I took the drive down Woburn, MA for Unity Games 18, to get another day of games in. This time a couple friends went down with me. We played through a number of games that I wanted to try out as well as some extra ones. Here's my take on the games we played:
Kingdom Builder - This game has very simple, deceptive (at least for me) mechanics. The part that kept tripping me up was that when placing new pieces they had to be next to your currently played pieces if that was possible - otherwise you could place them anywhere. My brain had a hard time keeping track of this when switching terrain. To be sure the rules were clear - it was just my brain fog. We all felt this was a solid game and it is definitely going on my wish list.
Discworld Ankh-Morpork - Based on the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett - one of the guys I went with knows the books and was curious, so we gave it a whirl. Each player takes a character that has a different victory goal (though all the goals aren't unique) and you go about trying to make that happen. The trick is that the goals are kept secret so while you're going for yours you need to try keeping other goals from coming about. Easy game to learn that was enjoyable, but not one that I'm wanting to own. (Though the guy who knows the books liked it so it might still end up at game nights, which I won't complain about. :))
Eminent Domain - A deck building game that was very enjoyable. It had a completely different feel from Dominion, other than building up a deck of cards. The theme was nice in that you were exploring planets (that stay in the place in front of you) and colonizing or using military to conquer them. You deck consists of role cards, that are more effective the more you have at a time, and technology improvements that you get through the Research role (which can help with Roles as well). This was a very enjoyable and definitely one on my wish list.
Santiago de Cuba - Initially I was thrown off by the randomness of how the board was setup, but after thinking about it for a bit I realized the changing of the Cubans and the Buildings makes for interesting combinations that need to be accounted for in each game. The main play has you driving a car around to stop in front of the shop for a Cuban or the port to load up the ship with goods. However, you can move the car extra (for some money) to get what you want, or (maybe more importantly) to go past something someone else really wants. Another for the wish list!
Wiz-War - This game got a big-ole thumbs down from all of us. The build quality was nice, but the rules were annoyingly complex for a game that was essentially all about beating up the other players and/or stealing their treasure. It would be good for slap stick game if it wasn't so painful to start up. Apparently, it's a remake of a game that was notorious for bad rules. For my money I'd rather play Dungeon Twister - though I haven't played that with the 3/4 player expansion.
Princes of Florence - The first thing that struck me about this game was the font used for things, which really threw me off at first. For some reason I found it distracting, even though I felt it was appropriate for the theme. Once I got past that, however, I was able to enjoy this auction game - though in this play I initial severely misjudged what my friends wanted while I was trying to up the bid only to increase what they paid for things. I enjoyed the balance of things and would definitely pick up this classic.
Africa - I consider myself a fan of Reiner Knizia's game designs, but this one left me pretty board. You have some limited options available and for the most part you felt you were at the mercy of the tiles you flipped up. There were ways to work with what you got, but it felt too luck heavy and didn't make any of us really want to play it again.
Medici - Another, more respected, Knizia game with an auctioning mechanic. This revolves around the very simple mechanic of players taking turns proposing a set of 1 - 3 items to be shipped of different values. Players get one chance to bid on each set and if they win they spend money and put them in the 5 spaces on their ship. More money is acquired by having the 1st and 2nd most point totals on their ship or the most items shipped per good. So you're constantly balancing how much it is worth to go for any given offer. I'd love to play this and while not at the top of my wish list, I still hope to get it. I'd also like to play it with more people.
I was going to try out Troyes, but I saw it in their silent auction along with Masters of Venice and since the money goes to charity I figured what the heck and bid it up. Not that I knew anything about the second game, but now I'm looking forward to pulling them out at a future game night.
Glad I was able to make it down for another Unity Games and hopefully I'll be able to snatch up the games I tried out sooner than later. :)
