Game(s) Played:
Dungeon Petz
Belfort
Session – Dungeon Petz
Player(s):
Da Panda (Blue)
Milo (Red)
Mo (Green)
Nitsuj (Yellow)
It is the night before the first day of the Chinese New Year and families gather in the homes of their parents to celebrate the Chinese New Year’s Eve. With none of us knowing how to cook any traditional Chinese New Year dishes and all of us being under 30, we decided to go with an Italian/Western style reunion dinner a.k.a. Pizza & Fries. Most places were either closed or too expensive anyway plus we were more interested in seeing who was the best at raising little Dungeon Petz (my latest acquisition) for the evening’s activities.
Dungeon Petz is a difficult game to keep track of without taking notes, especially when you are playing with the full complement of 4 Players. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to pick the inner recesses of my brain’s HDD and see if a coherent recollection of events can be transcribed to this post.
I was the more aggressive in picking up Petz at the initial start of the game and trying to ensure that I had the 3 Petz / 4 Cages ratio most of the time to enable efficient cleaning of poop from my Cages. Da Panda simply picked up the Long Handled Shovel (Imps can clean Cages without getting hurt) which I neglected out of sheer folly. Mo had troubles at the start as he was shut out from the Petz recruitment process at the start and I picked up the mature Pet in the next round, leaving him to start the process of raising Petz until Round 3. Milo had a pristine record of no Suffering/Mutation again but managed that through only handling 2 Petz at a time, although she now does have the record of oldest Stegobully sold (size 7) in our games.
There's a pic of Milo's super oldy Stegobully
I picked up the scoring early and pulled off an early lead in Round 3 when the Event (Magic Show) & Customer (Warlock) were both Magic related, enabling me to score big with my Ghosty. I managed to score some points selling my Fiery Fairy to the Lich Lord in the subsequent round but failed to score much in the final rounds as my Petz were not big enough to sell and instead focused on end game scoring. Da Panda suffered from some Suffering for not being able to play with her Petz but ended up losing a tonne of points because she had not “arranged” for her Imps’ relatives to be brought into her Burrow. Milo & Mo managed to catch up through well timed placements on the Platform although I felt Milo spent too much time on her Stegobully and should have sold more Petz to catch up on points.
In my opinion, I probably will not do as well in our subsequent rounds of Dungeon Petz as Da Panda & Mo are more aware on the significance of the Event & Customer Tiles’ symbols and will probably fight me more on the recruitment of Petz to match those symbols. I pretty much had quite an easy time getting the right Pet for the right time with the exception of me overlooking the size requirements for the last round’s 2 Customers.
Even so, grouping of Imps was still fairly competitive in that there was only 1 occasion where the spaces on the board were fully occupied. Dungeon Petz was an average length game for us this round at 90 minutes but I suspect would be longer with AP Players as there is no rule to say discarded Need Cards are not open information and Players may want to look at their odds, especially towards the late game rounds.
The traditional Imp conga line
Time Taken: 90 minutes
Results Of Game
Winna – Nitsuj (60 Points)
2nd – Mo (59 Points)
3rd – Milo (56 Points)
4th – Da Panda (Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away)
Can you see her? Far, far away?
Comments:
Nitsuj
"Dungeon Petz is a really cool game. It is intricately designed and extremely thematic and I look forward to playing this as many chances as I get."
Rating: 9/10
Session – Belfort
Player(s):
Da Panda (White)
Milo (Yellow)
Mo (Red)
Nitsuj (Blue)
We spent a short time arguing about what game to play next with Da Panda favouring another round of Dungeon Petz (probably because she lost) whilst Milo & Mo were pretty much short-circuited (Dungeon Petz does tend to be a bit on the heavy side). Seeing as Mo has not joined us in Belfort, we decided to amend that little exclusion in his gaming experience.
My strategy was to have a healthy income of surplus 1 or 2 Coins each turn and to build Buildings that were actually useful over a couple of turns. I also spread myself to more sectors of the board and was content to hold dominance in only 1 measly sector and fight for 2nd or 3rd place in the others. The strategy worked fairly well, I was not disrupted quite as much once I settled in for Turn Order 3 but I think I should have deigned to construct a few more buildings. The logic behind this is simply as follows, I lost in the Elves/Dwarves majority by a fair margin because I felt with more Players the Guilds became fairly crowded & there was not much point in having so many Workers if you couldn’t use them plus I could only draw 1 Card a turn and was building 1/2 Buildings each turn already anyways so… yea, no real need for more Workers. So that was the shortcoming in my strategy and I was only 1 Point behind Milo but fell behind at the last turn.
We always got gross stuff on our playing table
Da Panda had tonnes of Coins as is her usual practice, typically mining or camping the Bankers’ Guild for Coins but her buildings were less strategically placed and she did spend a lot of time jostling for the Turn Order 1 Crest. Mo for his first time out only did marginally better than Da Panda, most due to better placement of buildings, particularly buildings like the Keep and the Gatehouse. However, I think he built just a tinge too many of these costly buildings resulting in him lagging behind a fair bit in the race.
I do notice that with more Players, it does become easier to manage your economy and found myself and the other Players never in situations where we did not have enough Coins for taxes/actions. However, it does cause a heck of a lot more AP (Analysis Paralysis) which Milo succumbed to in her last round of play. Her AP was so bad that on the instant when she finally put down her Workers and removed her hand from the board, we quickly resolved all the actions so that she could not change her mind (again) which she protested vehement that she wanted to (again) but we just didn’t really care at that point.
Only yellow and blue seemed to be everywhere on the board
Time Taken: 120 minutes
Results Of Game
Winna – Milo (40 Points)
2nd – Nitsuj (36 Points)
3rd – Mo (30 Points)
4th – Da Panda (28 Points)
Final scoring
Comments:
Nitsuj
"I have to say that Belfort has surprisingly not worn out its welcome with me. It is still every bit as challenging and involved and continues to be a game I’d be willing to play if someone suggests it. The duration does make this game not as great as it should be but a lot of it comes down to Player AP which can be solved simply by bringing your Chess Clock to the next game. Be warned Milo, we may actually do it."
Rating: 8/10
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