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Knizia Games, and a Citadels alt-character review
Doug had another game party at his house on Sunday. It was good.
I played Knizia's abstract and very elegant Ingenious! twice, and though I lost pretty hard both times I decided I really like the game and must obtain a copy. Unlike my Wii/BattleLore/Fool needs, this is actually an attainable goal, so: cool. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karlvonl taught the game to me earlier this year but for some reason it didn't really catch me at the time...)
When teaching the game, I recommend skipping the part about having to say "ingenious" before claiming an extra turn. That's just corny and doesn't add anything. Some people insisted that something ought to be said, so I suggested "cheeseburger" as an if-you-must alternative. People seemed to take to that pretty well, at least.
Thendougo taught some of us Knizia's non-abstract and not-very-elegant-at-all Dragonland. It is still a fun game, mind you, and I'd like to play it again sometime. And I'd like to try playing it without the score-hiding screens, which, like all game mechanics that rely on forgetfulness to work, annoy me. (So why don't I insist on playing Settlers with face-up resource cards? I don't know... maybe I should...)
classicaljunkie and I both love Citadels and had earlier agreed to start experimenting with the alternate roles that come with the American edition of the game, but which nobody seems to have ever tried ever. We finally enacted this plan at Doug's, playing a four-handed game and swapping in two of the alts:
* The Tax Collector - replaces Thief; take 1 gold from every player who builds, at the end of their turn. Sounds like easy money, a low-risk, low-return version of the Thief. But he more often than not got nothing, or maybe just one gold, as players who built were careful to spend all their gold, leaving nothing for him. With the thief out of the game, nobody was able to pull off a nice combo of stealing someone's pile in one turn and then building something lavish in the next.
* The Alchemist - replaces Merchant; after building, take back the gold you just spent. Sounds quite potent, doesn't he? The problem is, unlike the Merchant, he doesn't do much to help you build up your wealth so that you can build those nice expensive districts. I never found him to be a tempting choice, and later in the game when I had three green districts and no money, I was really missing the Merchant!
Removing both the Thief and the Merchant from the deck led to a dramatically gold-poor game. I ended up winning the game by building (if memory serves) six 3-point districts, one 5-pointer and one 1-pointer. That's one impovershed principality! The other players tended towards strategies of saving up and building more expensive districts, but nobody else managed to complete eight after I went out - which is a fairly rare occurrence - and only one other player got the five-color bonus.cthulhia came in second, just three points behind me, even though she had only five or six districts built.
Speaking of Ms. Cthules, there was some Baking Madness afoot, and photographic evidence shall be forthcoming.
I played Knizia's abstract and very elegant Ingenious! twice, and though I lost pretty hard both times I decided I really like the game and must obtain a copy. Unlike my Wii/BattleLore/Fool needs, this is actually an attainable goal, so: cool. (
karlvonl taught the game to me earlier this year but for some reason it didn't really catch me at the time...)When teaching the game, I recommend skipping the part about having to say "ingenious" before claiming an extra turn. That's just corny and doesn't add anything. Some people insisted that something ought to be said, so I suggested "cheeseburger" as an if-you-must alternative. People seemed to take to that pretty well, at least.
Then
dougo taught some of us Knizia's non-abstract and not-very-elegant-at-all Dragonland. It is still a fun game, mind you, and I'd like to play it again sometime. And I'd like to try playing it without the score-hiding screens, which, like all game mechanics that rely on forgetfulness to work, annoy me. (So why don't I insist on playing Settlers with face-up resource cards? I don't know... maybe I should...)classicaljunkie and I both love Citadels and had earlier agreed to start experimenting with the alternate roles that come with the American edition of the game, but which nobody seems to have ever tried ever. We finally enacted this plan at Doug's, playing a four-handed game and swapping in two of the alts:* The Tax Collector - replaces Thief; take 1 gold from every player who builds, at the end of their turn. Sounds like easy money, a low-risk, low-return version of the Thief. But he more often than not got nothing, or maybe just one gold, as players who built were careful to spend all their gold, leaving nothing for him. With the thief out of the game, nobody was able to pull off a nice combo of stealing someone's pile in one turn and then building something lavish in the next.
* The Alchemist - replaces Merchant; after building, take back the gold you just spent. Sounds quite potent, doesn't he? The problem is, unlike the Merchant, he doesn't do much to help you build up your wealth so that you can build those nice expensive districts. I never found him to be a tempting choice, and later in the game when I had three green districts and no money, I was really missing the Merchant!
Removing both the Thief and the Merchant from the deck led to a dramatically gold-poor game. I ended up winning the game by building (if memory serves) six 3-point districts, one 5-pointer and one 1-pointer. That's one impovershed principality! The other players tended towards strategies of saving up and building more expensive districts, but nobody else managed to complete eight after I went out - which is a fairly rare occurrence - and only one other player got the five-color bonus.
cthulhia came in second, just three points behind me, even though she had only five or six districts built.Speaking of Ms. Cthules, there was some Baking Madness afoot, and photographic evidence shall be forthcoming.