Terra, New England, Quandary - Iron Valley Gamers
Candyland
We opened with Candyland, so that Tom and Dana's two-year-old daughter Chloe could play along with us. She did a great job taking turns, identifying the colors, and moving people's markers. And she handled losing very well when Beth's strategy of choosing the right cards at the right time proved to be too much for any of us to handle.
Drunter und Druber
We moved from Candyland to Drunter and Druber, and by the end of this game Beth was clearly on a roll. In Drunter and Druber (designed by Klaus Teuber, designer of Settlers of Catan), the board has pre-printed "crazy buildings" of six colors, five buildings (valued 1 through 5) in each color. Numerous outhouses also dot the board. Players build a road, a river and the city wall by playing tiles, covering up the crazy buildings as they see fit. Whenever an outhouse would be covered, however, a vote must be taken to see if that tile will be placed.
The goal is to have more value in your buildings still visible at the end of the game than anyone else. Beth's uncovered blue buildings were worth 10 points at the end of the game, twice as valuable as Dana's yellow buildings. I checked in with 4 points and Tom had just a lonely 2-point building remaining at the end.
The German title of the game translates to "Above and Below" in English.
Quandary
While Dana tended to Chloe, Beth, Tom and I played Quandary, designed by Reiner Knizia. It also was published in another edition as Flinke Pinke, and more recently as both Thor and Loco!. But Quandary is the best-produced version, with wonderful thick tiles that have real weight to them. I picked up a copy in a thrift store for $0.75 -- my best thrift store purchase to date.
Players are given a random set of numbered tiles (tiles are available from 0 to 5 in each of five colors), and on a turn place one of those tiles on the proper line on the board. They also remove one of the colored Quandary tiles and keep it in front of them. When one of the lines is filled, all colors are scored, and each Quandary tile is worth whatever number is on the last tile in that color line. For example, if the red line ends with a 3, each red Quandary tile collected by the players is worth three points.
It's a simple game, but challenging to play. Fortunes can rise or fall quickly as the 0 and 5 tiles get played. Beth, 98; Erik, 94; Tom, 84. Dana joined us for a second game, but the winner didn't change. Beth, 94; Erik, 91; Tom, 72; Dana, 56. (It would only be fair to point out that Dana got excessively hosed in the first round of the second game, while she was just learning it and the three of us had already played once. Yes, we are merciless.)
Terra
Next we tried the new world-peace-feed-the-hungry-please-recycle game Terra (designed by Bruno Faidutti), intruiged by the core mechanism: one person can win, but it is possible for all players to lose. The political and social leanings of the game are apparent, but as long as you agree with them or can get past them, it seems like there's a quality game here.
In a four-player game, each players starts with a hand of four "solution" cards with values ranging from 1 to 6. Sixteen "crisis" cards (values ranging from 10 to 16) are then shuffled into the deck, and a player's turn begins with drawing a card.
If it's a crisis card, it gets placed in front of that player and becomes an "impending crisis." Going once around the board, starting with the player who drew it, each player is given a chance to play one solution card onto the impending crisis. If enough solutions are played, the crisis is solved and some of the players are eligible for a few points. If not, all cards played are discarded and the crisis is now "full-blown," placed in the middle of the table.
If it's a solution card, the player puts it into his hand and can, if he chooses, play it onto the board to help solve a "full-blown" crisis. This also enables him to play a set of three cards that will count as his own points at the end of the game.
The conflict is that the number of points you get for helping solve a crisis doesn't feel like enough to make it worth your while. But if the crises remain unsolved too long, the game ends with everyone losing. Which is what happened to us. We were unfortunate enough to have four environmental crises come out pretty early, and one of the game-ending conditions is to have four full-blown crises of the same kind.
Perhaps the four of us should not be charged with saving the world.
New England
Finally, we played New England, Games magazine's Game of the Year for 2003 and my pick as the second-best game published last year.
The most significant mechanism in the game is bidding for turn order. There are 10 coins, and the player who choses the highest coin goes first. But you must pay the price on your coin for each card or land tile you purchase. The first player may grab the '6' coin, but it will cost him 12 gold to purchase two things. The last player will have less to choose from, but he'll also pay a lot less.
New England, designed by Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum, is an elegant bidding and tile-placement game with numerous paths to victory. Dana choose to concentrate on acquiring pilgrims, which increase your income, but stayed with that strategy a bit too long. Beth wound up winning without ever having acquired a pilgrim -- a sure sign that the rest of us were letting her get too many good tiles and cards too inexpensively. Beth, 39; Erik, 28; Tom, 26; Dana, 19. Beth increased her margin of victory by developing land worth 10 points right before the end of the game.
It was another great night of Iron Valley gaming with Tom and Dana, and as always we appreciate their hospitality!
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