Friday Night Gaming: Neuroshima Hex!, Palastgeflüster
March 27, 2009
Zach flaked on running the second session of Street Fighter, so it was board game night. Zach never did show up, distracted by work, so that left us with five: Brian, Merwin, Ian, Robert, and myself.
Neuroshima Hex!
While Merwin took Max (his son) for a walk, we started a four-way deathmatch. Afterward, this was declared the best game of NH ever and I think Robert vowed never to play it again because of this.
Since every player was out for themselves, the tactics were pretty interesting. There were cases when your best move would be against player A, but then it would hurt player A's attack on player B, so you went against player C instead. And because the board is so cramped, ganging up on a single opponent, 3-to-1, was actually pretty difficult. Another theme that emerged was that I seemed to start most of the battles, often when my tile filled up the board. This gave Ian, to my left, more open space to deploy units, and there were many times when I simply had no units on the board beside my base.
At the start, Brian took an early, but narrow lead (having the base with the fewest hits). And then thanks to some good play, Ian slammed both Brian and I, knocking us hard and taking a substantial lead. And then we turned our attention against him while Brian was still struggling to get his blockers in place to protect his base. At one point, I had the lead with Robert close behind. As we entered the final stretch, I started getting my Move tiles rather than actual fighting tiles, limiting my options right when they targeted me.
Brian, the first player, triggered the endgame with his last tile draw and it went around the table. As the last player, Ian pulled off an amazing maneuver. He was actually in a king-maker situation and his placement would determine who won. He placed a tile and then played a battle tile. As the dust cleared, there were three bases with 3 hit points left, and mine with 4. And then, the Final Battle took place, giving one last point of damage to my base. End result: four-way tie.
Except I just read the rules that say "When any of the players has drawn his last tile, Battle tiles cannot be used." I can't claim this would have given me the win, because catching this restriction would have changed what Ian played. Still, it was a damn cool ending.
Palastgeflüster
This card game came as a surprise. It is light, very chaotic, yet still fun. It lacks the same direct, visceral attacking of Bang! or The Red Dragon Inn, but there are opportunities to directly screw with people. Bruno Faidutti has a very good synopsis/review at his site.
We did have problems with the rules and the poor English translation, the lack of detail on the summary cards, and Merwin's cursory rules reading. We misplayed two character abilities in the first game and aborted a second to restart and play a full game with all the correct rules.
I started out by "shooting the moon," winning the hand giving me a one-point (out of four) lead. I then lost the next two hands, making the score everyone else: 2, me: 1. Brian then won a hand when Robert got greedy, could have taken a co-win by knocking me out, but went for a solo-win and failed. And then there might have been another hand in there. In the end, Brian won the game all by himself by winning the last hand.
I expect this to come out as a filler when we have less than six players, as it unfortunately only handles up to five.
Zach flaked on running the second session of Street Fighter, so it was board game night. Zach never did show up, distracted by work, so that left us with five: Brian, Merwin, Ian, Robert, and myself.
Neuroshima Hex!
While Merwin took Max (his son) for a walk, we started a four-way deathmatch. Afterward, this was declared the best game of NH ever and I think Robert vowed never to play it again because of this.
Since every player was out for themselves, the tactics were pretty interesting. There were cases when your best move would be against player A, but then it would hurt player A's attack on player B, so you went against player C instead. And because the board is so cramped, ganging up on a single opponent, 3-to-1, was actually pretty difficult. Another theme that emerged was that I seemed to start most of the battles, often when my tile filled up the board. This gave Ian, to my left, more open space to deploy units, and there were many times when I simply had no units on the board beside my base.
At the start, Brian took an early, but narrow lead (having the base with the fewest hits). And then thanks to some good play, Ian slammed both Brian and I, knocking us hard and taking a substantial lead. And then we turned our attention against him while Brian was still struggling to get his blockers in place to protect his base. At one point, I had the lead with Robert close behind. As we entered the final stretch, I started getting my Move tiles rather than actual fighting tiles, limiting my options right when they targeted me.
Brian, the first player, triggered the endgame with his last tile draw and it went around the table. As the last player, Ian pulled off an amazing maneuver. He was actually in a king-maker situation and his placement would determine who won. He placed a tile and then played a battle tile. As the dust cleared, there were three bases with 3 hit points left, and mine with 4. And then, the Final Battle took place, giving one last point of damage to my base. End result: four-way tie.
Except I just read the rules that say "When any of the players has drawn his last tile, Battle tiles cannot be used." I can't claim this would have given me the win, because catching this restriction would have changed what Ian played. Still, it was a damn cool ending.
Palastgeflüster
This card game came as a surprise. It is light, very chaotic, yet still fun. It lacks the same direct, visceral attacking of Bang! or The Red Dragon Inn, but there are opportunities to directly screw with people. Bruno Faidutti has a very good synopsis/review at his site.
We did have problems with the rules and the poor English translation, the lack of detail on the summary cards, and Merwin's cursory rules reading. We misplayed two character abilities in the first game and aborted a second to restart and play a full game with all the correct rules.
I started out by "shooting the moon," winning the hand giving me a one-point (out of four) lead. I then lost the next two hands, making the score everyone else: 2, me: 1. Brian then won a hand when Robert got greedy, could have taken a co-win by knocking me out, but went for a solo-win and failed. And then there might have been another hand in there. In the end, Brian won the game all by himself by winning the last hand.
I expect this to come out as a filler when we have less than six players, as it unfortunately only handles up to five.
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 9:10 PM
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