Oh, this is actually San Juan

I recently saw, at first, that Puerto Rico had been added to Yucata. I’ve been having a real itch to play it again. Back in my early days, that and Settlers of Catan was a huge chunk of what we played.

Then I saw it was Puerto Rico THE CARD GAME or, as we call it on our house, San Juan. That was kind of a bummer.

Don’t get me wrong. Even though I like Race for the Galaxy and Glory to Rome more, I still quite like San Juan. I have played it a lot and I’m sure I will continue to play it.

And I also know Puerto Rico is on Boardgame Arena so I could play it online if I really needed to. However, Yucata is where my friends play and it was hard enough for us to all end up there. Playing by turn instead of live helps us play over the time zones.

We have a long history with Puerto Rico. It was part of our foundation playing board games. Getting to play it again, making it part of our routine again would have been really awesome.

But we may get in some San Juan.

Thanks Yucata for adding Macao

I don’t know how long it’s been since I last played Macao before it got added to Yucata. Four or five years at least but I’ve considered it one of my favorite Felds I’ve played. Getting back into it on Yucata has only confirmed it.

Macao is the one with the wind rose. It easily falls under the description of point salad but you can believably get away with describing it as a pick-up-and-deliver game driven by resource management.

I’m not going to go through the rules but I kind of have to talk about the wind rose. It’s really a seven space clock that you fill with cubes. Every turn, a die for each of the six colors of cube gets rolled. You choose two dice and put that number of cubes on that number on your clock. Each turn, the clock ticks one space and those are the cubes you have to work with that turn. 

Macao is not the first game that requires you to plan ahead or even program your moves ahead (indeed, compared to a lot of programmed movement games, Macao gives you a lot of latitude) but it’s still a pretty original way of doing it. And all the elements of the game tie together pretty well. The core of the game is simple but it gives you lots of choices.

While I was already a fan of Notre Dame, Macao was the game where I started really paying attention to Feld. I have not been able to remotely keep up with his output but Macao is one game I’m glad I’ve experienced.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/55670/macao

Learning Mystic Vale on Yucata

Okay. So Mystic Vale is now on Yucata. My only problem is I have no idea how to play. So one of my friends from back East who is also on Yucata and owns the physical version of Mystic Vale says let’s get on Skype and I’ll walk you through the game.

In other words, I ended up learning the game on an online face-to-face game. And I still don’t know what it’s like to play the game physically, interacting with the clear cards and sleeves.

Okay, everyone who is reading this has almost assuredly played more Mystic Vale than me and has a better idea of how it works. But here are my initial thoughts.

Mystic Vale is a deck builder where you use sleeves and clear cards to build cards (meaning that you don’t add more cards to your deck, you just make the cards you already have more interesting) with a push your luck mechanic for drawing cards. And having played a decent number of deck builders and push your luck games, what surprised me is that, mechanically, Mystic Vale seems simple.

Not that means light or bad or that you get to be an expert right off the bat, just that the process of how you get the moving parts moving is easy to learn. The individual pieces are not complex. But just because I know what a gear is doesn’t mean I can make a good clock without experience.

Mystic Vale has also made me think about Hecatomb, a weird little collectible card game that also used transparent cards. While I know that I played some demos of it and got some some starter decks when it first came out, I have almost no memories of what it was like to play. My only two memories are that it felt overly complicated and that there was an undead house cat card that disturbed my cat-loving self.

I do remember that you created layers of cards and I am absolutely convinced that Mystic Vale takes that idea and streamlines it, simplifies it and just makes it better.

I don’t know how good Mystic Vale will be in the long run. I do know that I had fun with my learning game and that I am going to be playing it again in the future.

Jumping into Lemminge

Lemminge is a game that I never would have heard of, let alone played, if it wasn’t for Yucata.

It’s a race game based on the disproven myth that lemmings are a bunch of suicidal rodents who have an urge to throw themselves off cliffs. You are trying to be the first person to get both your lemmings over the cliff.

The board is a wide, u-shaped track of hexes that are either blank or a terrain type, which are grouped together. 

On your turn, you can either draw cards or play cards. Playing cards is the interesting bit. The cards show the different terrain types and a number. Over the course the game, you make rows of each terrain type, counting down. If you play a higher card, you clear the row and start over with your card.

So here’s how movement works: you move one of your lemmings the sum Of the room that you just put a card in. They can move on blank spaces or the matching terrain. You can also push other lemmings but that takes movement points.

One of my favorite touches is that if you clear a card row and start a new one (which usually means less movement), you get the consolation of a tile that matches that terrain that you can use to fill an empty space on the board. Definitely gives options for nasty plays.

And, the game ends when someone flings their two lemmings over the cliff and wins.

On a whole, I’m pretty meh to the game. While you sometimes get to make some really cool moves, luck of the draw seems really powerful. And if you get blocked in or have bad card draws, even a move that gives you a lot of moves doesn’t seem like it would save you. Particularly because you only get one terrain type per move.

In the case of Lemminge, that fact that it is a very light game is kind of its saving grace. Because it is easy to understand and quick to play, I’m willing to keep on trying it. It could be that practicing hand management might mitigate the luck. Or it could be that each turn really only does have one good move.

It reminds me a lot of Odin’s Ravens, the whole playing cards to matching terrain for movement. However, Odin’s Ravens is a much tighter, more interactive game. Lemminge just doesn’t have the tension.

I won’t deny the fact that getting to learn a new game is  fun. So I am glad that I have gotten to experience Lemminge. However, I can’t say that it’s a game that I would actually think about getting a hardcopy or even try and get a play face-to-face.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153004/lemminge

Am I a hypocrite with card adaptations?

Last year, I tried Castles of Burgundy the Card Game on Yucatá. I skimmed through the rules, missed some of them and didn't have a very good time. But I knew part of the problem was I messed up the rules so I'm trying again.

And, yes, actually carefully reading the rules makes everything make sense and I feel like I can actually say I'm playing the game.

I have promised myself that I will play it ten times before I come to a final conclusion. However, so far, compared to the board game, I am finding it fairly meh.

Pictures of the physical game being played aren't helping my impression of it. It looks like, despite the small box size, it takes a up a lot to table space in play. And that is a minus for me when it comes to a card adaptation of a boardgame.

At the same time, I am forced to ask myself if I would feel so meh if the card version was the first version I tried or if I didn't own the board game already.

After all, Euphrates and Tigris: Contest of Kings has stayed in my collection and it has just about every flaw I've accused Castles of Burgundy the Card Game of. It's definitely not as good as it's board game parent, Tigris and Euphrates. It takes up a silly amount of table space.

However, I don't actually own the board game. Truth to tell, only one or two people in my old gaming group did. So the card version both gives me a way to occasionally enjoy that Tigris and Euphrates flavor and I have managed to compress it down to a small plastic photo box for storage.

On the one hand, Tigris and Euphrates has never seen a lot of play in any of my groups. On the other hand, Castles of Burgundy has.

What I need to do is keep on playing it over and over again online. Give it a chance to stand on its own mechanically. Then, I need to actually try and get a face to face game in with a physical copy. Only then, will I really know if it's something that I enjoy or something I want to get.

Let's try a 10 x 10 challenge

I used to set myself a goal of learning a certain number of games a year. Which was fun and I ended up learning a lot about mechanics during those years. However, it also helped encourage me to binge buy games and to only play a game once because I had another game to get to.

What some folks do instead is trying to get in repetitions of games. You know, the 10 x 10 challenge where you try and play 10 different games 10 times each. There are a lot of variations in that, including trying to play 10 different games five times each with your kids.

Frankly, since our son just turned three, I'm not going to try the family version yet. There are games that he plays but we are still working on his patients and focus.

Instead, I've decided to try doing a 10 x 10 with my old stomping grounds, Yucatá. In some ways, this doesn't quite hold to one of the basic tenants of these challenges, getting more of your own games played. However, it is still a start.

When I decided to do this, I set down a few basic rules. First of all, it had to be games that I had already played enough to have a vague idea of how to play. I'm not interested in pledging to learn the game and then play ten times, only to find out I hate it after the first couple place. Second, they cannot be games that I would be playing ten times anyway. There are games that my regular group plays on a regular basis and there are games that I regularly have going on. Those don't count.

Hopefully, by the time I am done with this, I will have stretched my knowledge of these games and gotten better at them. Of course, I also might end up hating them anyway :P

These are my choices:

Aronda

Atacama

Captain W. Kidd

King of Siam

Pergamon 

Race

Schweinebande 

The Castles of Burgundy - the Card Game

The Voyages of Marco Polo

Yucatá 

It will be interesting to see how this goes. The very nature of Yucatá affects this challenge. On the one hand, I will have multiple games going on at the same time, including multiples of the same game. On the other hand, each game will take days to get played. No trying to get in ten plays in one day in the middle of December.

Let's see how this goes.

What did Yucata give me in 2016?

One of the things that I decided to do as part of my looking at 2016 was see what games were added to Yucatá  last year.

Let's see:

7 Steps

Carcassonne: South Seas

Automobiles

Race

Lords of War

Castles of Burgundy: The Card Game

Attika

Packet Row

Spexx

Atacama

Las Vegas

Guildhall

Pax Porfiriana

I think that is all of them and I gave all of them at least one run through, except for Pax Porfiriana. Actually, thanks to the international dateline, it was the first one in 2017 anyway. I am keeping it on the list, even though it doesn't really count.

On the one hand, 2016 didn't have a lot of 'bigger' games, at least to my mind. 2014 gave us Castles of Burgundy and Carson City while 2015, a relatively light year, included the Voyages of Marco Polo.

On the other hand, as someone who has been more of a casual game player since the birth of our son, there are a lot of games that are great for me. If I can log on once a day, make a reasonable assessment of my board position and make a move that I am happy with, and have the endgame in sight, I am a happy camper.

I had been wanting to try out Carcassonne: South Seas, Las Vegas and Guildhall so I was really happy that they got added. And those are games that I am going to keep on my regular rotation with Yucatá. 

And, really, while heavy games, they are all well regarded games. From that angle, those three games along with Castles of Burgundy the Card Game and Attika are the 'big' games of the year. From that perspective, 2016 was pretty darn awesome actually.

The surprise hit for my small little circle of Midwest friends who play with me on Yucutta was Automobiles. That has become a game that we go back to again and again. And I am still no good at it whatsoever :D

There are definitely some games that I need to revisit because I haven't played them enough to know what I really think about them. (Castles and Lords of War, I'm looking at you) But, honestly, when I look at all of the 2016 games in one list, there's a lot of games that I'm going to be playing on a regular basis.

Atacama: mining as through a spreadsheet

Out of all the games that have been recently added to Yucata, Atacama is the one that I knew the absolute least about.

A little bit of research later, I found out that Atacama is a game that was designed as part of a contest to create a game using the components of a previously existing game and other spare parts. And, just for the record, it didn't win. However, it did get published, which is saying something.

The theme of Atacama is mining for gold, silver and copper in South America. The reality is that it's an abstract of placing neutral pawns in a nine by nine grid. Bit like filling out a spreadsheet. Every space has a good or silver or copper mine on it, along with a numeric value ranging from one to five, indicated by dots of the metal.

OK, here's where it gets interesting. Each player or team is either the horizontal rows or the vertical columns. You need for pawns in line before it scores but each direction has a metal (a different one, natch) that scores negative points. And pawns can't be right next each other, creating a way to block each other and create dead spaces.

So far, I've just played the basic version of the game. Some of the variants include special pawns that count as two pawns and revealing the board slowly, one section at a time. (The board is made up of nine tiles so there is a lot of room for variable set ups.)

I still have to play the game plenty more times and play the variants but I have a feeling that the game is solvable, at least in the versions were you know the whole board. I suspect, at a high enough skill level that there is a strong second player advantage. Although, thanks for blocking, I can also see how there might be a very strong first player advantage instead. Regardless, I really suspect that skilled play will favor one position.

And, despite the mining theme in the reasonably pretty mining artwork, there is no denying that this is a pure abstract in a fairly dry one at that. Which isn't a problem for me but I know makes it less appealing for a lot of folks I know.

So here's the thing. I have been enjoying Atacama a whole lot more than I think it has any right to be enjoyed. The whole sharing pawns and creative ways of blocking each other has been a surprising amount of fun for me.

I don't know if I would play this face-to-face. There's a lot of good abstract options out there for that. But, as part of my Yucatá rotation, I can easily see myself getting in a dozen place of this and trying out all the variations. It's not going to be a game that I will play forever but I will play it.

I know that's not high praise but that's not bad.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/144587/atacama

Yucatá keeps on delivering

Yucatá has been one of my primary gaming experiences over the last few years. The moving to a whole new part of the country and having a small child has meant online gaming has been a godsend. And the last few months have definitely seen a decent number of new games added to the site.

Every time a game is added to Yucatá, it feels like a game has been added to my closet. More than that, everyone who signs on has access to the same games so everyone involved has the same chance to play.

Since October, we've seen Attika, Packet Row, Spexxx, Atacama and Las Vegas get added. I've had a chance to play them all by now. In the case of Attika, it was the chance to revisit a game that I haven't played in years.

None of these games are particularly heavy. In fact, some of them are awfully light. However, when you are playing online Internet-based, the disconnect from time and space can add weight to games. Coming back to a game after a day or two and figuring out what's going on is a different mental process than playing face-to-face. Although, sometimes, that can actually make a game easier. But it is definitely different.

I do realize that five games over the course of three months might not sound like that much. Back when I was in the cult of the new, that could be one game order. However, I didn't always play all those games. These new games on Yucatá, I am playing all of them multiple times.

And I know that I will play even the weakest of the lot, which is probably Acatama, several times to explore it. That's another thing that Yucatá lets me do, really explore repetition.

Yucatá keeps on delivering a good experience for me.

My journey with Attika continues

Attika came into my gaming experience after I had solidly gotten into gaming. I had played plenty of Catan and Carcassonne and Puerto Rico and the like. However, it was before I helped start a group that played at least once a week and before I really started seriously collecting games.

While I've seen every single element in Attika plenty of times, I have yet to see another game that puts them together in the same way. I've played literally hundreds of different games since I learned Attika and it still feels pretty distinct.

Here's the thumbnail sketch: In Attika, each player is playing a Greek city state, either trying to build every last one of its buildings or connect two different temples with their buildings.

The board is made up of modular hexagonal jigsaw pieces that have a hex grid on them. The nifty bit is, as the game goes on, you'll be able to add more jigsaw pieces to the board.

On your turn, you have a certain number action points you get to use. You can use them to draw building tiles, build building tiles and draw cards.

Every building has a resource cost. Resources are both printed on the board and on the cards. However, the different groups of buildings come in chains. If you build next to a previous link in a chain, it's free. Of course, you are randomly drawing the buildings.

Seriously, we have action points from games like Tikal. We got connections like games like Hex. We got randomly drawing tiles like you get in Samurai. We got a modular board like games like Catan. We got building stuff with resources like a ton of different games. There's a lot of familiar pieces but Attika uses them in its own way.

However, here's the first twist in my story. A couple years ago, I was purging my collection and I came across my own copy of Attika, which I picked up shortly after I first learned the game. And it was still in the shrinkwrap.

Was it a game that I had good memories of? Yeah. Was it a game I could remember the last time I played? Nope. Did it take up more space than a deck of cards? Yes. When push came to shove, I ended up selling Attika. 

And, to be honest, I have never regretted that decision. I never played my own copy and I hadn't played anyone else's in years. There's only so much time for playing games and only so much to store them.

Ah,  but there's a second twist. Attika has been added to Yucata, the online game site. It's amusing how I got excited to be able to play a game online that I got rid of. But sites like Yucata let me play games without needing storage space or a designated playing time. I just need a couple minutes a day to make a move or two. 

Although, to be brutally honest, I've found Attika isn't as good as I remembered. Everything works well but there is a lot of mechanics going on for what is a relatively simple game. It feels a little busy for its depth.

But it is still a fun game and a good game and one I'm going to be playing regularly at Yucata.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8051/attika

7 Steps doesn't quite step high enough for me

After several games of 7 Steps on Yucata, I still haven't decided if I like it or not.

It's an abstract placement game with some luck of the draw, not unlike two of my favorite games, Ingenious and Qwirkle. One of the designers is Michael Keisling made history with his collaborations with the great Wolfgang Kramer and Reinhard Staup is no slouch either. So 7 Steps seems like a game I'd go for.

However, I really feel like the luck of the draw is significantly more powerful in 7 Steps and the actual gameplay becomes more and more resticted.

The gameplay is very simple. You get a hand of seven tokens that are in seven different colors. On your turn, you place the tokens on spaces that match the color. You always have to place your first token on the lowest possible space but you can begin stacking tokens up so you can be forming a staircase or tokens on your turn.

You get points equal to the height of the tokens that you put down. If you get less than eight points, and draw a card from one of two decks. One deck gives you scoring bonuses and the other gives you ways to break the placement rules. Then you get to discard discs before drawing up your hand.

The game ends when someone can't draw their hand to seven and whoever has the most points wins.

One thing that makes the game interesting is that it has a modular board. Seven puzzle pieces. The basic side has every piece as one color and the advanced has them all mixed. I also learned that you don't have to put the pieces in a circular pattern but in other shapes. That said, I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Breaking up the puzzle pieces like that seems to increase the random factor.

Okay, let me get one issue I have with the game clear. I'm very colorblind and it is not even remotely colorblind friendly. Three of the colors are virtually identical to my eyes and a fourth one is very close. Using the mixed board side is virtually unplayable for me. (Pictures of the physical version look not as extreme but, seriously, seven different symbols would have been that hard?)

Still, the color issue aside, the placement restrictions have too often left me with moves that only involves placing one or two discs. And the board can change enough between turns that trying to plan ahead often fails. Spaces and even whole colors can become effectively dead.

The bonus placement cards can help overcome that and can help set up big moves. However, I always feel like I am making them up on the turn as opposed to working my way up to them. And the fact that you really need the cards to make the game work indicates how restricted placement can be.

I do enjoy the individual puzzles that every move gives me enough that I'm still playing the game. However, playing on Yucata means I don't have to own the game and it isn't taking up any precious face-to-face gaming time. Ingenious and Qwirkle have proven themselves to be games I can keep playing for years and have a definite place on my game shelf. I don't think 7 Steps will follow in their footsteps.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161537/7-steps

Meeples set sail for the south seas

Thanks to the power of Yucata, I have had a chance to try out Carcassonne: South Seas.

Like a lot of folks, I have a long history with Carcassonne. It was one of the first designer games I discovered when I first found out there was a wider world of board games out there. I distinctly remember seeing a game of Hunters and Gatherers for the first time and having no idea what was going on with the fish and tiny people.

However, I have to admit that I burned out of the expansions and spin offs a while go. I still play Carcassonne with the first couple expansions and get in regular plays of Hunters and Gatherers. There’s not too many games that I can say I still keep on playing after more than ten years.

The basic Carcassonne formula is that it’s a tile laying game where the players are building a map. You can use your tiny little wooden men to claim landscape features that will score points at the end of the game.

South Seas adds some genuine twists that changes things up. You are building islands and bridges and fishing areas. But, when a feature is scored, you don’t get victory points. You get trade goods. Bridges earn shells while islands get you bananas. Fishing waters will get you fish, which isn’t a surprise.

There’s a stack of trade ships, which is where the points come in. Four of them are revealed at a time, each with a specific set of goods that you need to fork over in order to get those points.

There’s more to the game than that, like trading posts and the ability to take a meeple back from the board. However, that’s the gist of it. You’re not trying to make giant cities and take control of the fields with farmers. You are trying to get the right price to buy them ships.

So, three years late to the party, Carcassonne: South Seas strikes me as a game that is distinct from other Carcassonne games on a fundamental level. However, it does this without sacrificing the relative simplicity and accessibility and depth that makes Carcassonne such a good game.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/147303/carcassonne-south-seas

Why I chose Yucata for online board gaming

When we moved to a new city almost immediately after our son's birth, I decided to make Yucata.de my only online board gaming site.

While my favorite way to play board games is face-to-face, playing games online has been a big part of my board gaming experiences, starting with Brettspeilwelt, which might end up as a series of blogs in and of itself. And I knew that moving across the country with an infant meant that online gaming was going to be my primary form of gaming. (Not that my wife and I don't play games, of course.)

BUT I also knew that online gaming could be a serious time sink. I knew I had to keep it under control. And Yucata was my best one stop, gaming extravaganza.

Three reasons. Turn-based. Selection. Community.

When I say turn-based, I mean that the games aren't necessarily live. I take a turn and the next person gets an email that it's their turn. The modern day version of correspondence chess, only a lot faster. Sometimes I do get in a live game but if I need to leave, it doesn't mess up the game.

With a small kid, it is really nice to have the freedom to get in a move when I feel like it with the flexibility of being interrupted at any time.

Selection? That just means that Yucata has a lot of games and a lot of them are ones I like to play. Some of them are really light games for when I know my brain power is low and heavier games when I want something to make me think. Can't Stop, Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, Castles of Burgundy, there is a lot of solid stuff for someone into German family games and Euro games.

More than that, unlike some iOS sites, like Apple's Game Center, everyone who logs onto Yucata has access to the exact same games. That can make a big difference.

Which ties into community. The best interface in the world isn't any good if you don't have people to play with. And Yucata has a big international community of players. I usually have to wait at most a day to get any given game going.

On top of that, some of my friends from the Midwest joined Yucata to play with me. So Yucata provides me with community in that way as well.

Board gaming is one of my favorite hobbies and Yucata has let keep on doing it while focusing on what's important in my life.

http://www.yucata.de/en