This week, I only played two games.  I don't exactly understand where the time went, but I was one of the last to leave and didn't have that much down time throughout the evening.  Of course, I didn't arrive until 8pm or so, and then had to wait over half an hour for others to finish up their games, and then I had to first teach and then learn the games I played... Oh, I guess that's where it went.

But anyway, the two games I played were actually very similar.  They were both all about dice, so I'll take the chance here to explore, compare, and contrast both games for y'all fine folks.

Alien Frontiers [BGG]

Chris spoke up and asked to try Alien Frontiers, so I pulled it out and Keith joined us.  I actually remembered all the rules this time (since I'd forgotten to deal out an Alien Tech card to each player at the start in my previous games), and it went rather smoothly.

Speaking of Alien Tech, all game long, we were very aggressive with flushing and drawing cards.  Each of us had 5 or 6 cards by game end, and we had drawn through and reshuffled the deck at least 2 or 3 times.  More than anything, I think this was the biggest difference in this session, and is probably a sign that we are getting the game a little more than I had personally done before. 

Keith and Chris got lucky with rolling doubles early on, and on the one turn when I did so as well, they had already taken both spots at the Shipyard.  I caught up some later, but by then Keith was up to 7 dice (with the help of the Burroughs Desert) and Chris was doing positively indecent things with the Colony Constructor.  In fact, Chris used that space at least 3 or 4 times, a couple of times with the help of the Bradbury Plateau, which reduced its cost to just 2 ore.

But right from the beginning, Keith ran away with the game.  I don't know exactly what he did, other than to get a lot of colonies onto the planet faster than Chris and I did.  He used the Terraforming Station a lot (a time or two with the extra ship from the Burroughs Desert, which is nice) and really pushed on the Colonist Hub hard as well.  I moved way too slowly, trying to recover my ship immediately after Terraforming, and fell behind pretty badly.  My only move at the end of the game was to drop a colony, steal Keith's Alien Artifact, and manipulate a colony or two on the planet to push me ahead of Chris, but still not very close to Keith as he played out his last colony and won the game.


Keith was red, Chris was yellow, and I was green.  You can see why Keith won...

Time: 78 minutes
Score: Keith 11, Norton (Me) 8, Chris* 7
Ratings: Keith 8, Norton 8, Chris 8

I'll hold my comments til later, so let's move on to...

Troyes [BGG]

Before I go on, I feel the need to make sure that you're pronouncing Troyes correctly.  I don't think that I can continue to write if I know that people out there will be reading it as "Troy-ez", because I'm apparently way too invested in the pronounciation of game titles (just like with Agri-cola and Si-clades).  Anyway, it's a city in France, and from what I've heard, the correct way to say it is "Twaa" (or, more techinically, [tʁwa]).  So please, for the sake of my sanity and all else that is right with the world, at least humor me enough to tell me that's how you're saying it.

One other thing before I get to the game, though.  For the first time, Chris from Dice Hate Me (@DiceHateMe) and Michael from Wired.com's GeekDad blog (@oldbie) were able to come from their homes in the Triangle and join us this week.   I've met them a time or two before in person, but we read each others blogs and talk a lot on Twitter, so I feel like I know them a lot better than I really do, and therefore it's always nice to actually play a game and spend some time with them in person.  Chris had recently picked up Troyes (remember, pronounced "Twaa"), and so Michael, Tom, and I joined him in a play of it.  He has subsequently written a review of it, so go over there to see the basics about how to play.


Michael, Chris, and Tom brave the rough streets of Troyes...
Buy anyway, we eventually got around to actually playing the game, and it was pretty interesting.  With it being my first play and also due to the nature of the game, though, it's pretty hard for me to really lay out any sort of narrative about how it went.  For most of the game (which is only 6 rounds with 4-players), I relied more on military (red) and religious (white) dice for my actions, getting a couple of cubes into the cathedral early and using some military to get money from everyone in City Hall using the Tax Collector, and followed Chris to the  Sculptor mostly through buying action dice from other people.  I fought a few enemies, but only took the majority and collected one of them.

Michael, however, fought off enemies left and right, picking up several cards as trophies.  He also pushed hard later on to get cubes into the cathedral, and placed several of his workers onto the different action spots.  I don't really remember what all Chris and Tom did, though, since I was pretty focused on my own actions.  

When we all added up our points at the end of the game, Michael came up with one more point than me, and it's all Tom's fault.  If he hadn't bought the one die I needed to get my last cube into the cathedral, I would have had 2 more points and won the game.  Dang it, Tom; how dare you! 


You can use the dice you roll (in the section with your colored marker) for free, but you can also buy dice from other sections as well...
Time: 120 minutes
Score: Michael* 36, Norton* 35, DHM Chris 32, Tom* 19
Ratings: Michael 6.5, Norton 7.5, DHM Chris 8.5, Tom 7

Okay, then, time for some insightful commentary.  Let's start with how similar both of these games are, because really, they're almost the same game.

Shared strengths: Lots of choices!  In addition to having several different ways to spend/place the dice you roll, there are also a lot of ways to manipulate your dice rolls (Alien Tech cards in Alien Frontiers and spending Influence in Troyes).  There's also a lot of player interaction; from blocking out spaces and stealing from each other in AF to buying dice and stealing money in Troyes. More than anything, though, is that both games are very dynamic, where on every single turn, you have to take what the luck of the dice gives you and make the best out of it.  But you still have to be working towards some semblance of a larger strategy, so you have to be felxible and opportunistic, which I like a lot.


Shared Weaknesses: With all the choices, both games seem to be very vulnerable to analysis paralysis.  In general, both also seemed to go on a little longer than they should.  And like most all dice games, both of these also seemed to have a smal bias towards people who happen to roll higher.  Yeah, there's a lot of ways to fiddle with the dice, but someome who rolls better will still have an easier road of it than someone who rolls poorly.  I still can't say for sure that this is a terrible thing (since they are dice games, you know), but it certainly makes blind luck a greater factor than some people are comfortable with.

Why Might Troyes be Better? Even more choices!  The ability to buy other players' dice is just incredible, and it opens up the game even more than you see with Alien Frontiers.  Troyes is also, to borrow a term, "meatier" than Alien Frontiers, and will probably give a consistently deeper experience than AF.  The scoring is also a lot more granular and at least partially hidden, so while there's still a lot of player interaction throughout the game, the game won't devolve into turn after turn of "we gotta stop  X or he'll win!" like most of my games of Alien Frontiers have.  The turns are also more integrated, so you don't have the large blocks of downtime like you can get in AF.


Why Might Alien Frontiers be Better? Time!  The extra choices in Troyes also adds in more time, and Alien Frontiers seems to run 30-45 minutes shorter.  And the coolest thing to me in AF is the ability to pull off "shenanigans", by which I really just mean combinations of orbital facilities, Alien Tech cards, and region powers to do all sorts of cool and interesting effects.  I really can't overstate how important this sort of thing is to my experience with the game, because even in losing, getting off that really cool turn or two may just be enough to make you feel like you've really accomplished something in the game.

So what's my final opinion?  As my ratings would indicate, I lean towards Alien Frontiers right now.  But I should be getting in a copy of Troyes soon, and I look forward to exploring it further as well.  And while I do have a few qualms about this genre of game in general, I'm having a lot of fun with them right now, and I look forward to see how designers will continue to find cool and interesting ways to use dice in the future!   


Other Games Played

7 Wonders
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Josh 55, Chris 54, Alex 52, Keith 48
Ratings: Josh 8, Chris 8.5, Alex 9.5, Keith 8

Agricola
Time: 61, 70, and 45 minutes
Game 1: Sceadeau 51, Ian 41, Chris 26, Stacey* 24
Game 1: Sceadeau 64, Adam 38, Ian 26, Stacey 24
Game 1: Sceadeau 51, Ian 38
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Ian 9.5, Chris 9.5, Stacey 9, Adam 9.5,

Homesteaders
Time: 79 minutes
Score: Chip 40(+$2), Ken* 40(+$0), Josh* 36, Tom 33
Ratings: Chip 8, Ken 8, Josh 8.5, Tom 8

Le Havre
Time: 92 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 238, Stacey* 138, Adam 116, Ian 111
Ratings: Sceadeau 10, Stacey 9, Adam , Ian 10

London
Time: 62, 75, and 79 minutes
Game 1: Chris 55, Alex 38, Josh 35, Shawn 31
Game 2: Ken 130, Chip 101
Game 3: Ken 49, Keith 40, Chip 36, Josh 18
Ratings: Chris 8.5, Alex 8.5, Josh 8, Shawn 8, Ken 8, Chip 7, Keith 6

Parade
Time: ??
Score: Adam 26, Shawn 29, Josh 33
Ratings: Adam 8, Shawn 7, Josh 7

Roll Through the Ages
Time: ??
Score: Adam 24, Shawn 6
Ratings: Adam 8, Shawn 8

Sunrise City (playtest)
Time: 80 minutes
Score: Shawn 17, DHM Chris 15, Michael 9 
Ratings: (Not reported since it was a playtest)

Trollhalla
Time: 34 minutes
Score: Shawn 68, Michael 64, Tom* 51, DHM Chris 45 
Ratings: Shawn 9, Tom 7


* First play for that Person