Every now and then I come across interesting projects that were completely unknown to me before. This time it's The Decktet Wiki, a wiki dedicated to the Decktet, a new deck of cards with a somewhat unusual structure: each card can be assigned to multiple symbols and there are not just 4, but 6 of them. Based on this, there is a large number of games that creatively use this deck of cards.
Archive July 2015
In The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Treebeard was once again on the road with Merry and Pippin. But in "Blood of Gondor," it turned out that an adventure that starts directly with a siege is rather stupid if you mainly use Hobbits. And if there aren't enough allies outside and the few that are there face the adventure, it's quickly over. Then it went back to Ithilien, but things didn't go well there either - except Treebeard initially showed himself to be a great Ent, thereby gathering the opponents, who unfortunately could not be attacked through the secret path and thus became more and more numerous, eventually overwhelming the group. All in all, not a good day for Middle-earth. If a deck just can't find its key cards, things just go badly - there's not much you can do about it, as even drawing cards helps only to a limited extent. Sometimes I wish there were 4 of each card allowed, like in Magic. And for the Ents themselves, the density of Ent cards still needs to be increased so that things run more smoothly - at the moment, I still have too many compromises in there (for example, own Ent healing instead of the Elves I use and better defense - both will come with the next adventures, but at the moment it's stuck there).
Something new again: VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game. Juliana loves coffee, I love games, so you can kill two birds with one stone. Nice dice game with surprising depth for a Yahtzee variant. The Al Gusto expansion in the box brings even more variations, but the base game itself is already quite nice. Of course, there is a lot of luck involved, but you can help with suitable (unlockable) abilities. Depending on the variant, there is more or less direct interaction in the game. Really nicely done. Instead of the pencil-ticked score counters, I use player mats and small markers to move. It has given us a lot of fun, and apparently we have only made a rough rules violation (the thing with the abilities that give out markers is not quite clearly explained in the rules - you can only use these things once or twice per game).
Cruel Necessity hit the table for the first time today. Wow, that's a tough nut to crack. Definitely far outside my usual gaming experience and a really interesting system that can be easily modified if it becomes too frustrating (or too easy - but I don't think that's likely). The setup based on historical events gives the dice rolling a thematic framework. But the dice can also quickly become a source of frustration when the Parliament just can't seem to accomplish anything. There are only very few ways to influence the dice. Apart from that, my first Victory Point game - and that's also an interesting experience, smelling game components that smell like burnt wood is not something you encounter every day.
Brought San Juan to the table again together with Juliana. I still like it, a fast and actually quite uncomplicated game. And by now, I also understand how to play against a Guild Hall. Even though the Guild Hall with many production buildings still seems very dominant at the moment, the Town Hall with a suitable administrative building strategy can also achieve comparable point totals. Nevertheless, I'm considering whether I might want the new San Juan, as the Guild Hall is slightly toned down there (without completely degrading it) and new interesting accents are set with the Bank.
Here's what I found worth reading this week and didn't want to link separately, collected and uncommented.
Race for the Galaxy is - together with the Robot from the Gathering Storm expansion - a really cool solo game. I have never played the game in multiplayer, only alone against the Robot (and 1 or 2 times against the Keldon AI). And so far, I have only lost. But the way to losing was always exciting. A bit of a shame is that the Robot really builds up high pressure and you therefore really have a race with him: one of the main goals must be to end the game as quickly as possible and score more victory points than the Robot. You can't afford great development work here, every turn must bring victory points and bring about the end of the game (either collect direct victory points or - usually better - bring cards into your own display). If you like science fiction themes and are looking for a solid solo experience, I can really recommend this. However, it's not quite cheap, as you need both the main game and the expansion.
Space Hulk: Death Angel – The Card Game - unpacked again after a long time. I do have many (according to Juliana, too many) solo-playable games, so it has somewhat faded into the background. But I once again realized how good the system is, how smoothly it plays, and how it keeps you on edge. It really builds a good story that is very thematic despite the few components. It's amazing how well some older (and here also smaller) games hold up. This time, the teams of Scriptor Callistarius, Brother Leon, and Brother Lorenzo wiped the Space Hulk with the Genestealers.
Progress: Evolution of Technology went into its first two-player round today. Juliana put up a good fight, even though Progress is really more challenging than anything else we usually play together. She even won (ok, she and I together won against me). As usual, of course, a game with open cards to learn. I really like the game, the technology tree is fun and quite logically structured. The game also looks good and the gray cells are not neglected. But until we get this on the table at our weekly game night, there will still be some practice time with the Nations dice game and San Juan to get used to it.
After considerable reflection and discussion, we've decided the time has come for us to step aside and seek new owners for Koken. As much as we'd like to stay, all of us have decided to pursue new professional opportunities that will prevent us from…
Quelle: Koken is for sale and looking for a new home - Koken blog