MF WARS

Sunday, December 7, 2014

The Sunday Miscellanea - King of New York (2014)

King of New York (2014) is a light, little card / board game that plays much like its forerunner, Unlike the previous game, everyone is on the board and has to battle the military while vying for monstrous supremacy.

King of Tokyo (2011), but with some twists. The description from Board Game Geek follows:

There's always something happening in the city that never sleeps. Maybe it's the lights, maybe it's the energy, or maybe it's the giant monsters trying to demolish the place!

King of New York is a standalone game from designer Richard Garfield that keeps the core ideas of King of Tokyo while introducing new ways to play. As in KoT, your goal is to be the first monster to collect 20 victory points (VPs) or to be the last monster standing. On your turn, you roll six dice up to three times, then carry out the actions on those dice. Claws cause damage to other monsters, hearts heal damage to yourself, and energy is stored up so that you can purchase power cards that provide unique effects not available to anyone else.

What's new in King of New York is that you can now try to become a star in the big city; more specifically, you can achieve "Fame", which nets you VPs, but superstar status is fleeting, so enjoy your time in the spotlight.

The game board for King of New York is larger than in KoT with each monster occupying a district in the city and everyone trying to shine in Manhattan. When you attack, you can displace a monster in another district, whether to escape military forces or to find new smashing opportunities. Yes, smashing because you can now destroy buildings and get bonuses for doing so, but the more destruction you cause, the more intense the military response.

The monsters from King of New York can be used in KoT and vice versa, but the power cards are specific to this game.

I found it fun to have multiple paths to victory and more ways to vary the dice from the original game. I've enjoyed both but do feel this game has more to it, as a base game, and even feel the addition of expansions as decks of cards to the original doesn't top the fun to have with the King of New York base game.

The Sunday Miscellanea on MFWARS.com

Essentially, a clearinghouse for topics on MFWARS.com

not covered elsewhere or wanting a particular focus.

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Saturday, December 6, 2014

Systems Saturday - Canal Mania (2006)

Canal Mania (2006) is a game I hadn't seen before last Friday but when my pal, Tom, brought it along to one of our weekly Culver's games, we jumped right even. Tom hadn't even had the chance to punch the tokens on this one, so we were all learning it together. Early on, we were scrambling left and right find ways to squeak out victory points on the scoring track and really couldn't fathom how we could get as far as the marker indicating the end game. The longer we played, the more apparent later scoring opportunities became and I think we all did very well for a first time playing.

The description from Board Game Geek:

Canal Mania is a game about the great canal-building era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that captures the feel of the period and gives players plenty of decision making in their attempts to complete some of the most famous British canals.
Players will engage brilliant engineers such as James Brindley and Thomas Telford in their efforts to create canals linking emerging manufacturing centers, thereby providing the waterways that supplied the goods generated by the Industrial Revolution.

The goal of this game is to have more victory points than your opponents. You gain victory points by building canals (with 0-3 victory point for each hex and 2-8 victory points for the contract) and moving goods through canals (1 for each town you visit, including the first one).

Each turn has 3 phases. In each Phase you can chose one action:

First Phase:

Take a contract from parliament

Exchange engineers

Discard the five face up building cards

Second Phase:

Pick up three face up build cards

Build tiles

Third Phase:

Move one good token

Any Phase Alternative:

Draw one card from the top of the build deck

I think one of the keys to doing well in this game is not getting fixated on early one, two, and three point grabs. This includes both moving cargo boxes one canal segment and utilizing non-stretch canal hexes when unnecessary. Certain building restrictions will require some flexibility during canal construction and conservation of canal hexes but finding yourself late in the game unable to build a route because of a lack of canal hex types can leave you out of the running when it is most crucial, particularly if that contract is going to tie together some lines and allow for a big score to put you over the top.

Rather than moving a lot of single segment cargoes early on, I think it is more worthwhile drawing that extra build card in the third phase, even if it turns out not to pay off every time. Grabbing those extra build cards in the third phase might help avoid missing too many opportunities during phase two on a subsequent turn not building.

Perhaps contrary to this advice, I also think it's important to look for chances to strategically switch engineers. It can save a lot of unnecessary drawing of building cards during the first phase on various turns.

Furthermore, be careful not to choose contracts that wind up having you loop back around on yourself. The requirement to take the shortest route when moving cargo if you have two routes of your own to choose can be a costly loss of victory points.

*Edit* We missed two rules the first time through. We didn't realize you could not pass any color twice when fulfilling a contract nor that you cleared the board at the end by fulfilling unfinished contracts if possible. These may well have simply offset one another in our case.

Obviously, you have to play with the cards you get but I think these strategies in combination can help build toward a healthy end game.

Systems Saturday on MFWARS.com

A look under the hood of various Games, Rules and Systems.

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Friday, December 5, 2014

Tabletopper Friday - Istanbul (2014)

Istanbul (2014), which came out early this year, is a game I visited briefly on this blog before I had a chance to play it. I've corrected that situation with a game at the Fall Hoopla where Ken Lewandowski taught me and several others how to play and since then my friend Tom picked up a copy and we've played half a dozen games together.

The description from Board Game Geek is as follow:

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything...

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.

Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.

Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.

Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.

Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who's reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

This is one of those games where you are solving a puzzle in a variety of possible ways and trying to do so prior to any other player solving it in whatever way they choose to do it. There is conflict when you want to do the same action as others, which you can pay off if you have the coinage, but additional conflict comes from others taking an action ahead of you and that particular action going up in cost for those who come later.

Because the board can be reconfigured in a myriad of ways, the replayability for this game is very high. I do suggest getting hold of the "Kebab Shop" replacement tile for the "Fountain" because it does make the game much more fun and friendly. While you're here, check out The Dice Tower's Ryan Metzler's video review as well.