Well many gaming opportunities have come and gone since I last wrote about one. So much to write, so little time.

So rather than bore you all with endless details of 4 or 5 gaming sessions, I’m going to highlight a few games:

Einfach Genial

The other week Brian, Jon and myself had the opportunity to finally break out Einfach Genial (or Simply Ingenious) by Mr. Reiner Knizia (too many wonderful games to even begin to list).

This game had been sitting in the game closet for quite some time waiting to be loved. The problem is (and this is common to Mr. K), it’s only a 4 player game. So when we have 5, 6 or 7 people show up for game night, it becomes a problem. However, everyone was going to be late and I jumped at the chance to bring it to the table.

The game is amazingly simple. It’s ingenious. It’s simply ingenious.

The way it works is this. Each player has a tile tray in front of them that holds 6 game tiles (which are double hexes with two different symbols on them). On your turn you place a double hex on the board. With the exception of the first turn you are allowed to place it anywhere in any direction you choose. If place your tile next to one with a matching symbol you score points. There are 6 different symbols. Which ever one you have the LOWEST score in (ala Tigris and Euphrates), that becomes your score.

Scoring is pretty straight forward. For every matching symbol that touches your hex in a straight line you score a point for. You score in 5 directions (however you never count the second symbol on your double hex). If you look at the picture to the right, just above the tile track you’ll see that the last tile is a blue star (on top) and a purple ring (on the bottom). If you had just placed that tile this is what you would score: 5 blue stars (2 stars on the top and 3 in a straight line on the left) and 1 purple ring (1 purple on the left). As you can see from the orange mass that points could add up really quickly.

Once one of your colors reaches 18 (which is the max limit) you shout, “Ingenious” and take another turn. The game ends when no more tiles can be placed on the board. Open spaces are allowed.

The three of us had a blast playing this game. I think we played it 3 times in a row. Jon always had 3 or 4 colors in Ingenious mode, but he generally had one color that was bottom of the barrel low (like 3). Brian and I didn’t have as many maxed colors but we stayed very close (like with in 1 point) of each other. But despite his best efforts I managed to edge him out every time (usually just by that 1 point) and I remain undefeated at this game.

Die Fugger

In a recent trend of mine, I’ve been picking up a lot of card games that are really board games. This game falls into that category. Die Fugger comes to us from Klaus-Jurgen Wrede (who?), that guy who gave us Carcassone. So I was pretty excited to try this one as well.

Again, this game suffers from the 2 to 4 player syndrome that a lot of my games do. So since opportunity knocked, I opened the door with Brian and Jon again.

Again, another amazingly simple game. In the center of the table you have 9 cards with pictures of florins on them ranging in value from 1 to 9. There are also 5 commodities cards (wine, gems, spices, cloth, and copper). They all start at an initial value of 5.

On your turn you can either draw a card or play a card. Once there are 5 cards of any one commodity on the table the round ends. The top 3 commodities played rise and price, the bottom two fall in price. The top three rise in vale equal to the number of that type of card in play (so if there are 4 wine cards it rises in price 4), but the bottom two only fall in price by one.

As mentioned above all commodities start at a value of 5. So whichever good triggers round end is in trouble. If you’ll recall the values range from 1 to 9, so if the good starting at 5 increase by 5, that would give it a value of 10. However instead of going there it rolls over to 1! Doh. No commodity can decrease past 1, and all goods that go over 9 rolls over to 1. Then players look at the adjusted value of the goods (after they’ve moved up or down) and total their scores. The first player to reach 100 wins.

To make things interesting there are a few other cards in the deck as well. Each good has 3 cards with the royal seal on them. If there are 3 or less of that good on the table at the end of the round, the value is doubled. Anything more and they are counted as standard. In additional to the royal goods, there are also 4 merchant cards. These stay in front of players for the whole game and offer the following advantage: At the end of the round players are dealt 2 new cards. If you have one merchant in play you get an additional 2 cards. If you have 2 merchants in play you get an additional 5 cards. No player may have more than 2 merchants.

It was a crazy game. Jon took the early lead on the first game and Brian was the only player to set aside 2 secret goods for bonus end game scoring. Jon also got out a merchant card early and gathered a pile of cards. However, in the end, the good guys came back and I took the game from Jon by 15 points.

It was a fun little game so we played another one. This one however was no contest. Due to the luck of the draw I got 2 merchant cards during the first round and simply ran away with the game. All and all we decided this was a game we wanted to play again.

Wings of War: Famous Aces

I had a chance to play this at game night on Friday with Marks group. Mark, Tom and myself all crashed in burned while playing Motor Champ and were looking for a small filler to play (while Paul dominated Brian and Rob).

Wings of War is a great little game (yet another card game that is really a board game). In it players are World War I flying aces dog fighting in the skies over Germany. Each player has a deck of movement cards (there are various types some that are fast, some that are more mobile, etc.)

On a turn each player lays down 3 movement cards in the order they which to move them. The game is free form, so all planes start where ever they want on the table and play begins.

One at a time players move their planes. After each plane has moved you check to see if others are in your line of sight and rang. If they are, you take a shot at them. Players draw damage cards that are kept hidden. Once a player reaches his planes damage limit he is out of the game (though you have to trust that a player is being honest).

I jumped in the game late as Tom and Mark had already played two or three rounds, but since we were just having it fun it didn’t really matter. Flying my little Spitfire jumped in the game right on Mark’s tail (Mark was the Red Barron) and the game was on. It was fun to watch planes spinning, rolling and diving in attempts to get position on another plane to take shot. We battled back and forth and Tom’s plane went down in flames as I peppered him relentlessly from behind and the side. That left just Mark and I in the skies.

Mark’s plane wasn’t as fast as mine was but he could make amazingly tight turns and was quickly on my heels. I barrel rolled into a loop and we faced off head to head. Curse you Red Barron, I couldn’t get a shot off before we crossed each other in the skies.

I swung out wide to the right and brought myself behind his plane and opened fire. Thanks to all the damage that Tom had inflicted I was able to knock Mark out of the sky.

What a fun little game. The cool thing is that you can play 2 to 4 players or you can combine two sets and play 8 players (in teams even). There is a new stand alone coming out in January that you can combine with it as well. That will certainly be on my list.

OH, as a note, if you are playing with anal-rules misters who like to argue over exact position, and line of sight, you’ll want to play on some felt or something so that the cards don’t shift or turn slightly as players touch them.

So if you are looking for some holiday gifts any one of the above would be a hit.