scary little parallel I drew was that Chronicle is sort of a mix between Rook and Phase 10.  You have tricks and manage your hand like Rook (a trick-taking card game, of course), but the objective/way to score each turn switches around (like in Phase 10).  While I like Rook a lot, I consider Phase 10 to be a painful boil on the heiney of all gaming, and find some delight in thinking that perhaps I can redirect its boring force of evil into some sort of benefit to humanity.  

Pandemic [BGG]

It's been way too long since I've played Pandemic, and despite just finishing up a game of Forbidden Island, Chip and Kenny agreed to take a run at saving the world with me.  We included both the virulent strain and mutation challenges from On the Brink, and used 5 epidemic cards.

As it usually does, the game came right down to the very end.  We kept the board pretty well under control for all of the early game, but weren't making a lot of headway towards curing the 5 diseases.  We did manage to eradicate red (since I was the Medic), and then used ??? to switch Kenny from the Generalist to the Researcher, who could better help us put together sets.  As our focus then turned to developing cures, the board started to slip and we had our first outbreak about 2/3 to 3/4 through the game. 


Our work paid off, though, and we put together cures for black and yellow (the virulent strain, which required 6 cards), and I was holding the cure for blue in my hand.  But we didn't have a good plan for purple, and we were on our last turn around the table.  Luck was on our side, though, when Kenny drew Reexamined Research, which let Chip pull a card from the discard pile for a city containing a purple cube, add it to the four other cards in his hand, and cure the mutant strain.  I then played the blue cure with one card (the 5th epidemic, in fact) left in the player deck, and we won!    

Time: 35 minutes
Score: Humans (Chip, Kenny & Norton) - Win!; Mutating, VIrulent Pandemic - Lose
Ratings: Chip 9.5, Kenny 9, Norton 10

Getting all that action, drama, and tension is only 35 minutes is almost a crime.  I love Pandemic...

Il Principe [BGG]

After playing Il Principe last week, I went home and scavanged some wooden cubes from another game to see if it would help mitigate the misearable board and score track that came with the game.  And while I enjoyed the game and wanted to explore it a little more, I also had some concerns about it. 

Well, despite having the "better" components, the game really fell apart for all of us as we played it this time.  I actually ended up winning the game, but it was a hollow victory, because we had seen through the facade of the game and realized just how pointless it really is. 


My little wooden "cubes" (even though they weren't actually square) being used as influence markers, which I scavanged from a Risk game I picked up cheap a year or two ago...
Time: ~60 minutes
Score: Norton 67, Chip 58, Sceadeau 58, Kenny 54
Ratings: Norton 4, Chip 4.5, Sceadeau 3, Kenny 4

There's a lot wrong with it (starting with the ridiculously bad component choices), but the thing that really sort of spelled its doom is that the scoring is just too even.  It's like, in some misguided attempt at balancing the game, the designer actually made it so that everyone scores roughly the same amount of points all the time.  You get points for building cities and points when other people build cities (as long as you control a role or two, which you will usually have), and while there's also the area-majority scoring at the end of the game, the nature of the card play will mean that most players will probably build roughly the same number of cities, thus getting roughly the same number of influence markers on the map.  And since these game elements are so intertwined, everyone is always does the same things all the time (with no real way to specialize your strategy), and I'm not even convinced that there is a real way to "play better" than everyone else and consistently feel like you are rewarded for better doing so.

Standing in stark contrast to the balance of the rest of the game are the effects of blue roles, which let you put extra markers on the board when you claim them.  Since cities only give between 1-3 influnce markers for the investment of building cards and money, getting another marker for just claiming these roles is far too powerful.  I sort of realized this from the beginning and made it my plan all along.  But I don't necessarily feel like I was executing some great strategy in doing this as much as I was exploiting an imbalance and weakness in the game to get my win.  It sort of made me feel dirty.


If there's a nugget of something interesting in the game, it is definitely how the building cards flow.  You draw four a turn, but then commit two to an auction process, in which you can try to win lots of like colors.  Then you play the cards to build cities, and the cards you've played then are used to claim the different roles.  I like that sort of sequence and wonder if there would be a really cool game that could use it, but Il Principe is unfortunately not that game. 

Other Games Played

7 Wonders
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Chris 62, Shawn 53, Sceadeau 49, Adam 21
Ratings: Chris 9, Shawn 9, Sceadeau 9, Adam 8

Bottle Imp
Time: ??
Score: Sceadeau* 83, Adam* 65, Shawn* 48
Ratings: Sceadeau 7, Adam 5.5, Shawn 5

Chronicle
Time: 65 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 3, Chris* 2, Shawn* 2, Adam* 1
Ratings: Sceadeau 6, Chris 7, Shawn 6, Adam 7

Cities
Time: 9 minutes (really???)
Score: Sceadeau 55, Shawn 51, Chris 47
Ratings: Sceadeau 7, Shawn 9, Chris 8 

Domaine
Time: 39 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 33, Adam* 15, Shawn* 8, Chris 5
Ratings: Sceadeau 8, Adam 8, Shawn 7, Chris 5

Forbidden Island
Time: 23 minutes
Score: Forbidden Island (Elite) - Win; Explorers (Chip & Kenny) - Lose
Ratings: ?

Marvel Heroes
Time: 150 minutes (and didn't finish)
Score (at the time the game was stopped): Matt* 14, Britt 13, Chip* 11, Kenny 8
Ratings: Matt 7, Britt 7, Chip 5.5, Kenny 6.5

Rowboat
Time: 30 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 230, Shawn 160
Ratings: Sceadeau 4, Shawn 6

Sultan
Time: 11 minutes
Score: Shawn* 56, Sceadeau 49, Chris 48, Adam 38
Ratings: Shawn 7.5, Sceadeau 7, Chris 7.5, Adam 7

* First play for that Person