NIGHT (AND EARLY MORNING) O' GAMING
After too long, I made it back out to Jay's place for an evening of drinking Cokes, scarfing sugary snacks, and playing games with some good folks. Jay and I were joined by Jorge, Eva, and Chris. In a pleasant turn, they were all games I liked--even the ones that were new to me. Two heavy games, three light games.
Waiting for Chris to arrive, the four of us pulled out Coloretto. This is, perhaps, the game's niche. I rate Coloretto a 6. Perhaps not the ultimate test of wills, but it's a fine appetizer. I can't imagine playing a full game of it several times in a row, or competitively, but doled out in portions I've always enjoyed myself. No clue who won this one.
We followed it up with a somewhat longer and more serious affair when Chris showed up: Caylus, the game that many folks prop up in their game rooms with a little votive candle in front. I thought it was all right. I mean, I'm going to get it. I had fun. It probably took two and a half hours, but with a bunch of experienced, fast players I imagine this could creep well below two hours, maybe to ninety minutes. (Maybe.) I had the sense, somehow, that we were playing suboptimally--not surprisingly, since for all of us but Jay it was our first game. Lord knows I was playing suboptimally.
There's not a whole lot of player interaction (there's definitely some), there's perfect information, and with most games (it would seem) having very similar setups I imagine that, in time, Caylus could develop a "groove" as best play is determined. With Shadow of the Emperor, I feel like there's a lot more interaction so there's less of a chance of play becoming stereotyped. Caylus, though, is a lot easier to get into than Shadow--for the latter, you have to have a fairly decent handle on what every card does before you start.
I give Caylus a seven right now, same as Shadow of the Emperor. I'm not sure where those scores are going to go; I think Shadow is more the kind of game I like than Caylus is, but they're both pretty neat. I'm not getting a tattoo of either of them, though.
I finished somewhere back in the pack, I think. I never seemed to grasp the fine art of having commodities in stock. I never seemed to have more than one or two sitting around at the end of the turn--usually none. And that's not because I was "efficient."
After Caylus, another couple of palate cleansers. First up was Reiner Knizia's Poison. I'm a big fan of most of Knizia's small card games--Money, Vampire, and Trendy (among others) all have places in the collection. Granted, Trendy's not the game the others are, but I've always enjoyed them and (perhaps not coincidentally) tend to do fairly well when I pllay them..
I like Poison, too. It has kind of a press-your-luck element, which I always approve of. Yeah, there's a lot of luck in the game, but you have to be paying attention to what everyone else is playing and know when to play your cards. Eva and I won this one, with a three-round total score of something like eight. Third place had...fifteen or sixteen? The first round, I only took two cards, period. I was usually able to set it up so that at least one or two pots would be cleared out by the time it was my turn again. The third round, I decided to just shoot the moon on Purple and hope for the best everywhere else, and that worked nicely. The second round, I forget what I did. It was good, though.
We still hadn't quite decided what to do next, so we tried Tsuro for a couple of games. It's neat! Again, it's not exactly rocket science but I thought it was pretty spiffy. It looks gorgeous; I love the "carved in granite" tiles, the board, the "guest soap" pieces, the whole package. I love that it works for 2-8 players. I like moving along the path you make--it's not exactly "required" as long as you have good spatial abilities, but I think I just like moving the pieces around. Makes it more obvious when two guys are about to run into each other. It's fast. I did pretty poorly the first game, but the second game I finished second--it helped, I think, that I trusted much of my play to the fates--rolling a die to determine which tile to play. I said it wasn't rocket science. This game is all about the aesthetics of the product and socializing, not preparing for the Tsuro World Championships.
Tsuro Championships: I don't think there are any. But there are Pirates of the Spanish Main tournaments, which makes even less sense. I walked into the game store once, and there were tables and tables full of PotSM(etc) players--some of them had special "treasure chests" to hold their ships, there were binders, laminated rules, the wole nine yards. Of all the WizKids "constructible" games, I think Rocketmen is the only one really worth a darn as a game, personally, but what do I know? That one seems to have died a horrible death at the stores.
After that, we were ready for the night's crowning effort: Taj Mahal. Jay, long ago, owned Taj Mahal but sold it away years ago, and had wanted to get a game of it in for a long time since. He finally got his chance last night--and, sad to say, hated it.
I finished, I think, third. I, the "expert," didn't play particularly well. Playing TM "well" requires a lot of watching and counting and evaluating and third-order determinations of what other people want to do, which I just wasn't in the mood for between having not played in well over a year and the late hour. (He says, making lame excuses.) It's a hard game, probably the most difficult and complicated auction game I've ever played. Jay found it totally impenetrable.
Honestly, though, I thought that the other four, for being newbies, played very nicely. Nobody developed irrational fixations, picked up useless cards off the table (well, none that were obviously useless), or other common mistakes born of inexperience that plauge Taj Mahal players. Eva had a strategy that Jay stumbled into partway through the game, which upset her apple cart something fierce, which sometimes happens. There were some little misreads I noticed, but nothing worse than what I was missing.
Jay made a good point, after the game, that for most of it he wasn't aware of the good plays he was missing. There are a few stages people go through learning a game. Early on, with no real experience, you're playing based partly on guesswork and partly on trying to evaluate the position from Point Zero. You can blunder through whole games this way; I've gotten clobbered at games and, at the end, had no idea what I even did wrong. What were the really bad moves?
The next stage is when you play something, and later (sometime between the second the next person takes their turn and the end of the game) realize that (A) that was a bad move, and (B) you should have done __________. This is when enlightenment comes. I mean, assuming that __________ was the right thing. Theoretically, if you reach this point, finding the right move in a given situation requires sufficiently visualizing and puzzling out the position on the board. Not that it's easy, or our board judgement is infalliable, but we know what a good move looks like.
Taj Mahal is a hard game to get this with. You have to follow so much stuff, and read not only the board position but the psychology of your fellow players. If you find yourself, playing Taj Mahal, thinking thoughts like the following you're probably well on the way towards Taj Mahal Enlightenment:
"He doesn't really need anything in this region, so he's probably just dumping some money and making someone spend extra to get what they want."It's a toughie. It's still one of my very favorite games, and probably my favorite game with a major auction mechanic, but I downgraded it from a ten because there's such a learning curve to it, it's hard to wrap your head around.
"Jane's had the +2 card for too long. Jeff right now has a Princess down, and has one Princess chip already. Plus he's in fourth place. I could probably beat him for the Princess this turn, but I want someone to get the card away from Jane."
"Purple, eh? He's been drawing purple the last few turns, so he can probably outbid me if he has to. I'll stay away this round. Or do I want to toss out something I'm short in, and bleed off his purple? Hmmm..."
"I don't need anything in this region, but the face-up cards are...unimpressive. I'll throw something out, see if it sticks, and take random stuff if I have to."
"I have a good shot at getting all the tea, and a lot of other stuff besides. If I sit out these three regions, I should have enough cards for that big run at the end."
Not that I didn't enjoy myself, but it's a pity Jay had such a bad time. Again, I thought he played fairly competently by the standards of first-time Taj Mahal players, but it just gets frustrating sometimes.
Basically, Taj Mahal for Jay is what Tichu is for me...
