Pack O Game: BUS

Hello! I meant to post this yesterday, but you know, St. Patrick’s Day…

I have a few little games here from Perplext. This is part of their first series of Pack O Game. These games were produced last year with a successful Kickstarter campaign raising more than double the goal.

These are some pretty cool little games. Today I want to talk about one of the five that I own. I have not yet played the fifth game, TAJ, as it is a voting game and seemed sort of silly to try with two players.

Each game has the following characteristics:

• A three letter name
• 30 cards
• A rules sheet
• Quick game play
• Fun

Okay, that last one is up to you, but I have found them to be quite fun. It amazes me that someone has taken 30 cards, that are roughly 1/3 the size of a standard poker card, and created such different games. The first one I want to talk about even uses the cards to imitate a board!

BUS

BUS is a pick up and deliver game for 2-3 players. As with all the games in this series there are 30 cards. The cards are divided into three different types.

On the left you have you passenger cards. There are 15 of them in the game. Two will be face up on the table at a time to be taken by the players but you can also draw from the top of a draw pile if you don’t like either of the ones showing.

The cards on the bottom right are the players buses. They have an arrow indicating which direction they are traveling.

The vertical cards on the right are the road cards that make up the board. The layout for the board is as below:

The different colored dots represent passenger destinations and the white ones signify a bus stop where you can pick up new passengers. When carrying no passengers you can move your bus as many spaces as you like. Each card is one space. Once you start to pick up passengers though you will have to slow down. Your speed limit each turn will be the lowest speed among all the passenger cards you currently are working to drop off. The more valuable the passenger cards the slower you have to move. Card values range from 1 to 5 with speeds ranging from 5 to 1 respectively.

On each players turn they can move the amount of spaces allowed by their passengers. Passengers are dropped off by moving across or stopping on a matching colored space. If you stop on one of the BUS spaces you can pick up new passengers. No player can be working on more than three passenger cards at a time. The first person to complete their fifth card triggers the end of the game. Once the end is triggered, each other player will have one more turn.

Above is how a players area may look during the game. The top most passenger card has been completed and will score three points. The middle card is still in progress. The red passenger was just dropped off. If they can make it to the green road section they will complete the middle card and drop off the first passenger of the bottom card. If they were to stop at a bus stop next turn, a new passenger card could be picked up, bringing them to the maximum of three.

You might have noticed earlier that one of the road cards has a construction sign on it. This symbol is also on one side of the bus cards. Once per game, if you stop you movement on this space, you can swap two of the road cards. Once this is done, your bus card is flipped over showing you have used this ability. This ability seemed pretty cool. You could definitely hamper you opponents coming turns while also benefiting from the new position yourself. It never seemed devastating but I can imagine moving a players last destination for a 5 point card clear across the board being very frustrating.

I really liked this game. I love the face that a game that is roughly the size of a pack of gum can deliver this much fun. There is definitely some strategy to this game. Picking up passenger cards that have the same colors on them really seem like they can push you toward winning. You almost have to weigh the options of high value cards with slow speeds or grab a bunch of low value ones to zip around the board and try to end the game before your opponents can deliver their passengers.

Rachael and I played this game three times and each game lasted around 15 minutes. This is definitely something that you could carry in you pocket and have a quick bit of fun while waiting around for your food at a restaurant. It has a small enough footprint that it could be played on the smallest of tables.

For me, the size, price, and fun all come together in a great little package. This series seems to be great for having a few beers and some fun. They have been easy to learn, quick to play, and have a surprising amount of strategy for such tiny size. Keep an eye out in the next few weeks as I run through some more of these games.

Slainte!

I almost forgot, if this sounds interesting to you, there is currently a Kickstarter going for the next Pack O Game set: http://kck.st/1VT7pfX

 

504

Here we are! This is the game that inspired my creation of this blog.

504 is a game that contains 504 games. That’s the idea anyway. I’m not sure if you could really call it 504 different games because of how the rules work but if you want to get technical I guess you can say that.

504 is game featuring a metric ton of pieces, 9 different modules and a crazy flipping rule book.

As you can see there are a lot of bits to this game. There are over 900 pieces of cardboard, paper and wood in this box. Thankfully, not all of them are used in any one game.

Two rule books are included in the box; the Rule Book and the Book of Worlds. The Rule Book has every bit of detail on how all the rules interact with each other. The Book of Worlds, one of the coolest features of the game, is basically an overview of the rules for the individual “worlds” that will be played.

This Book of Worlds is cut into three sections with each module having different rules depending if it is in the top, middle or bottom position. The rules above are for world 147 or “The World of Traveling Generals Craving for Recognition.” I’ll discuss this game in some detail later on.

The rules are designed so that you play with a different module in each of the three positions. The order of these modules matters so the total number of games is 9x8x7=504. The top module defines how the way the game is played and scored while the middle module determines how income is generated. The bottom module adds some flavor to the game and some end game scoring.

The modules included in 504 are:

1. Pick Up & Deliver
2. Race
3. Privileges
4. Military
5. Exploration
6. Roads
7. Majorities
8. Production
9. Shares

The rule book suggests playing world 123 for the first game. This is a pick up & deliver racing game with privileges. The goal of the game is to deliver the most goods as fast as possible. The privileges are cards that can be purchased to give you bonuses to aspects of play. It was a fun little game. Most people online seem to knock it a little for its simplicity but I liked it. Not every game needs to have extremely complex rules.

With the rules position mattering, using modules 1, 2 & 3 in different order will have a large impact on the game play. I have not tried playing world 321 or 213 or the other 3 permutations that these modules can be played as. From reading through the rules for these modules though, I can say that they would be very different games. Eventually I will be trying out the other 5 combinations.

Now, back to the example I showed from the Book of Worlds above, World 147. I took turns playing as three different players in the colors Blue, Green & Purple. This world seemed to start out a little slow without much interaction but as the players expanded things got a little more interesting.

The modules used were Pick Up & Deliver, Military and Majorities. Everyone started with a capital city equidistant from one another. Each city on the board, ten in total, had a specific good it supplied and then demand for each of the other four goods . The board looked like this:

When a good is delivered to a city with demand for it, that fulfills demand and the city will no longer accept that good.

The goal here was to expand your settlements to reach other cities in order to transport goods around the board. Having the Military module in place allowed players to attack each others settlements and increase their control of the map. The Majorities module more or less ensured there would be some fighting as it added additional victory points at the end of the game for having majority control of the different types of terrain. A Majorities Board is used in the game to keep track of each players settlements and adjusts as people place/take over settlements.

The three main pieces in the game are shown above. The piece on the left represents one resident. Residents can be purchased each turn for $10 each. This is your way of expanding in the game. You move residents to new tiles to add settlements (the piece on the right) and fight with others residents and settlements. The piece in the middle is the transport trolley. This is moved around the board to collect goods and deliver them to other cities. It starts with a total movement of three tiles but can be upgraded to move up to seven. In the beginning it can hold only one good but can be upgraded to hold two goods. Players could move through enemy controlled territory at a cost of additional movement.

After a couple turns the board started to get some settlements on the board and some goods delivered.

As you can see, each player has carved out tome territory to work with. No conflict has really happened yet and the players have taken majorities on different terrain types. It looks like Blue is behind in the majority portion of the game but that is fine since those are not scored until the end of the game. A turn later though:

Blue has expanded to take a few territories away from Green and secured majority control of multiple types of terrain. I stopped playing at this point. With three full rounds of play I figured I had a pretty good grasp of the game. Each player managed to deliver two goods and had a third ready to be delivered making this stopping point roughly a third of the way through the game. Final scores were as follows:

• Green – 22 points
• Blue – 28 points
• Purple – 25 points

I quite enjoyed playing around with this world. It seemed to be a very strategic game managing resources to upgraded your trolley so you can deliver more goods or to take territory from your opponents or build up some defenses to prevent other players attacks. I will do an update to this world once I get a chance to play it with some friends. See you soon…

 

Castles of Burgundy

A few nights ago my wife and I played The Castles of Burgundy for the first time. I saw it at an online retailer for more than half off and snatched it up. It looked to be a rather complex game and seemed a bit intimidating. The learning curve was a little steep due to the number of different components, but once we got the feel for it we realized it is an awesome game.

My wife and I both compared it to Settlers of Catan about half way through our first game. It is quite a bit more complex than that due to the number of different pieces but the play itself is on about the same level. Both players are trying to expand their territory through the purchase and placement of building tiles, knowledge tiles, ships, castles, mines and pastures. There is also a goods selling mechanic for a small income. Income is not necessarily needed to win the game as many tiles when placed allow you to acquire other tiles. The game was designed for 2-4 players.

A main board holds the expansion tiles and goods tiles as well as having a track for turn order and a track for points. Each player receives their own board to place tiles on in a hexagonal layout made up of hexagonal spaces numbered from one to six. Six double sided player boards are included in the game and are numbered from 1-9. Four of the sides are numbered 1 so you can play a game where everyone is on equal ground. The other 8 boards are arranged completely differently. This allows for different strategies in placement of tiles and some seem like they would be difficult without a little luck (maybe that luck should be better planning).

Gameplay is divided into 5 phases, each with five rounds. One round consists of all players taking a turn. Players roll to determine the starting player with the highest roll going first. Play then follows in clockwise order until all players have taken their turn. The turn order rotates so that each player has a chance to be the lead player. This can be altered through the purchase of tiles so that some players always go ahead of others.

Each player has their own set of dice and all dice are rolled at the same time. Since everyone sees what the other players have rolled, this is an interesting mechanic to encourage planning ahead. Players roll two six sided dice with the lead player rolling a third die. The third die determines where goods are placed that turn and is not used to help that player in any way.

In order to acquire one of the many different tiles that will be on the board at any given time you must “spend” one of your two dice. You can only take a tile from the section for which you have rolled. This seemed at first to be severely limiting. However, you can spend dice to buy “workers” that can be expended to modify your dice rolls +1 or -1, allowing for much more control on your turn than just relying on the luck of the dice.

Once a tile is purchased from the main board it is placed onto your player board in a queue or staging area. There are only three spots to store these tiles before placement. To place a tile you must spend a die to place it in a corresponding hex space on your player board. Placing these tiles give a number of different benefits, from taking another tile off the main board, to awarding victory points or allowing additional points at the end of the game, to static bonuses for things like selling goods or placing more tiles.

The tiles are placed in groups of like colored spaces. Once a group is completed you score points for that group. Each phase gives a different amount of bonus points for completing them. The sooner you can complete a group the more bonus points you will get.

There are over 200 tiles including 26 different knowledge tiles to research, 8 different types of building tiles to populate your towns, 6 different types of goods to sell, and 4 different types of livestock to graze your pastures. Also in the box are silverlings (money tiles), bonus tiles, victory point tiles, worker tiles, nine dice and eight player pieces.

When I first opened the box and began popping out all these pieces I became worried that it was too complex and would be a bit overwhelming. Perusing the rules only further reinforced this idea in my mind. I was determined to play it at least once though, so I watched a video of someone explaining the game over the course of one phase of play. This made jumping into a game so easy and suddenly made the rules and the board setup make sense. Each player board also has a pictorial of what the different tiles do and what actions you can take. Once you get a play or two under your belt everything you need to know is basically right in front of you.

In our first play through we started with the basic number one board as suggested in the rules. My wife won by a score of 164 to 149. She developed a bit of an economic engine providing her additional income and workers every time she sold goods. She also purchased knowledge tiles that gave her bonus points at the end of the game for the total number of goods sold and the number of different goods sold. Normally you do not score points at the end of the game for the goods sold so she ended up with quite a few extra points.

In the second game we flipped over our boards and each played with different numbers. I won with a score of 145 to 98. My board was grouped into a lot of two hex sections allowing me to score groups rather quickly gaining me many more bonus points than my wife. All the early bonus points allowed me to run away early and she never really caught up.

Both games played out pretty different from one another and our own play styles differed greatly with the unique boards and variety of tiles purchased. It looked a little bewildering at first glance but we easily picked it up within a few turns.

The Castle of Burgundy is a fantastic game. It seems to have a tremendous amount of replay value and appears that it will be a regular in our rotation. I would definitely recommend this to other people and am surely going to suggest we play this the next time we have friends over.