Friday Night Gaming: Red November, Coloretto
January 16, 2009
Red November
We played this cooperative game twice. The first time, we were still learning the rules and trying to puzzle things out. I had read the rules before the game, but not having the whole game, especially the event cards, I failed to grasp some of the finer points. We were plagued by fires and no fire extinguishers. Then the flooding started, which helped against the fires. Meanwhile, the asphyxiation, heat, and pressure gauges gradually rose. And just as we were getting a grip on things, at just about the midway point, the sub imploded.
The second game went much more smoothly. We were able to keep the gauges in check, timed event cards were discarded during feint checks, fires and flooding were under control, and Zach even started complaining that it was too boring. We even lucked out in that the dreaded Kraken showed up one minute too late to be a threat. The last 10 minutes to the rescue were quite hairy, though. Passages were becoming blocked and so we were unable to deal with the rapidly increasing number of events. In the end, Brian was locked in the fully flooded reactor room and I was locked in the missile room which was on fire. But no matter, we were rescued. The only casualty was Merwin, who passed out and died from a flood or fire.
Cooperative games are fun, but I am tiring of them. In some ways, our group is too good at cooperation. Sure, we may still lose to the mechanisms (and machinations) of the game and we often have disagreements on the proper course of action, but we are all professionals. We're very open with each other, we respect each other, and we work relatively well together. And any sense of group accomplishment is overshadowed by the thought we that just got lucky. Case in point, in our first game, we too often rigged things so that we had a 100% chance to fix a problem. This costs time and resources, but it is probably what we would do in our day jobs. In the second game, we took more chances (typically between 60% and 80%) and it payed off more than it probably should have.
Coloretto
Merwin and I had played this before, several years ago, but neither of us remembered much about it. I got off to a good start with Brian on my heels. And it went downhill from there. I finished third behind Brian and Merwin, between whom I was sitting. I place a bit of the blame on luck. Twice I drew a joker that Brian picked up after me. And others just seemed to have better luck with drawing cards to fill out a collection when they were the last to play. During the game, I frequently looked to Ian, who seemed to approve of my moves, but he came in 4th, so maybe that wasn't such a good idea. :)
Red November
We played this cooperative game twice. The first time, we were still learning the rules and trying to puzzle things out. I had read the rules before the game, but not having the whole game, especially the event cards, I failed to grasp some of the finer points. We were plagued by fires and no fire extinguishers. Then the flooding started, which helped against the fires. Meanwhile, the asphyxiation, heat, and pressure gauges gradually rose. And just as we were getting a grip on things, at just about the midway point, the sub imploded.
The second game went much more smoothly. We were able to keep the gauges in check, timed event cards were discarded during feint checks, fires and flooding were under control, and Zach even started complaining that it was too boring. We even lucked out in that the dreaded Kraken showed up one minute too late to be a threat. The last 10 minutes to the rescue were quite hairy, though. Passages were becoming blocked and so we were unable to deal with the rapidly increasing number of events. In the end, Brian was locked in the fully flooded reactor room and I was locked in the missile room which was on fire. But no matter, we were rescued. The only casualty was Merwin, who passed out and died from a flood or fire.
Cooperative games are fun, but I am tiring of them. In some ways, our group is too good at cooperation. Sure, we may still lose to the mechanisms (and machinations) of the game and we often have disagreements on the proper course of action, but we are all professionals. We're very open with each other, we respect each other, and we work relatively well together. And any sense of group accomplishment is overshadowed by the thought we that just got lucky. Case in point, in our first game, we too often rigged things so that we had a 100% chance to fix a problem. This costs time and resources, but it is probably what we would do in our day jobs. In the second game, we took more chances (typically between 60% and 80%) and it payed off more than it probably should have.
Coloretto
Merwin and I had played this before, several years ago, but neither of us remembered much about it. I got off to a good start with Brian on my heels. And it went downhill from there. I finished third behind Brian and Merwin, between whom I was sitting. I place a bit of the blame on luck. Twice I drew a joker that Brian picked up after me. And others just seemed to have better luck with drawing cards to fill out a collection when they were the last to play. During the game, I frequently looked to Ian, who seemed to approve of my moves, but he came in 4th, so maybe that wasn't such a good idea. :)
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 8:33 PM
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