Friday Night Gaming: Kamisado, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg, Ruse & Bruise
January 23, 2009
Being that it was Merwin's birthday, or we just used it as an excuse, we started an hour earlier this night. Unfortunately, it ended up being a very long night.
Kamisado
Though I suck at most abstract games, I generally appreciate their design and have even designed (but never playtested) a few myself. We very rarely play such games with this group, but since people were trickling in, Merwin opened this newly-arrived game, and we banged out a couple of plays before we got the main event(s).
In the first game, Merwin and I moved pieces and were just trying to get a hang of the rules rather than the strategy. It definitely seems to be a game of reducing your opponent's movement options while keeping yours open. This requires some foresight, but I doubt one could look more than two moves ahead. Well, I certainly couldn't. But it also requires "seeing" moves, both good and bad, which is a skill I'm particularly bad at. I even had a mulligan because I made a particularly obvious bad move; we blamed it on me confusing which pieces were whose... Anyway, I lost.
Zach and Brian took their chess experience to the game and had a more thoughtful time of it. I actually saw the winning move before Brian did, but then, I didn't see a bunch of bad moves that he did. Anyway, like a jerk, I blurted out "Oh, you can win!" which (rightfully) ticked him off. He soon found it and won.
By now, everyone had arrived and we moved on to...
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Merwin has very fond memories of this game from earlier years. A new edition is coming from Z-Man games, so he was anxious to play this at least once before getting the new version for the sake of comparison. It is essentially a combination of an adventure boardgame (like Prophecy, but without the fighting) and a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The production values on this well-used game were pretty low with square cardboard shits and non-laminated cardstock player boards and cards. We started the game fine as our character chits set off from Bagdad and had a number of encounters. Brian had a very involved encounter and converted a nation to Islam and got half way to his goal. Ian was griefstricken and lovestruck. Merwin became griefstriken and enslaved. Robert was imprissoned. Zach had a "no encounter" and a city quest. I had a small event that I can't even remember anymore. And then Brian got the exact same enounter again and got to his winning conditions. We all had one turn to either stop him or overpass him. Since none of us were anywhere near him and simply didn't get a super mega-event to catch up, he won. I think the actual play time was less than an hour and the actual number of turns was 4.
I'm not playing it again. It's dull, random, nonsensical, and (though I usually try to avoid this word) broken. I'll give the Z-Man version a try when Merwin gets it, but if the flaws aren't fixed, I'll pass.
Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg, die
I'll just quote what I wrote for BGG:
Afterward, this game drove me nuts because it reminds me some other game that I just can't place. During the game, I compared it Wyatt Earp, but that wasn't it. One could even say it's Loco (a game I've never played) on steroids. During the game, it drove me nuts because very little that I did worked. No, I take that back.* Everything I tried in the second-half of the game failed. I was even completely shut out for a round.
Each turn, you play a card on one of six stacks, trying to accumulate enough points to win the victory point card at the top of the stack. The round ends when each stack is filled (one card per vp reward in that stack). After six rounds, the game is over and the player with the most points (double if you manage to get one of each of the six "suits" of vp). Every card has a special ability that changes the rules or screws with other cards. Cards are played face-down initially and then revealed when the next card on the stack is played. You can bluff. You can set traps. You can really screw with the other players. It's a game of tough decisions and second-guessing. And I didn't really like it.
When it comes your time to play, you only have a choice of 3 cards, which is good because it reduces your options to a managable number. But it's bad because sometimes those options suck. Certain cards work really well together, which is great for you when you get them during the same round. And you must play to a stack, even if you know all your options are bad. Even when things are working and you have clear control of a particular stack, someone can swap the vp card you're after by playing the Traitor on a completely different stack (meaning that there was nothing you could do about it).
The ability to control one's destiny in a game is important, but there must always be elements outside of your control (and it ceases being a game and becomes a puzzle). When the lack of control comes from die rolls and card draws, a game is random. When it comes from other players, a game is chaotic. Not enough randomness and/or chaos can make a game dry and prone to "optimal strategies." Too much randomness turns a game into a pointless excerise. Too much chaos and the game becomes frustrating. I'm very inconsistent when I rate a game based on its level of chaos. I like some chaotic games (Fluxx, Bang!) while chaos annoys me in other games, and I can't say I know why.
I want to say that Ruse and Bruse is too chaotic, that your plans are too easily thwarted by the actions of the other players. Control is ephemerol, such as when Robert screwed me with a Traitor and then I did the exact same thing to him (reversing his earlier move) in the same round. But then I was hosed by Brian's traitor two rounds later. And since you can only expect to get your Traitor card once per game, it's just random whether or not you can use it when you need it. I'm picking on Traitor because those three uses stand out in my mind and affected me personally, but the same kind of thing happens with other cards.
Of the six of us, Robert, Zach, and Ian did really well. Ian came out clearly on top while Merwin, Brian, and I languished in the cellar far below.
* Why don't you just delete it and type something else?
Shut up, you.
Being that it was Merwin's birthday, or we just used it as an excuse, we started an hour earlier this night. Unfortunately, it ended up being a very long night.
Kamisado
Though I suck at most abstract games, I generally appreciate their design and have even designed (but never playtested) a few myself. We very rarely play such games with this group, but since people were trickling in, Merwin opened this newly-arrived game, and we banged out a couple of plays before we got the main event(s).
In the first game, Merwin and I moved pieces and were just trying to get a hang of the rules rather than the strategy. It definitely seems to be a game of reducing your opponent's movement options while keeping yours open. This requires some foresight, but I doubt one could look more than two moves ahead. Well, I certainly couldn't. But it also requires "seeing" moves, both good and bad, which is a skill I'm particularly bad at. I even had a mulligan because I made a particularly obvious bad move; we blamed it on me confusing which pieces were whose... Anyway, I lost.
Zach and Brian took their chess experience to the game and had a more thoughtful time of it. I actually saw the winning move before Brian did, but then, I didn't see a bunch of bad moves that he did. Anyway, like a jerk, I blurted out "Oh, you can win!" which (rightfully) ticked him off. He soon found it and won.
By now, everyone had arrived and we moved on to...
Tales of the Arabian Nights
Merwin has very fond memories of this game from earlier years. A new edition is coming from Z-Man games, so he was anxious to play this at least once before getting the new version for the sake of comparison. It is essentially a combination of an adventure boardgame (like Prophecy, but without the fighting) and a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
The production values on this well-used game were pretty low with square cardboard shits and non-laminated cardstock player boards and cards. We started the game fine as our character chits set off from Bagdad and had a number of encounters. Brian had a very involved encounter and converted a nation to Islam and got half way to his goal. Ian was griefstricken and lovestruck. Merwin became griefstriken and enslaved. Robert was imprissoned. Zach had a "no encounter" and a city quest. I had a small event that I can't even remember anymore. And then Brian got the exact same enounter again and got to his winning conditions. We all had one turn to either stop him or overpass him. Since none of us were anywhere near him and simply didn't get a super mega-event to catch up, he won. I think the actual play time was less than an hour and the actual number of turns was 4.
I'm not playing it again. It's dull, random, nonsensical, and (though I usually try to avoid this word) broken. I'll give the Z-Man version a try when Merwin gets it, but if the flaws aren't fixed, I'll pass.
Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg, die
I'll just quote what I wrote for BGG:
Despite elements of Bang! and Shadow Hunters, such as role-deduction, variable powers, and direct conflict/interaction, it just fell flat with me. The decisions aren't hard. The card play isn't clever. Dull.Ruse & Bruise
Afterward, this game drove me nuts because it reminds me some other game that I just can't place. During the game, I compared it Wyatt Earp, but that wasn't it. One could even say it's Loco (a game I've never played) on steroids. During the game, it drove me nuts because very little that I did worked. No, I take that back.* Everything I tried in the second-half of the game failed. I was even completely shut out for a round.
Each turn, you play a card on one of six stacks, trying to accumulate enough points to win the victory point card at the top of the stack. The round ends when each stack is filled (one card per vp reward in that stack). After six rounds, the game is over and the player with the most points (double if you manage to get one of each of the six "suits" of vp). Every card has a special ability that changes the rules or screws with other cards. Cards are played face-down initially and then revealed when the next card on the stack is played. You can bluff. You can set traps. You can really screw with the other players. It's a game of tough decisions and second-guessing. And I didn't really like it.
When it comes your time to play, you only have a choice of 3 cards, which is good because it reduces your options to a managable number. But it's bad because sometimes those options suck. Certain cards work really well together, which is great for you when you get them during the same round. And you must play to a stack, even if you know all your options are bad. Even when things are working and you have clear control of a particular stack, someone can swap the vp card you're after by playing the Traitor on a completely different stack (meaning that there was nothing you could do about it).
The ability to control one's destiny in a game is important, but there must always be elements outside of your control (and it ceases being a game and becomes a puzzle). When the lack of control comes from die rolls and card draws, a game is random. When it comes from other players, a game is chaotic. Not enough randomness and/or chaos can make a game dry and prone to "optimal strategies." Too much randomness turns a game into a pointless excerise. Too much chaos and the game becomes frustrating. I'm very inconsistent when I rate a game based on its level of chaos. I like some chaotic games (Fluxx, Bang!) while chaos annoys me in other games, and I can't say I know why.
I want to say that Ruse and Bruse is too chaotic, that your plans are too easily thwarted by the actions of the other players. Control is ephemerol, such as when Robert screwed me with a Traitor and then I did the exact same thing to him (reversing his earlier move) in the same round. But then I was hosed by Brian's traitor two rounds later. And since you can only expect to get your Traitor card once per game, it's just random whether or not you can use it when you need it. I'm picking on Traitor because those three uses stand out in my mind and affected me personally, but the same kind of thing happens with other cards.
Of the six of us, Robert, Zach, and Ian did really well. Ian came out clearly on top while Merwin, Brian, and I languished in the cellar far below.
* Why don't you just delete it and type something else?
Shut up, you.
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 4:44 PM
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