THREE FOR THREE
I was at Jorge and Eva's last night (into the wee hours) for kind of a rare experience for me: A night of three-player gaming. It was a nice change of pace, though--especially since I got to play three games for the first time.
First up was San Marco, one of those well-regarded, semi-venerable games that I've never gotten around to. It was my first game, as noted, and Jorge and Eva's second (and first in a long time; we all needed a rules explanation). It's safe to say we weren't playing optimally. I really like the "one cuts, the others choose" mechanic--it's one I wish I saw in more games. We really didn't have a firm grasp on the relative value of the special cards; Banishment, in particular, was undervalued. I may have overvalued the Doge (special scoring) card somewhat. I also like how the periods of the game end. Along with "good" cards--ones where you place guys on the map, kick other guys off, convert other people's guys into my guys, etc--there are also "bad" cards, marked 1, 2, or 3. Once someone gets 10 or more points worth of bad cards, the Period ends after the next round (which is conducted without the guy who went out). It gives players control over when the round ends, and makes for extra decisions: a good thing, I say.
I won. I focused on pouring--just pouring--my guys on the board, and managed to kick out a fair number, as well. Still, I only won by a few points over Eva. I would have done better if I had better bridges...although Jorge had an excellent bridge network and it got him bupkis. Again, our card valuation skills are in their infancy. It's a clever game--but for all that, it didn't grab me quite the way I expected. The theme is just nothing, but that's not the problem. The thing is that, in a given turn, everybody had a very different level of involvement. The "cutter," who divides the cards, has a good healthy think on his or her hands. The First Chooser then has a medium-weight think, and after that (in our game) the Second Chooser was usually left with a clearly superior choice. Again, that'd be cut down as our experience.
I'd play it again, but it'd be someone else's copy, I think.
The next game caught my eye on the shelf--I'd never heard of it: Old Town. How had I missed this game? I mean, there are plenty of games on American history--but if there's another game where you play American historians, I haven't heard of it.
In the game, the players are trying to reconstruct the layout of an Old West town. The map begins with the ruins of the railroad and train station, the cemetery, the dirt roads, and the foundations of sixteen buildings. Each player also starts with a hand of cards. These cards--which I imagined to represent various letters, reminiscences, fuzzy photos, and so on--give clues as to where various buildings are. Some exclude only half the board (i.e., eight locations)--say, "The Saloon was north of the railroad tracks." Others narrow it down to four locations--"The Church is next to the graveyard." The third kind of card--and these are the fun ones--are conditional: "The Church entrance faces the Saloon entrance."
Some cards say something like "My building is on Main Street." Every player has one or two "own" buildings in front of them at all times, and the "My Building" cards refer to any of these. You don't score extra for them, other people can score by removing their chits, and so on. The designation is only for those particular cards.
Each building--and there are eighteen, so two will never enter the game; their existence was merely rumor--has five "chits" which represent where a building might possibly be. On your turn, you play one of your cards and adjust the chits accordingly. When the map is empty--i.e., at the start of the game--you typically play one of your cards that restricts a building's location to four possibilities. You put a chit in each of those four--leaving one. You get one point (you've eliminated one chit). If, later, you play a card that eliminates two more chits, you get two points. By the time a building is securely located, then, it's given out five points, one for each chit.
Now--like in Sudoku--it can happen that placing one building causes a chain reaction, and you can end up removing all kinds of chits. I think Jorge said his personal record was ten chits from one card. It can happen, of course, that previous cards render later cards obsolete. If someone plays a card that locates the Undertaker's north of the railroad, your card saying it's south of the railroad is--to steal a line from Age of Renaissance--an unplayable misery burden. [NOTE: "Unplayable Misery Burden" is, by a mile, my favorite term from any game, I think. I try to use it in conversation.] If you get a whole hand of useless cards, you can discard two and draw two back. Eva did that once; I had a couple of useless cards by the end of the game (one of which came fairly early) but the others I got were useful, so I managed by cycling through the deck normally. (Of course, you draw a new card at the end of your turn, keeping four in your hand.)
Our game came down to the very end. There were three slots left, and whoever filled the last one was going to win--it turned out to be Jorge.
I am absolutely in love with this game, which is kind of odd. I mean, it's not really a brain-burner, the art is one step above clip art, and there's a pretty fair luck component...but gosh darn it's fun. Yeah...partly it's the theme. I'm an historian; now I get to play one in a game, too! (Well, I'm a postulant historian, anyway. I'll be a little bolder once I give my first conference paper in September.) Also, it's a game where you make a map--I love those. You can see it rise out of the ground, almost. Plenty of good times were engendered.
Third up: Shear Panic, one of the best examples of a game becoming a hit thanks to internet-generated buzz. Friends, it's worth every bit of its press. It's just about perfect, if you think about it. It scales well for 2-4 players; it's a nice, meaty no-luck/perfect-information game; and...I mean, it's got the sheep, and anyone who isn't immediately taken by these sheep figurines needs to reevaluate his or her life.
The game mechanics have nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--to do with sheep shearing, so anyone scarred by memories of Squatter can rest easy.
Tom Vasel did his usual excellent job describing how the game works, so I'll forego that. I'm a big fan of abstracts, personally, so I'd like this game as either a "serious" game or not. I like how there are several different kinds of scoring, how you can take each action only once, and how you need to conserve your resources for the endgame...which I so did not do, and finished back in oblivion.
It did have a kingmaker ending, though, which I'm never fond of. I'd like to play more, though, before decreeing on that. (For Dos Rios, where I pounced on the kingmaker ending in my first game, I felt it stemmed directly from design choices earlier on; if it were a "money" game, it wouldn't have existed.) I loved it. The best part: When all the sheep are staring at you.
ALSO: If someone from the UK wants to be my best friend, they can get me this for my birthday coming up. (And tell the seller that the picture has knights and rooks switched.)
Of the three games, I liked them all but only the latter two seem collection-worthy to me. Luckily, I discovered that one of my neglected wargames is selling for $100 these days...
The night was closed out by a three-plus-hour discussion of the history, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Spanish educational system, and of course the World Cup. A wonderful evening all around!
