Dominion

This is a deck-building card game in which players attempt to earn enough points to be the others.  Everyone starts with a basic hand of 7 copper coins and 3 estate cards (worth one point each).  Each turn you play off of your own individual deck.  The turn begins by drawing five cards.  You then have an action phase, in which you can play action cards.  Then there is the buy phase, which allows you to purchase new cards to add to your deck – these might be action cards, money cards, or victory point cards.  Finally, you end your turn by discarding all cards played and any that still remain in your hand into your own personal discard pile.  You immediately draw 5 new cards from your deck to prepare for your next turn.  When you run out of cards your deck gets reshuffled.  The game continues in this manner until either all of the province cards are gone (victory point cards worth 8 points) or when any other three stacks of cards have been exhausted.

2-4 players.  Multiple expansions and other stand-old versions available.  Approximately 30 minutes.  Easy-medium learning curve.

Becky says:

One nice thing about this game is that the basic rules are simple enough.  The variety of different action cards can make it seem a little overwhelming, but once you accept that you’re just going to have to take some time to read the cards and get to know them, the game can go pretty quickly.  One thing that I really like is how the playing experience can be different every time, depending on what cards you use.  There are pre-set arrangements that they recommend, but you can also just randomly select which cards will be played with for each game.

One thing that is both a pro and a con is that it can be very difficult to figure out what strategy you want to use, and that can change depending on which cards are used.  Many people I play with build up these amazing chains of action cards, going through almost their whole deck in one turn.  Somehow I just can’t get that strategy to work for me.  I find that if I’m buying action cards it means I can’t upgrade my coins, and if I have mostly action cards I don’t have enough coins to buy what I want anyway.  It’s a delicate balance that you have to find. 

I also love how fast paced the game is.  It’s not like Citadels, where I feel like we wait forever for everyone to make their selections, or even Bang!, where a turn can drag out for far too long.  I know Jason will complain that this game doesn’t move quickly enough for him, which frankly I don’t understand.  I find that half the time, by the time that I have drawn my cards for my next hand and figured out what I want to do with them, it’s already my turn again.  I will note that we don’t own this game, his brothers do, so we only play when they come over which means that it’s always a 4 person game.  It would be interesting for Jason to try 2 person Dominion and see if that fixes his issue with the pace.

While Dominion is a very good game, if I have to note some negatives I will say that it doesn’t always seem perfectly balanced, especially when you choose which cards to play with randomly.  Sometimes it feels like you are getting nowhere fast, so you might as well start buying Duchys so you can get some points.  And while I don’t have a problem with the general idea of the attack cards, some of them seem much worse than others and a few I personally feel are too harsh or annoying and don’t really add much to the game.

Overall I enjoy Dominion, but probably not as much as I could because Jason usually is resistant to play, and what fun is it to play a game when one of the players isn’t into it?  I still give it an 8 out of 10 as it’s a fun game and I am pretty much always willing to play it.

Jason says:

I was really fascinated with Dominion the first time I played it.  It was like a breath of fresh air.  It’s another one of those solitaire-feeling games, where you play your game, other people play their game, and (except for a few exceptional cases of indirect influence) everyone compares their work at the end of the game.  In my mind, I put it into the same style class as 7 Wonders.

Like Bang!, Dominion fills a void in my gaming heart that was once reserved for collectible card games.  Bang! fills the game playing part, but Dominion appeals to the deck-building fun.  Yes, a lot of the fun that people find in collectible games like Magic: The Gathering is the search for the perfect deck design.  Dominion knows this, and it turned that search into a game in and of itself.

Regretfully, the more I play Dominion, the less fond of it I have become.  It is fast-paced, especially for a game that goes by turns, but I still get impatient waiting for people to take their turns.  Normally I have the patience of an immortal, but Dominion just hits some spot in my brain that can’t seem to wait.  That complaint might just be my personal problem, so I think others should judge for themselves on that; let me know what you come up with.

My real gripe with the game is the Attack cards, the part that makes people interact more directly.  Because the game feels like such a personal endeavor, attacks and disruptions feels contrary to the spirit of the game.  Also, they make the game slow down more.

I rate it a 6.6/11, which really just comes out to 6/10.  Even though it is one of the lower scores I have given and despite how critical I am of it, I do enjoy playing it, and there are many times I would rather play Dominion than games like Pandemic or Bohnanza.  I will point out that almost everyone I play games with disagrees with how low a score I gave to Dominion, but because of how impatient the game makes me, I'm sticking with my decision.

"Real" Board Games come to Target

While in Target today I decided to take a detour down the board game aisle just to check it out.  I expected the usual - kids' games, and more mainstream titles like Monopoly, Life, and Scrabble.  All of those were there, but something else caught my eye.  Toward the bottom shelf there was a section of "real" games!  The type of games that we like to play!

They didn't have many, but I did see Lord of the Rings, Munchkin, Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Stratego, and one or two others that I didn't recognize but seem to be similar strategy games.  The prices were reasonable too.  Though they didn't have tons of options, it is exciting to see the games that we enjoy in a common store such as Target.  Hopefully this is a sign that we'll be able to get games more easily and perhaps more people will start playing these games!

7 Wonders

This is a card game in which each player is working independently to create their own civilization.  You start off with a hand of 7 cards, of which you can pick one to build.  The rest get passed to the person next to you.  You usually start by building resources, which are often free, and then you have to use resources to pay for bigger things you want to build later.  There are also ways to earn coins, which can help you pay to build cards.  There’s a variety of different card types of build, and it is often good strategy to pick one or two card types of focus on that.  They include military, civilian structures, commercial structures, scientific structures, and guilds.  The game has 3 rounds, and at the end you add up the points that your structures are worth and whoever has the most points wins.

One other aspect of the game is your wonder.  There are seven different ones, and each one has different rewards on the bottom.  At any point during the game instead of playing a card you can choose to build a level on your wonder and get the reward for that.

2-7 players.  1 expansion available (Leaders) and one coming out soon (Cities).  30-45 minutes.  Medium learning curve.

Becky says:

For one reason or another, I was a little bit hesitant about trying this game, and didn’t really care for it the first time I played.  All of the different cards just seemed so overwhelming, and I was playing with people that had played several times before.  I didn’t even understand what those “green cards” were, and so I ignored them – while other players were getting 30 points from them!  When it comes down to it, though, I really enjoy the game after playing it more.  It is very similar to other card playing, point gathering games, such as Race for the Galaxy and Dominion.  While I am not great at those games I really like them.  I think one of my favorite things about such types of games is that it doesn’t feel as competitive as other games.  You are working on your own little thing and not caring what other people do very much, except maybe when passing cards or building military structures.  That’s not to say that you shouldn’t pay attention to what other people are doing – that’s a good way to lose the game.  But it’s not usually your main focus.

Another plus – I really love the little scoring pad.  It seems like such a simple thing, but it helps a lot for tallying up the points at the end.  Speaking of scoring, while some of the areas are straightforward in terms of scores, other ways to gain points are a bit more subtle.  Science, for instance, is probably the trickiest type of card to go after.  Military is somewhat straightforward but the results can vary greatly depending on what the person next to you is doing.  I like the fact that there are different ways to play the game.  I often alter my strategy based on which wonder I get, which makes the game fun and a little different every time.

The biggest downfall for me is that sometimes you just can’t get the right cards.  I was stuck in a game once where I built the resources I thought I would need, and then it turned out there were a few other things I needed later on – which neither of the people next to me had.  So I just went turns where I couldn’t build anything at all, or had to build pathetic little things.  Those games are very frustrating, though that may just be bad luck.  You also have to keep in mind that the game changes based on the number of people playing.  If you have less than 7 you remove cards from the deck.  If you’ve played a lot and have specific cards in mind that you might be searching for, it can be difficult to remember which ones remain in play with fewer people.

Overall I give the game an 8.5 out of 10.  I enjoy playing it a good deal but it doesn’t quite make it to my list of favorites.

Jason says:

Before having played this game, I had been exhausted of all of the "point-scoring" games out there because it had become a stale mechanic to me.  Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Master's Gallery, tons and tons of other games out there are just mathematical processes (these are all games that we will review some day).  They just bored me (I'll also talk/rant about that some day).  But when 7 Wonders came around, it was unique, it was entertaining, it was complex, and most importantly, it was just plain fun.

One of the best parts of 7 Wonders is that everyone takes their turns at the same time.  Fast thinkers and impatient people can breathe a sigh of relief when they play this game, because every turn is your turn.  On a turn, each person selects a card from their hand, then everyone plays their selected card simultaneously.  When you have seven people playing the game, that's seven turns for the price of one!  For comparison, imagine how long it would take if seven people all played Carcassonne.

Alright, so far, I've given this a pretty good review.  What's the catch?  Glad you asked.  The learning curve is steep and high.  Someone playing for the first time shouldn't expect to know what they're doing at all.  You can have an expert teacher who can literally insert information directly into your brain, but you won't completely understand what a good strategy is until you play the game through once.  Maybe even several times, depending on 1) how experienced you are with games in general, 2) how genuinely interested you are in trying to learn the game, and 3) what hints your teachers give you through those playthroughs.  The game is great though, provided you stick it out for that first game.  or five.

So I think I'll give this game a 2.7/3, but of course, if you run through the math, 2.7/3 is exactly the same as saying 27/30, and if you divide both the numerator and the denominator by three, you end up with a 9/10.  So there it is.  9/10.  Or a grade of 90%.  Revel in this, because not many more games will get the "A" rating that I've been giving out lately.

PS: Yes, I know that Carcassonne only holds up to five people.

PPS: If you've never played Carcassonne, then just substitute your own experience with a game that's wretchedly long because everyone takes their turns separately.

Meme Monday - lolCats

New 7 Wonders Expansion: Cities

Jason and I will be putting up our review of 7 Wonders shortly, but in the meantime here is some exciting news: a new expansion for this game is in the works.  There is currently one expansion available called Leaders, which added some new cards and a short phase 0 in the beginning.  The new Cities expansion does more, adding a new type of card - black city cards, and a new type of game play - teams.  With this expansion you have the option to play in teams rather than individually.  The creators say that this change will make the game more aggressive and add to the interaction between players in a game that often feels like it is a solo endeavor and other people just happen to be playing.  The effects of the new city cards are all very different and are still being tweaked.

No exact release date has been announced, though it is expected to come out sometime this year.

Meme Monday - Splash Mountain

Need a bit of a laugh on the start of your work or school week?  We bring you Meme Monday, with a board game theme to brighten up your day.  Here, one that combines my two favorite things - board games and Disney!

Incan Gold

In this game you have to decide when to run and when to go forward – go on into the temple and more riches could be yours, but turn back before you meet your doom!  Each player is given two cards.  One represents proceeding into the temple, the other represents returning to camp.  Cards are flipped over, which either contain treasure or a “hazard” – something like zombies, spiders, or snakes.  Before every card players decide secretly whether they want to keep going or they want to run away.  If a treasure card is turned up, all of the players who are still going forward split the treasure equally, with the remainder staying on the card.  If a hazard turns up, it’s a warning of what’s ahead.  Get two hazards that are the same (two spider cards, or two fire cards), and the expedition is over.

Once you’ve accumulated some treasure, you want to think about running.  If you successfully escape before a hazard, you not only keep what you’ve earned, you also get to split whatever is remaining on the cards with anyone else that ran away.  Try not to run at the same time as someone else so you get all the jewels!  If you don’t leave an expedition before it ends due a hazard, you lose any treasure that you collected.  At the end of the game points are scored based on how many jewels you’ve acquired through 5 rounds.

There’s also 5 artifact cards, one that gets added to the deck before each round.  They are worth 5 jewels each, but you can’t split them with anyone else.  So in order to get them you have to be the only one who runs while an artifact is still on the path.

3-8 players.  No expansions available.  20-30 minutes.  Easy learning curve.

Becky says:
This game is surprisingly fun and addicting.  It’s easy to learn and goes really quickly, so you can finish a game in about 20 minutes.  It helps to know the people that you’re playing with too.  Is Joe usually a risk taker?  Then he’ll probably keep going into the temple.  Mary is a scaredy cat?  She’s going to be the first to run, and she’ll be greatly tempted by those artifacts.  It also shows how well you know yourself.  I’m usually pretty cautious, but sometimes when playing this game I’ll be tempted to keep going!  I find it’s more fun to gamble with fake jewels than with real money, though.  I also love the accessories in this game – the little jewels are so cute and fun to play with!  And you get little tents to keep them in, too J

Another interesting thing about this game, for me, is how different it is depending on how many people you have playing.  It can hold anywhere from 3-8, and we’ve played it with almost every number.  With more people there is a much greater chance that someone will run at the same time as you, and so your winnings will be a lot less.  I had a great strategy developed that worked really well when I played small games with 3-4 people, but it started to fail horribly once we got up to around 5 or 6.  There isn’t a ton of strategy since it’s mostly luck, but it is about making the right decisions.  And the decision will be different depending on the number of players and who you’re playing with, so that’s something to adjust to.  But it also makes it more interesting and keeps the game dynamic.

One last thing – the two cards that you flip over look very similar, so don’t make the mistake of going back to camp when you meant to go on into the temple!  It’s happened more times than you’d think.

Overall this game is a fun and easy one that’s mostly about luck and how far you’re willing to go.  It can be very suspenseful and a lot of fun.  I’ve seen players win a ton of jewels in one turn, and people that have finished the game without a single jewel in their tent.  An excellent game to play if you’re killing time while waiting for someone or if you’re just looking for something quick and easy.  8 out of 10.

Jason says:
OMG WOW THIS GAME IS SO AWESOME I AM NOT WORTHY I AM NOT WORTHY!!!
I’m sure some people are expecting me to say that, because that’s generally my level of excitement when I play Incan Gold.

It’s a game of luck and how far you’re willing to go to risk it.  The classic game Pass the Pigs is almost exactly the same thing, and yet, with the addition of one little twist, it’s a completely different experience.  I’m not going to assume you know Pass the Pigs; what it comes down to is that you’re pressing your luck alongside all the other players, and if you decide to call it quits when someone else does, you have to share the prize.  It makes the decision a lot more difficult because you have to guess the intentions of all of the up to eight players in order to maximize your gains.  I like it.

Now, one of the most exciting things is when there’s one, desperate person left hanging on to the hope that there’s still plenty to be earned in the temple.  Once you get to that place, the ultimate temptation is to keep going and win more and more.  It’s exciting because watching, you know they should stop, and yet if it’s the right person (which it probably is if they got to this in the first place) they will keep on going, and you’ll grab your hair and say, “No, you’ve gotten enough, why can’t you just settle with your small fortune!”  Maybe that’s just me.

This game is simple enough for anyone to play, and it holds up to eight people.  It’s quick and there isn’t much waiting for other people.  There’s not a lot of strategy, it really comes down to guessing what others will do, and often, that’s enough to satisfy those of you that want to overthink your decisions, but it also allows others to simply decide and not be shut out by a master strategist.

 I give this game a 9.6/10 or a 79.68/83 for the mathematically inclined.  But I think that this number is subject to change based on how willing you are to get excited about it.  Play with people who think the way you do and it will be extremely exciting.  Trying not to do what your opponents do (and often failing to avoid it) is what makes the game so fun.

Bohnanza

In Bohnanza, you are a bean farmer.  Your goal is to grow beans in order to gain coins, and have the most coins by the end of the game.  There are a different types of beans in the deck, and each bean has a different number of cards in the deck.  For example, there are 22 wax beans in the deck, but only 4 cocoa beans.  In order to make money off of your beans you need to plant a certain amount of them.  For more common beans, such as wax, you need to plant more than you would for the rare beans such as cocoa or garden beans in order to get a good pay-off.  When you are ready to plant different beans, you dig up the ones you have and earn the coins from that.

You start with a hand of cards, in which order matters.  That means that however you pick the cards up is the order in which you must play them – you can’t move them around within your hand.  You have two fields in which to plant beans.  At the start of your turn you must plant the first bean in your hand, and you may plant the second one if you want.  You then flip over two beans face up from the draw pile.  You can choose to plant these beans , or you can trade them for beans you actually need.

What this game is really about is the trading.  You can trade what you turn face up, but on your turn you can also trade from out of your hand.  There aren’t many rules about trading – almost anything goes.  The only major rule is that when you trade, you must plant the bean that you get, you can’t just put it into your hand.  Trading from your hand is a good way to get rid of beans that you don’t want that are in your way.  You go through the deck three times, and at the end of the game you count up the number of coins you have from planting beans – the player with the most coins wins!

2-7 players.  Multiple expansions available (Bohnaparte).  Approximately 45-60 minutes.  Easy-medium learning curve.

Becky says:

Bohnanza is a fun little game, and pretty easy to get the hang of quickly.  The cards and brightly colored with cute pictures.  In terms of game play, I do like it.  I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite game, but it’s fun.  It’s a very social game, as you are constantly trading or bargaining with people. 

I think the trading is fun, but it certainly depends on who you play with.  You also tend to develop certain “types” of traders, which I’ve developed names for.  There’s the “Too Nice” trader, who will give you the beans you want even if you can’t offer anything in return.  This person tends to go with the line, “just remember it for next time!”  Then there’s the “Miser,” who doesn’t want to trade anything that will help anyone else – unfortunately, that often puts them in a bad position but they’re usually too stubborn to act any other way.  And there’s also the “Bargainer,” who is constantly trying to get a better deal.  “A wax bean for a blue bean?  I could do that, but how about you throw in a stink bean too?”  This person can get very greedy and frustrating to trade with.  It is interesting to see how your friends and family act when it comes to trading beans!

On the negative side, this game can get really long and slow moving if you play with too many people.  This is especially true if the people you play with are stubborn – “But I don’t want to plant this blue bean!  Won’t anyone trade with me?  No?  Well, I’ll keep offering different trades for the next ten minutes anyway.”  The game holds up to 7 but that can often be way too long.  It’s a fun game, but most people don’t really want to be planting beans for 2 hours.  I find it works really well with 4 or 5 people, especially if they already know how to play.

In the end, it’s not a game I want to play all the time, but I enjoy it every once in awhile.  I don’t feel it’s particularly outstanding in any way, but it’s just fun with a little bit of strategy.  And sometimes, you don’t need a crazy, complex game – you just want that game that lets you have a good time without too much effort but still requires a little brain power.  Bohnanza fits that niche well.  7 out of 10.

Jason says:

Bohnanza.  Here I am, an American writing a review of a game by the German publisher Rio Grande games.  I always liked that about this game.  It has nothing to do with the review, but I thought I would share that.

Interesting game, certainly another unique one, which I say because I haven’t seen another game that does quite what Bohnanza does.  The game is simple; you plant beans, you dig up beans, you get money.  Your friends are also doing that.  The trick is that everyone wants stuff that everyone else has.  So it’s really a game about trading in a way that makes your hand work as well as it can, which can be especially difficult since the order of the cards in your hand matters.  Yes, a stink bean in the back of your hand could be just the trade leverage you need to secure your new bean farm, but a stink bean in the front of the hand could spell disaster for your hard-earned bean empire, a situation that most often just… well… stinks beans.

Alright, so what about the game?  Extremely social and interactive, that’s a plus.  And it’s easy, that’s a plus too.  I would also venture to say that winning the game isn’t nearly as fun as just playing it, which I think is a big point in its favor.  Of course, with any social game, it matters who you play with, and it’s important not to get hung up on people making strange trades that you think don’t make sense: there’s no rule that they aren’t allowed, and you have no idea what kinds of beans are cluttering up their hands or how desperately they want to trade that clutter away.

Now, having said all of that, this game is a good one, but it’s not one of my favorites.  I don’t get excited when someone says, “Let’s play Bohnanza!” but that is just my opinion.  I think of it as one of those change-of-pace games for when we’ve played tons of Pandemic and Bang! and such.  Like any game, it has its deficiencies.  It can drag a bit if people aren’t focused or if the trading gets too involved.  There may also be a person or two who simply can’t get their bean machines working because that’s the way the cards are dealt.  But I think these small deficiencies fade compared to the positive simplicity and elegance of the game.

Now, I think I will rate Bohnanza at 425.02/538, or a 7.9/10 which means that I rated it higher than Pandemic or Lord of the Rings.  But you see, when I play games, Bohnanza doesn’t really come to mind, even despite how much I like it.  I think of Bohnanza as that guy that everyone thinks deserves better, but no one really wants to throw him a bone because they think they have better things to do.  Maybe it’s just old hat for me at this point.