Bunker Project Log

One word:

infuriating.

Oh crap…?

?I love Tanga. They have a great business model, cool content, and they are run by this guy?(how cool is that?). I have bought a godzillion things there.

And that’s the problem.

For an obsessive compulsive collector hobbyist weirdo like me, with a previously disposable income…?but now a father of two whose expenses are catching up with him, this is very bad.

So, when Ticket to Ride Marklin Edition (the “Real Gamer’s version”)?showed up at the appointed time of Tanga (1opm EST for the uninitiated) I did my usual bolt downstairs, halfway through a 5-player game?of Fluxx no less.

Then I hesitated.?The Tangathon marquee flashed. The $24.99 price tag?said to me, “I’m so cheap, and you want me so?bad… come on baby, just buy it.”

And I hesitated some more. The marquee continued it’s cycle.

And then I said to myself, “I’ve got a lot of games. Do I really need more games?”

?”Of course I do.” I said to myself.

“But you have about 30 unopened games from the last 3 months of Tangathons and other ‘good deals’. Are you ever going to play them?”

“Uhmm…”

“And… Mrs. G will be really, really mad.”

Exhale to deep sigh.

So, I took my hand off the mouse, and went back upstairs. I continued Fluxx, and I whined a little. And my chest was really tight just thinking about that great deal that I had passed up.

It wasn’t any easier today when a whole boatload of great stuff showed up, particularly Starfarers of Catan. I’ve had major wood for anything Catan lately, and the space theme has me gagging for it.

But I’ve made it so far. Sorry TangaJoe, TangaJen, TangaMonkey and the rest of the crew. I think I’m going to pass, as much as I don’t want to.

See you again when my credit card has recovered. Don’t forget me.?

I suck at rules. I have spoiled many a game night gathering the dorks together to play some new game, only to find that, yes… there are some?important rules on the third through sixth pages… and… Yes! Players have a hard time playing when they don’t know how to win, and YES!! If you wreck the first play of a good game, it doesn’t matter how good it could have been, first impressions matter.

So, I decided to fix this. My first step? Read the rules… all the way through. A bunch of times!

The problem with this is, now I?have invested?time in the game. Thus, I?must play it, with whomever is around, and in this case, the victim was Mrs. G.

The second step? Explain the rules, starting with the victory condition. Not the mechanic that I think is so damn cool. Nobody cares about that. They want to know why they are playing. Then you can move on to the how.

The third step? Play…?flawlessly?

My victim seemed hesitant,?but really?didn’t have much choice in the matter, so we played anyway. In the end, it went so smoothly that I am having a hard time writing about it. There weren’t any strings of turns that needed to be replayed because of misread rules, nor a single moment where we didn’t have any idea what to do next. There wasn’t even a patented Gangrene “mid-game rule” (wherein I remember to divulge the rule halfway through the game that totally?changes the way the whole game is played.)?It was almost anti-climactic! Just like this story…

For those of you interested, what follows is the basics of how to play Thurn and Taxis. I have glossed over a few details (the carriage in particular) in order to give you a quick feel for how the game is played. If you have specific questions, ask them in the comments and I will try to answer them as best I can.

The object of Thurn?and Taxis is to create postal routes over a European map centered on historic Bavaria.

Completing routes allows you to build houses in cities along the route.

You are?rewarded points for having at least one house in each city in a province. You also get points for having at least one house in all of the provinces on the map. Each of these goals has a corresponding set of chits that reside on the board. The point values descend as each person achieves the goal. For example, the first person to complete the Baiern province will get?five points. The next person will get four. Some provinces only have three victory chits, thus the fourth player gets nothing for the achievement.

The Baiern chit stack, with the five already taken

?Points are also gained by creating exceptionally long routes from five to seven cities long.

?At the end of the game, each players points are added up, and the number of unplaced houses is subtracted from the total. The highest?total wins.

In the picture above, Green gets:

2 Points for a 5-city route
3 Points for a 6-city route
2 Points for a 7-city route (Note: there are four 7-city chits, and two with higher values had been taken by the Yellow player first)
3 Points for completing Schweiz-Tyrol (the blue toned chit)
4 Points for completing Bohmen-Salzburg (the orange toned chit)
6 Points for?placing a house in every province
1 Point for creating the end game condition (the laureled chit)
10 Points for a?level 7 Carriage
-1 Point for?1 unplaced house
————————————
30 Points Total?

Routes are created by playing city cards from your hand, and placing them in front of you, one per turn (two with assistance from the Postal Carrier, more on this later).

In the picture above, the player has created a four city route from Basel – Zurich – Kempten – Augsburg. In the hand below are the cities Freiburg, Innsbuck, and Ingolstadt. The player could close the route as is, since routes are only required to have three cities. Or, the route could be expanded to the left with the Freiburg card, or to the right with either the Innsbruck or?the Ingolstadt card. (Click here for a larger version of the picture.) Routes?may not be expanded in the middle between two previously laid cards.?

When a route is closed, the player has a choice. You can add a house to every city, in?one province on the route orone city in each province in the route. In the example above. If the player decide to close the Basel – Zurich – Kempten – Augsburg route, the player could choose to place a city in Basel and Zurich (every city in?one province on the route ) orthe player could place a city in (Bazel or Zurich) and (Kempten or Augsburg). The choice gets more complex as the routes get longer.

Your hand is populated by pulling?one card each turn (Two with assistance from the Postmaster). These can come from the display, or the stack.

The display

For those of you who have played Ticket to Ride, this is similar to the revealed pool of train cards that can be chosen from.

?The display is replenished immediately from the topmost card in the stack as each card is taken. The entire display can be discarded and replaced with the assistance of the Administrator.

Assistance

During each?turn, the player is?allowed to ask for help from one of four people. The Postal carrier, the Postmaster, the Administrator, and the Cartwright. These allow you to modify your turn depending on your need. If you?trying to?get a route down quickly, say to beat your opponent to the first 7-city reward chit, you may ask the Postal carrier for help, allowing you to place two cities per turn instead of one. If you need to build up a hand full of cities for more route options, you would ask the Postmaster for help. If you can use none of the cards in the display, and desperately need a particular city, you would ask the administrator for help.

Now to turn this all on it’s head and boil the sequence of play down to the major steps:

1) Pull?one city card from the display?or the stack (two with assistance from the Postmaster)
2) Place?one city card?at either end of?your route (two with assistance from the Postal carrier)
3) If possible and desired, close the route, placing houses, gathering bonus chits, and upgrading your carriage?as deserved

That’s it.

OMG. There’s this game called Zombies!… and the box has, like, 5 million little zombie guys in it, and… like… the game is named ZOMBIES! But, we were like, at this party, where we played it, and there were like…?NO ZOMBIES! We played the whole friggin game, and there were like, 3 zombies all the way through it. WTH???

I have been reading posts on Boardgamegeek about Loopin’ Louie being?teh funnest game evar!!!!11one, and, it suddenly became available on Firebox.com, so I bit. Here’s the last game of the night, right before everyone shuffled off to Buffalo. Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eySMQZuXzXY]

It’s late, I leave you with a slideshow…

So I mentioned actually winning a game (for once) against Mrs. G. She wasn’t happy. So not happy that she immediately suggested we play Rat Hot, a nice simple abstract that is sort of a reverse Mah-Jong. A stacking, pairing, tile-placing extravaganza, quick enough to finish in the last minutes before Tanga flips at 10PM EST. ?

Did she win? Check out the goods below. Major props to Pottse for taking our hella boring video and giving it?Michael Bay-esque intensity!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_TekFKtu-I]

I don’t know why I keep buying these things, other than the skull elf keeps telling me to.

I hate card games. I never played cards when I was a kid, and my dad was the kind of guy who would occasionally play 52-card pickup with me. (I got to play the pick-up phase of the game, just in case you are wondering.)

?That’s not for lack of trying though. At some point I discovered the magnificent phenomena known as the?”Collectible Card Game” or CCG for short. I don’t know how it happened, but I was in a Shinders in the frozen north, and discovered Mythos. I am an H.P. Lovecraft fan, so I had to buy it! Then… I bought some more, and I convinced my friends to buy some, then… we never really played it. (This is kind of my modus operandi.)

I also found the X-Files CCG, Star Wars, a tiny bit of Magic the Gathering, inherited a few hundred Pokemon cards, and although not technically a CCG, I recently discovered Pirates of the Spanish Main. Oh boy… that was a doozy.

So, I had pretty much written off getting more card anythings when I found myself in my friendly neighborhood thrift store. There, on the shelf between the 27 copies of Trivial Pursuit, and the 3 different versions of Operation, and?below the shelf with both 13 and 1313 Dead End Drive, I found,? Settlers of Catan, the Card Game. For 80 freakin cents.

I was ecstatic. I ran all around the office with a big fat smile on my face and told all?one of the people who would give a rat’s ass about it.

If I remember correctly, she was non-plussed. I think the exact response was: “Settlers? As a card game?” followed by a drawling “I don’t know…”

Anyway, I was still stoked, so I took my prize home and?promptly forgot it.

Until?last night!

That’s when I finally decided…?I’m going to play this game with Mrs. G!?And we are going to love it!

Here’s how it goes: (For the rest of this… whatever it is… I will refer to “Real Settlers” as RS.)?

There are?four types of cards. They are all square, and about the size of the short edge of a standard playing card.

Regions -??these are like the?hexes in RS. Each represents one of the classic Catan resource types??and has a number in the middle designated by a face of a standard d6. On?three edges are pictures of the corresponding resource. For example, the mountain region has one ore symbol on one side, two ore symbols on the next, and three on the other. The fourth side is blank. Unlike in RS, where you are given cards representing?commodities, the card itself is rotated to indicate how many?of each type you have. To?decrement a commodity, you rotate the card to the next lower amount. To add, you rotate to the next higher. You can never have?more than three?of any commodity on a card.
Settlements, Roads, and Cities -?these are similar to their counterparts in RS.
Expansions -?these are like the cards found in Cities and Knights of Catan. These include buildings, knights, and nasty cards like the Spy. You also find the equivalents of the RS harbors, “Fleets”.
Events -?these have a large question mark on the back, and various effects on the face. These range from Plagues and Civil Wars, to general Conflict.?Each is usually a “bad thing” that happens to one or both of you. Usually by stealing your resources or killing your knights or whatnot.

Each player begins with their principality. This is comprised of two settlements, separated by a road, and one of each of the region types. The regions are equally distributed from 1-6.

To the side are placed the cards do be drawn. The expansion cards are separated into five approximately equal stacks. The other types get their own stacks

To start, each player picks one of the expansion stacks and picks through it?for any three cards. It isn’t explicitely stated in the rules, but I order the cards so that the next good ones are on top. (Don’t tell anyone this super secret strategy! It’s our secret!)

The rest of the game is fairly simple. The current player rolls two chunky D6 dice.?One is the?”Production” die whit the usual numbers 1-6?, and the other, the “Event” die?has five different symbols:

Sun – Year of Plenty – Each player takes an extra resource of their choice
Knight – Tournament – Whichever player has the best “show knights” gets a resource of their choice
Question Mark – Event – An event card is drawn, and it’s effects are determined (this symbol appears twice)
Club – Brigand Attack – Any player who has more than seven unprotected resources loses all their ore and wool
Windmill – Commerce?- The player in control of the Commerce marker may take one resource from their opponent

First, the?event die is resolved. When this is done, the results of the production die are applied.?

Then, the player can build just like in RS. You rotate your cards to spend the resources, and add roads, and settlements.

Here I have expanded to the right with a new road and settlement.

When you build a new settlement, you also acquire a pair of region cards, possibly increasing the number of commodities produced with each die roll.

Each settlement can have two expansions,?physically located at the top and bottom?of the settlement card. Here I’ve?used up all of my expansion options, without adding an entirely new settlement.

Eventually, settlements can be converted to cities, which allow four expansions, as seen below.

The goal is to?acquire 12 victory points, which you get?through the normal course of expansion. As an example, a settlement is worth?one victory point. A city is worth?two.?

So, was it fun?

I loved it. I like the action of turning the cards for production. I also like the fact that your starting principality has regions for each side of a d6. This means that you get something on every roll. (I am always picking the worst hexes in?RS!) I also like that fact that it can be played with two.?The addition of the event die?adds tension, and balances?the?steady?flow of commodities by constantly taking them in?various ways.?

The problem is, ?Mrs. G wasn’t thrilled. I tried to encourage trading, even though I really had nothing to trade. This got her pretty grouchy. I also kinda… sorta… TOTALLY KICKED HER ASS! (Which I wouldn’t normally gloat about, but it is just very unusual for me to win in any game I play with her.)

So, I took it to work and played it with Dangerkitty over lunch. Then I showed The Los how to play it. Then… I drove home with the box open on the passenger seat. I gazed at the cards lovingly, and even shuffled them?at the stop lights.?

Yeah… I’m healthy.

So, if you liked “Real Settlers”, and frequently find yourself with only one gaming partner, this is the game for you.

Every five years on Labor Day, my company hosts a secret weekend vacation. We have no idea where we are going until we are ready to arrive at the destination. We are given one piece of luggage, and a basic list to pack from. My first trip, which was ten years ago, started in Vegas, and ended in the Grand Canyon. The second started in DC and ended in New York. This year we arrived in San Francisco, a city I am semi-acclimated to having been there for GDC.

Of course, when I was given my bag a week ago, I started figuring out how I was going to jam my laptop, a Nintendo DS, a PSP, clothes, and as many board games as possible in there.

In the end I ditched the PSP (take that, Sony!) The board games that made it were:

• Blink
• Family Flux
• Quoridor
• Ricochet Robots
• Settlers of Catan Travel Edition
• Turbo Taxi

On the plane back, I managed to get my first full game of Settlers in. This did not amuse my very hung-over travelling companions. But we had fun. As usual, I lost.

Settlers on a Plane

After Tajrules dominated Settlers, he fell from grace… hard, face stomped in on Quoridor by Seraphim.

Quoridor on a Plane! AAAAH!!

More trip details later!

The Abstract Apocalypse game night started with Pottse and I playing “Ricochet Robots”. Mrs. G was putting Prince Thud to bed. The three-year old DemonPop was tearing ass all over the place, and father-in-law wasn’t yet back from his galavanting. It was a perfect time to learn rules whilst everything settled around us.

Ricochet Robots is a game that can be played by as many people as can see the board. There are no “turns”. There is only a problem that must be solved. This problem is to get a single robot from its current position, to a specified position on the playing surface.

The surface itself is comprised of four double-sided 8″ x 8″ boards. Each is a grid, with walls here and there, and occasionally colored symbols. The four boards are joined together in one of the corners with a plastic piece having four protrusions. This makes about 384 possible layouts, if I remember my remedial math.

A board section

Once the boards are laid out, four square colored chits are placed randomly on the grid. Then the corresponding-colored robots are placed on those. These markers are necessary to keep the original position of the robots.

All laid out

Finally, there is a pool of chits that represents each one of the colored symbols on the grid. These are placed face down on the table. Each problem is created by revealing one of these symbols, and placing it in the board’s central area. The color of the symbol defines which robot needs to be moved. The color and the symbol define the destination on the board. As soon as the problem is presented, all players try to figure out the shortest number of moves the robots need to make to get the target robot on the destination square.

The destination chit:

The destination square:

The trick is, a robot can only move straight, and has no brakes. They can only stop when they hit a wall or another robot. Any robot can be moved in any sequence, but each one of these moves counts toward the total.

To the observer, Ricochet Robots is a bonecrushingly boring game. I know this because Mrs. G (who, admittedly, has the patience of a Piranha) said “boring!” the second she saw it in “action”. The reason is, once the problem is revealed, the players just stare at the board. There is no movement, no talking, no anything until the first player announces their opening bid. For example, “I can solve this in 12 moves.” Once that happens, the hourglass is flipped, and then even more brain-burning, cog-churning, (and totally silent) cerebritude ensues.

What is unseen is the amazing internal drama: “Is there a faster way?” “Can he see where I’m looking on the board?” “Oh crap, time’s almost out!” “Oh man! I’ve almost got it!” “I’m a genius!” and “Uh-oh… what were my moves again?” For an oldie moldie like me, remembering anything 10 steps out is pretty tough. Pottse was coming up with solutions 22 steps long that involved moving all four robots in different orders. After a day at work and then dealing with rodents, I just let those go.

So, if your brain hasn’t melted down, and you can come up with a more efficient way, you call out your bid. Then you have to wait for the time to run out, which is hard because until it does, you have to remember that sequence of moves you committed to. Once it does run out, whoever had the lowest bid describes the steps taken to solve the problem. If you were right, you get the chit. If you were wrong, you get the derision of your peers, and the next best bid is attempted.

The game went well, once Mrs. G decided to listen to the rules and stop being bored. As usual, she decided it was her “favoritest game evar” once her initial knee-jerk reaction wore off. Eventually, father-in-law, who shall be heretofore known as “The Wall” joined in, but didn’t fare so well. Pottse, the wonderbrat, coasted out with at least six trophy chits, setting the tone for the rest of Abstract Apocalypse. I just enjoyed the experience, with middle of the road performance.

The most important lesson was, “YES, YOU CAN MOVE ALL THE ROBOTS.” I say this is in all caps, because it is really frustrating to explain the rules, and particularly this salient point… twice… and still have the mouth-breathers go “OH! I DIDN’T KNOW YOU COULD MOVE ALL THE ROBOTS.”

But, this is what I expect from my wife’s side of the family, so it’s all good.