Letters from the Lord of Troyes
Unlike many game groups that I hear about, our attendance is always highest in the summer. So now that school is back in session, our numbers have dropped pretty significantly. But you know what, the cool thing about boardgames is that they work whether you have 31 other friends with you or just 1.
And last week, things worked out pretty well for me to get to Hypermind incredibly early (for me, anyway), but instead of fitting in lots of games through the evening, I ended up playing a few lengthy games instead.
Troyes [BGG]
Troyes is finally our new Game of the Month! after being delayed since back in May or June for one reason or another. This was Alton's first play, but I think that the rules review was nice for all of us (me included) since it had been a little while since any of us had played.
I was randomly chosen as the first player, so I may have had a little advantage to start with regarding placement in the buildings, and then when Chivalry came out in round 1, I made a pretty conscious decision to aggressively place more dudes in the Palace. I was also a little bit intentional in using up dice that could displace my workers from the different buildings, and by the end of the game I was rolling a rather incredible 8 dice every turn.
It's sort of hard to really remember or explain what all happened through the game otherwise, but I know that I killed a number of event cards using both Chivalry and my dice directly, used the Priest along with the Sculptor for a good number of points, and scored in a few character bonuses to rack up 53 points and the win.
Time: 79 minutes
Score: Norton 53, Alton* 47, Chris 42, Ken 37
Ratings: Norton 7.5, Alton 8, Chris 7.5, Ken 7
I enjoy Troyes quite a bit, but always seem to feel like it takes just a little bit too long for what it is. And I think that the biggest culprit behind that is that the game just has too many freaking options. Usually, options are really good in a game, but there is a point when it almost becomes overwhelming and pushes people into some level of analysis paralysis. And it's not just the number of choices that are the problem, but also the fact that you can't usually plan that far ahead about what you're going to do, since other players can always buy your dice out from under you. So the end result is that as each player's turn comes up, they have to start fresh in evaluating which options they want to pursue, which dice they can use to perform those actions, if and how to obtain those dice, and whether or not they may need to manipulate some of those dice using the influence actions.
If there's a general flaw in dice-placement games like Troyes and Alien Frontiers, I'd definitely say that it's this condition of players not being able to plan their moves in advance, because they ultimately have to wait to see what exactly the dice will roll (in AF) or which dice are still left (here in Troyes) before you can realistically evaluate your move.
I'm not saying, however, that there's no strategic-level planning in either game, because I actually think they both do a good job of letting players put together an overall plan on how they will approach each game. But each turn is also very tactical in that you have to make the best use of your dice at that moment to make some small progress towards your larger strategy. The constraint of strategy actually makes the choices in each turn harder in many cases, again adding to the overall analysis burden of the games.
Good or bad, the game sure is pretty...
But that's enough of that, because after Troyes, we pulled out Kenny's brand-spankin'-new copy of...
Letters from Whitechapel [BGG]
Chris decided to try his hand at being Jack this time, and we actually had 5 other people jumping in to be investigators. In the first night, Chris did a great job of moving quickly and keeping a really good lead on us. But while we were never close to catching him or anything like that, we did manage to narrow down his home location to generally 1/3 or so of the board.
In the second night, we were a lot more aggressive in tracking him, but still couldn't pin him down very closely. Near the very end of the turn, though, through some impressive intuitive logic mixed with a nice dose of pure luck, I actually managed to identify exactly where he was (since I had checked that spot, #80, the turn before and not found a clue, but then found one when I checked it again on this turn). Chris was in a huge bind at that point, because he was only one spot away from his home, but with a lot of us being close by and not a lot of moves left, he didn't have very many options. When he jumped into his hidey-hole on the next move, we had narrowed his home to 4 different spots.
I found Jack at #80, which meant that his home was either # 81, 78, 79, or 97
On the 3rd night, we struggled a little trying to figure out whether we should actively track him or just blockade those 4 spots. We did a little bit of both, but when Chris jumped on his only chance to slip past us to get back home, there was only one spot he could have gone to, so we absolutely figured out that his home was #81. While Chris did manage to kill all five victims (some consolation to a serial killer, I suppose), we basically just blocked off all access to his home on the last night and won the game.
Time: 153 minutes
Score: Investigators (Alton, Chip*, Norton, Keith & Kenny) - Win (4th night), Jack the Ripper (Chris) - Lose
Ratings: Alton 8, Chip 8.5, Norton 9, Keith 8.5, Kenny 8.5, Chris 8.5
Once again, Letters from Whitechapel absolutely rocked. With 5 of us conferring on each move, the game lasted longer than it had before, but I tell you what, it totally didn't feel like it dragged at all for me. Each move is so filled with tension and excitement, and the level of cooperation between the investigators is so incredible; the game just works so freaking well.
Mechanically, there's not a lot to really talk about in LfW, because the actual movement and search actions are so simple. But probably because the mechanics seem to just get out of the way, what really comes through is that exciting cat-and-mouse chase around the board. I'd play it almost any time, and really do hope that we make it the Game of the Month! in October.
Lord of the Rings LCG [BGG]
It had been a while since I'd played the Lord of the Rings LCG (at game night anyway), so I then managed to get Alton, Keith, and Kenny to join me in the relatively new quest Conflict at the Carrock. For this game, I had basically put together four mono-sphere decks that were mostly just the preconstructed decks with a few of the more useless cards removed and a few of the newer cards slipped in. So we each took a sphere and set out to beat the crap out of some trolls!
In the early game, we did a good job of playing the no-gain quest game, since we didn't want to actually complete the first phase of the quest until we were ready to fight the trolls. Just as we were all starting to get into the dangerous range for threat (which was 34, the engagement cost of the trolls), Kenny (playing Spirit) finally drew into his Galadhrim's Greetings, dropping us back down into the place where we could engage them as we wanted to.
Meanwhile, Keith had Tactics and was buffing up both Gimli with armor, a dwarven axe, and lots of damage counters and Legolas with two Blades of Gondolin. I had placed the new Burning Brand (which cancels all shadow cards on enemies engaged with its owner) on Denethor, so I had a rather incredible blocker to protect myself as I healed others and made them draw lots of cards with an unexpectedly courageous Beravor.
By the end, we not only took out all four of the trolls defined by the quest, but also both Hill Trolls and the Marsh Adder. Through some recursive Galadhrim's Greetings and copious use of Gandalfs by everyone, our final score was a rather impressive 82 points (an average of just 20.5 per player)!
Time: 105 minutes
Score: Heroes of Light (Alton*, Norton, Keith & Kenny) - Win (82 points); Conflict at the Carrock - Lose
Ratings: Alton 8, Norton 9, Keith 8, Kenny 9
I've already written a review of the LotR LCG, so I don't need to go on much about it other than to say that it's still holding up well for me, even if I don't get it to the table as often as I'd like.
Other Games Played
Ascension
Time: 58 minutes
Score: Chris 81, Shawn 74, Alton 72, Sean 68, Brad 60
Ratings: All 10's
Carcassonne
Time: 37 minutes
Score: Sean 93, Brad* 80, Shawn 74
Ratings: Sean 10, Brad 9, Shawn 9
Quarriors!
Time: 55 minutes
Score: Brad* 16, Sean 6, Shawn 4, Keith 3
Ratings: Brad 8, Sean 8, Shawn 8, Keith 7
Race for the Galaxy
Time: 20 and 25 minutes
Game 1: Chris 68, Alton 50
Game 2: Chris 91, Alton 29
Ratings: 10's
* First play for that Person
Posted by Chris Norwood at 9/14/2011 3:46 PM 
Categories: Game of the month, Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: Letters from Whitechapel Lord of the Rings LCG Troyes
Categories: Game of the month, Gaming Weblog, Hypermind BoardGamers
Tags: Letters from Whitechapel Lord of the Rings LCG Troyes
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