MichaelBD

Stone Age has a lot going for it: great components (the board is gorgeous), simple yet deep gameplay, and a theme that fits the game well.

I’ve taught Stone Age to non-gamers and I’ve played Stone Age with gamers that have been playing games for decades–it has that much overall appeal. If you are looking for an introduction into the crowded world of worker placement games, this is a game definitely worth trying.

I find these days I gravitate towards two types of games–those that play quickly and those that you strap in for the long haul. Small World is of the former.

Small World is pretty simple in its mechanics, and it comes with lots of pretty cardboard to manipulate around the board. You really only have one major and simple rule to bear in mind: cardboard + 2. You choose a race (each has a special ability), get a certain number of cardboard pieces representing your race, and then enter from a side of the board by, you guessed it, placing cardboard + 2 of your pieces into a territory. This means if a territory is empty, you need 2 of your cardboard people to take it. From there you spread out, earning a victory coin for each territory you occupy at the end of your turn (plus any bonuses).

To reinforce the cardboard + 2 rule, the game gives you lots of cardboard to place on the map. For instance, even though there are mountains printed on the beautifully illustrated game board, they give you cardboard mountains to place in those mountain regions. This way you can tell new players they need cardboard + 2 to take over a mountain territory (the cardboard mountain is 1, plus 2 means you need 3 cardboard pieces of your people to take a mountain region).

The game of course throws some spice into the mix by having a random special ability that is assigned to each race at the beginning of the game. These abilities do all kinds of things like award you bonus points for certain types of land or for conquering regions that are already occupied etc., and a lot of the fun of the game comes from the interaction between racial and special abilities.

The game is easy to learn and I’ve had success teaching it to casual gamers. It generally gets positive feedback but from the non-gamer perspective I’ve yet to have any non-gamer family or friends ask to play it again (whereas they often ask to play Ticket to Ride or No Thanks or Incan Gold). As for me I enjoy it. There are other area control games I’d rather play but the lighthearted nature of the theme and the quick play time are big positives.

The game is called Race for the Galaxy for a reason. When sitting with veteran players a game will take maybe about half an hour, as players…race…to gather as many victory points as they can before the end game is triggered.

Everything is in the cards–they work as money, resources, and the planets and developments that you will lay down in your tableau to try and build an efficient mechanism of card interplay to crank out victory points. There is a system of iconography on the cards that is designed as a means to quickly evaluate a card’s powers, but it is this iconography that drives a lot of people away from the game.

Race is one of the first games I bought when I got into the hobby because it had a scifi theme and I’m a sucker for card games. I had no one to play it with, and so I also bought The Gathering Storm to try the solitaire version out. The game takes dedication to learn, and I had the dedication. I poured over forum threads learning about rules and card interactions and basic strategy. And then there were some great fan computer programs that let you play against others (and solo). I quickly racked up over 200 plays.

To me Race is a puzzle. You are given the pieces (your opening hand) and you have to decide how they will fit into your tableau. If not, you have to find pieces that will. Sometimes the deck just won’t work with you, so you have to scramble, but because of the speed of the game and the number of viable paths you can take with certain card interactions, it rarely feels like there is nothing you can do to be competitive.

I lucked out in finding a group that plays Race. I don’t play as much as I did when I first got the game, but Race is something I will never say no to. It will take some work to get good at it, but once you do it’s a great game to play.

7 Wonders has two great things going for it: it only takes about 30 to 45 minutes to play, and it plays with up to 7 people. Aside from that, I don’t find it too compelling.

I originally bought into all the hype and I doggedly searched for a copy after the first print run was released in the US, but to no avail. Soon a friend found a copy and it became a regular opening staple at our local gaming group. It only took a few plays for me to feel like I had seen pretty much all the game has to offer.

7 Wonders is a card drafting game so everyone starts with a Wonder, some coin, and a hand of cards. Every turn you review the cards in your hand, pick one, and then pass the remaining to your neighbor (which direction depends on which Age–the game is played in 3 ages). Then you play your card. Cards represent buildings and the buildings give you stuff like resources, science, military, money, bonuses for having other buildings, victory points, etc. So you are trying to build a civilization that will garner you the most VPs by the end of the 3rd age.

My issue with 7 Wonders is that there doesn’t seem to be much to do. You have 3 main paths for points: military might, VP buildings, and a diversity of science–each coupled with special 3rd age cards called Guilds (which multiply points based on specific conditions). I’m sure there are other ways to win but the game itself doesn’t compel me to figure those out, not when I can just bank on science and crank as many scientific buildings as comes through my hand.

I know I haven’t seen the last of 7 Wonders and at such a short playing time I’d never be one to say “no” if someone wants to play it. But I won’t be too excited about it.

I’ve heard people recommend Cosmic Encounter as a gateway game, and I’ve introduced it to people who were knew to gaming. The game itself is pretty basic to play as each player starts with 5 planets and 20 ships with the intention of being the first to colonize 5 planets outside your home system.

During your turn you pick a card from the destiny deck–which will tell you who you will be attacking for your turn (so there is no “he’s picking on me” to deal with)–choose a planet in the defending players home system, commit ships to attack (no more than 4 chosen from anywhere you have them), and then it becomes a straight up numbers game. You have encounter cards in your hand that have attack values. Add the value of the attack card you play to the number of ships you committed and match it up to the number of ships defending to the number on the defender’s attack card, and whomever has the biggest overall number wins. Offense places ships and gets a new colony if he or she wins and if the defense wins he or she has fended off the attack.

Where Cosmic Encounter gets complicated is in the alien powers. You see, at the beginning of the game everyone randomly draws 2 aliens from a nice thick stack of alien cards and chooses which alien race they’ll be representing during the game. Each alien has a power that breaks rules of the game, and it’s in these powers that the complications can arise. There is an attempt to mitigate the complication by color-coding the aliens from green (easy with little chance of misinterpretation) to yellow (things start getting a little tricky in how you interpret the use of the powers) to red (expect some complications). A game turn progresses over a series of phases and much of the powers of the aliens kick in during specific phases, so as players learn you need to make sure you are carefully calling out each phase so people have the time to react accordingly (especially since some powers are mandatory and others are not).

The underlying excellence in Cosmic Encounter comes from the interplay between participants. This is a negotiation game. As the attacker and the defender you are allowed to invite other players to join your cause, with spoils for the victors and destruction for the vanquished. It is possible to have all players achieve victory in this game, and novice players may find themselves finishing the game quickly and wondering “is that it?” The key is to make sure you make, or break, alliances as they best suit your own march towards victory. It is too simple to simply invite everyone along to help when in fact you need to be particular about who you are allying yourself with or you might be handing the win over to someone else. Repeated plays open up the nuances of this game built on some very simple mechanics.

The space theme might turn some people off, but I haven’t found this to be a real issue. The real issues stem from the group you play with. As mentioned earlier it is a negotiation game and you are often making deals that you might not want to see through to the end. Some people struggle with this. Don’t play Cosmic Encounter with them. However if you have a group that digs the social interplay that this game can offer, then I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Sid Meirer’s Civilization: The Board Game is a civilization building game where 2 to 4 players vie to create the most dominant society. There are 4 potential paths to victory: cultural, economic, military, or technological. While some may feel that certain paths are easier to achieve than others, my continued experience with the game has led me to appreciate that there are powerful counters to each path available to all players. If someone is going for an economic victory, then you need to counter by denying him or her the ability to gain coins (the source of an economic victory) while you work your own strategy.

It’s a long game. Even after multiple plays we still assume at least 2.5 to 3 hours (with experienced players). And there is a lot to manage, but for me that is the beauty of the game. You have lots of options to customize your civ and an open playing field for which to expand.