Ropecon was entertaining. Good games in good company, what else can you want? Some highlights:
- Nine-player Eclipse with the Rise of the Ancients expansion. Lovely. Took us slightly over three hours, too, which I think is pretty cool. Ok, so I may not play any more nine-player games – it’s a bit too much, and I still prefer the game with four players – there’s lots of lovely stuff in the expansion. If you like Eclipse, you’ll find lots of interesting material in the expansion. Suggest.
- Trains remains a hit. It’s a wonderful game. Enthusiastic.
- 1830 Cardgame is a curious beast. You can see the connections to Lokomotive Werks, another Dieter Danziger game, but it’s a different game. Very spartan and minimalistic version of 1830. Buy shares, improve companies, pay dividends. The core of the game is the taxation mechanism, where the poorest player pays 0% tax, richest player pays 20% tax and the rest pay 10%. You don’t want to be rich. If you’re the richest player in the end game, you won’t win. I’m not sure the game works, but it should be interesting to figure out if that is indeed the case. Suggest.
After Ropecon, I haven’t played much.
- Africana is a pickup-and-deliver romp with Colonial Africa theme. Kind of interesting, but I’m not terribly thrilled. I’m going to play it again, though, to see if it gets more interesting. Indifferent.
- Monster-Falle is a charming family game. I’ve only played it with two players so far and the game definitely needs more to shine, because it has a clever team-play feature, where each player is teamed with both neighbours and tries to dump monsters in a pit with the help of the other player. It sounds like fun. The game works with two, but is clearly better with more. Suggest.