Game Day Quick Hits

This past Saturday was an event appropriately entitled "Game Day" at a local gaming shop. Held once every two months, this was the 24th installment. It's always something I look forward to it, and my friend Mark all but single-handedly puts it together, bringing his personal game collection from home for use by the public for the day, gathering food & drinks for the group, and putting together a raffle among other tasks to perpetuate this event.

Now, when I say 'personal game collection,' know that this is no ordinary collection. Mark fills an entire wall of shelves with games, and I've no doubt that he owns and brings in excess of 300 games. I try to do what I can to help by arriving early and helping to bring in games & food, stay late to clean up when I can, and I set up a Facebook event for it each time.

This Game Day was abbreviated for me, but I still got to try a variety of new games, which I'll briefly review.

After setting up, Mark and I played Fits, a new Reiner Knizia (of Settlers of Catan fame, among others) game which plays like a mixture of Tetris and Blokus sans the interaction, with some twists. Players have an identical batch of pieces which they slide into their personal, slanted, Tetris-like grid one at a time, depending on what matching card is flipped from the deck. Fits is played over four rounds. In round one, each individual space on the grid is marked with a green dot, which obviously won't show when covered by your pieces. Players in round one try to cover these dots as best they can, and get points for completely covered rows and lose points for uncovered dots. Rounds progress with different objectives. For example, in round 2 instead of scoring for complete rows, some of the green spaces are replaced by a number value from 1-3, and if that spot is visible at the end of the round, a player gets that many points. Overall, Fits was a solid but not spectacular puzzle game. There is no difference between playing solitaire or with 4 players, as players don't interact at all. Since a game is quick (about 15 minutes), I didn't mind the lack of interaction that much.

The next game played was another game between Mark and I. We played Ra: The Dice Game (RTDG). It is a simplified version of Ra, which shaves some time off from the original, but also shaves off the best part of the original. Generally to me, converting something into a dice game is a downgrade, because it adds an element of luck that wasn't present before. However, the difference between drawing tiles in Ra and rolling dice in RTDG isn't very significant. The real loss is the lack of auctions in RTDG, which were a huge part of why I personally enjoyed the first. While there is some interaction in the form of rolling a disaster which only affects your opponent, it's still much less than existed in the original. As a result, I won't be adding Ra: The Dice Game to my wishlist.

Some of my friends showed up in time for the next game, and we played a five-player game of Small World. I'd been meaning to try this one for a while, as it's highly rated on Boardgamegeek.com. Small World is an example of a game that you will truely understand the second time around, but I enjoyed the potential of what I saw in the first. At the beginning of the game, the player going first chooses from a list of 5 game races attached to randomized bonus abilities for that race. If the player passes on the first in the list, they must spend one point on it to get to the second, and another to get to the third, etc. Then, that player puts a number of race tokens on the board claiming territory which is ultimately converted to victory points. As the game implies, the game board is too small to accommodate everybody appropriately, so the game quickly becomes a territory struggle. I enjoyed this game, because it seems to have lots of replay value, with the races and abilities always being randomized, there are hundreds of combinations of possibilities for ways the game could play out. However, there is some learning curve as it is a significant disadvantage to those who don't know the specifics of what the races and abilities all do, and how they interact with each other. I would recommend this to anyone seeking a better version of Risk.

Next, and last for me, we played a five-player game of Citadels. I loved this game - it was very elegant in its presentation and quick to play, yet provided lots of decision making and interaction between the players. At the start of the game, a hand of building cards is dealt to each player. One player is assigned as King, and begins the first round. The King chooses from a deck of 8 roles (6 in a 5-player game, one is discarded randomly face up, and one is chosen to be discarded face down by the King) and passes the deck clockwise for each other player to choose a role. The last player has a choice between two, and discards the one not chosen face down. The roles from 1-8 are Assassin, Thief, Magician, King, Bishop, Merchant, Architect, and Warlord. The turn begins with the Assassin (if present) and continues numerically to the Warlord. On a turn, a player plays his role card, and performs any action associated with it. Then, they can take two coins OR draw a new building card, and then play a card by paying its cost in coins. Players can receive bonus coins, build more buildings, steal from others, make a player lose a turn, switch hands with someone, and more depending on their role in the game. The next round begins with whoever chose the king role, and play continues until a player has played 8 buildings. The value of the buildings played determines the winner. This is a great buy for a game, and we've already got a copy on the way. Easy to learn and play, with some solid strategy aspects.

-Andrew