Hey Travelers, Don't Bother Calling

In a previous post I expressed my love for the Travelers, the mysterious race of intergalactic merchants from Starfarers of Catan. I mentioned how I wanted to hang out with them, that they seem cool. I wanted to be friends. Well, I take it all back. If I was to spend any time with them it would merely be to kill them, Tro-Taphon specifically. I blame him for my Starfarers loss the other night, no one else. Just him.

The 5-6 player expansion for Starfarers adds the Travelers to the game as a trade outpost, previously they were just a very generous black ball encounter. It is indisputably the best trade post in the game and the one that all players try to reach first. All of the cards are very good, but the Small Donation card has got to be the most valuable in the game for several reasons. Here is what it does: It allows the player to ask the lead player for a specific resource. If the lead player does not have the card then Tro-Taphon and his scumbag friends take an Upgrade from the lead player’s mother ship. An upgrade! That is absurd. I’m taking this very personally, it’s true. But it is a killer.

So, here’s what happened to me last night. We were playing a five player game of Starfarers (Mike, Katie, Tozer, Danielle, and myself) and I jumped out to an early lead on the strength of some colonies and fame rings. Mike eventually wound up getting a trade ship to the Travelers and got Tro-Taphon on his side. It was a great move for Mike, especially since he was in last place and wasn’t looking to be the lead player anytime soon. Since my lead was pretty substantial I wound up being the victim of his Small Donation for the majority of the game. I lost several resources to him, but the worst part was the lost freight ring and the four lost cannons. I had an abundance of carbon so I was working on a cannon strategy in the hopes of fighting a bunch of pirates and freeing some pirate planets. That went down the drain real fast since I was losing a cannon just about every turn. At one point I had seven cannons (I had picked up the plus two cannons from the Scientists) and was one move away from freeing the (7)Pirate planet. That was the closest I ever got to it. The game unfolded in a wretched manner and Mike wound up winning. I finished with 14 points.

I guess my question is if the Small Donation card is too good? Is it unbalanced to the point that it is foolish not to get it? Let’s see, the only reason to not get it would be if you are in the lead since it won’t help you at all as long as you are winning. You could even make the argument that it would be worth taking it just to prevent someone else from getting it. Compared to other cards it yields much more over the course of the game than a typical card from another trading post. I’m going to make some vast generalizations in an attempt to quantify exactly what this card is worth. Here goes. In an average game of Starfarers there are going to be about 18 turns. Small Donation is going to be one of, if not the, first trade cards picked up. We will say that someone gets it on turn 5 of the game (it is at the far end of the board, so it takes a little while to get there) and begins to use it on turn 6. That is twelve turns that they will have it, and let’s predict that they will take the lead on turn sixteen. That means it will be yielding resources for ten turns and it is guaranteed to produce something every turn. A smart player is going to ask for a resource that they know the lead player does not have, so for seven turns it will yield an upgrade (all of which are worth two resources). Following my fuzzy math that card has yielded 17 resources over the course of the game, plus has the additional effect of taking those resources from the lead player. Wow, that’s a lot. Does anything else even come close? Let’s compare it to some others.

A card from the Scientists is worth four resources (some combination of a booster and a cannon, or two of one type) plus a little bump up since it allows you to get your cannons over six and kill that one real tough pirate. I’ll be generous and say that they are worth five resources each. How about the Green Folk? At most they will yield an extra resource every other turn over the course of the game. Say you get to it early and it starts to pay off right away, it might be worth nine resources over the course of the game. The Merchants are hard to quantify since they allow you to convert your resources into others at a more favorable exchange rate, but it’s really an improvement on something that any player can do regardless. The trade goods one is the most useful, but since it is only usable once a turn I doubt that it is worth more than a couple of resources a game. Let’s be generous and say it’s worth eight resources over the course of the game. What about the Blue Folk? They seem to be sort of a mixed bag of usefulness. Let’s go with the one that is similar to Small Donation. The card (I can’t remember the name) allows the player to take a random card from up to two players, as long as the players have more victory points than the player taking the card. That one is pretty good. It has the potential to generate two resources a round, but they are random so not worth as much as picking a resource. This one puzzles me. I am going to say that it will be useful for half the game in all, but for half of that will only yield one resource. That’s a total of 15 resources, but since they are random I’d say that it is worth about 12 resources altogether. Plus the same bump that Small Donation gets for taking resources from someone. What does this all mean? It means that Small Donation is probably the best card in the game. I can’t even think of the last time we played Starfarers and it was not one of the first cards taken, which shows how highly valued it is.

Am I bitter? Sure. But it’s not so much because I lost but rather that this one card seems to be grossly out of line with other cards in the game. It doesn’t seem fair, not particularly to me but just in the general sense. The point is that if I ever run into Tro-Taphon on the street I’m going to tear him a new mouth.

Shadows Over Camelot: Session Review

I’ve mentioned before that when it comes to cooperative games our group has really been struggling of late. I’m not sure why this is, but one game that has been a particular thorn in our collective side is the otherwise excellent Shadows Over Camelot . We have a lot of fun playing it, yet in the end the ominous clouds swell over the Round Table and reign supreme as Camelot falls. Perhaps that makes it seem a bit dramatic, but it’s the truth. One thing I will say is that we’ve gotten slightly better each time we’ve played it. We had the four person crew the other night, strapped on our plate mail, and decided to give it another shot. Going in we realized that helping each other out and behaving like gentlemanly knights was the path to success, we made that our primary strategy. No one would be running off on foolish quests for glory while the kingdom crumbled. We randomly drew knights as follows; I was Sir Percival, Katie was the Saracen Knight Palamedes, Mike the valiant and pure Sir Galahad, and Nick was King Arthur. We were ready to go.

In the first couple of rounds Percival and Arthur joined forces to defeat an army of invading Picts, earning some cards and our first white sword. That will teach those barbarians! Throughout the game we all frequently used the ability to sacrifice a life to take an extra action, usually when moving to a new area and then to immediately play a card. It’s very helpful. Knowing that if you defeat a challenge you will earn more life lessens the blow of the heroic sacrifice. Our victory was followed by a brave display of arms by Sir Galahad in the Black Knights Tournament, besting him soundly (despite the presence of what Mike deemed, in knightly speak, “a combatant of Jet Li type prowess”). In the meantime Palamedes was struggling by himself to save Exaclibur. Two other issues had arisen as well; the Lancelot Quest was bordering on being unwinnable due to the accumulation of several cards for Lancelot and none for us, the Grail Quest seemed extremely dire as well. The Dark Forest card came into play shortly after the victory in the Tournament. This card prevented any knight from playing a Grail card until a quest was successfully completed. At this point we were not even close to winning any, having just completed two. Plus, the Grail cards were piling up. The Grail Quest is sort of a big deal, it’s worth three swords for either side and a ton of white cards if the knights win it. This was where we really came together as true Knights of the Round Table. We all hustled to over to Excalibur to lend support to Palamedes and save the legendary sword. With the four of us working together on it we saved the sword from plunging into the murky depths of the lake. Fittingly it was Sir Palamedes who earned the sword (fitting because he has been there for a while and prevented it from being lost). Not only did we earn more white swords but we were now able to continue the quest for the Grail since the Dark Forest card was now out of play.

Right around this time we also discovered the great pairing that is Arthur and Galahad. Arthur has the power to, once a turn, give a card to another knight in exchange for a card. Galahad can, once a turn, play a special white card in his hand for no action point. Whenever Arthur had a special white he would pass it on to Galahad who could play it without the cost of a point. It worked out really well for all of us, especially since the special whites usually benefit the whole company it did not matter who played it. The net gain was several actions over the course of the game, which really goes a long way. The good knights were able to put their egos aside for the greater good of the kingdom.

At this point we had four white swords and two black ones, we could see how the end game was going to play out. To insure victory we needed to have seven white swords and last until the Round Table had a total of twelve swords. Galahad, Arthur, and Palamedes all went over to the Grail Quest to save the cup. Percival (myself) had nothing to contribute to the Grail Quest so I traveled to Camelot and began to battle the siege engines that were building up. The Knights had been unable to play any Grail cards for a while since the Dark Forest card was in play, so we had a bunch built up. The three of them were able battle the forces of evil and had the Grail on the verge of victory. Palamedes then played the Heroism card, which would earn us an extra white sword if we won. On the next turn Arthur saved the sacred cup and earned us four (!) more swords, bringing our total to eight! Victory would be ours if we could survive. With the Grail and Excalibur quests completed the siege engines were coming at a furious rate and Percival was being overwhelmed as the lone warrior defending the castle. The other knights joined him in defense, battling the invading forces. Palamedes fell in battle on the fields of Camelot, but was saved when Arthur, brave King that he is, sacrificed the recently earned Grail to provide him with new life. Such camaraderie.

We were in a strange position at this point. We had the game won once more swords were added to the table. However we did not want to leave Camelot to complete another quest because of all the siege engines, so we bided our time. Eventually the Black Knights Tournament was lost, placing a 12th sword on the Round Table. Sure, we were a bit ashamed to lose to such a coward, but the war was won! There was much rejoicing in the halls of Camelot that night.

I think that we took a big step forward in team tactics with this victory. Shadows Over Camelot is a game that really requires everyone to work together, the lone knight does not stand a chance. We also realized that it is very hard to win the game if the very difficult Grail Quest is not won. Seven black swords loses the game for the knights, and that quest alone provides three of them. I think that we did really well. At no point were we ever in serious danger. We recognized threats before they became mortal danger, cooperated, and helped one another. Perhaps we are actually ready to try the game with a traitor. And honestly the best part of this game is speaking in that bizarre Knightly vernacular that is encouraged by the game designers.

Zombie Apocalypse- Last Night on Earth

Everytime that I play Last Night on Earth I am reminded of two things; how poorly written and confusing some of the rules can be, and how much of a fun, tense game it actually is. Most of my gaming takes place at night, but yesterday Mike and I found ourselves with some afternoon time available for gaming. We decided on LNOE, which in my opinion is much better as a two player game than with a larger group. The game is naturally zombies versus heroes so it makes sense to have it as a two player game. It works fine with multiple players, but when a gamer is controlling an entire side by themselves it really lets you develop strategy and execute a plan. There is something to be said for the heroes to all be controlled to by a different person, it sort of reflects the chaos of a real life zombie invasion, but it also really minimizes each players contribution to the game. A single hero may do very little on any given turn.



We went totally random in the set up and I wound up with the zombies and Mike got the heroes. We drew the Zombie Apocalypse scenario (from the Growing Hunger expansion) which has all sorts of crazy stuff going on in it. 21 zombies for me with autospawn. Well stocked buildings, search markers, extra cards, and respawning heroes for Mike. The goal of this particular scenario is for the zombies to destroy six buildings before the sun comes up (buildings are destroyed when a zombie occupies every space in the building and there are no heroes in it). It¹s a nice little change of pace since it is normally the heroes trying to accomplish a task, and the zombies stopping them. Mike wound up with a pretty good squad as well. To start off he had Jenny, Sam, Sally, and the kick ass Rachelle. With his bonus cards he got lucky and came strapped with some serious firepower (revolvers and pump shotguns), which goes a long way in this game.

The game started off slow for me as I was having a hard time getting my zombies out onto the board. And with small numbers it was easy for Mike to pick them off with his many guns, he knows better than to get close to the brain hungry zombies. We had also ruled before the game that the buildings that were only a single space (the morgue and something else) were only rooms inside of another building, so they did not count as a destroyed building. They also did not get a free search marker. Eventually I was able to get some large numbers of zombies on the board and start to do some damage, in two rounds I was able to destroy three buildings and kill Jenny (though she was promptly replaced by the far superior Amanda). I will give Jenny some credit though, she held out for a bit and took some zombies with her. I¹ve never thought much of Jenny but on this day she did her farm proud. On the other hand, my zombies were fighting like wimps all day (lots of 1¹s and 2¹s) and I really struggled in fights.



While all of this was going down Rachelle was absolutely wreaking havoc on the zombie population with her firearms. I tried my hardest to keep my zombies apart from one another to avoid the blast of the shotgun, but then she would just use the revolver and pick them off one by one. She was a force to be reckoned with. I think that she is my favorite character, or my least favorite on this day. She starts with a gun and a flashlight, which is very good in itself. But then she also has a power that lets her ignore a wound on a roll of 6. It doesn’t work all that often, but when it does you sort of fall in love with her for being such a tough chick.

For a couple of turns I felt like I was on pace to win this thing and then everything started going wrong. I had destroyed four buildings and I had masses of zombies getting ready to overrun two remaining structures. A gruesome battle in the supermarket left Sam the Cook dead. Johnny the Quarterback appeared in his place and in a single turn, using his blitz ability and some well played cards by Mike, managed to take out five zombies and nullify the threat to the high school. I was devastated. I still had a shot as a fifth building had gone down and I was massing to take over the supermarket. The problem is that I was running out of time. The other option that opened up to me was that I had killed three heroes (Rachelle died a hero, I¹m sure that the police force honored her in some way), so one more death would win it for me (if the zombies kill four heroes victory is automatic). I had enough zombies to take over the supermarket but Mike brought Amanda and Sally to the vicinity and the zombies were lured away from the building (and victory!). On the last turn of the game all I had to do was defeat one of the two high school girls and I would win. Mike just needed to survive. I got to give it up to Mike here, he totally had the right strategy. He didn’t need to kill the zombies or charge into the building, all that he needed to do was lure them out and he put himself into a position to do so.

My rolls were pathetic and I had nothing all that useful in my hand. I had shambled a couple of zombies to the space and the fight wound up being seven zombies versus the two girls, but in the end the girls survived and the town stood for another day. Amanda has a great ability that lets her hide and potentially cancel any fight that she is in, and she was able to get rid of two of them that way.

What LNOE does well is create very dramatic situations that often play out until the very last turn of the game. It¹s a lot of fun. The characters all have distinct personas and as they move around over the course of the game they develop personal histories unique to that game. Maybe I get too into it, but I definitely get invested in what is happening with them. It is also nice to play a game that is not operating on a grand scale, such as colonizing alien galaxies and saving the world from invading orcs. Everything in LNOE is on a small scale. Small town being invaded by zombies, there are a handful of survivors left to battle them. We know all of their names and what they have, what motivates them and what they can do. They fight with jumper cables and meat cleavers.

Back to the point that I raised earlier about the rules being confusing. A lot of the text is worded in ways that make it difficult to understand how an item or event is supposed to operate. For example, the pump shotgun. Do I roll a die for each zombie in the space, and if any of them are a one is the gun out of ammo? Or do I roll them all and then roll a separate time to see if any ammo remains? I think that myself and Mike are fair with rules so we were able to come to fairly simple conclusions and keep the game moving, but with larger numbers or less experienced players it could really be an issue and slow down what is otherwise a very fun experience.

One Night in Arkadia

Dusted off the shelf and pulled out an old favorite the other night, Arkadia from Ravensburger Games. In Arkadia players become medieval architects competing for the commissions of the noble families in the area, the whole time also helping to build the large castle in the center of town. The game is a lot of fun, not too long of a commitment, and pretty easy to understand. Katie, Mike, and I had played a bunch of times before, this would be the first time for Nick, though he seemed eager to get started. It had probably been about a year since any of us had played Arkadia so I went through the rules and once we got going it all seemed to come back fairly easy. This is definitely one of those easy to learn, hard to master type games. Each turn a player has the option of placing down a building on the board (each of which bears a seal of one of four colors) or placing down workers to close out a building. A building is closed off when all of it’s sides have either another building or a worker on it. The player that closed it off gets the seal from the building, and everyone who has a colored worker also gets a seal of that color. Additionally, when a building is completed another piece of the castle is added. Each castle piece has a colored tile that corresponds to the four colors, and how many of the color are currently visible in the castle construction is how much in gold each seal is worth. The castle is also essentially the timer for the game. When construction begins on the third floor of the castle the game enters it’s final turn.



As is typical with this game, play started off pretty slowly. We were all being very cautious in placing our buildings and trying not to give each other openings to seal off a building. Right away Nick grasped the value of the neutral workers gained from covering up camps and picked up a couple early on. The neutral workers don’t garner any seals for you, but they help close out buildings which in turn helps control the value of the colored seals. Mike was the first to use some of his banners and cash in some seals once he had picked some up. At this point in the game getting the two colored workers is probably more useful than cashing in. Mike was to my right, so I also had to deal with his stingy ways and he was giving me nothing to work with. I was off to a much slower start than I had wanted. There were several buildings with silver seals concentrated in one part of the board and I wound up using most of my resources in that area, leaving me with a bunch of silver. Unfortunately no one else was into silver and it’s value kept plummeting as no new silver pieces were added to the castle. I figured I would just hoard them for now and hope for a big payoff later in the game, but I wasn’t sure that it would ever come.

As we moved into the second half of the game Nick and Mike started to pull away. They were both gathering in a lot of the olive colored seals so they were helping each other by adding more olive to the castle. Nick in particular seemed to be doing well, though his tent setup in front of him kept his gold total unknown to me. I suppose I could have tried to track his total in my head, but defense against one individual in a four player game is almost impossible so I didn’t see the point in it. I did eventually get a decent return on my silver, I cashed in 12 silver seals at four gold each for a total of 48 gold. I swore to myself that I was going to wait until silver got to five gold before trading in, but that day never arrived so I had to do something.

One of the tricky things about Arkadia is how quickly the ending sneaks up on you. For a game that starts off very conservative, it ends in very aggressive fashion with all of the players quickly trying to play whatever workers they have and cash in their seals once the third floor of the castle is started. I misplayed my hand entirely and wound up with some colored workers still in my hand at the end of the game, which is a cardinal sin in this game. When the last turn finished up we cashed in our remaining seals and the score looked like this: Nick 97, Fran 95, Mike 84, Katie 71.

Despite the fact that a rookie player won the game Arkadia really does have a lot of strategy. In the four player game it is tough to plan long term since the board changes so much by the time it comes back around, so the best thing to do is look for general trends and make the best move you can at any given time. I like this game a lot and I hope it’s not another year before we play again.

A Pirates Life for Me

Had a four player game of Pirate’s Cove last night with Cris, Mike, and Jesse. This was about the sixth time or so that we have played so I am starting to get a solid feel for the strategy and I went in with a definite plan on what I wanted to try and do. I thought that if I could get to about 35 points I stood a good chance of winning as that seems to be around the magic number so far for our games. That’s about 3 points a turn, which seems very doable when you look at it that way.

My strategy early on was to build up my hull and maximize the amount of treasure that I could carry, I planned on making two trips to Treasure Island over the course of the game. One would be on the 12th (and last) turn, the other would most likely be in the first half of the game. I wanted to make sure that I had full treasures every time that I went. That pretty much left me with ten turns to get as many other resources as I could. I tried to look at each Treasure card in terms of Fame Points, as that seems to be a good baseline to convert everything into. I made some quick adjustments and roughly equated resources to be worth the following: Treasures-4/5 of a point (obviously they are worth a fame point each, but there is always the risk that they never get buried), Gold- ½ a fame point (Again, three gold are worth a fame point, but the fact that you can use gold for all sorts of stuff makes them worth more), and Tavern Cards- 1 fame point (worth two gold each, but can be real hit or miss. Definitely a wild card in the game). I also wanted to make a definite effort to avoid combat so I decided I would be a wimp about things and try to steer clear of islands that looked very tempting.

Things started off well when I drew the parrot that lets you shoot six dice in combat (I forget it’s name) as my initial Tavern card. Unfortunately I sailed to the same island as both Jesse and Cris and before I could even attack my parrot had been killed. At least I had no fame points to lose. I wound up losing the battle as well and retreated to the Cove for a little R&R and to plan my revenge. After that things went well for me as I avoided battle for the next couple of rounds and tried to concentrate on building up my ship and grabbing some tavern cards. Mike and Cris jumped out early in the Fame Point lead, but the one thing I am certain of in the game is that an early lead means nothing so I paced myself and tried to stay on target of getting at least three Fame Points (or the equivalent) each round.

I finally made it to Treasure Island on Round 5 and buried a hull’s full worth of booty, but I was still in the back of the pack, though Jesse was struggling mightily as I had managed to damage most of his ship with a well rolled Six Gun Salute. Mike was in hunting mode as he managed to take down both the Flying Dutchman (with help) and the surprisingly wimpy Captain Hook. This was setting up a showdown with Ann Bonny and Mary Read who I knew would be at Treasure Island on the last turn, which was fine with me as I was spoiling for a fight at this point. I had Grapeshot Attack sitting in my hand for my final stand, and since the lady pirates attack every part of your ship I didn’t really care about damaging my cannons since my sails were going to be crippled first anyway.

Heading into Round 11 I played Consort on Mike. It wound up getting me 1 Fame, 3 Gold, and a Treasure. I was happy with that.

On Round 12 I went to Treasure Island with 9 treasures stowed away in my hull. Jesse also went there so I had some backup for the fight, which I was happy about. I was surprised to see Mike go to Tavern Island, even though he had some treasure in his hull. Cris also opted to stay away, having been there last turn to unload and take the lead. Cris also dispatched the Royal Navy after Mike, taking advantage of his weak hull and forcing him to Pirates Cove. Jesse and I made quick work of Bonny and Read with the help of good rolling and Grapeshot Attack. Between the buried Treasure, buried Gold (I had 17 gold!), and Fame points from the Legendary Pirate victory I netted 17 points on the final turn which pushed me into the lead. After we played the cards in our hands I wound up with a 1 point win over Cris. Another close exciting game.