Macao - 20 March 2013

Round at David's this week for a first play of Macao. This is one of the more difficult games to describe but here goes...

The game is based around spending different coloured cubes on a variety of actions. Cubes are gained in a novel way. Each turn dice are thrown (one for each colour cube) and the players can pick two of the colours. The clever bit is that the number rolled shows both the number of cubes you will get and how many turns you will have to wait before they arrive. So you are forced to make the choice between major gains 5 or 6 turns in the future and immediate availability of resources. When the game only lasts 12 turns, that's quite a lot to balance.

You use your cubes to buy cards which make up your entourage - people, buildings and offices. These enable you to develop your own private economy - providing free cubes, exchanging cubes for money (or vice versa) - or provide other special advantages. You can also buy city districts in Macao (in the process gaining you goods to trade with Europe), advance your counter along the city wall (deciding turn order) or move your ship towards European ports for trade.

The point of the game is to gain victory points. These can be won by selling goods from the city quarters via your ship, or by buying them at a random exchange rate each turn. At game end you also earn points for your longest chain of city districts and for a number of special "game end" cards you can purchase throughout the game.

It's really difficult to describe and very difficult to play well. Some cards appear to be very powerful, but require 4 different colour cubes and early in the game trying to get 4 colours aligned is extremely difficult. Each turn you have to pick a card to place in a staging area and if they build up too much you lose points. So you have to balance selecting cheap easy to buy cards with the game changing expensive and difficult to place cards. You have no built in way of generating cash, so if you want to make use of the exchange rate to earn points you have to build the economy yourself out of the cards you select.

We must play this again soon.

James 85
Kieron 70
David 61
Andy 51

Building Walmington-on-Sea (Part 2)

I've completed some more of Andy's buildings, added some Dad's Army shop signs and created a simple road and pavement system using vinyl floor tiles.  Vehicles sourced from eBay.

Walmington-on-Sea is starting to come to life

Corporal Jones accosts Mrs Fox outside the Butchers

Warden Hodges makes clear to Private Frazer that he won't let Napoleon commandeer his van 

 Sgt Wilson tries to convince Captain Mainwaring that there's time for a swift half

The Vicar and the Verger discuss who left the light on in the Church Hall office last night

Alea Iacta Est - 13 March 2013

First play of David's Christmas present to James - Alea Iacta Est - a dice rolling game with an Ancient Rome theme, co-authored by Bernd Eisenstein, creator of one of our current favourites Pelopennes.  One review describes it as "Yahtzee for Eurogamers" which understates the game, but reveals its influences.

It took a while to get through the rules but the game itself is pretty quick, with a range of different ways to earn Fame points and good player interaction.  We played a game in about 1hr20m and then played again in about 40 minutes.  Scoring is done at the end so it's not clear who is ahead and the scores (particularly in the first game) were very close.

We were all pleased to see Adrian at games tonight, even though he took first place in both games ;-)

First game: Adrian 36, Orhan 35, Andy 34, James 32, David 31
Second game: Adrian 39, David 38, James 37, Andy 33, Orhan 32

Hacienda & Maori - 6 March 2013

Unusually, we played the same pair of new games as the previous week, but with an extra couple of players for each game.  They worked just as well with more players, although I think it made Maori more random - and we were close to a position where no-one wanted the set of tiles available.  Both were pretty close games, but host Stuart was triumphant each time.

Hacienda: Stuart 142, Orhan 139, David 127, Kieron 126 and James 114
Maori: Stuart 35, James 32, Kieron 27, David 23

Building Walmington-on-Sea (Part 1)

The Dad's Army game needs a proper recreation of Walmington-on-Sea.  I had my medieval buildings which might be ok for Godfrey's Cottage and other old buildings, but wouldn't be right for the Bank and other more modern buildings.  Fortunately, Andy remembered a set of flat-pack laser cut MDF buildings he had bought a while back.  He dug a couple out... and they kept on coming...

They are from two different companies and I've put together an example of each so far.  Warbases produce a series of 28mm scale buildings laser cut out of plain MDF.  Their pub comes with a choice of three names.

It fits together very straightforwardly with a touch of PVA to hold it firm.  Depth is provided by doors and windows being separate pieces glued behind the appropriate holes.

A wash of red over the bricks and some painting of windows and doors brings it to life.  The finishing touch is a set of tiles for the roof.  These come on a A4-ish size of paper pre-cut into strips.  I sprayed then grey and then glued them on one at a time on each side of the roof.  This is a lot quicker than making your own individual tiles from cardboard - which is what I did to roof a small Wild West stable from Warbases a few years back!

The second company is 4Ground, who sell pre-painted laser cut buildings of very high quality and detail.  The construction time is a lot longer but of course no painting time.  But you also end up with a building that is fully playable - not just a closed box like the pub above.

I'd already started the ground floor and attic before realising I hadn't snapped all the bits.  Once they are all together, you get a right-hand terraced building - more Northern European than red-brick but I think will fit in well.

The building comes apart into ground floor, first floor, attic and roof, with interior doors, painted interior and exterior walls, a staircase and even a ladder up into the loft.

Should be quite a sight once all the buildings are constructed.  But this means the Dad's Army game won't be happening any time soon!