Rule 23

After another classic "Rule 23" event from Adrian last week, I thought I'd blog about the origin.

My recollection was that this from a game we played in the mid-nineties called Kings & Things.  After having played it many times, we spotted a rule that said that the first player in each turn was supposed to change i.e. the second player became the first player.

This makes sense in many games where there are limited options and each player should have the same opportunities across the whole game, but in a fighting game like Kings & Things, it essentially means that players are encouraged to fight the first player because everyone else has two turns to their one them when that person "misses a go" as they shift from being first player in one round to last player in the next.

Anyway, the belated discovery of a crucial rule in a game has become known as "Rule 23" ever since.

So I dug out a copy of the Kings & Things rules and found the first player change rule.

It's rule 29!

This either means I've misremembered the game which is the source of our "Rule 23" legend, or we played an edition of the game with different numbering of the rules.

Can anyone solve the mystery?  Otherwise, it looks like our very own "Rule 23" story is itself subject to a kind of "Rule 23" effect!

Cargo Noir - 13 July

Cargo Noir with an inadvertent house rule at Adrian's this week.  The host confused the existence of a first player counter with all the various games that use said counter to rotate the first player around the board (Stone Age, Puerto Rico etc).  Implementing this accidental variant had the effect of stalling David's game for 3 of the 9 rounds of play - or so he said anyway...  Despite the addition of this new rule the game still played well and makes for a fun evening.  The end result was very close - Andy stormed to victory on 135 points; Stu, James and Adrian all had 125; and David (plus extra rule) got 95.

Village - 29 June 2016

Three of us for a game of Village this week.  Andy continued his usual strategy of visiting the market at every opportunity, James unusually didn't go travelling to every location and instead spread his options, but David stormed home with points from every element of the village, in particular from his domination of the church throughout the entire game.  Final scores: David 57, James 45 and Andy 38.

Peloponnes Card Game - 25 May 2016

First play of the card game version of one of our favourites, Peloponnes.  Unsurprisingly it has lots in common with the board game but with some interesting twists: resources aren't stockpiled, production is only used to construct buildings (with any excess going to luxury goods - the only track still remaining in the game); the cards double-up as money and resources.

One claim of the game is that not all the disasters will occur - but they did for us, one in the 2nd turn - and the card-disabling effects of these disasters was devastating.  At the end of the game David and Andy had more cards disabled than still available, with significant impact on their final population.  BGG Forum suggests starting each disaster counter one step earlier so that four of the same disaster cards have to appear to make it happen, rather than just three.  We will try this next time.

It also felt to us that the civilization tiles didn't feel very balanced with one seemingly providing a strong advantage and another making it very difficult to develop, but no-one has mentioned this on the forum, so we won't tweak this on the basis of just one game.

All in all, not as good as Peloponnes but certainly an interesting and playable alternative, with the advantage of portability.

Final scores: Stuart 21 Prestige/14 Population, James 10/8, Andy 9/5 and David 10/4.

Dead of Winter - 11 May 2016

With just two this week, a chance for the first play of David's game Dead of Winter.  Another zombies game, but unlike Kieron's favourite where you play just a single character, each player has a group of survivors to control.  The survivors have different strengths and abilities, and additional characters are discovered during the game - which gives you more dice / actions.

The board has a survivors hide-out which you can barricade as it is attacked by zombies, plus half a dozen locations where a stack of cards represents items you can search for e.g. medicine, food, additional survivors.

Each game has a mission card with victory conditions to achieve.  Our first game was to defeat a certain number of zombies within a certain number of turns (achieved).  The second was to completely search (i.e. take all the cards) from two different locations (also achieved... just).

The game is cooperative but with more players, each has a specific additional victory condition - so although you are still trying to meet the mission victory conditions and survive, there is still a way to have a bit of competition, but not in a full-blown Battlestar Galactica deceive-your-friends kind of way (so Andy will be content).

The rules were pretty straightforward but took a while to go through, suggest we just get cracking next time.  It certainly looked the part - printed pictures of the zombies and all the different characters, rather than coloured plastic like in Zombies.

It was a lot of fun - look forward to playing it with more players.

Notre Dame & Ra - 5 May 2016

A good night for Stuart with a double win.  Despite the name of the game, Stuart managed to win Notre Dame with 60 points without a single visit to the church, followed by James 53, Andy 50 and David on 43.

A much closer result with Ra and Stuart pipping David to 1st place by just one point.  Final scores Stuart 50, David 49, Andy 30 and James 26.  I still really enjoy this game although I've forgotten how to play it well - must try harder to rise out of the lower quartile!

Peloponnes - 27 April 2016

A full house for another fun game of Peloponnes.  A lot of high scores but the final round of disasters and population feeding hit a few of the civilizations hard.  Adrian won with a high and balanced score of population/prestige 33/35, followed by David 30/28, James 27/27, Stuart 20/36 and Andy 18/30.