Season 3, Week 2: Formula D, Splendor, and Junk Art!

The second week of the Table Top Game Club brought in large numbers once again.  I’ve decided that for the foreseeable future, featuring two games (one for larger groups and one for four or less) should be able to accommodate the turn-out of enthusiastic gamers.  This week we featured Splendor and Formula D.

Last year, we played Formula D in Week 27.  Here is what I wrote then:

 In anticipation of the bigger group, we were ready with another game featured on Table Top, Formula D, a racing game for up to ten players.  Formula D is a wonderfully tactile game, with tiny model cars and personal dashboards complete with moving stick shifts.  The game uses a very clever technique for movement.  Although it looks like a simple roll-and-move mechanic, different gears are represented by different polyhedral dice (fans of Dungeons & Dragons will recognize these right away).  The lowest gear represented by a d4 and the highest represented by a d30.  As players shift up and down in gears they get to roll different dice.  The dice are also numbered specifically to represent a range of numbers.  For example, unlike a typical d6 that is numbered 1-6, the d6 representing second gear is numbered 2-4 (2,3,3,4,4,4).  That way gearing up to higher levels guarantees a decent amount of movement (you’ll never roll a one on a d20 for example; its range is 11-20).  This simulates the anticipation and excitement of being able to open up the engines on straightaways, but as the saying goes, “speed kills”.  Turns on the track are dangerous.  Players must stop a prescribed amount of times at each turn, for overshooting a turn causes stress and damage on the vehicle.  In a one lap race there is no pit stop, so there is a great sense of risk and reward.  Open up the engines into a higher gear to speed ahead, or play it safe and let your opponents flame out before the finish line.

This week, the game was enthusiastically enjoyed by the players, especially our German exchange students.  A couple of the German students knew of the game from before.  Formula D has been a staple of European gaming since the 1990s.  There is something exciting about playing the game with a group of enthusiastic students from another country.  It seems fitting that a game about Formula 1 racing in Monaco inspires excited table talk in a variety of languages, giving our race a real international flair.  In the end team Germany finished 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd, with team Canada trailing behind.  Alas, but it was still a very fun session.

The other table had three students and our library-tech play a few games of Splendor.  I love Splendor.  I find the game scratches a similar itch as Ticket to Ride, and considering they both involve set collection, the comparison makes sense.  Splendor, like Ticket to Ride, is also a wonderfully tactile game.  The goal of splendor is to purchase sets of cards, each card featuring a gem (red, green, white, blue, and black).  To purchase the necessary cards, players collect gem tokens that are printed on colourful poker chips.  The poker chips have great “heft”.  They are solid, weighty, and since they must be organized quickly, they are also stackable.  Through purchasing certain gem cards, the players earn “prestige” which are the victory points of the game.  The early rounds of the game are very relaxed, but as the collections get bigger and the prestige points are awarded, the tension begins to mount.  It’s fun, challenging, and also plays relatively quickly, so multiple games can be accomplished in our two hour session.  The students really enjoyed it, and a couple had played it the year previous, so they jumped at the chance to replay an old favourite.

I knew Friday’s session would be sparsely attended due to a massive field trip for music students, so I took the opportunity to test a new game. There was six of us, so we decided to try JunkArt.  The game is a fascinating experience that is simple in its design, but very engaging in execution.  Junk Art comes with a massive selection of wooden blocks.  There are sixty blocks in all, fifteen shapes in four colours.  The shapes are designed to be stacked, but only if you have skilled hands.  These aren’t Jenga blocks or Lego.  Some look like tiny flowerpots, others like miniature barbells, etc.  The game comes with a deck of cards representing the pieces, and a second deck representing a number of cities.  Each city card features a set of specific rules for that round.  A typical game consists of three rounds, or three city cards drawn at random.  This is a clever mechanic to increase replayability.  The core mechanic of the game is to stack blocks and build sculptures on a small wooden base.  One round might have players draft cards and use corresponding pieces to create a sculpture.  Another round will have all the players building a common sculpture, eliminating one another through fallen pieces.  A great variant has the players start a sculpture, and then switch places to continue building on someone else’s work. 

It’s a fun game with the right players.  That’s the tricky part.  This is not a good game for players who fidget or are hyper-active.  Touching the table or fiddling with the pieces often results in toppled sculptures.  We had a couple instances of players losing in frustration and then tossing their pieces back into the pile, only to have them ricochet into another sculpture.  However, if everyone can keep their wits and energy in check, it’s a clever, fun, and engaging game.

Thanks for reading folks!  See you next week for our club's coverage of Five Tribes, Camel Up, and Codenames: Pictures.