Dominion: Alchemy, Dicetown, Forbidden Island
It was game night at the local hobby shop, and I showed up early to see what was going on. Turns out I was a bit too early, but I did get to see some people playing a 6-player game of Twilight Imperium, something I’d liked to do. I remember having a hell of a time last time I played. The only thing stopping me from getting it is the huge in-cost.
Once people started showing up, Alchemy hit the table again, and I completely dominated, mainly from getting an early possession to constantly feed off the player on my left, and partly from knowing how powerful the cards from the get-go. Grabbing a few philosopher’s stones early, as well as a really aggressive victory point purchasing campaign late in the game. I bought maybe 4-5 estates when I didn’t have enough gold to buy anything else, just to counteract the massive number of curses I was getting. Turns out it was unnecessary, as I won by 3 times as much as the next best player, which was an almost offensive trouncing.
I also played a game of Dicetown, an Old West themed game where you roll a set of poker dice to try and get the right combination of faces to acquire the right stuff each turn. You can keep one dice each roll, and have to pay money to keep more or less. Once all rolls are decided, you find out who has the most of each icon, and that person can take an action, mostly taking victory points, money, or special cards. The sheriff goes to the player with the most kings each turn, and the sheriff can break all ties. Those who don’t win anything get a consolation prize at the end, usually in the form of stealing points from everyone else, or protecting their own points.
I was doing pretty well, I thought, being able to keep the sheriff when I needed it to break all ties in my favor and stealing points from my opponents when I had a chance. Unfortunately, I got tricked into thinking one player was ahead by the player who actually was ahead, and picked on the poor guy while the trickster ran away with the game. Enjoyable, but light.
In the same category is Forbidden Island, which I also played, which is without a doubt Pandemic Lite. It uses the same mechanics in almost every way, which is good when you consider that the same designer made it, otherwise it’d feel like a rip-off. The player are trying to get four items before the island they are on sinks into the ocean, which involves going to a certain location and discarding four cards of the same type. Each turn 2-5 locations sink, going to a flooded mode, and then, if not recovered, a completely gone mode. It’s a matter of balancing keeping certain locations up and moving to the locations you need to be in to get the treasures.
It’s really simple, and we had no trouble. It does have a couple of things that differed a bit, mainly the treasure deck, which determines how often the sinking intensifies. The panic cards that make the sinking worse aren’t spaced out in this game, rather shuffled in at random, and the deck is quite small, meaning it will get reshuffled often. If cards are chilling in your hand, they won’t get reshuffled in, and the panic cards will show up more often and cause locations to sink much faster. Though, once a place sinks, you no longer care about it, which lowers the tension a bit though, as you can sacrifice a whole bunch of outlying areas and see no troubles when the waters rise. I’ll have to play a bit more (it’s short), and see if any variants will make it more interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment