Gamer's meetup 02 August 2005

As promised, the event coverage.

I managed to play 3 new games this session, and 1 repeat game.
Names of the other players shall not be revealed. (Or rather, I do not know some of their names ><) I am not good at remembering names, and now it seems that I am not good at remembering names of boardgames too...

I am just going to give a brief overview of the games, and my own dismal performances in said games. If it whets your appetite, do join the meetup sometime.

Niagara Falls

This is a game of adventure and treasure hunting, where the players controls two tiny kayaks in the rapids that leads to the Niagara Falls. Along the bank, 5 excavation points containing different types of gems can be found. The objective of the game is pretty simple. Brave the rapids, pick up some gems, and bring them back to your base camp. The problem is, some of the quarries are placed really close to the overhang, and as the stream is constantly pushing your kayaks downstream, getting those is a calculated gamble. Adding to the challenge, other players can steal a gem when it is still in your kayak!

I would have won the first game if not for someone else stealing one of the most difficult to get gem off my kayak because I could not paddle fast enough upstream. In the second game, my kayaks fell off the waterfall due to me playing the wrong card. It was fun to see other people frantically paddling upstream only to be dragged downstream again though.

A beautifully made game. Easy to learn and get into. Fun to play too. One thing that I felt lacking was the victory condition. One of them is easier, and the other is more difficult. Could do better with some tuning.

Robo Rally

This game is like a car rally, where you have to clear certain checkpoints. The difference is that you're using robots, in a factory like arena, and you have to pre-program your robots with a sequence of movements for each round. Robots can shoot, be shot, get repaired, push each other, and automatically moved by various elements on the arena (e.g. when the robot is on a conveyor belt) on their race to the checkpoints.

Due to some misinterpretation of the rules, this supposedly fast paced game (it has a timer and well, it is called a rally...) got slowed down by quite a bit. After chaotic rounds of shootings, rammings and confusion (one robot actually got stuck for quite a long time in the starting area as it was derailed by another player's robot and ended up stuck facing a 2-sided wall for much of the game), one robot emerged as a victor on top of a messy pile of metals, and it was *not* mine.

This is actually a remake of an older game. I feel that it could have been better as the play arena looks kind of clunky, and the character cards are kind of flimsy. It was fun though, and would have been better if we had gotten the rules right off the bat.

*Name unavailable*

This is a pretty simple game that can be irritating at times. You play as a farmer, and your objective is to build an enclosure to house all your sheeps, and get it filled with sheeps. However, there are two types of sheeps. The white sheeps gives your +ve points, and the black sheeps gives you -ve points. Everyone plays the sheeps face down initially, and these face down sheeps can then be flipped up in their current locations, or moved to other locations using a shepherd dog and then flipped up. Once a sheep has been flipped up, it cannot be moved anymore. Flipping a black sheep gives you two extra actions.

I could not win the first game as I was sort of 'fenced out' by my two neighbours, one who managed to corral off a juicy 5 point sheep away from me. In the second game, it was a pretty close match, until I inadvertently gave away a 5 point sheep to sonic after he gave me a -3 point sheep. (The 'face-down' initial placement system of this game has baffled me so far) Needless to say, he won the game. For this game, we had 2 players who was playing 2 different games at the same time. The outcome might have been quite different had they been focusing as they both are good boardgame players.

An interesting game, but most of the players agreed that it is pretty restricted due to the outlay of the board. A game with other than 6/3/2 players would kind of unbalance it. It is interesting though.

Carcasonne: Hunters and Gatherers (repeat)

Carcassone is a pretty classic game that has spawned off a few variation of games using its own mechanic. This one is based on hunting and gathering. Basically, each player starts out with a set number of point gatherers (5 person and 2 huts). A player gain points by playing tiles and completing patches of forests or rivers and putting their people in there as 'gatherers'. Everyone shares a common pool of tiles and the tiles are drawn at random. At the end of the game, there will be another scoring round for the huts, and people that are placed on the fields as 'hunters'.

I chose this game as our last game as there were only 3 people left, and time was short. As it turned out, one of them had to leave mid-game, and I lost the game by 1 point. The winner had an unexpectedly large area covered by his hunter which netted him a whopping 22 points.

This game can turn pretty nasty at times if players take extra effort to 'block' other player's point gatherers instead of just concentrating on how they can maximize their own points. Personally, I found it frustating at times.

Whew.. that was quite a write up.
Next meetup is on 06 Sept 2005.