Saturday 5 December 2009

The Phoenix were playing at the Westpac stadium on Friday night, so I moved games to Saturday night. Anne went to Sydney for a wedding.

There were six of us and no-one had any strong ideas about what to play so we ended up playing a game we were all familiar with - Expedition. Craig and John got off to a good start while Andrew and Travis lagged behind. The blue expedition went in and out of North Africa before wandering all over Asia and then crossed the Atlantic to Central and South America where Travis was eager to take advantage of it but it looped and resurface heading for Australia before heading out across the South Pacific where it ended. So we had to turn our attention to red which had gone to Canada and across the Bering Straight and yellow which hadn't left Europe. The yellow expedition looped back and then headed for the USA before I fatefully took it to Africa playing into Craig's hands. Craig was happy with his win, which he regarded as redemption for his performance on Lance's birthday.

Craig  15
John B 14
Andrew 11
Anna   11
Ian     9
Travis  2

Staying with the route building theme we moved onto Elfenland, a game which I have almost never played with less than six people. I wonder if there is something about route building games that allows them to scale to lots of players better than other types of game. Expedition, Elfenland, TransAmerica and a few other train games scale up to 6 players better than many other games do. It is even practical to play Expedition and TransAmerica with 7 players. These three games have a cooperative element to their route building, though that doesn't make them 'nice and friendly' games! Unlike 'real' cooperative games, these are games where you want others to help you more than you help them.

This turned out to be a very even game where we played the traditional way by keeping our blocks until the last round. We tried hard and successfully to block Craig who only had three markers to pick up in the last round. Nobody got to all the cities but most people ended up on their home city.

Craig  19
Andrew 19
Ian    19
John B 18
Travis 18
Anna   17

At this point Andrew, Anna and Travis went home and I encouraged John and Craig to try my new purchase, Nefertiti. Andrew claims I have a "thing" for auction games. I think it is that game designers have a "thing" for auctions. I guess about 20% of the games I own involve auctions. But Andrew is right in the sense that auctions are a mechanic I like and there are some short to medium length games I enjoy that are pretty much all auction.

Nefertiti reminds me of the action (auction?) phase of Vegas Showdown except that everyone has 4 bid markers and you don't move your bid marker just because someone bids higher. Each auction (or market) contains 4 cards and a royal seal (which can be used to do a special action in a future turn). The winner of the auction will get either two of the cards or one card and the seal. Unlike most other auction games the other bids are not worthless. In bid order each player can choose to buy one of the remaining cards for the amount they bid or take half the money in market rounded up (this leads to a 'zero-sum' feature similar to Traumfabrik). The cards are gifts for Queen Nefertiti and at the end of the game the players earn points (kudos?) for the presents they have for the queen. For example necklaces are worth 14 points each if only one player has necklaces but 10 points each if they are split between two players and 7 points each if split between 3 or 4 players. Similarly harps are worth 9 or 7 or 5 points each depending on how many players have them. The conclusion / resolution of an auction is triggered by different conditions in different markets. In Luxor the resolution is triggered by a player throwing a particular dice roll, whereas the market in Abu Simbel is resolved when the sum of the bids reaches a particular number. The special action cards are all face up and each turn a player can spend a royal seal to take a card do the action and discard it out of the game. This seems better than drawing random power cards as you would in say Amun-Re or Tower of Babel.

John tried to hog all the money and at one point Craig and I only had one coin between us, but he couldn't hang onto all of it and money flowed back into the game. Craig and I took advantage of a couple of special actions to score some of our cards early, so we had around 55-60 points going into the final scoring but John's large pile of cards payed off and he over took Craig. John pointed out that in my final turn I could have traded to give myself even more points.

Ian    160
John B 126
Craig  119