Session Report 19.11.2002

Session Report 19.11.2002

Author: Aaron

at the table: Andrea, Hans, Moritz, Walter, Aaron

on the table: Trias, 6 nimmt, ZooSim, Anno Domini

1. Trias
   
   38 hex-tiles form a large island of three different terrain types. Following the name of
   the game this large island will eventually break up into several smaller islands due to
   player actions which cause the tiles to “drift” into an outwards direction.
   Players start the game with a small group of four herds on the large island and their
   objective is to have a majority of herds on the soon to come smaller islands.

   A player’s turn consists of a mandatory “drift” of a tile followed by up
   to four actions of herd propagation, herd movement and optional tile drift.
   “Drifting” is performed by taking a tile that forms the shore of an island and
   placing it further away from the central vulcano tile of the central island. Removing
   tiles from the central islands shores eventually generated smaller islands. Whenever a
   new island is created by tile drifting scoring is triggered for the island where the
   drifted tiles has been placed. The player with the majority of herds on that island
   receives two victory points, the runner-up gets one VP.

   In the course of the main island breaking up players receive already some victory
   points. Since herds cannot move between islands players every now and then will try to
   join islands to gain majorities which otherwise would not be possible. Envisioning such
   moves, preventing other players to perform them while at the same time taking care that
   there are sufficient options open for oneself is the zest of Trias.

   Eventually the last round of the game starts when the “comet” card is drawn
   from the stack and each player is left with just two more actions. Once that round is
   completed the last, but decisive victory points are allocated: this time herd majorities
   on islands yield points depending on the number of tiles the island consists of. And just
   as in any previous victory point allocations, the main island (or fragments thereof) does
   not yield any VPs.

   After my misfortune last week when I had the majority on the largest
   island but did not get any victory points because it was still connected to the central
   vulcano tile I knew what to look out for this time. Although the optional tile drift
   action costs three of the available four actions it is the one option that prevents
   exactly this mishap. Some sort of diversification is also required in order to
   participate from other player’s moves and to build alliances. Sometimes this can be a
   bit of a problem as the number of possible good moves is fairly large and it is difficult
   to decide which are the ones that need to be played now and which can be postponed to a
   later turn. In comparison to last week, when we played Trias with only four players we
   found that planning ahead in a five player game is much more difficult and sometimes even
   impossible – just too many things change while it’s not your turn.

   Moritz managed to win the game by being present on nearly all of the islands present and
   thereby collecting an enormous amount of victory points by being at least the runner up
   in terms of herd majority. His diversification strategy definitely worked out.
   

2. 6 nimmt
   
   Since Hans had to leave early tonight we decided to play a quick round of 6 nimmt, a game which had not been on the table for quite a
   while. Again we had a lot of “highest lowest” situations, a situation described
   by Walter in his German review of the game, and for
   whatever reason it was mostly I who had the “lowest highest” and consequently
   having to take lots of negative points. This game has a wonderful mechanism which makes
   you believe that you have some means of control where in fact most of the time it’s
   sheer luck which determines the result.

   Not having had a single round without taking at least five cards it was all too certain
   that a will lose the game. My only satisfaction was that our usual sure winner Moritz
   managed to only make second place.

3. ZooSim
   
   Like last year’s Essen release Titicaca, ZooSim also comes in a round box – the
   trademark of Cwali games. The objective of the two to four players is to create a zoo
   which attracts many visitors, a theme which is already known from various computer games
   (I guess that’s the reason for the game’s title). Unlike other Cwali games,
   ZooSim is a short game (less than 45 minutes) and is far more simpler to explain and
   play.

   The game consists of 25 tiles with zoo exhibits, paths and trees printed on them.
   Exhibits come in five color-coded categories (birds, apes, sea animals, reptiles and
   other mammals) and have a point value for attractiveness (one to three stars) printed on
   them. The objective of the players is to get the most attractive exhibits of a category
   as well as to boost attractiveness by having the most trees and circular pathways in
   their zoo.

   The game is played in five rounds and in each round five zoo tiles are revealed and
   auctioned one by one. Auctions are fast, with each player placing their bid in a closed
   fist and all revealing their bid at the same time. A clever mechanism has been selected
   to deal with ties: each player has a little flag marker next to a flag pole and the
   player with the flag at the higher position receives the tile in case of a tie. Then the
   flag marker is placed to the bottom of the markers.

   Won tiles must be placed so that paths line up with paths on existing tiles. Players
   will try to place tiles in such a way that exhibit categories are next to each other
   because only then the whole group counts as one exhibit for majority determination. As
   soon as the tile is properly placed the majority situation is re-evaluated. The player
   holding the majority in an animal category or trees places two visitor tokens on that
   exhibit and the runner up places one visitor on the some exhibit in his zoo. If a
   circular path has been created the player receives one visitor token for that as well.

   Once a set of five tiles has been auctioned a round finishes and players
   receive victory points depending on the number of visitors in their zoo. Each visitor
   equals one point multiplied with the round number, thus making round five, the final
   round, counting five times as much as the first round. Players then receive new money
   tokens equal to the number of tiles they have in their zoo and five new tiles are
   revealed before the next auctioning round commences. After five such rounds when all
   tiles have been auctioned, the player with the most victory points wins the game.

   ZooSim has some nice mechanisms which leave players with constant decision making and
   involving all players at anytime during the game. It’s important to decide which
   tile(s) to go for in the auctions – not all tiles have favorable paths or animal
   categories. Money is scarce with players starting the game with only eight tokens and
   receiving new tokens depending on the size of their zoo. Their is also an important
   tie-breaker on exhibit size: the player who equals the highest attraction value last
   takes the two visitors leaving the second place to the original leader. Together with the
   sometimes complex path layout this can lead to extended pondering at the beginning of an
   auction round. Latest after round three all animal categories are present in the zoos and
   from now on visitors are shifted between the zoos and new visitors only arrive for
   circular paths. This is where some long-term strategy of securing majorities pays off.

   Having played the game once before Walter and I had a good start in the first two rounds
   of the game, collecting most of the visitors for our exhibits. Round three turned out to
   be a disaster for Andrea when she lost most of her visitors to the other players. Walter
   managed to take two important majorities from me in round four but Moritz quietly had
   designed a clever path structure allowing him to build several circular paths in the last
   round and making him the winner of the game.

4. Anno Domini
   
   As often before, we decided to play this game as a quick closing game only to find out
   that it lasts a lot longer than one imagines. This time we found out that seeting order
   is of some relevance in this game when we saw that Moritz sitting in front of Andrea was
   very often successfully challenged by Andrea, who herself was in the position that she
   knew that Walter would challenge her if there are more than four cards on the table.

   Andrea soon had only three cards left and even our joint effort to make her getting new
   cards failed and she finally won the game.