Table Top Game Club Week 32, 33, and 34: Knights, Trains, and Rockets

Week 32: Shadows over Camelot

Shadows over Camelot was an easy game to get into, following our experience with Dead of Winter.  Like DOW, Shadows over Camelot is a cooperative game with a hidden traitor mechanic.  Players take on the role of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  Each knight has a special ability, and work with fellow knights to solve quests like the search for the Holy Grail, the quest for Excalibur, and opposition of the Saxon or Pict invasions.  Each player has a hand of cards representing fight strength, special rule changes, or goals for each quest.  Like many cooperative games, there is one way to win, and multiple ways to lose. 

Our club had two sessions.  Tuesday’s game was a loss for the players (except for our traitor).  Part of our loss was due to an unfamiliarity with the rules, part was due to the efforts of our traitor.  Friday’s session was a win for everyone involved due to no one drawing the traitor card, and the fact we were more familiar with our strategies…oh, and we also cheated…

Which brings me to what our club found so incredibly frustrating.  According to the rules, a player cannot directly reveal what cards they possess.  They can only hint about what they have, and this gets a little tricky.  A player cannot say, “I have two Grail cards”, but they can say, “I can help you on the quest to get the Grail”.  This gets tricky when it comes to matching up specific cards into sets, and almost everyone breaks the rule.  It’s a difficult rule to enforce, especially if the traitor has not been revealed or there is no traitor to police the rule.  Dice Tower featured a video about this very issue.  You can check it out here.  The rule is in place to allow the traitor to manipulate the success rates for the quests.  Dead of Winter does a better job of allowing the traitor to anonymously manipulate the situation.  The “illegal” table-talk is difficult to manage.  The club enjoyed the game, but the rule was frustrating, and the victory felt a little tainted.

Week 33: Ticket to Ride- Europe

A short week meant we had only one after-school session, so it was time to bust out Ticket to Ride: Europe.  Most of the students were already well-versed in Ticket to Ride, so the Europe expansion was a simple matter of learning some new rules (tunnels, ferries, and stations) and adjusting to the new map.  The European routes are quite congested, and the board filled up quickly with five players.  The students enjoyed the game, but after playing the deluxe version of the original Ticket to Ride, switching to the original, basic pieces was a little lackluster.  Also the terminology used for certain locations was a bit antiquated, making the search for key cities a little more difficult.  They did enjoy the game however, so I’m glad they got a chance to experience this variation.

Week 34: Mission- Red Planet

Some of my students played Mission: Red Planet before as we tried it out on one of our open-gaming sessions earlier in the year.  I also included it in my list of the Top Five Board Games for the Holiday Season for 2015.  You can read that review here.

Giving the game more attention last week, we got to see more of the strategies involved.  Like all Fantasy Flight games, the components are well crafted and are of great quality.  The game comes with excellent little plastic miniatures representing each player’s astronauts.  The board is a large map of Mars, along with a smaller piece representing the moon of Phobos, and a third location representing a cosmic graveyard for dead astronauts.  The mechanic for launching ships is quite clever, as players set miniatures on cards representing spaceships to different territories.  Here is where we ran into a bit of a snag; the locations on the map are named after actual places on Mars, which are given rather antiquated and complex names such as Sinus Sabaeus and Mare Serpentis. These names become a bit cumbersome as one is trying to strategize key moves.  Players did enjoy the playing of cards to load up the rockets, using a system much like Libertalia.

Like many games in the genre, players also draw objective cards called Missions, that grant bonus points if certain areas are controlled or certain conditions are met.  These Mission cards are what drew the biggest criticism from the players.  Some Missions grant bonus points if certain areas are controlled, or if players have a monopoly on key resources.  Some Missions were seen as overpowered, such as the one that granted bonus points for every one of your dead astronauts.  Considering how easy they are to kill, drawing this card can secure you a pretty substantial bonus.  Personally, I enjoyed the game, but considering I won one of the sessions, it's no wonder I was left with a positive take on the product.  The students were less pleased (a fellow teacher won the Tuesday session, I won the Friday), but they did enjoy the space theme.

With only three weeks left for the club this year, the plan is to play Among the Stars, Zombicide: Black Plague, and Blood Rage.  I also want a special Friday session to invite all the Magic: The Gathering players in for a big session.  Wish me luck, and thanks for reading.

Table Top Game Club Week 29, 30, and 31: Dwarves, Fish, and Undead

Week 29: Saboteur

Saboteur is a fun little card game.  In Saboteur players take on the role of a group of mining dwarves.  The players are dealt a role card face down.  Either they are a friendly miner or a Saboteur.  Like The Resistance, players try to convince others they are friendly miners working toward a common goal: discovering a huge chunk of gold.  Players take turns laying down cards that represent tunnels to get to the gold.  Saboteurs attempt to stop the plight of the miners.  They can be overt and build dead ends, but the real trick is to create suspicion within the group.  This can be done with map cards that let players peek at the potential gold location, and then tell the others lies to throw them off the trail.  Players can also destroy each others' equipment to halt digging.

The students found Saboteur very easy to learn, and they really enjoyed it...to a point.  It's a great game for a short term session, but maybe not the best way to spend two hours after school.  After a while, students were disappointed if they weren't a Saboteur.  Eventually, the game gave way to Coup and Star Fluxx, but Saboteur is a great little filler.

Graham (TED) Talks:

It was in this week that our school engaged in a rather interesting experiment in professional development.  Rather than have a standard staff meeting, our principal, inspired by the TED Talk movement, encouraged our staff to give presentations to our colleagues about topics of interest.  They're called "Graham Talks", named after of school (Marion M Graham Collegiate).  I gave a 25 minute presentation I called "The Board Game Renaissance: Bring your Hobbies to School".  I gave a power-point presentation about the history of table top games, the renaissance of table top gaming, and my experiences running an after school game club.  It was tremendously satisfying.

Week 30: Abyss and International Table Top Day!

Week 30 saw the return of a favourite from last year, Abyss.  The game generated a great deal of attention for its art-direction.  Abyss is a gorgeous game, but I found it to have some substance as well as style.  At its heart, Abyss is an auction game with an interesting combination of set collecting and press-your-luck mechanics.  Each player spends pearls (money) in an attempt to auction and bid for the control of undersea allies (squids, crabs, jellyfish, mollusks, and seahorses).  These allies are used to buy the influence of undersea lords, powerful politicians, merchants, soldiers, and other assorted individuals.  These lords grant additional powers and provide influence points, which each player is attempting accumulate in order to win.

Part of the appeal of Abyss is the components.  Players collect tokens, earn keys, unlock territory, and collect pearls.  The tokens and keys are high quality card-stock, and the territories are beautifully illustrated.  The lord portraits a stunning, but the most appealing aspect seems to be the pearls.  Pearls are and excellent thematic way to capture the concept of currency.  The game comes with little plastic dishes shaped like clam shells which are used to hold the pearls.  This is the only problematic aspect of Abyss; every player loves to swirl the pearls in the shell cup like ice cubes in a tumbler of gin (at least as they appear in movies).  This swirling usually causes a pearl to fly out and roll across the table/floor.  The temptation to play with the pearls is akin to not breaking bubble-wrap; it's virtually impossible to ignore.

Students really enjoyed Abyss.  It's an easy game to play once you get into the pattern of the auctioning, and everyone quickly picked up on the strategies.  In spite of the multiple components, everyone had a clear vision of what was important.  They enjoyed both sessions of the week.

The deep sea strategy of Abyss carried into the weekend for International Table Top Day.  I brought the game to Dragon's Den, our friendly local game shop, which was running open gaming tables all day.  I taught Abyss to some new players, but I made sure to replace the pearls with little poker chips.  This prevented the swirling loss of any pearls.  It was fun to just open up the game and draw complete strangers in to a session.  I hope they had fun.  International Table Top Day continued as a number of us teachers got together for an evening of gaming, including games of Concept, Saboteur, Pandemic, and Code Names!
Week 31: Dead of Winter

Arguably, this is my favourite game in our collection, and I included this in my post about the best board games for the holidays (which you can read here).  The sessions aren't always stellar, but when they're good, they are awesome.  Unless you've been hiding under a snowdrift (and we get plenty here in Saskatchewan), you've heard of Dead of Winter.  For the uninitiated, Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game of survival during the perfect storm of a blizzard and a zombie apocalypse.  Players each take on the role of a group of survivors, and these groups of survivors form The Colony.  Every round players take turns fighting zombies, searching for important items, exploring the neighborhood, feeding the survivors, meeting requirements of the round, and contributing to the goals of the game's win condition.  Each turn players are also confronted with moral dilemmas in the form of Crossroads Cards that require a crucial decision or a vote from the players.  The reason may people refer to Dead of Winter as a semi-cooperative game is due to hidden agenda cards.  Each player has a secret goal they are trying to reach in order to score a "true win".  This secret goal could could also mean a player is a traitor, secretly working to lose the game for everyone else.  This is where the true genius of the game begins to shine.  The paranoia and potential for exiling players begins to mount, and the challenge and immersion begins to build...if you're lucky enough to have a traitor.

Both sessions we played this week had no one draw the traitor.  Teaching the game was a touch time consuming, but once students got into the rhythm of playing, it was quite fun.  Perhaps it was best that no one was the traitor, because in order to be an effective traitor, you first have to know how to play well with others.  I was a player in the first session, but I ran the second session so more students had a turn.  Everyone enjoyed the game, and I think its only drawback is the time it takes to set up.  Dead of Winter has a ton of components, from multiple tokens, huge stacks of cards, cardboard standees, and scores of dice.  Clean up is quicker, but the initial set up takes time.  That said, it made for two great sessions this week.

Next week...more backstabbing and skulduggery... time to play Shadows over Camelot!

Thanks for reading.