o.m.*

the really interesting thing about trying to do something like 30 games in 30 days is the amount of excitement it's generated among my friends who i had no idea liked board games. so for everyone that's helped out this month:  thank you from the depths of my geek-driven heart!

now onto the next game!

this one is a classic from way back in 2000! carcassonne!

playing this one with me are jacob and addam!

for those who are unfamiliar with carcassonne, it is a tile-laying and area control game inspired by the roman and medieval influenced city/fortresses of carcassonne in the french region of languedoc-roussillon. each player takes a turn selecting a random face down tile and putting it into play. the only limitations are that it must be placed so that features remain contiguous (i.e. a road can't just run into a wall, field or city section, nor can an internal city section be played next to a field). my copy of carcassonne has "the river" expansion which is used to begin the game.

above you can see the first tile played off the river is a road tile that matches up with the bridge crossing the river. as the game progresses, the cities and fields begin to take shape, and players vie for points by placing their meeples.

here i've claimed 2 road sections and a monastery (i'm playing yellow). jacob (green) has a farmer in a field and a knight in a city, and addam (black) has a robber claiming a road and a farmer as well.

each player scores points during the game for completing a city, a road section on which they have a robber, or place 8 legal tiles around a monastery. here is the scoring track about mid-game:

addam is in the lead, with jacob and i hot on his heels!

eventually, we completed the game and here's what the end board looked like:

thanks to several farmers and completing a monastery, I was able to leapfrong past jacob and addam (who were tied for second place) and claim victory.

with its simple tile laying mechanic and scoring, carcassonne is another great eurogame that can be used to introduce folks to truly intelligent and skill based boardgames. thanks to jacob and addam for playing!

*original meeple

box photo property of rio grande games.  all other photos property of little mens!

alli-alli-alhambra

this one is an interesting little card management, tile-laying game based on the andalusian moorish castle, the calat alhambra. each player is building one of the may palaces that makes up the alhambra by managing placement of tiles, each worth a certain number of victory points during the game and at the end.

to acquire more tiles each player has to pay a cost for them in one of four denominations (depicted by 4 different colors, orange, green, blue, and yellow).

each turn, a player can take one of three different actions:

•  draw a currency card. a player can take one card of a denomination above 5 and any combination of cards so long as the total denomination doesn’t exceed 5.
• purchase a building tile. if a tile is purchased for the exact amount, the player then gets another chance to take an action. no change is given for tile purchases, so if a tile cost 5 yellow coins, and all you have is an 8 yellow coin card, then you pay 8.
• rearrange or exchange a tile. players can move a tile from their reserve or to their reserve, or they can swap a tile between their alhambra and the reserve. the only constraint is that the new tile has to legally fit into the space of the tile sent to the reserve.

playing this game with me are jacob, jeff, and dave.

here is jeff looking dapper and debating the cost and placement of a tile...

..and here is dave contemplating his next action.

i like alhambra. It’s pretty easy to learn, game play is pretty straightforward, and it’s much easier to score than other tile-laying games like carcassone. i would recommend alhambra as a way to get new eurogamers to take the next step to something a bit more complex, but not overly so.

box image is property of queen games.  all other images property of little mens.

neuroshima hex

another board game that wasn't originally on my list for 30 games in 30 days.  xenite from "little green monsters" introduced this one to me. 

based on the polish role playing game neuroshima, in neuroshima hex, you control one of several factions battling for survival in the post-apocalyptic ruins of north america.  in the simple one-on-one battle games, the action takes place within the black outlined area in the middle of the board.   

between your specialist actions and your troops' abilities, the middle board area is just big enough for a battle or two in the space of an hour.  here is the board at the start of the game: 

xenite (who is playing the moloch, a vicious machine intelligence that specializes in armor and ranged combat) has placed his hq on the board edge and i've place mine smack dab in the middle.  the reason for this is that my troops (the mutated borgos) are more deadly in close combat and my hq can improve their speed in melee, which is the reason for this deployment only a few turns later. 

 

as you can see the number of forces on the board wax and wane as infrequent combat begins taking it's toll on our troops.  

for most of the game, xenite controlled a good portion of the board and kept my forces contained with his shooting.  if not for one of my troops allowing me to negate the power of his hq, xenite would have completely wiped me from the board.

but some clever deployment and sacrifice on my part in the late game meant that the battle was a draw, and my borgos would live to fight another day. 

take that you moloch bastards! 

even though our battle took place in just a small part of the board, the game designers actually encourage you to create your own scenarios to take advantage of the rest of the board, and with the variety of images beneath each hex, you're only limited by your imagination as to what sort of scenario you could create!

i liked neuroshima hex quite a bit, and i don't think i'd pass up an opportunity to play.  

box image of neuroshima hex is property of portal games, all other image property of little mens

i am not beowulf!

i’m lucky in that i have so many awesome gaming friends, and that every thursday night there’s a big get together at winston’s (a local café) to play all sorts of games.

last night was a good get together.  i was able to get a couple of games in, one of which was beowulf the movie board game.

obviously, this game was designed to take advantage of the excitement of the 2007 film starring ray winstone, crispin glover, angelina jolie, sir anthony hopkins, robin wright penn, brandon gleeson, and john malkovich.

beowulf is an FFG game with a play style based on reiner knizia's kingdoms game structure with some tweaks to the board and the tiles.

The basic premise is that each player is a skald telling the saga of Beowulf. There are 3 acts, each represented by a different game board, where players place figures and tiles to take advantage of boons and avoid perils.  

here we are early in the first act.  of course, as the act progresses the board fills up:
 

once the first act is over, the tiles and figures are removed and the second act begins:

the second act has fewer spaces and some of the special actions the tiles allow you to take a much more cutthroat.  once the second act is over the tiles and figures are removed yet again, and the third act begins:

 

as you can see, this act has nearly double the play area, which meant some contemplation on tile and figure placement.

as you can see some of the players (melissa and chris) took the third act a bit more seriously than others (i'm lookin' @ you jacob)...

when the game was over, chris was the victorious skald having told the best tale of beowulf, and collecting the most saga points for it.  jacob was in second place, melissa in third, and i came in dead last.  so much for my career as a wandering poet/bard reciting epic verse and norse eddas.   

other games were played (like die kaufleute von amsterdam), so stay tuned for those posts!