Harrowed Halls

Yes, I changed the name of this…uh, series. Mainly because it’s less of a blog and more of just the annuals of the games we play ever week. So with that said, I have three weeks to catch up on.

05.27.2009

Back in May we played a new game called Ys. (Pronounced Ys.) Each player has a set of broker pawns worth from 2 to 5 points each. These are used to bid on various items in the game, usually precious stones, but sometimes influence as well. When bidding, two brokers are placed: one broker is placed revealed (showing its value), while the other is hidden. The object of the game is to amass as much gold (victory points) as possible. The player with the most gold at the end of the game wins. Two things stand to me. One is how the player order is determined. A card with a value of 1 through 4 is randomly given to each player. This is not the turn order; this is the tie-breaker. The turn order is determined by using two brokers to bid. These brokers will not be available to you the rest of the turn, but will, themselves, be used for tie-breaking. (There are a lot of ties in this game.)  The second thing that stands out to me is how victory points are garnished at the end of the game. All game you’ve been gathering precious stones of various colors and manipulating the value of each. You get more point if you’re the one with the most stones of a particular color. And even more points if that color has the highest value. Everyone else who has that color also scores some points.

Did we like the game? Yes, we gave it eight thumbs up out of eight. I don’t remember who won, but it wasn’t me.

06.01.2009

This week we played a new game of Owens called Through the Ages. The game is four player game, but we had five players this week because Andy joined us. That was ok, because Owen said he would just Game Master the game and lookup rules. Thank God he did. Although primarily a card game, this is the most complicated card game I’ve played. And we played the Basic Game! There is also an Advance Game, AND the Full Game. I assume the Full Game is similar to the Hell level of Doom 3. I should mention that besides just cards there is a main board and boards for each player. The player board holds various wooden discs that represent workers and the number of actions that player can take each round. You spend you actions buying leaders, wonders, assigning workers and military, and keeping them all happy. All the while scores the points that will win you the game.

Funny, I just looked on BoardGameGeek to see what they had to say about the game. I didn’t realize that”…the goal is to develop your civilization, not to destroy other ones.” Hmm, that’s probably why I lost. Mike won this first game, although I remember it being pretty close.

06.08.2009

We played through the Ages again. This time Owen played and we tried the Advance Rules which include more use of the military.  After about three hours we weren’t quite done with the game. Several players were poised to score points in the future, but at the cutoff, Ben was declared the winner, with Mike being close behind him. Mike is always close behind. It’s in his nature.

I didn’t mention if we liked this game or not. If we played it twice, we liked it.