by Matt
Here's our initial impressions from all of the new (to us) games that we played in September. This month's plays include FlowerFall, Power Grid, RoboRally, Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures, Merchants & Marauders, and Race for the Galaxy. While most games earned favorable first impressions, one of them has already jumped into Katie's Top 15 list, my Top 15 list, and scored a perfect 10 (5/5) from me (one of only four games to do so thus far). Which one is it? You'll see...
Played for the first time at board game night last month. It's quite innovative and unique when compared with the other games we've played. It's also one of the first (only?) dexterity games we've tried.
In a nutshell, everyone has their own unique type/color of flower. Green patches with regular flowers are spread throughout the table in different areas. Each player then takes turns attempting to drop their flower from eye level on to the table and connect the green portion of their flower patch with one of the patches on the board. At the end of the game, the person with the most of their flowers connected to each green region with the regular flowers earns as many points as there are regular flowers. I feel like I didn't explain that sufficiently... ah well. It's very simple to explain and play in person.
The game that I played was a 7-player game. A couple of folks (the usual suspects in our group) didn't quite seem to grasp the concept and dropped their cards in a huge pile in the middle of the table. The rest of us played more strategically sound and targeted specific patches around the table. I missed a couple of the drops that I needed, but ended up with two of the three patches that I went after, thwarting Alexa's best efforts to steal them away. I ended up finishing second behind Claude, who ended up winning the massive patch in the middle of the table with 20+ flowers in it.
This may become one of my favorite light fillers, and it's quite different from anything we currently own. That said... I'm not sure it's the type of game that we would get often or that I would prefer to play over other longer non-dexterity games.
Initial Impression - 3/5
Matt's Top 15 - Not Ranked
Katie's Top 15 - Not Ranked
If you are not familiar with it, Power Grid is all about running the power grid for an entire country. The United States and Germany are included in the main game, and there are expansions with Benelux, Brazil, Central Europe, China, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Northern Europe, Portugal, Quebec, Russia, Spain, and United Kingdom.
The game begins with a series of auctions, where each player has the chance to bid on their power plant of choice. There are a wide variety of power plants that are fueled by oil, coal, garbage, uranium, wind, or some hybrid of those resources. You are then allowed to buy resources off the market, which you will use to supply your power plant. The market has an interesting way of depicting supply and demand. Next, you will be able to purchase the rights to provide power to specific cities. In the first step of the game, each city is allowed only one power provider, and the amount of providers increases up to three by the end of the game. After purchasing cities, you then use up the resources that fuel your power plants in order to provide power to your cities. The person who provides power to the most cities at the end of the game wins.
Power Grid first piqued my interest a long time ago, and we had been trying to get it our for a while. Jim was available and owns it, so he pulled it out and we started a game with him, Kyle, Jeff, Claude, Brian, and myself. Because everyone to the game was new, we decided to just play through Step One, and plan a full-length game for another time after everyone has learned it.
We played on the United States map and blocked off the southeastern portion surrounding Florida. Kyle went for the wind-powered plant, while the rest of us went after a variety of resource-driven plants. If I remember correctly, I started off in Vegas, Kyle went for the midwest, Jeff and Jim went for the central states, Claude went for the northeast, and Brian went for the south.
Since we were only playing to the end of step one, the first person to a 6 cities won the game. Kyle and I used the lead from the front/win from the front approach and attempted to maintain a lead from the very start. Jim on the other hand was saving money and planning to come from behind.
Claude, an expert at setting others up for victory in our group, squandered his position in the northeast and did little to expand into his cheap neighboring cities. As a result, Jim built through him and got access to the cheap cities that he had not yet acquired, finishing with 7 cities. Kyle and I were each sitting with 5 cities, and I could make it to 7, but only if Kyle didn't acquire Boise. He took Boise, so we were left in a tie with 6 behind Jim. We were each able to power all 6 of our cities, but Kyle won the next tiebreaker with 2 more electors than me. That left me in third for our first game.
Kyle, Brian, and myself were impressed by our first playthrough of it. We managed to get the game out again in October with another group of 6, this time introducing Katie to the game as well, and finished the full game through all three steps. It went great, but I'll save that session report for the October recap. All you need to know is that Katie and I thoroughly enjoyed the full match we played in October, and we have since added the game to our own collection (along with the Robots expansion).
Initial Impression - 5/5
Matt's Top 15 - Ranked at #4
Katie's Top 15 - Ranked at #9
I had been looking forward to playing RoboRally for a while, so when Brian and Alexa brought it, I was fairly adamant on pulling it out and playing. We had a large group of people there for board game night and several were interested, so we ended up with an 8-player game, with Brian, Alexa, Larry, Kyle, Katie, myself, and two newcomers.
Unfortunately, we made two slight flaws. One, playing with 8 players on a single board, and two, unfortunately, playing with the newcomers. The new guys had no patience and were running around doing other things besides playing the game. They were carrying around side conversations while we were playing and they were playing with little HeroClix miniatures on the side, and as a result they were frequently accidentally skipped in turn order or didn't get damage added to their bot because they were not paying attention. As a result, they dragged the game on much longer than it was ever intended to last.
We were quite grateful when they quit, leaving us with just six players who were paying attention to the game. We decided to call the game once we got to the second flag and move on to something else, each of us incredibly frustrated with the experience thus far. We had a lot more fun after the guys not paying attention left, but most of us were checked out on the game already.
I ended up winning, with Larry and Kyle being the only others to make even the first flag.
I think I'll really love this game in the right environment with the right people, and the right amount of people. But an 8-player game with people who weren't paying attention wasn't just chaotic, it was stressful, irritating, and a pretty awful experience altogether.
Initial Impression - 3/5
Matt's Top 15 - Not Ranked
Katie's Top 15 - Not Ranked
I probably should not be giving an initial impression on this one yet, as I have only played three learning games and not finished a complete game thus far. Still, I was so impressed with what I have played, that I wanted to go ahead and briefly write on it.
Yes, it is a miniatures game, yes, it is my first miniatures game, no, it is not clunky, it does not have a huge setup time, and it is incredibly easy to learn. You have simultaneous hidden action selection for movement, which I'm a huge fan of, and then you have a range ruler and firing arc for shooting. The feeling of actually being in a dogfight and attempting to guess what the other pilots are doing is incredible, I was really impressed with that aspect of it. I do not have many chances right now to pull this out and play it, but it will be getting played down the road here because it's a blast.
Initial Impression - 4/5
Matt's Top 15 - Not Ranked
Katie's Top 15 - Not Ranked
4-player game.
1st, AN: 10
2nd, BN: 9
3rd, Matt: 4
4th, Katie: 1
Matt, as a merchant in a flute, was killed by BN in a frigate with 30+ gold and a full cargo hold, in the sea area outside his port. Never gained another glory point after that.
Initial Impression - 4/5
Matt's Top 15 - Not Ranked
Katie's Top 15 - Not Ranked
1st, KW: 37
2nd, Matt: 31
Initial Impression - 4/5
Matt's Top 15 - Not Ranked
Katie's Top 15 - Not Ranked