Some Games (or "I've Been Neglecting This Blog Too Long"): Istanbul, ZhanGuo, and Deus

I'm Batman.

Ha, had you fooled for a sec.  No, even though I use the Batman excuse whenever I've been negligent about updating this blog, I'm really just busy/lazy/generally unmotivated.

But you deserve an update.  Even though nobody reads this except my best friends.  
But if you are reading this, then we are best friends.  Hello friend!

So without further ado, here's a brand new and much needed Blupdate (that's a blog update, don't they teach you anything in school these days?....)

I got some gaming in with my brother this weekend at a family event.  We played three new games that I had acquired.  He's always my guinea pig for testing out new games.  I wouldn't want to embarrass myself at public events with crappy games.

I'll give you a quick simple run-through of them.  You can thank me later. 
Here they are, in play order:

Istanbul:

 

This guy offers you gems, but the guy in the back has pineapple!

Istanbul is a the 2014 Kennerspeil des Jahres game award winner.  It isn't super heavy, nor is it super simple or stupid.

The goal of the game is to get 5 rubies, or 6 rubies in a 2 player game like we played.  We decided that was a pointless goal.  Instead, we decided that the goal of the game was to acquire this man's fez, which costs exactly 6 rubies.  So get rubies, say "Hey, I'd like to buy that fez," and win.

Quality fez, costs more than you would think.

 On your turn, you move your merchant around the board, up to two spaces.  You then can drop on of your assistants off at the space and take an action, pick up an assistant that you previously dropped there and take an action, or do nothing if you do have any assistants left to help you (because you are worthless human being without your assistant labor).  Actions involve getting money, getting goods, selling goods, buying tiles, your typical collecting and buying stuff mechanics.

You get gems buy buying them (for money from the jewelry guy, for goods from the sultan's palace) or accomplishing other goals (like visiting all the mosques or getting the super deluxe max size wheelbarrow for carrying your goods). 

There are also some minor rules, like getting bonus cards that let you do extra stuff, or running into the smuggler or governor pieces which give you bonus stuff, or sending people's family members to jail...all routine activities. 

Nice components.  Nice table cloth.

I was one turn away from winning, but a super combo snagged my brother the win.  Seems like this game is either going to be very close or someone will run away with it, no in between.

With Splendor being my go-to starter game for teaching people new the world of awesome games, I think Istanbul is a nice step up on the way to teaching heavier games that I so much enjoy.

ZhanGuo:

Behold my Great Wall and Great Beard!

In ZhanGuo, you are building up China by doing lots of stuff.  The rules are fiddly and it takes forever to learn.  But it is fun.

On each turn you play a card from your hand.  You either play it on your player board or out on the main board.  Playing on the main board let's you take an action of your choice (building things on the board, getting cubes, moving cubes around, the normal things).  Then, if the number on the card is either above or below the last card played (it depends which symbol we are looking at) you trigger symbols that appear on your player board (from cards you played there instead of playing them on the main board) and get bonus points or actions.

 There is a lot going on.  You collect some kind of cultural tokens corresponding unifying China, and majorities for these each round grant you bonuses.  You are also trying to build parts of the Great Wall, which get you multipliers for completing tasks by endgame.  And you are trying to secure governors in the provinces, where majorities at the endgame score lots of points.  And you are trying to put these walls and governors in places that match up with certain randomized goals that also score you endgame points.

The real idea is balancing between building your tableau and taking immediate actions, choosing how to use your cards most efficiently.  But with a lot of tiny little rules to fill in the gaps that make this game both obnoxiously hard to learn but more interesting to play than it initially sounds.

I lost in a close game.  Really liked this one though.

Deus:

"Deus": from the Latin word meaning "6-pack armor abs"

Deus is another card-based tableau building game with a center board building element.  It is, however, much lighter than ZhanGuo and relies a lot more on luck of the draw (as many card games do).  

In the game, you either play a card with the necessary resources to a build a building of a certain color/category and place it on the board (there are production buildings which make stuff, military buildings which fight stuff, and some other things) or you discard some cards and choose the color of one of the discarded cards to activate a special favor from the associated god (like, for each discarded card take money, or for each discarded card add a new building to your supply).

The coolness comes in that whenever you actually build a building, you activate all building special abilities of that color already on your tableau starting from the bottom up.  So the game really really ramps up as you build more cards.

This may not sound too terribly new, but it feels pretty different from most games I've played.  Also, I think the board and components are super cool looking, always a plus.

Deus board, Deus cards, and a teddy bear in the background for whatever reason.

I liked it, would play it again for fun, but it doesn't feel like I know well enough what cards exist yet for me to go into this game with any sort of plan or idea of what to do.  Still cool looking though.


That sums up this past weekend.

In other news, DID YOU KNOW THEY MADE A KUNG FU PANDA 3!!!!!