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lovingbothThis was last weekend. Unlike the last time I was there, the main space was in the 'new' Gilbert Murray conference building - the one that replaced the venue of BiCon 2008 that was demolished just before we used it again for BiCon 2011.
When Leicester finally got the OK to build it - there was a High Court case, because they didn't have planning permission to use the original building as a conference centre! - it came with a bunch of restrictions, including on events there finishing way before midnight. (The rich local residents really, really do not like it and would also prefer there was no student accommodation there either.) Leicester are clearly ignoring that now: it's a ManorCon tradition that games of Midnight Party start at midnight and this year was no exception...
Hmmm.
Played:
Villagers - you are populating a village via drafting cards. There's a series of small technology trees in there - to play a cheesemaker, you need to have someone to milk the cows already etc. It looks nice, there were plenty of copies around (it was yet another success on Kickstarter), but the winner is whoever is lucky enough to get the best cards. In this case, someone got a card from the 'road', the next card placed there was the jeweller, the player before me picks it up, wins with the huge amount of gold it generates. One card deeper in the deck, and I would have won.
Dice Hospital - very silly, quite good. You're running a hospital and every turn an ambulance will arrive carrying three dice showing values between 2 and 5. If you can treat them, you rotate them until they would become a 7 when they're cured = good. If you don't treat them, you rotate them the other way and if they get to 0, they die(!) = bad. Treating them is made easier by expanding the staff and the rooms in your hospital (eg an intensive care unit can make two dice with very low values significantly better but are no good for treating relatively healthy ones). Oh, there's only room for twelve patients, so you better start curing (if there's no space, you have to let some die to make room...) Yet another Kickstarter game, wouldn't buy, might play again.
Rococo - clothes making for the royal party. Three sorts of tailors (masters down to apprentices) can do one action each turn (and often a bonus thing too) but, for example, apprentices can't make clothes and only masters can hire new staff. Other actions include buying cloth in four colours / silk / lace (in general, the more valuable clothes need more of the rarer colours / silk / lace) or being fired. The latter is because there's an element of hand management (you can only play three cards a turn, plus any recruits, and can't play them again until you've played all your other cards) which works well.
Once you've made a suit or a dress you can sell it for money or rent it for victory points for someone to wear in one of half a dozen rooms of the party. In addition to those, whoever has supplied the most / next most costumes for a room gets points, and there are a few other bonuses to be had.
For once, the theme doesn't look pasted on, and the game plays considerably smoother than the rule book suggests despite there always being an interesting range of options for you to pick from each turn. I'd buy a second-hand copy in a shot, but amazingly despite being very well received when it was published in five or six years ago, it's been allowed to go out of print and the publisher spends their time going 'I've told everyone else who's asked, there's no demand'...
Won, in part through selling a very valuable dress early on, which gave me enough money to get more of the other bonuses.
Caylus 1303 - in the original Caylus, a town slowly extends from a castle, with workers doing various things according to which building they're placed on, in the order they are along the road and depending on how far a special counter is moved by everyone. I'd get it, but it's another one where I've never found a cheap copy.
In this one, a town slowly extends towards a castle being built, with workers doing various things according to which building they're placed on, in the order etc etc. This was a pre-publication copy of something that's going to be released later this year. The presentation has improved, some of the rougher bits have been removed, and something interesting - special cards giving an additional power - added. Once we had more or less sorted the rules (downloaded a draft translation of the French original), I concentrated on delivering stuff to the castle builders: normally that has to be three different things including one 'food'. With a special card, I could deliver three of anything, including three of the same thing. As getting resources gets harder as the game goes on unless the right buildings are built, this is really useful. The other two were happily building stuff, and it was a tight finish: I came second by one point despite messing up my moves (needing stuff before I got it) twice.
Gizmos - fairly unencumbered engine-building game. A pile of cards do various things, and you want to collect the right set of them in the right order, to make collecting the most valuable ones easier. You pay for them via (plastic) marbles of four colours - some cards let you treat one colour as another, or make them more valuable. The only memorable thing is that you don't pick them out of a bag, but from a cardboard construction that has six of about a dozen-long queue visible and others entering the queue randomly.
There's nothing bad, once you realise how powerful one action (research - look at hidden cards and pick one-ish before anyone else sees them) is, but it's all been done better in other games.
Bought:
My favourite 'game' at these is always the bring-and-buy sale. I got rid of about half a dozen duplicate copies / don't like games and bought a couple more than I sold, cough. Highlights were..
Qin - I nearly didn't notice this one, despite looking for a physical copy of it for ages. A tile laying game with very few rules, but much more strategy than it first appears. I've played it loads online.
Chariot Lords - another copy of the basic idea of the 1970s Ancient Conquests, a bunch of empires appear, thrive and fall. The most famous is Britannia about the invasions of Britain from the Romans to the Normans, this one returns to the Middle East. Looking forward to playing this at the local group.
MarraCash - like the one Fred mentioned recently, this is about selling carpets. Here, there are variety of fixed shops of four colours, and a line of potential customers in the same colours. You auction off the shops and move the customers - if they go past the right shop, they have to enter and both the owner and the mover get a cut of what they spend.
La Strada - nineteen different settlements (ranging from valuable cities to tiny villages) are on a random map. You need to link as many settlements as possible, but the more who have a road to any one of them, the less you'll get.
When Leicester finally got the OK to build it - there was a High Court case, because they didn't have planning permission to use the original building as a conference centre! - it came with a bunch of restrictions, including on events there finishing way before midnight. (The rich local residents really, really do not like it and would also prefer there was no student accommodation there either.) Leicester are clearly ignoring that now: it's a ManorCon tradition that games of Midnight Party start at midnight and this year was no exception...
Hmmm.
Played:
Villagers - you are populating a village via drafting cards. There's a series of small technology trees in there - to play a cheesemaker, you need to have someone to milk the cows already etc. It looks nice, there were plenty of copies around (it was yet another success on Kickstarter), but the winner is whoever is lucky enough to get the best cards. In this case, someone got a card from the 'road', the next card placed there was the jeweller, the player before me picks it up, wins with the huge amount of gold it generates. One card deeper in the deck, and I would have won.
Dice Hospital - very silly, quite good. You're running a hospital and every turn an ambulance will arrive carrying three dice showing values between 2 and 5. If you can treat them, you rotate them until they would become a 7 when they're cured = good. If you don't treat them, you rotate them the other way and if they get to 0, they die(!) = bad. Treating them is made easier by expanding the staff and the rooms in your hospital (eg an intensive care unit can make two dice with very low values significantly better but are no good for treating relatively healthy ones). Oh, there's only room for twelve patients, so you better start curing (if there's no space, you have to let some die to make room...) Yet another Kickstarter game, wouldn't buy, might play again.
Rococo - clothes making for the royal party. Three sorts of tailors (masters down to apprentices) can do one action each turn (and often a bonus thing too) but, for example, apprentices can't make clothes and only masters can hire new staff. Other actions include buying cloth in four colours / silk / lace (in general, the more valuable clothes need more of the rarer colours / silk / lace) or being fired. The latter is because there's an element of hand management (you can only play three cards a turn, plus any recruits, and can't play them again until you've played all your other cards) which works well.
Once you've made a suit or a dress you can sell it for money or rent it for victory points for someone to wear in one of half a dozen rooms of the party. In addition to those, whoever has supplied the most / next most costumes for a room gets points, and there are a few other bonuses to be had.
For once, the theme doesn't look pasted on, and the game plays considerably smoother than the rule book suggests despite there always being an interesting range of options for you to pick from each turn. I'd buy a second-hand copy in a shot, but amazingly despite being very well received when it was published in five or six years ago, it's been allowed to go out of print and the publisher spends their time going 'I've told everyone else who's asked, there's no demand'...
Won, in part through selling a very valuable dress early on, which gave me enough money to get more of the other bonuses.
Caylus 1303 - in the original Caylus, a town slowly extends from a castle, with workers doing various things according to which building they're placed on, in the order they are along the road and depending on how far a special counter is moved by everyone. I'd get it, but it's another one where I've never found a cheap copy.
In this one, a town slowly extends towards a castle being built, with workers doing various things according to which building they're placed on, in the order etc etc. This was a pre-publication copy of something that's going to be released later this year. The presentation has improved, some of the rougher bits have been removed, and something interesting - special cards giving an additional power - added. Once we had more or less sorted the rules (downloaded a draft translation of the French original), I concentrated on delivering stuff to the castle builders: normally that has to be three different things including one 'food'. With a special card, I could deliver three of anything, including three of the same thing. As getting resources gets harder as the game goes on unless the right buildings are built, this is really useful. The other two were happily building stuff, and it was a tight finish: I came second by one point despite messing up my moves (needing stuff before I got it) twice.
Gizmos - fairly unencumbered engine-building game. A pile of cards do various things, and you want to collect the right set of them in the right order, to make collecting the most valuable ones easier. You pay for them via (plastic) marbles of four colours - some cards let you treat one colour as another, or make them more valuable. The only memorable thing is that you don't pick them out of a bag, but from a cardboard construction that has six of about a dozen-long queue visible and others entering the queue randomly.
There's nothing bad, once you realise how powerful one action (research - look at hidden cards and pick one-ish before anyone else sees them) is, but it's all been done better in other games.
Bought:
My favourite 'game' at these is always the bring-and-buy sale. I got rid of about half a dozen duplicate copies / don't like games and bought a couple more than I sold, cough. Highlights were..
Qin - I nearly didn't notice this one, despite looking for a physical copy of it for ages. A tile laying game with very few rules, but much more strategy than it first appears. I've played it loads online.
Chariot Lords - another copy of the basic idea of the 1970s Ancient Conquests, a bunch of empires appear, thrive and fall. The most famous is Britannia about the invasions of Britain from the Romans to the Normans, this one returns to the Middle East. Looking forward to playing this at the local group.
MarraCash - like the one Fred mentioned recently, this is about selling carpets. Here, there are variety of fixed shops of four colours, and a line of potential customers in the same colours. You auction off the shops and move the customers - if they go past the right shop, they have to enter and both the owner and the mover get a cut of what they spend.
La Strada - nineteen different settlements (ranging from valuable cities to tiny villages) are on a random map. You need to link as many settlements as possible, but the more who have a road to any one of them, the less you'll get.