Gamers: Henry (rhyen), CK Au (jack208), Heng (ayheng)

Games: Dungeon Lords, Agricola Farmers of Moor

Location: Old Town Kopitiam Cheras Google Map 
Date/Time: 26 February 2010 (Fri) 8.30 PM – 4.00 AM

Boardgamecafe.net Meetup Report @ Old Town Kopitiam Cheras 26/2/2010
by ayheng

Right, so we had a quick gaming session yesterday, quick meaning two games and we ended at 4am.

one of the training scenarios

The rules explanation was easier than I thought but it was helped no doubt by jack208 and rhyen’s fascination with the puzzle-solving aspect of the training scenarios. I think casual gamers might be turned off immediately with the training. However it is of paramount importance as I observed that in all four training missions, jack208 and rhyen had numerous questions, either one of which could turned out to be game breakers if went unexplained. 

Explaining Dungeon Lords 

jack208’s starting dungeon  

imps mining and working the dungeon rooms  

invading adventurers

So what did we think of this game? I thought it was fantastic, it went at a fast pace and there were only twelve actions to be taken before the adventurers start pillaging through your dungeon. The actions selection was less crowded than anticipated and the game wasn’t as tough as some claimed. 

individual dungeon lords action selection 

The main game action selection board  

one of the monsters for hire. the kiddy artwork is misleading, the game IS complicated.

Of course there’s a caveat that we did two rules wrong, one was that we did not paid the monster’s hiring costs as we thought it applied only on Pay Day. Hence we were quite low on our Evil-o-meter and the Evil Reduction action did not have to be taken often. We also failed to attract the Paladin due to our failure to pay for the monster’s hiring cost with the Evil-o-meter. It could have posted a challenge for us.

We scored low on the Evil-o-meter

The wizards also got powered down in our game as I thought erroneously that 3 magic points were needed at all times to cast spells. turns out the total magic points needed corresponds to the rounds number eg. Round 1 require 1 magic point, Round 2 require 2 magic points, etc. As it were, we all scored in the 20s. 

captured adventurers

jack208 and rhyen professed to like this game more than Galaxy Trucker due to the less random nature of the adventurers pillaging step. There’s control over the type of adventurers to attract, the monsters and traps to employ. Overall a thumbs up.  

using jedi mind tricks to find out the next trap card…

Next we did Agricola: Farmers of the Moor. Briefly, this expansion introduced fuel as a additional resource and houses require heating every harvesting phase. The idea is that house expansion will be reined in by this additional requirement. There is also a novel addition where every player’s board has a pre-determined setup of woods and moors. This does much to differentiate each player’s subsequent development. 

The new initial setup

The new free actions is another novel approach as they are useful enough to warrant obtaining at times but taking it it could mean giving up lucrative first picks of the traditional Agricola actions.

Horses are a mixed bag as they could be high point scorers but have low food value. Personally I did not take any horses in my game so I can’t say its impact on the overall game.

I would give this expansion a thumbs up as well as it introduces new niggles to an old game which felt natural and smooth. There’s more things to take care of and to me can be overwhelming at times. Those Minor Improvements and Occupation cards still give me the analysis paralysis.

In our game, I did the traditional farming of grain and vegetables and trying to combo the fishing space with my minor improvements to net me reed and clays along with the action. The braggart come out last and saved me with my multitude of improvements. I have no idea what jack208 and rhyen did as I had my head full just trying to juggle my own farm.


my vegetable farming-fu  

jack208’s animal farm  

 

rhyen’s stone house strategy

 

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