Session - Tash Kalar & Coal Baron

26th of November 2013 (Tuesday)

Our sitter is on holiday for two days so my wife took the day off yesterday to babysit and it falls to me today to make sure Padawan Minigeek doesn’t get herself into too much trouble. To help out (not with babysitting), Uncle Mo came by to help with the first play session of Tash Kalar & Coal Baron! (Big thank you to CK & Wai Yan for making all this possible)

Game(s) Played:
Tash Kalar

Coal Baron

Session – Tash Kalar

Player(s):
Hayen
Mo

Tash Kalar is Pan Chvátil’s latest design which seems to break away from his trend of designing component heavy games. Tash Kalar comes with a small game board, 4 school (faction) decks with their accompanying chips, some additional cards and that’s it. Despite the seeming size of the game, the adage that his designs are complex yet engaging remains true with Tash Kalar.

In Tash Kalar, you are a summoner specializing in summoning creatures into an arena. Perhaps the hardest thing to wrap your mind around is the fact that your creatures only hang around for 1 turn (summon-do their thang-fizzle) which kinda belies the general understanding of a summoning. Your summoned being’s effect is to change the landscape of patterns a Go/WeiQi board by moving or removing pieces on the board or simply for being summoned onto the board & thereafter becoming a part of the landscape. I feel like I’m doing this badly. Basically you are trying to achieve certain patterns on a board by either placing pieces or summoning beings (which become pieces) on to the board, accomplishing this gives a Player points & first to 6 points wins (Mo it appears that 6 points is only for the intro game, we should have increased this to 9 points, in accordance with the "Disputed Wins (through cheating, error & absurd luck) Act", I demand a rematch). Vlaada’s games have never been easy to explain.

As a matter of course (most of Vlaada’s designs have this feature), this is not the only variant of Tash Kalar that can be played, there is also the "Deathmatch" option which gives points for removing your opponent’s pieces and the first to 18 points wins. But this session report covers the pattern making variant otherwise known as "High Form" so read on for that.

Here is Mo doing some AP with his Southern Imperial School. You can see the Task Cards (or the patterns requested with their corresponding scores) at left

I had originally tried to contest for the central 9 tiles with Mo but got obliterated

In the end this was the best I could achieve before bowing to defeat

Mo’s middle two Task Cards were the reason why I was fighting for the central 9 tiles

We interrupt this broadcast to show Padawan Minigeek casting off the shackles of modern modesty by going pantsless and stuffing her bib behind the sofa cushions

Mo felt his All Star team deserved pictorial recognition here

Mo felt his picture taking skillz deserved recognition as well… There are like 3 more of these so I’ll limit them to just 1 for the readers’ sake

So feeling like I just got my bottom (we shall remain PG-13) handed to me, we decided to play the full game with the unique Highland & Sylvan School in "High Form" mode including the Legendary Beings deck (which I drew the mighty Leviathan & World’s Oldest Tree but never got to use them).

Here you can see Padawan Minigeek mimicking us by taking pieces and replacing them. She secreted one blue piece upon herself but turned it in later, slimed of course

This round was really close. Learning from the previous round, I spread my pieces wider and sought to place my Heroic pieces next to Mo’s pieces and quietly tried to spread my pieces cross board for the win

Sadly it was not to be and I was only 1 piece short from reaching the end (see previous pic) and only ended up with these two Task Cards

Mo’s really awesome All Star Team. He took back a whole turn when I indicated that I had won (I was feeling nice today) and threw on his Werewolf & Hungry Bear to snap up Devastation & Heroic Destruction in two turns

I was 1 Action away from this Task

Time Taken: 120 minutes

Results Of Game(s)
Game 1
Winna – Mo (6 Points)
Dead Last – Hayen (2 Points)

Game 2
Winna – Mo (7 Points)
Dead Last – Hayen (3 Points)

I was going to write that I felt Tash Kalar left me wanting for more, a feeling similar from games like the expanded Race For The Galaxy & Eminent Domain where it feels like it is over before you get into the full swing of things or that maybe the "High Form" variant didn’t suit my tastes. Then I discover we were playing 3 points short of the End Game trigger. Doh.

Apart from that beef, I didn’t love it (probably because I was so badly beaten today) but I enjoyed it. Each turn is an exercise in maximizing your two (oh so few) actions to put you in a position to either score Task Cards now or in the immediate future (your next turn) because planning any further into the future is an exercise in futility. I mean look at my case, Mo decimated 7 of my pieces (easily half of what I had) in 2 turns with his Werewolf & Hungry Bear. Tash Kalar is by no means going to be one of Vlaada’s biggest hits for me (Through The Ages currently sits on that throne) but it is a brilliant game that is easy to set up and get going in a short period of time and something I would play even if I didn’t feel particularly like gaming (say after a losing streak).

I suspect Tash Kalar may end up being my super sub game when either nobody else bar one turns up for KFCgamers or someone shows up late and everyone is already in the midst of another game (the former more than the latter sadly) then I can break this out and still have a great time since Tash Kalar is really designed to be a 2 Player game although the rules accommodate 2 – 4 Players.

I’m not sure what Mo thought of Tash Kalar but he spied Coal Baron with much interest and said "Okay let’s try that one" so read on for the session report of that.

Rating: 7/10

Session – Coal Baron

Player(s):
Hayen
Mo

As I mentioned before, I don’t have many pick up and deliver games in my arsenal (I think Kings Of Air & Steam is the only one I have until now) so when a good one comes along I usually pay a little closer attention. Coal Baron ranked reasonably well (in the top 15) on the Fairplay Rankings at Essen 2013 and the rules didn’t seem particularly complex so I decided to book one when the pre-order thread came up from BGC.

Coal Baron is designed by two persons, namely Michael Kiesling & Wolfgang Kramer (Herr Kramer is like the Godfather of eurogames & Herr Kiesling is his oft partner in crime). Coal Baron combines many elements of what define a eurogame and mesh them together to create a neat little boardgame about coal mining. In Coal Baron, Players are using their workers to dig tunnels and extract different types of coal (is there such a thing? Oh, well Google confirms it so it must be true) and accumulate sets of delivered order cards by delivering the coal in accordance with your clienteles’ requirements. Points are scored on delivery as well as at the end of each round (to a total of 3 rounds) where various feats are awarded such as delivering the most yellow coal or delivering the most orders via horse carriage etc. The key to doing well in Coal Baron I suspect is to learn to memorize your opponents' delivered orders and manage your little coal mine in order to ensure you maintain majority in the various scoring categories available.

As depicted in the pictures below, clearly I am not suited to playing a game with the end in mind which kinda qualifies me as a strange and weird eurogamer.

This is a big boo boo already. Players are penalized for not having balanced tunnels so you shouldn't have two gray tunnel tiles on one side so soon

This is Mo's mine and he focused on picking up all the double mine cart tunnels for efficiency. Just a side note to those who've played Coal Baron, I read rules before looking at diagrams and for a full five minutes thought the tunnel tiles stack on each other. Lol, whilst Mo figures this out intuitively

It was in the 3rd (and final) shift that I realized I should be challenging Mo on his slim majorities instead of ballooning up my own majorities that Mo had already given up on. See my Barrow Order Cards (second row)?

Compared to Mo's more balanced approach and not using more than 4 workers to displace me, its kinda obvious who won. Plus his order cards gave him way more points than mine did. He was at least 50 points ahead by the second shift

I should have had my head in the game but it was a fun day with Padawan Minigeek and Uncle Mo. Although by this hour Padawan Minigeek could do with a nice nap

Time Taken: 60 minutes

Results Of Game(s)
Winna – Mo (153 Points)
Dead Last – Hayen (124 Points)

Good thing Mo took these 2 pics else I wouldn't have remembered

In hindsight the gap was not as big as I had thought and mostly because I bucked up in the 3rd shift. It still felt (and I suspect is true) that no matter what I had done, it was clearly Mo's win after the end of the 2nd shift. I'm not sure if this is only true when playing with 2 Players but it does feel that the game has a runaway leader issue. I think that with 3 Players it becomes a significantly tighter fight on the majorities of each type.

I'm a little pissed at myself for not playing better so rather than spouting off some rambling about how broken the game is, I'm going to reserve my final thoughts after a few more plays (and definitely with more Players).

Rating: Inconclusive