We were supposed to give Jimmy's copy of Idealogy a spin this week but he had to reschedule due to work commitments. In the end I suggested we run Glass Road (always the need to scratch the new acquisition itch) & give the Marvel themed deck builder, Legendary, a try. I'm not a Marvel geek by any stretch of the imagination (even before the movies started pumping out) but I do know a fair bit of lore (at least the ones without the convoluted storylines) & being able to recruit Avengers & X-Men to battle the forces of evil had me as excited as a chocoholic in a Hershey's Factory. Plus Gideon has got all the expansions to boot :P
Game(s) Played:
Famiglia
Glass Road
Legendary
Session – Famiglia
Player(s):
Hayen
Mo
Whilst waiting for the others to arrive (it was going to be a nice quiet session this weekend), I decided a rematch with Mo to show who was the bigger Don on the streets was warranted & picked out Famiglia & this time, we managed to play it the right way with all rules adhered to (Yes, it is something of a novelty for us).
Me abusing the Accountants to take back Mercenaries & Brutes to hire the Asian mobsters with lotsa points
I thought I had a good lead on the Mercenaries & Chinese gangsters but Mo blindsided me when he snatched the level 3 Mercenary & then proceeded to quickly claim all FOUR Mob Bosses! His Mercenary Boss, aptly named Fats Monroe, was the big trigger here since I literally somehow got stuck with only level 2 mobsters and couldn't quite progress from there. Whilst the Brutes are supposed to counterbalance the usefulness of the Mercenaries, I feel the Mercenaries come out slightly ahead as you can retrieve them back into your hand & potentially keep reusing them infinitely. The only way to get Brutes back is to use the Accountants which makes it less efficient.
My final mob, highest ranked mobster - Ema Gelati, which is a little sad
Mo decided to just show off his Mob Bosses
Time Taken: 30 minutes
Results Of Game(s)
Winna – Mo (146 Points)
Dead Last – Hayen (59 Points)
Come to think of it, that sounds like an absurdly high score. Gideon & Esther had arrived just as we were wrapping up so I didn't think to audit Mo's score at the time but man... seems unreal (hint hint).
Anyways, I wouldn't have won seeing as just his Mob Bosses alone were already worth 45 points.
Rating: 8/10 (No change in my rating, still a solid 8)
Session – Glass Road
Player(s):
Esther
Gideon
Hayen
Mo
I've read the rulebook a couple of times (both hardcopy & softcopy) to get a feel of how to teach the game & rounded off my downloaded knowledge by watching Rahdo Runs Through... Glass Road. This really, really helped.
As mentioned in the previous post, Glass Road is the shy little brother of Uwe Rosenberg's two games that came out during Essen 2013. In design, the game is more similar to Ora Et Labora (due to the inclusion of, his now trademark, production wheel) with the introduction of the role selection mechanic (ala Glory To Rome, RFTG & Eminent Domain).
Players basically select Specialists (Roles) to perform actions & this is where the mind games start because (1) A leading Player who chooses a Specialist no-one else has in their hand gets bonus actions & (2) If other Players have Specialists in hand that the leading Player chose, they get a free action by following (those who've played any of the similar games I mentioned in the previous paragraph should have an instantaneous grasp of how this works). The various Specialists allow Players to harvest resources, terraform the landscape of their board & build buildings.
Instead of a universal Production Wheel, each Player is given two production wheels of their own which have now been upgraded into one glass factory & one brick factory. Instead of having the billions & billions of resource tiles, gaining & using resources with the factories simply means moving the respective resource's token on your personal production wheel. Each factory has the luxury goods (glass & brick) on one side of the dial & the resources required to produce these luxury goods on the other (food, water, sand, clay, charcoal, wood) & when a Player gains the necessary resources to produce a luxury good, the factory automatically turns the dial & produces the luxury good immediately. The design is ingenious in both its functionality & theme. This combo between the role selection & production wheel mechanic surprisingly works really well & keeps the game nicely tensed & fast paced.
I was aiming for the Cooperage & Springhouse combo to turn my wood into water that would give me points but was short 1 build action & eventually lost the Springhouse to Esther (who built it for lack of anything better to do... argh)
I focused mainly on my brick production because so many buildings seemed to need wood, clay & brick (which in hindsight seems only logical). Having lost the Springhouse to Esther I decided to change course and build a Sand Pit which would give me half a point for each sand, whilst I waited for another point scoring solution to present itself.
Me with my brick factory at maximum bricks (red token on the lower wheel)
Then guess what? The Water Mill (effectively two times better than the Springhouse) showed up! This meant I had to go back to water which was contradictory to my Sand Pit (since it turned water, a resource that was giving 1 point each, into sand that was half a point)
Mo then asked a good question, "Where is your water?" seeing as my water resource was all dried up at 0.
Bingo! Building the Water Tank netted me 7 Water & the Log Driver gave me 7 Wood for the Water I had. I should have built the Slipway to take advantage of the wood (see previous pic) but so much to do, so few actions as usual
Mo really hated his Sand Deposit because it was an unused space that gave him no points. I was really surprised that his Estate gave him so many points & all he had to do besides that was score maximum points with glass & bricks to net the win
Esther did well for her first real Euro I believe by simply sticking to the basics and building for the sake of the base points the building provided. I think this would have served her better in Le Havre because building combination in this game is a really big deal
I had no idea what Gideon was trying to do but he antagonised Mo no end (usually that's my job) by selecting nearly all the same Specialists that Mo wanted thereby restricting Mo from gaining bonus actions
Time Taken: 180 minutes
Results Of Game(s):
Winna – Mo (18.5 Points)
Second - Hayen (15 Points)
Third - Esther (14.5 Points)
Dead Last – Gideon (12.5 Points)
As you can see, the difference in points is minute. I am somewhat surprised that Mo could have won with only 2 buildings (one of which was useless) but I think this is more due to me neglecting glass & using up all my brick to build a building combo that was not very effective. Looking at the score now, I realize Esther's strategy actually had merit in that it would only take one mistake on my part for her to secure second place.
Rating: 9/10
Better than Caverna? Surely not! But yes, I honestly feel Glass Road is a better designed game for its lack of excesses which captures the essence of what makes those mechanics fun in a game & thereby increasing the speed of play without losing any of the exciting, fun bits. Until I can budget more time for my hobby, Glass Road will be hitting the table a fair few more times than Caverna.
Session – Legendary
Player(s):
Esther
Gideon
Hayen
Mo had to go off so it was down to the three of us to take on the forces of evil led by Magneto (honestly this guy's alignment must be True Neutral seeing the number of times he changes sides) & hire heroes from the Avengers & X-Men to save the day.
Legendary takes the Deck Building genre (similar to the likes of Thunderstone) & turns the queue of monsters into a conveyor belt instead whereby a new Villain is added on each Player's turn & once a Villain reaches the end of the conveyor belt, they manage to escape (nearly never ever happens in movies) which is never good for the Players' heroes' reputation. This does add a dose of tension & urgency in this semi-cooperative game whereby Player's can't really take their time to "hoard Gold & Silver" (as mentioned in Dominion, another deck builder) to hire the best Heroes since there'd be no one left to protect by then.
This game just made my brain turn on the geek mod
I tried to spread my colours (Captain America gives big bonuses for having various colours in your hand) & keep Rogue & Hulk around for their high attack abilities. True to the superhero in me, I decided to bulldoze for attack oriented heroes & mostly ignored heroes that allowed me to hire better heroes. Each hostage lost was a stab in my superhero pride, apparently it's a superhero "new to the business" condition because Gideon was definitely of the "even superheroes can't save everybody" mentality.
About halfway through the game I had managed to take out Ultron, Doc Ock & The Lizard (the villain from the not-so-good reboot of Spider Man)
At the end I had managed to take out the Juggernaut, rescue some bystanders & attack Magneto twice! I guess no one can stop the mean green machine
Esther's army of Jean Greys rescued so many hostages it gave her the win as each hostage gives the rescuer one point. On top of that she did a double tap on Magneto as well, nobody messes with the Phoenix I guess
Time Taken: 30 minutes
Results Of Game(s):
Winna – Esther (29 Points)
Second - Hayen (26 Points)
Dead Last – Gideon (22 Points)
Rating: 7/10
I'd play Legendary again at the drop of a hat just to try out the various heroes & villains but will probably not add it to my collection as I think it takes too many expansions to make the game really good (otherwise known as the marketing strategy of deck builders).
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