Wingspan

My son came to visit yesterday (with the rest of his family in tow, naturally) and brought an unexpected, delayed Father's Day gift:

I know that this is very much one of the 'in' boardgames at the moment, but I have to say that the less than inspiring write-up on the box, plus what looked like a bewildering variety of pieces, board and other components kind of put me off. However having now got a copy I wasn't about to turn up my nose at it, and after everyone had gone home Catherine and I sat down to try and puzzle it out.

And it did take some puzzling. We didn't find the rules very clear at first, but the game does come with a quick-start mode where you set everything up, and then it does pre-programmed moves for up to four players which demonstrate the key principles of the game. We did that and soon worked out what we were doing and were able to finish the game at a cracking pace with very few references to things afterwards.

In the game you play various kinds of bird nuts who are 'collecting' birds on a play-grid. The game has a deck of around 190 bird cards, each one unique and all found in North America*. The birds have various traits; type of next, number of eggs they lay, habitat and (of course) wingspan, plus a points value. You collect birds by drawing them from the deck into your hand and deploying them, but deploying them costs food and possibly eggs. And to get those things you have to spend some of your limited actions acquiring them. Each round (and the game has four in total) a player gets between 5 and 8 actions, which can be to gain food, place eggs, draw new cards or place a bird. If you play certain actions you get to activate the 'powers' of some of the birds on your grid, which can give you various bonuses and scoring opportunities.

So it's all about drawing cards then acquiring and optimally deploying limited resources in order to play those cards in order to score points.

You win by having the most points. You get theses for lots of things; each bird has value, for examples, but you also score for cached food, eggs and building flocks, plus end of round bonus objectives. And each player has a secret goal dealt to them at the start as well. So points come from all kinds of places.

As I said, this isn't a game I would have chosen myself, but it's a theme we could get behind (all three members of our household have some sort of background and interest in biology or ecology) and despite it's intimidating look it was fairly simple to play. So a gift I'm very happy with.

*There are  three expansions which not only add new rules but also add birds for Europe, Oceania and Asia. I think each one is stand-alone aside from a requirement to own the base game.

52 Games - Game 60

Ecosystem

This has been a week for new card-games, what with the two I played at MOAB and now one that Maya wanted to try with us on our semi-regular Wednesday evening games session.

We played Ecosystem, which is a game about building just that - an ecosystem. Players are dealt a hand of ten cards, which depict one of nine animals or two terrain types. Animals include Bear, Wolf, Fox, Eagle, Deer, Rabbit, Trout, Bee and Dragonfly, whilst the terrain is Stream and Meadow. On your turn you play one card in front of you, then pass your hand to the player on your left. You then play from your new hand and keep going, passing on the hand each time.

Cards are laid in a grid, which is limited to four cards high and five wide, and must be placed adjacent to another card (aside from the first card, obviously). Initial placements can be fairly free and easy, but once you fill a row or column you've kind of set your grid limits. Here's our grids after ten cards.

Once ten cards have been played you deal out another ten and play a second round, finishing the grid so that it contains twenty cards.

Here's our finished grids.

Then you score. Each type of card scores in a different way. For example a Bear scores for being adjacent to Trouts and/or Bees. Wolves score by you having more than the other players. A fox scores only if it is not adjacent to a Bear or Wolf. And so on. As you can see, building your grid becomes a tricky job of trying to maximise the scoring of each card you place, whilst leaving openings for future cards, the nature of which may not yet be known to you.

The last part of scoring is to check Diversity. Basically you gain or lose points depending on how many of the eleven types of cards you failed to achieve a core with. For example, if you only placed placed a single Fox, but it was adjacent to a Bear, then it scores zero, and counts against your diversity score. If you fail to place a Bee at all, again that would count against your diversity. In the grids above Maya managed to have all card types present and score with them. Catherine and I failed on one each.

Anyway, it's a simple enough game to play but interesting too. It'll be in our pile to take on holiday, for certain.

We played two games. I won both of them

52 Games - Game 59

The Dimachaerus in 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers'

 

A couple of times in the past couple of years I have noted that I felt that the dimachaerus in 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' seemed rather good, and in my last post about the game I outlined some of the reasons why.

Essentially a gladiator whose best defence is also their attack is difficult either to attack or defend without risk, and eventually the odds tend to catch up on the dimachaerus's opponent rather than the dimachaerus.

I played a few games over the weekend in odd moments, but also went back through my blog looking for any posts which features a fight between a dimachaerus and another gladiator. I noted down who won.

The dimachaerus seems to have a roughly 80% win-rate. This doesn't include my variants, but I did note in passing that ones with an Attack of 4 do very well. 

So is there a solution? Well, maybe I'm wrong and the dimachaerus isn't unbalanced. If there are any 'Blood, Sweat & Cheers' players out there perhaps you may have some thoughts on this. Perhaps they always lose in your games and my issue is one of play-style.

But I have been looking at a possible solution (and have tried a couple of test games even). This is to simply fiddle with the gladiator's stats.

What I have done is drop the Attack from 4 to 3 and increase Defence from 2 to 3.

Unfortunately this does make the dimachaerus identical in terms of stats to the hoplomachus, and the game does do a nice job of making the basic stats for each of the ten gladiator types unique. But needs must, and all that.

The Glory abilities stay exactly the same.

I feel I can justify the 3 Defence without that much in the way or armour and no shield, by assuming that the second weapons is as much for parrying as it is for attacking. The extra attack potential of the second sword is covered by the Glory abilities, in the same way that most of the potential of the retiarius's net is.

After only a couple of test games I don't really have a feel for whether the change makes enough of a difference, but it certainly felt like the dimachaerus was working a lot harder, and that's good.

I did consider a small change to the hoplomachus, but I'm not rushing into anything here. Whilst their 2 x Glory ability is a good one, it can only be used once (they throw their spear). After that the gladiator doesn't have the option to use a 2 x Glory ability any more, which seems a little harsh. My thought was that if they play two Glory cards then they get the same basic effect as their single Glory ability, but with an extra of some kind; maybe a +1, or an additional knock-down instead of the push result. Something to think about, anyway.

MOAB 2022

I paid a visit to MOAB yesterday. It's the first time it's been held since 2019, so it was nice to be back.

Most of it was competitions. There didn't seem to be as many traders present either, although those that were there were interesting enough including Aetherworks, Olympian Games, Eureka, Slave 2 Gaming and a company which distributes independent games. There was one demo game (it looked like Team Yankee, maybe, but I didn't look that closely), and a couple of participation games as well, both of which were card/boardgames. 

I played one of these; a card-drafting game called Cosmos: Empires.

With an attractive epic sci-fi feel, the players purchase cards from a pool of eight every-changing options in the centre of the table, looking to maximise the revenue of their empire before their opponents do. Some cards act as multipliers based on how many cards you have fulfilling certain conditions, so the game is a balance between picking up expensive multipliers and collecting enough of various other card-types that those expensive cards bear fruit. You can also destroy cards in the centre to deny them to other players. It was a simple enough game, although I failed to grasp exactly what the victory conditions were until near the end of my first game. Despite that I managed to scrape a win, mostly via a lucky draw in the centre on my last move.

Here's the game at the end.

I played a second game later in the day, and was simply lucky not to come last in that.

Cosmos: Empires is a funded kickstarter, and will be available early next year.

I also played a card-game on the independent stall called Viewpoint: Revisioned, which is part of a series called the Viewniverse. It was amusing, but I only played two-player and I'm not sure the cut-throat nature of it worked so well. Maybe because it was my throat getting cut.

Anyway, this year's MOAB also coincided with the start of my Frocktober campaign for this year. Here's a taster:

I'll do proper, regular posts throughout the month, but once again we've set up our usual team: IT HAS POCKETS

Oh! MOAB loot? I bought a can of varnish. I did turn down the chance to buy the Ogre: Ultimate Edition (the one that's the size of a suitcase) for $75 on the bring and buy, but as attractive as that looked I wasn't sure that, for the size, it was a game I was likely to play that much. I like it, but to the level of wanting to store a $75 suitcase. One day I know I will regret this decision.

52 Games - Game 57
52 Games - Game 58

Battle Cry - Newmarket

It's a wet long weekend, so we weren't keen to go out today. Instead Catherine and I played a couple of games of Battle Cry; one scenario, played twice and with us swapping sides, with the victory going to the best aggregate score. Most scenarios in theses boardgames are unbalanced in some way, so this method of play ensures a fair assessment of victory. Sometimes all you have to do is lose less badly than your opponent did.

Anyway, we played the Newmarket scenario, which is fun because it features two roughly equal forces, with one attacking the other. The Union have a decent defensive position, so should win, but the Confederates have six command cards to their four, so have the advantage of being able to put together a killer hand.

Here's the setup. Most of the Confederates are massed in the centre, whilst the Union are split between their right flank and the centre. On the Confederate right/Union left two equal forces of cavalry and horse artillery face each other across the bed of a stream.

I played the Confederates in the first game, and started off with a strong advance in the centre.

We both brought our cavalry in from the flank, and they fought on the edge of the centre sector.

The Union broke up the initial Confederate advance, leaving General Breckinridge looking a little exposed. 

Breckinridge fell back to the relative safety of the VMI Cadets, whilst the Confederates advanced en masse. I managed to save up a decent run or cards to launch a strong attack on the centre, and this was the moment I started it.

The end. I played the Battle Cry card and used the combat bonus to collapse the Union centre. I won 7 - 5 (Victory is six flags, but I destroyed two units on the last turn).

We swapped over, and it was something of a shock to end up with only four command cards. Especially when the only sector cards I drew were Scout cards, which meant I could only use one unit per turn for a lot of the early part of the game.

I reorganised the Union line into something a little stronger, but Catherine was already causing casualties with long-range fire as she edged forward.

I pulled my cavalry into the main part of the battle, and used horse artillery to cover my flank there. Catherine brought up her cavalry in opposition.

My position was strengthened with some hastily constructed field-works. This is always a good card to get when you're the defender.

A series of melees saw my cavalry swept away, as well as the horse artillery. Some of my infantry stabilised that flank. 

Confederate cavalry attacked a weakened Union unit to pick up their sixth victory flag.

After my bad start I was able to use some cards near the end to pick off some weakened Confederate units, and ended up with five flags. In fact had Catherine not taken out that last Union unit I had a couple of long-range shots possible which could have given me my sixth flag and a win. As it was Catherine won 6-5, so the aggregate scores were 12-10 to me.

I rather like this scenario, but there's still plenty more in the book I haven't played yet.