Column : Larry Levy: Gulf Games Goodies, Part 2

Last week, I talked about some of the new games I got to play at the most recent Gulf Games that I really enjoyed.  Here are some other new games I tried out, most of which were also well worth playing.

Deeku:  This was the other Kenichi Tenabe design that Joe Huber showed me.  It’s a 2008 game themed around rebuilding castles in 17th century Japan.  The rules are short and the game plays very quickly.  Players place or move their pieces on the locations and if they have a majority there, they can rebuild the castle.  Gameplay is interesting, but it’s pretty abstract and that’s usually not my favorite kind of game.  Additionally, it seems that one of the major skills is searching the semi-random setup for efficient ways of moving and gaining influence and that’s just not something I find that enjoyable. It’s a solid game and I’d have no trouble playing again, but I don't think this will ever be a favorite of mine.  I liked Inotaizu much more.

Numeri:  This is a redesign of a 1973 Rudi Hoffman game (which also had another version, 1998’s Fröscheln).  This is part of Schmidt’s EasyPlay line and it certainly is that.  Each player has pieces numbered 1 through 5 which move on a linear track.  On your turn, you roll a die (which has an asterisk in place of the 6) and move the piece of that number to the first open space on the track (you choose which piece to move if the asterisk comes up).  On a 3-5, you can move two of your pieces if their numbers add up to the roll.   Additionally, if you get three in a row, you take another turn.  About half of the spaces have a value and to get your score, you multiply the number of your piece by the value of the space it’s on and add them all together.  Some people won’t like the arithmetic necessary to determine the scores, but outside of that, this is an appealing family game.  It’s very easy to understand, plays fast, and even has a reasonable amount of decisions.  It’s also a quintessential Hoffman design.

Perpetual Motion Machine:  Ted Alspach's latest non-Age of Steam game has little to do with breaking the laws of physics but instead is a nicely constructed cardgame.  Each player has a display which shows different Poker melds (like 3 of a kind and Straight) and when you play a meld of the appropriate kind, you get to place one of your cubes next to that category on the display.  As you place cubes, your abilities in the game increase.  Abilities include things like your hand size, the number of cards you can draw from the stock, and the number of cards you can choose from the display each turn.  The object is to be the first player to place all of your cubes.

The game has a sound foundation and makes a nice, if slightly long, filler. However, my game had 4 players and there's too much shuffling with that number (Ted admits the game plays best with 2 or 3).  We also felt it took a little too long to get to the interesting part, where the players have more abilities.  Perhaps the game would move more briskly if some of the in-between levels (where there’s no advancement) were omitted.  But I still think this a good solid effort by Ted and the game was one of my prize table picks.

Pictionary Card Game:  This is a party game by Brian Yu, Dale’s brother (although I don’t hold that against him), which will soon be published by Mattel (Brian is one of Mattel’s in-house designers).  It takes the basic idea of Squint (a Charades style game where the presenter uses pre-printed cards instead of gestures to try to convey the clue), uses more detailed cards (like stick figures or a drawing of a house or airplane), and has teams trying to guess the Pictionary-type subjects.  It’s not a startling advance in party games but it was good fun and a fine alternative for folks who like the idea of Pictionary but who just can’t draw.

Ad Astra:  This is the Faidutti/Laget game that has been called “Settlers in Space”.  The main mechanic is that players each have a set of actions and place them secretly in a central display (kind of like a one-dimensional Inotaizu, if you remember my description of that game from last week).  Everyone gets to perform the actions, but the player who placed it gets to do it best (a la Puerto Rico–sort of).  This seems like an interesting concept, but I didn’t like the way it worked with five players, which was the number in my game.  Not only were there a large number of actions between the ones you placed, but we found it very difficult to guess what actions others would be placing.  There was also a great deal of groupthink, so you’d see four “move” actions in a row, for example.  Basically, with five, the action mechanism seemed to lead to limited control and much accidental assistance and the game suffered as a result.  The ideas in the rest of the game are quite good, though, and the game is well regarded, so I'd like to try this again with 3.  Not only will we all be placing a greater percentage of the actions, but we’ll each be placing 4 of them instead of 3, which should also help with the control issues.

Islas Canarias:  This is a Colovini game that doesn't feel at all like Colovini, but sadly it displeased me as much as most of the rest of his designs.  The basic idea seems reasonable:  each player has an island with its own unique mix of terrain features.  Each turn, you can play a card which lists the rules for building a house of a specific color.  First choice might be next to a river, second choice might be next to a blue house, and so on.  So you have some choice about how you populate your island, which is fine.  But then you each contribute a card to the incoming “ship” and these also get built, sometimes in what seems very arbitrary ways.  Additionally, advancement in this game is often punished, as a set of pirates attack the players who have the most number of houses of a certain color (and who very well may not be winning the game).  The whole thing became more and more random the longer we played (which, unfortunately, was quite a while) and we were all happy when it was over.  I do like a few of Colovini’s smaller games (like Corsari), but for the most part, his tastes and mine are not well aligned at all.  Thus, avoiding Leo is usually my best course of action.