New games I’ve played: Arkwright, Council of Four
Man, where did the time go? It’s already mid-July, and it’s still hotter than hell. I’m so ready for the Phoenix summer to be over! I’ve been staying inside a lot, playing board games naturally. Even amid all the Pokemon Go excitement (yes, I totally downloaded the game), I’m still not venturing outside too much, unless I really have to. And with that, there are two new games I’ve played in the past two weeks, and a couple oldies but goodies …
The biggest game I’ve played recently is Arkwright. This 2-4 player game is great, but it’s super heavy! It’s an economic game where you build factories, set the prices of your goods, sell goods and purchase stock in your company, while driving the price of your stock up. Sounds simple, right? It’s so not! The game is pretty tight; there’s a lot of math and calculating money involved. My friend described is as “Power Grid on crack.” Indeed it is! We’ve only played the basic version, called the Spinning Jenny, which gives you a mere 12 actions for the entire game.
So far, we’ve played this game twice in the past two weeks (each lasting over 3 hours each), and I feel like we’ve gotten a good grasp of all the rules and some strategy. I came in first the first time, and in second the second time. I must be doing something right! The Spinning Jenny version of the game is supposed to run about 30 minutes a player, whereas the Waterframe (advanced version) runs about an hour per person. To win the game, you multiply the amount of stock you have by your stock price. The person with the highest points wins the game. Can’t wait to play this again! Also, I totally would’ve taken more photos of the game, but my brain was so totally focused on the game!
Another game I’ve learned to play recently is Council of Four. In this game, you are amassing cards and advisers so that you can buy building permits and build on various cities on the map. Each city has a bonus, which you receive when you build in that city. When you build a city adjacent to a city you’re already in, you can activate the bonuses again for each city. There’s something truly satisfying about making a strategic move and reaping an endless chain of rewards and jealous eye rolls from the rest of the table. Ha!
Another chief component to this game is the corrupting the council. Four meeples sit randomly in each space for building permits. To gain a building permit, you have to collect colored cards that match the meeples’ colors in the balcony (similar to Ticket to Ride style). You also have the option to adjust who is sitting on the council, to better reflect the cards that are in your hand. For your action, you simply grab a meeple from the pool and push the last guy off the balcony — bloop! Each player on their turn gets a primary action and may take a secondary action. My friend spruced up his set by designing and printing 3D balconies (instead of using the cardboard ones from the box). We fancy!
My friend recently got a copy of Bruges, which I last played at Strategicon in LA. This is also another solid game. In each round, players draw up to 5 cards, and play, for the most part, 4 cards per round. With each card, you can either hire workers that match the card’s color, gain money, remove same-colored threats, build canals or build houses. The card can also be used to activate the character on it, if there’s a house for him or her to sit in. Thus, you have to make difficult decisions … should I play this card to gain a lot of money or hire workers, or should I save this character when a house is available because it’s pretty powerful. And sometimes you have to burn the card because you desperately need yellow workers and have tried for the past two rounds to gain a yellow card.
At the last game day, my friends and I played a 6-player Eclipse, with 3 newbies learning for the first time. I played this game last November during Friendship Con and was a little slow to gain enough resources to make a dent against my neighbor, who then ended up getting really powerful really quickly. We played the game through 6 rounds and had to call it, as a few of us had to leave for prior engagements. We were all OK with that, since we figured it was just a learning game for half the folks on the table.
The newbies ended up really liking the game, even my one friend who makes it a point to sarcastically say “Gee, I really love dice games” during every game that has dice. And the best part — my other friend (who wasn’t playing in this particular game) invited a couple of us to play Eclipse at his house this weekend. So it’ll be great since all the rules are fresh in our minds!
Lastly, I also played Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Terra Mystica in the past week. I haven’t played Castles since last summer, and though sometimes I’m a little spatially challenged, I did pretty well and placed second in the game. I think I priced the rooms well as the Master Builder that benefited me greatly. I also had a lot of blue and purple rooms that played off each other, maximizing my points.
Terra Mysticca is one of my favorite Top 9 games and am always down to play it. I ended up crushing my opponents with 110, mostly by hammering out the bonuses for each round and twice coupling them with the matching bonus tile. I played as the Witches for the first time, and their faction gave me an extra 5 points every time I built a city. I didn’t get any points for the longest cities but I totally didn’t need to.
And that’s my recap of the past two weeks. What have you guys played recently that’s new to you?