Monday Boardgaming at SS15 Drive Thru McD with Damien, Ong Dun Chuan, Aaron, and LIm Finally was able to play Deadwood for the second time and The Scepter of Zavandor for the first (where I believe I had bought this game 4 years ago and I couldnt find the right moment to bring it to the table). Deadwood Deadwood is a game of the Old West where players have to annex building in order to gain money and benefits provided by them. The objective of the game is to gain the most money. With five players, the board seemed crowded with cowboys and often this will invite a shoot-out as players will attack another players to take control of the desired building. However, there is a downside in attacking as you will get a Wanted Poster. The more Wanted Poster you have at the end of the game, the more fine you have to pay which reduced the total amount of the money you gained. And robbing the bank may potentially leads you to have 2 Wanted Poster as your notoriety spreads among the town. Yet, these posters can be gotten rid off such as going to the Church, ask for forgiveness and redeem yourself. The game has a unique fighting system. Each players will determine the amount of dice they will roll in a shoot-out. The player with a higher amount of dice roll the differences like if Damien having a Gunslinger with 3 dice to roll and Lim has a Greenhorn with only 1 die, Damien will first roll 2 dice to determine whether he kills or wound the opposing cowboy. If a 6 is rolled, the opposing cowboy will be immediately killed. However, a result of 4 or 5 will only result in a wound and a cowboy needs to be inflicted with 2 wounds to die. If a cowboy is not killed, he will immediately get heal at the of the turn. Next, after rolling the differences in dice number, both players will roll the remaining die. This an result in both Damiens and Lims cowboys to be killed and go to boot-hill (cemetery) with no cowboys controlling the targeted building. Scepter of Zavandor Long I wanted to play this game. Currently it s OOP (out-of-print) and the designer of this game also designed Terra Mystica which explain the different player boards that have wizards with varied ability. The idea of this game is that you need to purchase gems to be enchanted in order to draw energy from them so you can acquire special artifacts. Both the gems and artifacts have victory points. However, in order to acquire the artifacts, players need to auction and bid for the them using energy derived from the games and also magic dust. On top of this, there is a knowledge track where players can choose which one to improve. When they max them, they gain 2 VP for each knowledge track when they are at the highest level. The games started slow as each players work to build their economic engines. Though it takes 2 or more hours (Im not sure), my friends find the game immersive and they need to interact with each other in the auction and bidding process. As such, there does not seem to be a significant down-time. However, the challenge is sorting out the different denomination of energy and figuring out how to optimise your purchase. This is a good game that I will be keeping in my collection. It can accommodate up to 5 players, I think 4 will be the sweet-spot.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 17:07:18 +0000