A Gamestorm Recap

Critical Fumbles:

• After having spent a good deal of time on Thursday working on my personal design, Wizards' School,  I left the house with about 40 minutes to arrive and make my play test session.  I knew I was running behind but the drive only takes about 25 minutes.  Except on Thursdays when you have a play test, then it takes 90 min.  I missed this deadline and was unable to get a proper play test in all weekend.  This was a major loss and is what I regret most.  
• Two late starts on Thursday and Friday ate up more of my schedule than I had anticipated. 
• Not bringing any games that I own.  It seems odd given their library of games but there were games that we may have had time to play had I brought them.  Next year I will make sure to bring one or two.

Misses:

•  Cargo Noir proved to be very interesting at first as the primary auctioning mechanic provided a very rich, tight experience.  Unfortunately, the game seemed to fall apart in the last two turns as things wrapped up and the focus shifted to crunching numbers and optimizing.  I would play this again but, as with most Days of Wonder games, I do not think I would make the purchase.
• Unsure on the length of a demo and unable to seat all four players that I was visiting with, I opted not to participate in a game of Dominant Species.  I am a fool.  That game seemed very interesting to me but I had a few other things I wanted to do with that time midday Saturday.
• I was unable to meet up with Eric Dottarar, a designer who I met last year to play test his prototype, Patron.  I wish our schedules had aligned.

Hits:

• The hospitality room was awesome and although you could not bring food out of their designated area, the fact that they provided some on site snacks was fantastic.
• Relearning the rules to Hansa Teutonica resolved a number of problems I had with the game.  Actions make more sense now and I would be interested to play it more in the future.  The game is a much richer experience than I had previously encountered. 
• I actually had a good time playing Stone Age , although I am not exactly sure why. I did opt for more tools this time than I have in the past.  The game is still 'meh' in my mind but the experience was fun, perhaps due to company.  I enjoyed watching Andy shoot the moon with the starvation strat which did not work for him at all. It was his first game of Stone Age ever though and next time will be much more interesting.
• Dr. Reiner Knizia's classic horse racing game Winner's Circle was a blast.  Players place bets on horses before the race starts and then take turns rolling dice and determining which horses to move.  It sounds simple and it is for the most part but can provide some light choices.  I really enjoy the atmosphere it creates.  You can really feel the pull by individuals for their horses.
• Watched James Ernest play test a new version of Deadwood ('Two point Oh' I think.) with some folks at the GameLab. 
• Play tested a prototype by a local designer, Dave Meyers, called Paradise.  The game uses Lego's build-able dice as the core mechanic and starts each player off with a 'pair of dice'.  Roles allow players to populate their fiefs (dice) with actions from farming, merchant trading, building, and even allowed besieging other players dice.  It needs some serious play testing but was a very interesting space.
• Silly dice rolling game called Battling Towers.  More decisions than I had imagined and short enough to be a legitimate filler.  Solid design that I own all the pieces to recreate.

Critical Hits:

• Eating lunch on Saturday at Tiger Delight or some such place was amazing.  I really enjoyed my Beef Red Curry and the Spring Rolls were top notch.  I even had a Thai Iced Tea. 
• The only thing better than discovering the 'Double Bwaaaannhh' would have been ordering it.  
• Play testing a prototype by designer, Kris Gould, called Switching Tracks.  Kris is responsible for Jet Set and his new design is a pickup and deliver train game.  On your turn you get to toggle track switches to try to arrive at the optimal number of destinations where you deliver goods you picked up along the way.  It seemed very well put together and I am excited to try it again.
• I discovered Airlines Europe as a homemade copy was being played by some dedicated locals.  I had met a few of them before so I watched and I am super excited to purchase/play this game when it is released sometime in April.  It was packed with relevant decisions and played in around 60-74 min with four players.  Good job Alan Moon.
• Discovered the King of RPGs manga and met the writer Jason Thompson.

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.

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.