Emerald City and Ted Chiang | Main | Games: Attika

June 08, 2004

Goa to St Petersburg and Pounce

Played three games which were new to me last night and all of them were excellent. In fact I may very well have to buy all three. I probably only buy like 1 in 10 or less of games I play so to go 3 for 3 is pretty incredible (and probably the first time it has happened in many years at least).

The first game is brand new and is called St Petersburg. It is a money management game with an interesting mechanism where the only effect players have on each other is to buy things up so that the others can't get them, but this turns out to be highly significant. I made a few mistakes and got very unlucky at the end or otherwise would have probably had a very close second and perhaps even won.

The second game played, Pounce, is an older one which I have heard recommended but hadn't had a chance to play but now there is a new edition which Sean brought. Each player in the game is either one of several Mice or the single Cat (a role which moves around) trying to catch the Mice. It is basically a reaction game all about quick reflexes based on reading a couple of dice and taking the appropriate action depending on the roll. I don't have very good reflexes so didn't expect to be very good at it, not that with this kind of a game that matters that much as long as one has fun with it, but surprisingly I was quite good. As a Mouse, there were 3 of the 5 of us reasonably equal and two very slow, ineffective mice. However, as the Cat, I was vicious to the Mice, much more effective than anyone else for some reason. Most Cats would take maybe 8 or so attacks to catch all but one of the mice which is the end condition for a 'round' with the one uncaught Mouse becoming the new Cat. I was able to catch all, or all but one of them, usually in 3 attacks or less and at least once in just 1 attack. Anyway, I thought it was very fun and am sure I wouldn't play very much but could have a really good time when I do and it only costs $12. I asked Sean to pick me up a copy from the store he got it at.

Finally, we played Goa, another brand new game which was quite long (2.5 hours or so) but very good. It has a lot in common with the good game Industrial Waste in that it is mostly multi-player solitaire except for the auctions and it also shares a number of specific mechanisms. However, both the solitaire game and the auctions are much more interesting here. The only thing that bothered me at all about the game was that the scores were incredibly close at the end, so close that it seemed pretty random who won. However, I think all the players were quite skilled gamers so that may be fine. I definitely could have improved some things I did and there were a number of different strategies to take, all of which seemed viable, as opposed to Industrial Waste where the maximum innovation/quickly reduce waste/produce and sell a lot combination is almost certainly the only good one. Sure, that is three elements to balance but here there is much more going on to think about. I couldn't even consider what others were doing as my own board demanded all my attention, at least in this first game.

I will probably give all of these ratings of 8 +/- .5 for now. I am sure I'll get a chance to play St Petersburg and Goa several times again soon and I'll see how they hold up to repeated play. I really have no worries about Goa but St Petersburg might lose its luster a bit depending on things.

Posted by aarondf at June 8, 2004 02:31 PM

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