Alhambra Review

A game that I tried out based on a friend of mine mentioning it to me was Alhambra.

Alhambra is a tile placement game, similar to Carcassonne. In Alhambra, a player may choose one of three actions each turn: either they can take a currency card (or several as long as they add up to no more than 5), they can purchase and place a new building tile (which doesn't count against them if they spend the exact amount of money), or they can rearrange their alhambra (by removing a tile, adding a tile purchased on a previous round, or exchanging a tile). When replenishing cards after a player takes a currency card, a scoring card may appear which then will initiate scoring. Scoring occurs three times during the game - twice based off of cards, and once at the end of the game. When calculating scores, whoever has the most tiles of a certain type gets points (and in later scoring rounds, whoever has 2nd and 3rd most also get points). Finally, players also receive points for the longest exterior wall that they have built around their alhambra. At the end of the game (when no more tiles are available), the player with the most points wins.

The first thing that I like about Alhambra are the walls. The walls force a frustratingly delicate balance - they are worth points, so you want to connect a lot of walls, but they also limit your future tile placement, so you have to decide if it is worth it to seal off that part of your city. In one of the games that I played I wound up with a lot of exterior walls too quickly, and it caused me to not be able to place all of my tiles - but I was scoring 21 points for my walls. I like the delicate balance here, and it leads me to my next pro.

I like the tile placement rules. They are pretty intuitive once you are playing, but they can still be very limiting. One of the specific rules that can affect you if you wind up building a ton of walls is this: you cannot leave an empty square that you have built completely around. This caused me some frustrations during the end of our games because I ran out of places that I could put new tiles - I wouldn't be allowed to place them to complete my exterior wall until I had finished building all of the interior. And most of the interior pieces that were valid for me to play had already been purchased.

A point of note that's neither a pro nor a con is how currency works in the game.  There are 4 different kinds of currency (represented by different colors and a small symbol) and 6 different kinds of tiles (represented by color and number of diamonds).  When purchasing buildings, you base the purchase price on the number on the building tile and the purchase square that the tile is in (which shows the currency needed).  I thought that how the different currencies worked was really neat, but I thought that the conflicting color coding was pretty confusing.  I'm sure that if I keep playing the game, I will get used to it, but it takes an adjustment at first to know that I need to pay 4 blue for the green tile (and not 4 green) when it is on the blue space.  Make sense, or did I throw too many colors around?  If you're confused, then at least I'm not the only one.

With those pros, my biggest complaint with Alhambra is that it just didn't really excite me to play it. I'm realizing that I may be biased against tile placement games (I wasn't in love with Carcassonne either), but this game didn't really "strike my fancy." I could play the game again, but I could also not play it and be about equally happy. As a disclaimer, I will point out that we played the game two player, and we both agreed that it would probably be ideal to play with 4-6 players instead, and so you should factor that in with my previous comments.

After "much" internal debate (maybe 2 minutes worth), I give Alhambra a 7.5/10. I did not dislike playing the game (thus it does not get lower), but I'm also not itching to play it again. If you like tile placement games, you should check it out, because it seemed to be a good variant of the genre, but I think I will move on to other genres.  I also gave it a bonus 0.5 because I think that it would work well as a game to be played with non-gamers.

If you like tile laying (unlike me) you might also want to read about Tsuro (this one is good enough I forget it's tile laying), and my favorite "traditional" tile laying game - Architekton.  Or, if you're looking for games that you can play with non-gamers, you might read my review of Monopoly Deal or Sorry! Sliders.

Pylos Review

A new game that one of my friends brought over was a little game called Pylos.

In Pylos, the point of the game is to place the top-most piece of the pyramid. Each turn a player chooses where to place a new piece. If they are able to form a square of only their color by placing this piece (or a line in the advanced version), then they are allowed to remove 1-2 pieces of their color that have been placed. This continues with the players placing (and removing) pieces back and forth until the pyramid has been complete.

Now for the pros and cons. The first pro is that Pylos is a very pretty game. In fact, my friend who brought it over told me that he purchased it because he thought it would look good sitting on a table - indeed, this is a very nice looking ornamental game.

The next pro is that there is more strategy than there initially appears. Between having to block your opponent from forming lines (and squares), as well as trying to setup your own, there is some definite give and take in the strategy.

However, even though the depth of strategy is better than expected, it is still not what I would call "deep." In fact, unless you play the full version with both squares and lines, the game winds up stalemating much too often (like tic-tac-toe). In fact, when we first played the game, we almost gave up on it (I had written a review where it got a 2.5). After re-looking at the rules, we found the advanced set, and it gave us enough depth that we thought the game was tolerable.

The next con is that you can spend way too much time going back and forth removing pieces.  Some of the games we played wound up having me form a square and removing some pieces, which then freed up my opponent to form his own square and remove pieces; now I would be free to form another square or line and remove pieces.  And then he could.  And back and forth until you're not convinced that the pyramid is actually growing instead of shrinking.

Overall, I give Pylos a 6.5/10. It is a game that I could play every now and then, and I can think of much worse ways to spend 5-10 minutes, but overall, I think that my friend was right; this game is pretty. If you are interested in a pretty game, this would be a good option. Otherwise, there are much better spatial reasoning games (Yinsh, Dvonn, Gipf, etc.)

Like abstract strategy? You might want to read about Zertz, Quoridor, Quadrago, and Punct.

The Heavens of Olympus Review

This weekend I was fortunate to get to play The Heavens of Olympus.

In the Heavens of Olympus, each player takes on the role of a minor god that is attempting to gain the favor of Zeus. In order to do this, they must set the stars in the heavens in beautiful and diverse ways. How the game actually plays is that it is broken down into 5 days, each consisting of 3 phases. At the end of each day, the players score points based on where their stars are placed and which of those stars are lit. During each phase, the players choose between one of four options: 1) create new stars in a limbo state, 2) place the stars that they have created, 3) increase the number of stars that they will have lit, or 4) switch positions of two stars (at least one belonging to them). Once the scoring occurs, players then score points for the lit stars that they have that give them the greatest number of stars in an orbit, and also for the stars that are lined up into constellations. The game continues in this manner for 5 days, and at the end of the 5 days, whoever has the most favor wins the game, thus being welcomed in by Zeus and his fellow Olympians as a greater god.

The first pro that I found in this game was the limited number of options available. Whereas I was initially hesitant about the fact that there are only 4 actions that you can choose, it actually works out quite nicely. All players select their actions at the same time.  Then, when they reveal their choices, if multiple players selected the same action, those players must pay "power" in order to perform that action (and if you are out of power, you must pay victory points). This works very well, as in 3-4 player you will often choose the same options as other players, and in 5 players, every phase will consist of at least 2 players selecting the same option. Because of all of the overlap with other players, it is important to decide both whether that is the best option and whether it is worth the risk of paying extra if other players perform the same action.

The next factor of the game that I liked was the balance between keeping stars together and separating them. If you place all of your stars together, then you are able to get much larger constellations, which can be worth quite a few points. However, if you place your stars in regions where you do not yet have many, you are able to get significantly more "power" which you can spend to do other actions later. (And of course, since you can switch positions of stars, you can place them to get points and then move them to get constellations - but at the cost of an extra action.) This worked really well and made the decisions often much more agonizing (which I'm sure was by design).

The final pro that I will mention about the game was that it introduced two different game mechanics that I don't recall seeing elsewhere (at least not in quite this way). The first mechanic was keeping your stars lit - which continuously ate into your actions. At the end of each day, 2-3 of your stars would become unlit. In order to keep them lit (and thus valuable for scoring), you were forced to choose the action of lighting them each day. The other mechanic was that the stars that you build go into a limbo state before they were actually placed on the board (and there was a limited number (3) that could be in this state). These mechanics combined for a fresh new gaming experience, and I really appreciated that The Heavens of Olympus was very different than anything else I can recall playing.

Now for my neutral point of interest. The Heavens of Olympus is not really "haha" fun. By that, I mean that this isn't the type of game that you go and joke around and laugh during. Instead, it is fun in a cerebral way much more like playing Chess, Go, etc. It is a game that is very mentally taxing, as you must carefully consider each move and the decisions are very challenging as there are often several actions that each player needs to perform each phase.  This forces them to weigh the pros and cons of what to do. This also happens during the "trade stars" action - you must carefully decide which stars to switch based on what is most advantageous for you versus whether you can defend your new position (by doing things like preventing people from breaking your constellations).  Each decision that is made in this game seems crucial, because there are only 15 total actions that you will perform each game! Because of this, it seems that every "trivial" decision is of grave consequence.  Whereas I thought that the game would be fairly light and jovial by looking at the box, it turned out to be a highly strategic challenge. I think it will appeal more to people that enjoy games like Power Grid than people who enjoy games like Ticket to Ride.

Now for my first con. It can be hard to visualize what is going on in the game, and this can lead to the game slowing down sometimes. Since the orbits are all lined up in concentric circles, my eyes often wandered as I was trying to follow the orbits to see who had the most stars on each one for both scoring and determining which stars I should swap. I don't know how this could have been done differently, and it doesn't significantly detract from the gameplay, but it was something that affected the game enough that I felt it was worth noting.

The next con that we found in the game was that it was very "high maintenance".  Because of the being lit versus being unlit (and that a swapped star couldn't be re-swapped in the same round), it felt like we were constantly flipping the star tokens from one side to the other.  Again, this didn't really detract from the gameplay, but it did add some potentially unnecessary length to the game.

Overall, I give the Heavens of Olympus an 8.5/10. This is a very solid game that I can see myself playing when I'm looking for a mental workout.  I look forward to the next titles that this designer creates.

As one last point of note: the designer, Mike Compton, has posted a link detailing the design process for The Heavens of Olympus here, which I found to be very interesting.  Regardless of whether you decide to play the game or not, you should go read his post, as it really gives good insight into how a game becomes what you see at your friendly local game store.

If Heavens of Olympus sounds interesting, you might also check out Glory to Rome, Fealty, and Space Alert.

I would like to thank Rio Grande Games for providing me a demo copy of Heavens of Olympus to review.

Cargo Noir Review

As many of you may know, I really like Days of Wonder. Because of this, I was incredibly excited when they announced the release of Cargo Noir.

In Cargo Noir, each player takes on the role of a smuggler that is attempting to trade his smuggled goods for power and prestige. Each turn every player will place all of his cargo ships to either collect coins, collect a random good, trade a good with the "black market", or attempt to purchase all of the goods at one of the outer ports (which will range from 1-4 goods). (This is the only thing that happens on the first turn, but happens last every other turn.) On the second through last turns, the players will also collect everything they have acquired from the previous turns (and may add extra coins at outer ports in which other players have outbid them). After collecting all of their goods and before placing their ships back out, players will also have the option of trading in goods to purchase victory points. This continues for a designated number of turns and then the player with the most victory points is declared the winner.

The first thing that I like about Cargo Noir is the auction aspect of the game. At each outer port, the goods go to the highest bidder. However, instead of there being an auction phase in each round of the game, in Cargo Noir each player must determine how many coins they are willing to commit to a port from one turn to another - and only collects the goods on his turn if he still has the most coins at that port. If a player wants to purchase the goods at an outer port, they must place one of their ships (you start the game with 3) alongside the number of coins that they are willing to spend at the outer port. After that, each other player may (on their own turn) place one of their own ships on that same outer port, as long as they place more coins than the previous player. Once it gets back to the original player, if he is the only person with a ship in that port, he collects all of the goods. However, if he is not the only player with a ship, he can choose either to withdraw from that port (thus conceding the goods to the other players) or place more coins under his ship. The reason that I like this mechanic so much is that the players must determine not only how much they are willing to spend on the goods in question, but must also determine how much they are willing to spend to scare off the other players. After all, if you get outbid, then your ship was essentially unproductive for a round; and with the limited number of ships available, it is important to make them productive as often as possible.

The next reason that I like the bidding mechanic is because of the interaction it allows between players. The fact that I can adjust how other players play by forcing them to bid different amounts helps the game to be replayable. If I play the same way every time, then my opponents will learn how much they have to bid to defeat me. Because of this, it forces players to subtly adjust their strategies including their opening and maximum bids so that they will have a greater chance of winning the goods that they need (and forcing their opponents to overspend).

The next part of the game that I enjoy is how players acquire upgrades to their smuggling operation. When trading in goods for victory points, some of the options are "Smuggler's Edge" cards; these cards allow players to gain extra ships, store extra goods, or collect coins when they are outbid at outer ports. However, the Smuggler's Edge cards are not worth very many victory points. This forces the players to determine which bonus they most need at any given point in the game, and also whether it is more valuable long-term for a player to gain an advantage in the game or to gain more victory points. I always enjoy decision making aspects like this in games.

A final brief pro that I will mention is the ability to teach this game to anybody. As with most of Days of Wonder's games, Cargo Noir is a game that could easily be taught to non-gamers. My personal term for this is a "Gateway Game", and Cargo Noir definitely fits into this mold.

An aspect of the game worth mentioning that I'm not sure if I really like or not is how trading goods works. When you trade goods, you get points based on the number of the same kind of goods you trade (you get the number squared; ie 3 "Cars" get you 9 points to spend), or you get points for the number of different kinds of goods (every extra kind you trade gives you one more point than the previous one; ie the points go 1, 3, 6, 10, 15...) I think I like this mechanic, but it also encourages hoarding. My main concern is that winning the game can be based a bit too much on luck - if you have 8 "Jewels" and are saving up for the victory point card that requires 9 of a kind, whether or not you have a "Jewels" available is based on what is drawn out of the bag of available goods. Which leads us into the cons.

One of my concerns with Cargo Noir is that there is too much luck involved in the game. When I say this, I realize that there is very little luck in the game - the problem is that if a player is lucky in those small areas, they can have a significant advantage. One of the things that a player can use his ships to do each turn is pull a random cargo from the bag. If a player has 7 of a kind and pulls 2 of the type they need, they suddenly have a huge advantage in the game. The other luck aspect in the game is what I mentioned in the previous paragraph - if the goods you are collecting stop appearing on the board, then you aren't able to get as many points and there is nothing you can do about it in the game.

The next concern that I have about Cargo Noir is the replayability. The simplicity of this game makes it hard for me to envision playing this game too often. There are really only a handful of decisions that a player must make - which ports to go to, when to trade, and how much (and when) to overbid your opponents. The major aspect that adds to the replayability of the game, however is the player interaction; that is the saving grace that allows me to consider playing this game on a more frequent basis than some other games that have a similar level of complexity.

Overall, I give Cargo Noir an 8.0/10. It is a solid title from Days of Wonder, but I honestly don't know how often I will play it due to the simplicity of the game itself. However, the player interaction may keep pulling me back in - and it will definitely be a good option when looking for a gateway game to teach to a non-gamer.

Do you like Days of Wonder games? You may also want to read about Pirate's Cove, Shadows Over Camelot, and Ticket to Ride.