Agricola Solitaire

While solitaire Agricola isn't really a great game, I've been messing around with it this week trying to figure the high score possible, or maybe just trying to make a 15 room stone house. Has anyone else spent time solo farming? What's your high score? What's your high score playing with others?

victory

A couple of thoughts on victory conditions and general gameplay:

A lot of games include a certain "delay the leader" dynamic. The two best examples I can think of are Munchkin and Settlers... in both cases the group teams up to prevent the leader from attaining the victory condition and ending the game. I like attacking the leader, but I don't like the group dynamic it sometimes creates, in which those in last place are pressured to do something which, frankly, isn't really in their own self-interest. Once you're really out of it in Catan, upholding an embargo on the first place player only prolongs the pain and gives some other jerk a chance to win. Often, the last place player figures this out, and stops helping the group hold the winner back.... and everyone else gets angry because the last place player isn't being "competitive." I say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

All that leads me to ask, is there a way to make the "attack the leader" action help the last-place player? In other words, what if hurting the leader didn't prolong the game... but instead hastened victory?

Here's a simple example of what I'm talking about: take a deck of playing cards, deal some out. Players take turns giving points by playing cards on one another. The game ends when the group total=100 (or whatever), and the winner is the low point holder. Giving the leader points both hurts their position and brings the end a bit closer.

Molding: Krosis Prime

On the dense jungle planet of Krosis Prime your detachment has touched down, with a host of other units, into the unrelenting wilds. You are charged with security, reconnaissance and the preliminary extraction of valuable planetary resources.

In Krosis Prime you are in command of a detachment of trained mercenaries supported by the slush funds of large corporations, political extremists, and insane philanthropists. Your score is determined by the successful completion of missions, and the more people you can satisfy the more fame you can claim for your shard of an otherwise loosely organized world military.

The game begins with each player selecting missions from a closed source. The remaining missions will be made available later in the game. Each player controls a faction of similarly composed military units, including Space marines, Engineers, a Spider walker, an enforcer Mech, a drop ship and a mobile command unit.

On each players turn they may do one of the following:

• Deploy one unit to a terrain space (the unit must be able to navigate the terrain)
• Move one unit (adhering to terrain restricions)
• Scout new terrain (this includes moving a unit)
• Secure discovered terrain (a second search of the wild countryside)
• Seek additional missions
• Close a completed mission (a player's third mission ends the game)

As a bonus, and a requirement to foster interesting play, the activated unit may, depending on the type, combat alien forces on the surface or collect valuable resources which will help that unit's controller to complete his mission objectives. Clever use of unit influence and strategic deployment will help a player make the most of his mission cards. When a player has completed three missions the game will complete one final round before a faction is crowned the Krosis Elite.

Rattlesnake Review

RattleSnake - A family game for 2 to 4 players

Fantasy Flight Toys & Nexus

Roberto Di Meglio (War of the Ring, Age of Conan)

This is an interesting quick play game where players take turns lacing a snake pit with rattlesnake eggs. The 12 eggs are divided evenly and each player rolls a die depicting one of six colored snakes. You then place a snake egg on the board on top of a snake with the corresponding color (The board is a mash of different colored snakes). The first player to place all of their eggs without any rolling off the board or colliding into other eggs is the winner. If you goof you have to collect the offending eggs. Simple.

Oh and did I mention the eggs are oblong earth magnets... Clack! Clack! Clack! Go the snake eggs! Lots of fun, great at parties or as a drinking game, and very inexpensive (I picked it up for around $10 on sale). I think this is a game of pure approachable fun and would seem more at home on the shelves of Target then your local game store. Even though it has a die for randomization it still gets a nod from me. Everyone loves magnets and the fact that a game can actually play in under 5 min makes it a great filler to keep people occupied while waiting for players or for the teapot to whistle.

Dragon Cake

Now THAT'S a cake:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21474400@N04/tags/dragoncake/

sorry for the off topic, but I thought with the 20-sider it's game appropriate.

Reader Blues

Please weigh in on this issue: I plan on posting some game designs and prototypes here and while they may not be Spiel winning (or even good) do not initially want them to be available to the general public. This unfortunately means that the permissions are set to allow only the folks that have been invited to read the blog to view it and thus you can't add it to a reader. Is this going to enrage anyone?

Aquaretto review

Played Aquaretto today, and thought this would be a good venue for a quick writeup.

If you want a walk through of the game play, obsessed board gamers has done a decent video review; take a look.

The mechanics I liked in this game:

1. The building up and selecting of animal "trucks". - basically for each player there is a truck that holds up to 3 cards, you go around in a circle and place animals on the trucks, anyone can choose to take a truck at any point. Tile selection is one of the few random events that I really like in board games. In this case you've got the interplay between loading a truck that you wan't vs not making it too inticing for other players. Since you can't place a tile on a truck and take it in the same turn, there is a lot of posturing. It worked well.
   
2. Animal placement, and expansion of the board. Since animal's can't be directly adjacent, there are decisions to make about where you place animals, but more importantly, how much space you need to expand your collection of animals. Time is involved to make sure you expand the board where you need space for animals. I ended up expanding in the wrong direction one game, and this resulted in a glut of animals that I simply didn't have space for, but should have. This added a bit of a puzzle aspect to the game, I liked.
   

These two aspects combined to make an interesting game that you could get through in 45mins easily. The only shortcoming that I came across was that some of the professions your workers (you are awarded workers for producing 5 or more of one animal in your zoo) could be were just not as good as others. This power balance might change with more players, but in a 3 player game your optimal choices were limited. Still, we played 3 consecutive games and each one held my interest and managed to play differently. This was a good one.