While I was away, I put my Netflix account on hold, but going away wasn’t the only reason I stopped the flow of movies. I had simply not been able to find anything that I really cared to watch. Yesterday I unfroze my account to watch an 80 minute documentary on Helvetica, based on the suggestion of Tycho over at Penny Arcade. It’s not for everyone, but I found it mildly interesting. Then again I’m the kind of person who likes to ponder hyper-linking as language.

One of the reasons that the posts have been going up so late is that I have become entranced by Crayon Physics. The designer definitely exceeded my expectations after playing the original project. I wish I had a tablet.

The other reason the posts have been late is that I’m having the hardest time adjusting to the time zone. This time of year the difference is only 6 hours, but it’s just messing with me.

On Tuesday I again went to the mall. I played a game of Race for the Galaxy, which I’m starting to think might be worth buying since I don’t have a copy of San Juan. The only new game I got to play was The Battle for Hill 218. It’s slightly unbalanced (the second player has an advantage), has some randomness, and may only have a few set strategies (I’ll have to play it more to find out), but it’s fun, quick and very cheap. There’s also a free online version.

Since every other time I’ve gone I had to wait around, I decided to go a bit later. Because of this, I missed the chance to play Steam over Holland with Scott. I guess it’s one of the easiest/shortest 18xx games. It looked interesting anyway. I was also told by the new spokesman for the group that I was deprived because I haven’t played Imperial.

Just so you know, I went back and put some screenshots into the Hobbiton post and one into the post about Mt. Ruapehu.

[Joe]

Maybe I’ll give you a wax later. – Steve during his first game of Bohnanza

I think I want that Metro-guy. – One of my opponents in a game of Metropolys

I went up to the mall tonight, which is where I played Metropolys. The Metro-guy jokes became a running gag throughout the game. Before that I played (and won) a game of Medina with Hive Tattoo Guy and another player. It’s a interesting “tile” laying game that has a lot to do, but you almost never want to do any of it. It was fun and I’d play it again, but since it’s out-of-print and expensive, I probably won’t be picking up a copy.

HTG also brought 1835 and Cuba. I don’t think he was serious about getting a game of 1835 in as the play time is around 6 hours. He described Cuba as a mix of Puerto Rico, Caylus and Pillars of the Earth without all the bad parts. That’s high praise, but sadly we didn’t have time for that either, after the other games.

[Joe]

Last week, I went to Carousel Mall to play board games with the intention of getting a game of Agricola in. Of course, I forgot to put my copy in the car in the morning, and nobody else had one with them either. This kinda surprised me, but I guess it was too new for some and somewhat passé for those who had been playing it since Essen, last year.

The first game I ended up playing was some random hot air ballooning game. It’s not even worth looking up what the name of the game was. Next I played a two player game of California. It’s sort of an auction game in that you take turns either buying stuff for your house or taking money. If you take money it reduces the cost of the items for everyone. I made a mistake in that I thought I would get the majority of my points from the gifts you get by attracting people to your house, but it turned out most came from the bonus cards. I thought it was a OK game, but not something I particularly care to play again.

The last game I played was Hermagor. In the game you get money (victory points) by selling goods and establishing markets in different towns. You get bonuses by creating loops around certain paths. The goods that you are allowed to sell on any given turn, and thus which towns you are able to establish markets in that turn are determined by a unique bidding round. You are each given 4 tokens that you take turns placing on/in a matrix of chips that represent the various goods. You can place the tokens either between two chips, at a corner connected to 4 chips or directly on a chip. Who ever has more tokens connected to a chip, gets that chip. If two people tie, nobody gets the chip, but closer tokens are tie breakers. The tokens cost a different amount of money to play depending on where you place them, and you get money back based on the arrangement of your tokens. This made it very hard for me to figure out just how much money I was spending on a given bidding round. I squeaked out a win with 131 dollars to 130 to 130. It was a fun game that I’d be willing to play again, but I’m not ready to run out and pick up a copy.

This week I remembered to bring Agricola, and got a group together to play it. During the game, it seemed like I ran into fewer situations where I was unable to choose the actions that I wanted than I expected. I always had so many things I wanted to do that if I couldn’t do one I’d do another. There were plenty of interesting decisions to make, but most of them were based on conflicts within my strategy as opposed to conflicts with the other players. I certainly want to play it more, as I was playing, how shall I say this, with a rather diverse group of people with some very different strategies.

[Joe]

I picked up a copy of Agricola, the new board game from Uwe Rosenberg (who you may know from such board games as Bohnanza and Babel). Currently Agricola is giving Puerto Rico a run for it’s money on Board Game Geek. I’ve got some rule reading to do before we start playing, but if you want a simple explanation you can check out the latest episode of Board Games with Scott.

As an aside, YouTube/Google need to step it up. It seems like more and more people are using other video solutions because of YouTube’s poor video quality.

In unrelated news, I just found out that Majesty is getting a sequel. The game is based on an interesting concept in that it’s sort of the other half of a role playing game. Instead of being the adventurer/hero, you play as the king who plans the city and sets up rewards for various tasks like killing beasts and such. I found out about the first game when I picked it up as part of a RTS game pack. Gametrailers has a trailer for the upcoming game.

[Joe]

Lately, I’ve been playing a fair amount of Risk knock-off on Facebook. I don’t particularly like the game, but it’s so simple that it’s easy to do as a ‘take your turn when you want to’ type game that I don’t mind. Jason won the first game I was involved in, so he was lording it over people a bit. I told him we would have to try a real game sometime, and finally last Friday we got a game of Power Grid in with Gareth, Peter, Jason and myself playing.

Jason had only played the game once before, but he clearly had a knack for it. On a couple of occasions he put power plants up for bid that he had no use for but were of interest to others. On the last turn, although no one knew it at the time, he put the 4-city windmill up for bid and got Pete up to some ridiculous price and dropped it on him. He bid me up a bit on a 7-city power plant, but I thought I got it for a good price. He picked up a 6-city plant even though there was a 7 on the table. This made it so that we were both able to power 16 cities. Jason bought resources for the current turn and the next. Because of the resource market, Gareth was neutralized for at least that turn and Pete couldn’t power all that many so I decided to end the game. I built 17 cities and powered 16, Jason built up to 16 cities and powered as many, so the win came down to who had more money. I figured that if he had a lot more money, he would have bought the 7 power plant. I put my 23 extra dollars on the table and he put down 8. Ha! I was right. Then he was like “Wait, let me just check my pocket.” 2 red chips. 20 dollars. 8+20 = 28 > 23. Shit! I called bull on it, but honestly I think he was as surprised as I was. So, it was a good game. I suppose I could have waited till the next turn, but that would have been a gamble too, I think.

Maybe this week we’ll play Puerto Rico, he hasn’t played that one yet.

[Joe]