December 30, 2008In general, I don't like the holidays. But I like the time off, especially when it means we can have a gaming day in the middle of the week. Robert and I went over to Merwin's at noon, and Brian joined us in the afternoon, just as we were clearing up our first game, which was ...
DoomRobert had requested this recently, saying, "And for some strange reason I've had a little itch to play Doom again. Must be the Christmas spirit. Futurama style." On a Friday night, it would have been the main event, but on a Tuesday, it was a good, meaty starter.
My memories of Doom, which we apparently hadn't played in over 18 months (according to Robert), were of a tense-filled dice-fest. This time, it ended up being a slow grind to inevitable defeat. Robert and I played the marines and Merwin the Doom Master (or whatever it's called), running the bad guys. In theory, the marines had some great synergies. I had Special Ops (two extra damage with hand-to-hand weapons), Killer Instinct (allowing me to move and attack after a successful kill), and Prepared (gave me 3 tokens which I could use to cancel event cards played by Merwin). Robert had Officer (one extra damage and range to him and close allies), Marksman (3 or 4 extra range), and Frontal Assault (?) (one additional attack when he used the Advance option). While I was going toe-to-toe, Robert could snipe at the baddies before they approached. In theory, anyway.
The single biggest frustration with Doom (as the marines, anyway) is that there is a one-third chance you'll run out of ammo after using a gun. It is not uncommon to pick up an ammo pack, shoot, and then lose the ammo. Yes, his adds to the nail-biting excitement of the game. But yes, it can make the entire effort of getting ammo rather pointless. Robert's other problem was that one of the central areas had limited lighting that reduced line of sight to four squares. So even though he had a minimum range of six (!), the demons (who were not affected by the lighting, naturally) could always move up on him.
More so than when we played previously, I was struck by how the boardgame differed from the video game. The ammo is one thing (I never ran out of ammo as often when I played on the PC), but two other factors were the spawning of monsters and the respawning of marines. In the original game, when you killed a demon, it didn't come back. You could clear an area and take your time sweeping through the empty rooms and corridors, picking up equipment and looking for secret rooms. In the boardgame, new demons can be added every round, making it impossible to clear an area. And since there is usually little opportunity to ready a defense, it means that you will be eventually worn down and killed. And when you die, you return with full life and all your equipment (except additional armor, which doens't really make sense). Every time we respawned, however, we chose to appear close to an ammo pack, which was situated on the far side of the demons that had just killed us. Thematically, this seemed like cheating (Merwin read the rule and okayed the placement), but it didn't really help.
The game definitely had its highlights. I got the chainsaw and was able to rock some great death and destruction, especially when I got additional armor. There were several turns when Merwin missed every shot (each attack has a one-sixth chance of an automatic miss), which was a great relief to us. But then there was a time I threw a grenade, missed, and it landed back in my square. Oops.
In the end, we each died three times, which gave the win to Meriwn. I'm not sure if there was anything we could have done tactically to improve our chances. We died two rooms from the end, I think. I got the feeling we were moving too slowly, giving Merwin too many opportunities to spawn monsters. Next time we play, I think I'll volunteer to control the demons--they don't run out of ammo.
Notre DameAfter Brian arrived, I requested this game. Though we didn't have Ian, our ending ranks exactly matched our previous game. Merwin won and I came in second (though well behind him rather than tied). Brian was third, but did much better than before, improving his prestige (VP) total from 19 to 50. Robert was last, this simply not being his kind of game. Merwin was able to again grind the Bank and Notre Dame to get a lot of prestige. He was to my right, so he never passed me Notre Dame (except at the end when it didn't matter), and my own Notre Dame card always seemed to show up at the wrong time (i.e., when I had no money to spare). Brian to my left set out to sweep up points with the Carriage, and I tried to avoid giving him that option. Which meant I ended up using the Carriage a lot myself. With two markers in the Park, I managed to sweep up bonus prestige by getting several smaller rewards. In contrast, Merwin was picking them up six or more at a single shot; one time, I think he picked up twelve from one action. I think we only had one person hit by the Plague and that was at the end.
I'd like to play this once more to see if I can duplicate Merwin's success; otherwise, I think we've explored the options in this game. I downgraded my BGG rating from 8 to 7. We might end up saving it for a day when Robert can't make it.
TikalAt first, I thought this was going to be a fairly complicated game. Each turn, you have ten action points to allocate, which give a lot of options to ponder. But the tactics are straight-forward enough that you don't agonize (too much) over every single action point. Often times, we'd end a turn with unused points and just use them to put more workers on the board (some of which went unused for the rest of the game).
We played the basic game, which means we randomly drew tiles instead of auctioning them. This adds luck, but it seemed to balance out for us. In the beginning, I drew two treasure tiles, giving me an early lead on the treasures, but I didn't see one for the rest of the game and was unable to expand my collections.
Initially, there was great confusion regarding how scoring rounds (which appear randomly during the course of the game and once at the end) worked. The rules seemed contradictory, but we eventually figured it out. Thanks to being the starting player and getting my lucky treasure draws, I got an early lead, but didn't expect to see it again. I fell back during the middle game as I just couldn't get useful tiles and I was fighting with Merwin over the control of a temple. I came back at the end when the board was really tight and was able to place a good base camp. During the final round of scoring, I went first and roared into the lead. Based on my experience with Mykerinos and Princes of Florence, I expected everyone else to pass me as they scored. But Brian fell short and Robert was last (he just doesn't seem to do well with vp-counting games). And then Merwin came out one point ahead of me, making it three win in a row for him.
We all know that Merwin is slow taking his turns. But because the board changes so much by the time your turn comes around again, everyone has to spend time figuring out how to optimize their action points. This means there is a lot of down time between turns. Brian and I spent ours working out what we would do if we were the current player. On one of Merwin's turn, we both figured out exactly what he should do and made the mistake of telling him what it was. It not only gave him possession of a good temple, but screwed Robert and Brian. Because of this, Merwin didn't take credit for the win because that's just the kind of guy he is. But more importantly, Brian and I realized we just need to learn to keep our mouths shut.
ManilaMerwin had been clamoring for a return of this game for a few weeks. I was slightly sour on the idea since the first (and only) time we played, he won handily thanks to a really lucky combination of rolls allowing his pirates to plunder every punt during one turn. But after reading the rules earlier this week, I softened to the idea and humorously suggested that we play it so that Merwin would quit asking for it.
At its heart, Manila is a gambling game. You spend money to place bets on certain events and reap the payouts when they occur. For example, if one, two, or three punts will make it to Manilla or if they will scuttled. Pirates let you plunder, but only if the punts land on a specific space. And you can bet on specific punts and share in the profit if they make it to port. But it also a stock game, and the value of the stocks you hold at the end can be worth much more than the money you earned from the payouts. You start with two random shares, but can only buy more if you are the Harbor Master, a role that is auctioned each turn. Also, the Harbor Master determines which three of the four goods will be sent down the river and what their starting positions will be. So, it is a very powerful role which we have probably been undervaluing.
Given the previous game experience, my strategy was to get a pirate every single turn. This is exactly what I did; I think it only failed to pay off twice during the game. There are too many variables to calculate precisely, but I think it works out the pirates will plunder about one-third of the time.* I think I definitely beat the odds.
The other thing I did was win the Harbor Master bid several times. And every time (in addition to placing a pirate), I picked to send Silk and Nutmeg to Manila, bought a share of one of those, and put those two punts in the lead spaces (at 5 or 4) with the third far behind (at 0). Every time, both Silk and Nutmeg arrived in Manila (perhaps even after I plundered it), which increased the value of my shares. Lather-rinse-repeat. Eventually, the others started out bidding me for the Harbor Master and I took a few turns off, as it were, but by then my lead was substantial. I grabbed the Harbor Master for the last turn and ended the game when the share price maxed out.
I won handily because of the Harbor Master, with the Pirate giving me enough cash to win the auctions. In the beginning the Harbor Master was going for ~10 Pecos. By the end, we were over 20. I suspect that our next game will be very different with the auction reaching those high values from the very beginning. But even so, there is quite a bit of luck with the die rolls and any strategy can fail.
*: If you assume that two punts are in range to land on the right space, and you need to roll the number exactly on a die, that means that means neither punt will land (5/6)^2 = 69.4% of the time. And at least one will land 30.5% ~ 1/3 of the time.
Labels: Other Games