Friday Night Gaming: Clans, Shogun
November 28, 2008
We had a change to our routine this week as Merwin was out of town, so Brian hosted. Also, this being the day after Thanksgiving, we started around noon, rather than the usual seven o'clock. The additional time allowed us to pull out a monster of a game that we would never have been able to play on the usual game night.
Clans
No, this is not the "monster game." It's an engaging multi-player abstract that I've had and wanted to play, but it only handles up to four. I brought it along with a bunch of other games, not knowing what we would be playing. At first, it was just Brian, Zach, and myself, so I chose Clans from my stash. The first game was a learning experience, but it has very smooth game play and we quickly got into the swing of things. Zach was setting up opportunities for me to create villages (and earn tokens), but which also advanced his (secret) color. I took the opportunities, making sure to not disadvantage my own color. I guessed wrong about Zach's color, giving him the lead, but my tokens made up the difference and we ended up tying. Because Zach and I were colluding (though we didn't necessarily realize we were), Brian was left behind.
Robert joined us for the second game. I never managed to get anything going and my poor blue huts suffered terribly. I finished dead last by a wide margin. Brian, following the sole strategy of not revealing his color, ended up winning (actually, he was tied with the unused color, which I think is telling).
Shogun
Brian had the first printing of the game now called Samurai Swords (and now out of print). The guys agreed that since we had the full day (it was two o'clock by now and Ian had arrived), we should take the opportunity to play a bigger, longer game. Shogun certainly qualified.
After an overview of the rules, we tackled a couple of practice rounds to get a feel for the game and smooth out some of the rough edges of our understanding. Then, we cleared the board and started the game proper. After the random setup, Robert and I found ourselves tangled in a mess. We quickly realized that if we fought each other for the northern third of the board, where the majority of our pieces were, that we'd just weaken ourselves, allowing the others to take advantage of the situation. So, we made an allegiance that lasted the entire game; except for a few sacrificial territories* to create continuous regions, we never attacked each other. Brian convinced Ian and Zach (themselves in a war that fluctuated between cold and hot) to leave him alone, allowing him to slowly expand his territory without worrying about his backside.
The prudent strategy seems to be to not overextend or expose yourself, but this results in a very slow, long game. We were very cautious of making costly mistakes and leaving exploitable vulnerabilities, so we did not send our armies rampaging across the board. Eventually though, a quiet boredom creeps in and you start wishing that something would just happen already. In that spirit (I think), Ian pushed into my territory to see how far he could get, and I pushed back hard, killing one of his three daimyos. After the dinner break, Brian made a very strong push against me, forcing me to retreat into a defensive position. Robert took Brian's aggression as a threat (since if Brian broke through me, he'd run over Robert's position in the north, even if this was never Brian's intention), and went after Brian, killing one of his daimyos (with the help of very favorable die rolls). Then, Zach went nuts and did exactly that rampaging push that we all knew was a bad idea, running into Brian, and losing. We agreed to call the game once the first player was eliminated, and a few turns later, it was Zach (and might have been Brian had I got my turn).
As with Galactic Emperor, I just don't see how we were supposed to finish the game in the recommended time of 4 hours. At the rate we were going, it was going to take 12. Maybe if we were worse (or much better) players, it might have been faster. Sure, there were little annoyances that slowed things down, such as not having enough room to spread out and make die rolls on the table), but they don't add up to triple the game time. It's not a bad game--I can appreciate the design--but I know I'd never suggest it.
*One element of the game which I didn't like was that players could help each other by leaving weakly defended territories to be taken over by an opponent's daimyo, who would gain in rank for winning the battle. The daimyo would then retreat and allow the other player to do the same. While perfectly legal, it's cheesy and breaks the pretense of a quasi-historical wargame.
We had a change to our routine this week as Merwin was out of town, so Brian hosted. Also, this being the day after Thanksgiving, we started around noon, rather than the usual seven o'clock. The additional time allowed us to pull out a monster of a game that we would never have been able to play on the usual game night.
Clans
No, this is not the "monster game." It's an engaging multi-player abstract that I've had and wanted to play, but it only handles up to four. I brought it along with a bunch of other games, not knowing what we would be playing. At first, it was just Brian, Zach, and myself, so I chose Clans from my stash. The first game was a learning experience, but it has very smooth game play and we quickly got into the swing of things. Zach was setting up opportunities for me to create villages (and earn tokens), but which also advanced his (secret) color. I took the opportunities, making sure to not disadvantage my own color. I guessed wrong about Zach's color, giving him the lead, but my tokens made up the difference and we ended up tying. Because Zach and I were colluding (though we didn't necessarily realize we were), Brian was left behind.
Robert joined us for the second game. I never managed to get anything going and my poor blue huts suffered terribly. I finished dead last by a wide margin. Brian, following the sole strategy of not revealing his color, ended up winning (actually, he was tied with the unused color, which I think is telling).
Shogun
Brian had the first printing of the game now called Samurai Swords (and now out of print). The guys agreed that since we had the full day (it was two o'clock by now and Ian had arrived), we should take the opportunity to play a bigger, longer game. Shogun certainly qualified.
After an overview of the rules, we tackled a couple of practice rounds to get a feel for the game and smooth out some of the rough edges of our understanding. Then, we cleared the board and started the game proper. After the random setup, Robert and I found ourselves tangled in a mess. We quickly realized that if we fought each other for the northern third of the board, where the majority of our pieces were, that we'd just weaken ourselves, allowing the others to take advantage of the situation. So, we made an allegiance that lasted the entire game; except for a few sacrificial territories* to create continuous regions, we never attacked each other. Brian convinced Ian and Zach (themselves in a war that fluctuated between cold and hot) to leave him alone, allowing him to slowly expand his territory without worrying about his backside.
The prudent strategy seems to be to not overextend or expose yourself, but this results in a very slow, long game. We were very cautious of making costly mistakes and leaving exploitable vulnerabilities, so we did not send our armies rampaging across the board. Eventually though, a quiet boredom creeps in and you start wishing that something would just happen already. In that spirit (I think), Ian pushed into my territory to see how far he could get, and I pushed back hard, killing one of his three daimyos. After the dinner break, Brian made a very strong push against me, forcing me to retreat into a defensive position. Robert took Brian's aggression as a threat (since if Brian broke through me, he'd run over Robert's position in the north, even if this was never Brian's intention), and went after Brian, killing one of his daimyos (with the help of very favorable die rolls). Then, Zach went nuts and did exactly that rampaging push that we all knew was a bad idea, running into Brian, and losing. We agreed to call the game once the first player was eliminated, and a few turns later, it was Zach (and might have been Brian had I got my turn).
As with Galactic Emperor, I just don't see how we were supposed to finish the game in the recommended time of 4 hours. At the rate we were going, it was going to take 12. Maybe if we were worse (or much better) players, it might have been faster. Sure, there were little annoyances that slowed things down, such as not having enough room to spread out and make die rolls on the table), but they don't add up to triple the game time. It's not a bad game--I can appreciate the design--but I know I'd never suggest it.
*One element of the game which I didn't like was that players could help each other by leaving weakly defended territories to be taken over by an opponent's daimyo, who would gain in rank for winning the battle. The daimyo would then retreat and allow the other player to do the same. While perfectly legal, it's cheesy and breaks the pretense of a quasi-historical wargame.
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 11:14 AM
<< Home