dorky post about games, #12765
So I got a new one. Tikal. It's marginally a game about exploring Mayan ruins and bringing back treasures -- sort of an Indiana Jones kind of feel within a Eurogame setting. It also came in handy to play it before watching Survivor.
It's a game where each turn is spent uncovering the jungle and getting 10 action points to spend on various things to do during your turn, and the game ends once all of the jungle is uncovered. As you might expect, it's also a game where there are many things you can do to increase your score but you don't have enough time or points to do everything you want to. It's also fairly easy to learn, the English portion of the rules being 3 or 4 pages of a small booklet.
There are certain kinds of players I could never, ever, ever play this with: the kinds of people who will min/max each turn to death, taking an hour to suss out each possible move with chess-like precision until the other players set fire to the board and their hair. Along with hyper-competitive disorder (HCD), analysis paralysis (AP) is a malady that afflicts a surprisingly large number of people and is quite serious. Ask your doctor today.
However, the game is fucking gorgeous to look at. And the Mayan temples you explore get larger on the board as more levels are uncovered. And also, with the right mix of people -- read, casual players -- I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun. (Plus there are cool volcano tiles and treasure pieces too.) Mer was by far the better treasure-hunter during our first game; she might've lapped me in the end.
Another game we've had a lot of fun with is Caesar and Cleopatra, a 2-player card game. I got it in Greenfield, MA over Thanksgiving -- support local businesses! -- because I was interested to begin with, and completely dorked out at Greenfield's game store. (Like that's any great surprise, but still.) We were initially somewhat skeptical about it but have warmed up to it a lot, mostly because it has intriguing things like slaves, orgies (although that particular orgy card is more annoying than the rest, and I can't believe I just strung those particular words together), and gigolos (not pictured).
The main thing we've liked about it is that at its heart it's a bluffing game, where any advantage in face-up card strength ebbs away over time, but face-down card strength is a little easier to defend, and also gives you the advantage of stealth, and encourages bluffing. It's very hard to explain here but is very clever in practice -- and the schadenfreude bluffing aspect is a big hit with sick fucks like me and the divine Miss M.
This post will now implode under its own weight, causing a singularity of dorkitude. Save yourselves.