Game(s) Played:
Welcome back to this month's gaming session report on the SWAGamers, many of our regular Players were either called away to answer the greater mysteries of life or nursing sleep deprivation from too much partay-ing the night before. And so, the newer gang sat down to the equivalent of dwarf fortress in a boardgame called, Caverna whilst the bleary eyed ones decided to occupy ourselves being the master architects in a little fantasy town called Belfort.
Session – Caverna
Game: Caverna
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg
Players: 1 – 7 Players
Playing Time: 210 minutes (This Play: 210 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Tile & Worker Placement
Player(s):
In retrospect I should have participated in some dwarven land & mountain-scaping in Caverna instead of going off to giving way to Belfort. The rules in Caverna are far more complex and I was too involved in Belfort to be much help to the other group when it came to rules explanation.
Sitting at the same table provided some comedic relief as comments from one group were misheard by the other group to be from their own game
The strategy to Caverna is somewhat strange where you are trying to be a specialist in either adventuring (where you bring back lots of goodies as loot) or farming or mining whilst at the same time, trying to ensure that other Players are not the only specialists of their chosen field in the game. This becomes particularly troublesome at higher Player counts, becoming like investors who abandon strategy in favour of chasing after the next series of hot stocks until they get buried in transaction costs.
Here we are at the start of the game, so many pretty components
Results Of Game(s)
The following are the results of the game as well as the titles given based on the scoring of categories:
Winner – Tham (85 VPs) "Breeder" & "Farmer"
Second – Luke (81 VPs) "Interior Designer" & "Tycoon"
LAST – Liw (69 VPs) "Breeder" & "No Family Planning"
LAST – Melody (69 VPs) "Miner" & "No Family Planning"
The last few rounds of any worker placement game inevitably result in chairs being abandoned for higher vantage points
Session – Belfort
Game: Belfort
Designer: Jay Cormier & Sen-Foong Lim
Players: 2 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 120 minutes (This Play: 150 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Area Control & Worker Placement
Player(s):
I've always imagined Belfort to be an upgraded version of Monopoly. Essentially it is still the same game where you struggle with other Players to own specific spots on the board, try to collect money each round and is a bit too long in my opinion. This may sound terrible to veteran boardgamers but you will be surprising how calming and soothing the term Monopoly sounds to the initially boardgame phobic.
If nothing else, it definitely looks a lot prettier than Monopoly
The premise of Belfort is simple. You have Dwarves & Elves who will collect gold (to buy building plans) & building materials (to build the buildings in the plans). The buildings you build have two purposes, the first being to give you the Player a special ability and the second is for the Player to "choup" a spot on one of the districts (slices) of Belfort. At the end of each of the three scoring rounds, each district will give points to the Player with the most & second most buildings in that district. Points will also be given to Players with the most Dwarves, Elves & Gnomes (Ed: We played this correctly guys!) However, gaining points results in higher taxes (what doesn't result in higher taxes these days) so you need to balance the need for points against your tax liability to the government of Belfort.
I did this by building a tonne of buildings that provide me income each turn
Another interesting thing we discovered about Belfort today is that changing the turn order in the game is not necessarily for becoming the first Player. We found that going last on a scoring round allows the Player to make changes to area majority in each district last before scoring happens. This interesting concept dawned upon Gideon & myself right as we entered the last scoring round and I managed to secure going last just before him.
This district is mine!
Results Of Game(s)
All built up
Winner – Justin (39 VPs)
Second – Moses (36 VPs)
Third – Gideon (34 VPs)
LAST – Henry (28 VPs) "Most Efficient Award"
Henry wins the "Most Efficient Award" in this game because he didn't increase his number of Dwarves & Elves at all during the course of the game and still managed to keep up with the pack. Just a note that I decided to use only Guilds that gave resources in our game as I felt it gives a better sense of "budgeting" for the number of resources you need as opposed to "guessing" when for example I have Guilds that allow stealing of resources from other Players.
And that's all for our meet up this month. I am really glad that I gave Belfort another chance today to discover new things about it and winning is of course, icing on the cake.
Until next time, keep calm and play better.
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