Made it to a games meet-up tonight, and it was excellent. Quite a few more people than usual (myself included; I’ve not made it for a while), which might well be a post-Wellycon effect.
I was at a table of six, and we stayed together the whole evening, playing:
- Ethnos
- Courtisans x 2
- Planepita
- Mantis x 2
- Flip 7
Details
Ethnos is so good. I’ve not had a chance to play it in ages, and I’d forgotten just how slick it is. We played with Merfolk, Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, Winged folk, and Skeletons. So just the one additional component in use (the Merfolk tracker) meaning the teach was quite simple. We found ourselves with a pair of very high-value regions (4,8,8 and 4,10,10) on the map, and in both the 2nd and 3rd eras of the game I managed to be dominating one of those two regions and tied for the lead in the other (making use of the merfolk bonus tokens to enhance my standing in each); so I took a lot of points from those regions alone. On top of that I managed to play a couple of 6-card bands worth 15 points each, and in the end these advantages were enough to secure me the win.
Courtisans was next. I forgot it was for 2-5 players until half-way through the teach. When I realised, I decided to carry on and sit it out. Fortunately one of the others said that it didn’t sound like the game would break if we just played with 6, so we decided to try that and… it was fine! When the draw deck was getting low, I counted the remaining cards so that I could discard whatever was necessary to ensure that we had an exact amount for the final round, and… just as for 5, full deck is already an exact multiple for 6 players! With 90 cards there are 30 individual player turns, which can be either 6 rounds with 5 players, or 5 rounds with 6 players. I’m surprised that they don’t advertise it for up to 6, as the game still works. I got trounced in both games of this, failing 3/4 of my secret goals!
Planepita then got its very first outing, and my goodness I’m very happy with that purchase! It’s exactly what I hoped it would be. In three of the four rounds we had a tie for control in one of the scoring zones, meaning that those points aren’t scored and the zone in question is worth more in the following round. I managed to scoop the two most valuable cases of that for 5+5 and 4+4 points respectively, which won me the game. Unfortunately not everyone had understood how that worked (very much my fault; I clearly failed to make certain that everyone knew the value of each zone at the start of each round), which meant I’d had an unfair advantage over some of them in knowing what to prioritise. Easily fixed for next time. The only significant issue I noticed was that one player was disadvantaged by their position at the table, which I didn’t recognise until well through the game. This wouldn’t have been a problem with fewer players or a smaller table. I think I shall house rule that partially-off-the-board discs get moved so they’re not leaning on the table, and that will ensure that players can rotate the board for best access to their assigned portion of the circumference, if necessary. Despite those little issues, everyone seemed to really enjoy the game (I think partly because it’s unusual, and partly because it’s very good at what it does).
Mantis was next, and looking at the last time I played it I’m wondering whether we played a rule differently. Tonight we played that if you fail in an attempt to steal, the card goes to the person you were trying to steal from. I think last time we played that the player who fails to do a thing always gets the card. I imagine that one way is better than the other, but it was nevertheless fun both times. I snuck a win in the second game after someone talked me out of attempting to steal from them in favour of trying to bank my own cards – they managed to convince me, and I succeeded in banking 3 cards, and the following round I managed to bank the additional 2 I needed to win the game :).
The final game of the night was Flip 7, which is another small push-your-luck card game I’ve seen mentioned here several times recently. It’s fun :). The game couldn’t be much simpler – the deck contains cards numbered from 1 to 12, and the number on the card is also the quantity of those cards in the deck (1x1, …, 12x12). Each turn you choose whether to bank your points for the round (the sum of the card numbers in front of you), or… draw a card! If you draw a number you already have, you bust and get no points. There are some special cards as well (with “Draw 3 cards” being the most notorious, especially as you choose who has to do it), but that’s the guts of it, and it’s just funny. Everyone starts with one card. In the first round I started with a 9. I drew a card. It was a 9. I continued to go bust in round 2, 3, and 4 without drawing more than 2 cards in any of those rounds. Has a similar vibe to No Thanks and 6 nimmt. Fast and funny! (Personally I feel that gambling for anything of real worth saps every ounce of fun out of a game – but when you remove any real stakes, gambling becomes the funniest mechanic in all of gaming?)
