Danger Planet session. 3-player Cave Troll, 4-player King's Gate, 4-player Labyrinth: the Card Game, 4-player Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers.
Players were Cindy, Nancy, myself. New players to the game were: Cindy, Nancy, myself. Nancy had the first turn.
We spent 20 minutes going over the rules.
Cave Troll is an area control game with a dungeon exploration theme. There are adventurers and monsters. There's a dungeon with various number of gold pieces in every room. There are events and artifacts. Each player controls a set of these, except artifacts are drawn randomly.
Basically, the majority of adventurers in a room gets the gold in the room when a scoring round is kicked off. The player with the most gold at the end of the game wins.
There's really not much more to the game except for the special abilities of adventurers, monsters and artifacts which are explained in a table. The rules take a page and the table takes another page, so it's simple to learn.
This game has nice artwork, though there's not enough that stands out to differentiate the pieces -- nothing iconic, but busy artwork.
The game is fun to play. There's a sense of dungeon exploration -- moving adventurers around, sending monsters after the opponents.
Cindy went after a big treasure trove and was able to hold on to it. Nancy was able to put an artifact on a valuable room to control the gold there early on. We placed trolls in places that locked us out of valuable rooms and paths, even.
There are three random scoring rounds during the game, and the final scoring round at the end of the game. That's what the scores represent. I did miss recording the score for the third round. (I like having data like that to get a feel as to how the game is going during the game.)
Cave Troll end-game.
Game lasted 75 minutes. Final scores were:
Click here to buy Cave Troll at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about Cave Troll at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Mike, Ralph, Karl, myself. New players to the game were: Mike, Karl, myself. Mike had the first turn.
We spent 8 minutes going over the rules.
King's Gate is a tile-laying game. There are cities to surround, and tiles to surround them with. Baisically, a city is placed down. The city has a score for first, second and third place. (One less place than the number of players.) Players surround the city one tile at a time, except for the one point tiles and special tiles, with tiles that have a value of one through five. (More than one one point tile may be played. Special tiles are played in addition to the point tile(s).) When a city is completely surrounded, points are added up for each player, and the score printed on the city is awarded to the high scoring players. Some cities bestow special abilities that can be played later in the game. The object of the game is to get the highest score.
Like Cave Troll, the game rules take only two pages.
In the picture, the game art looks extremely busy, but it's very effective. The numbers are printed in big characters on the tiles. Though the final game doesn't look pretty as tile-games tend to be, this game was engaging and quick.
Karl was frustrated because many rounds ended with Ralph. But Karl won, so that wasn't any shortcoming of the game. I didn't get the game and ended up in last place.
There are 10 scoring rounds during the game -- one for each city. That's what the scores represent. (I like having data like that to get a feel as to how the game is going during the game.)
King's Gate end-game. Easier on the eyes than it looks!
Game lasted 37 minutes. Final scores were:
Click here to buy King's Gate at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about King's Gate at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Mike, Ralph, Karl, myself. New players to the game were: Mike, Ralph, Karl, myself. I had the first turn.
We spent 5 minutes going over the rules.
We played the "caffeinated variant" of the game, which made this children's game meatier.
Basically, Four cards are placed in the center of the table. Cards contain maze-like artwork, and things in the maze. We draw a hand of cards. During each turn, we can do two from: draw a card, place a card, rotate a card. If artwork on the card can be traced with a path to other cards with the artwork, player may collect all the cards except the one played and any that will break the labyrinth. Play continues until a player plays his last card (because no more are available to draw.) Winner is the one with the most cards collected.
Not much to say here. Karl was very strict about the rule that says once I play a move, there's no changing my mind, even for obvious mistakes. He says this encourages thinking about moves before playing them. I found thinking about moves made this game drag.
Also, the patterns weren't interesting at all, for a tile-laying game, as can be seen by the picture of the end-game.
The novelty of the game wore out after a couple of turns.
Labyrinth: the Card Game end-game. Looks boring? Included Ralph to make the picture more interesting. :-)
Game lasted 35 minutes. Final scores were:
Click here to buy Labyrinth: the Card Game at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about Labyrinth: the Card Game at BoardGameGeek.com.
Players were Tom, Nancy, Jimmy, myself. New players to the game were: Tom, Nancy, Jimmy. Tom had the first turn.
We spent 15 minutes going over the rules.
Well, I saved Tom from starting right off putting a hunter down. Everyone was used to playing the original Carcassonne where putting farmers down early is important, but in this game the equivalent hunters should be placed mid-game.
We were fairly vicious about putting tigers in each other's meadows. Jimmy was trying to build up his river network. I got one of the more boring bonus tiles. I wonder why bonus tiles generally don't work for me.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers end-game. Pretty.
Game lasted 80 minutes. Final scores were:
Click here to buy Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers at FunAgain.com.
Click here to learn more about Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers at BoardGameGeek.com.
Click here and scroll down to "9th" for Ralph's take on our games.
