Boardgamecafe.net Meetup Report @ OTK Cheras 5/7/2013 – We Drink to Euphoria
By jack208

EXCERPT
One of our quieter nights where OTK regulars meet and drink to our boardgaming friendship ala VITICULTURE! KAHUNA and RIVER DRAGONS were also in session.

Gamers: Wolfx, Victor Lee, Ivan, Kareem, CK Au, Waiyan & others.

Games:  Kahuna, River Dragons, Viticulture.

Location: OTK Cheras | Google Map | Lat-Long: N 03° 06.179′ E 101° 44.237′
Date/Time: 5 July 2013 (Fri) 8.30 PM – (Sat) 3:00 AM

This was a 2-player game we enjoyed much but sadly 2-player games do not see much exposure in OTK given we usually have tables of 3-4 (or more) gamers to satisfy. Tonight while waiting for the rest to arrive, Kareem decided he wanted to find out if the game is worthy of someone’s Top Ten list and brought it out for a run with Ivan.

Have to say it’s been ages since I last did KAHUNA and I still owe waiyan a game as I’d mentioned I’ll teach her the game. Am sure she’ll love this game. Let me put that down in my To-do list. We can bring this along to our Phantom Spore trip. J

Victor’s group was here earlier than the rest and they settled down to a session or two of RIVER DRAGONS.

Meanwhile the expansion to Manhattan Project, SECOND STAGE has arrived from Kickstarter. You do need the base game (below) to play this. Still in shrinkwrap. Watch out for a sessrep soon.

Once everyone’s here, we get started on our main menu for the night. Not easy to find games for 6 players, but then we do have VITICULTURE (another successful Kickstarter project). J

In Viticulture, you are vineyard owners hoping to make your winery one of the best. It’s essentially a woker placement game with some unique wine themes for eg you don’t just harvest or collect resources; you harvest grapes that you can crush into different type of wines. But it doesn’t stop here… these grapes or wine continue to age with each round so you actually get better grades of your resources if you let them age (but at the expense of not using them immediately?)

The game is divided into seasons – basically you get actions to perform in Summer and Winter, with Fall being a short-break to replenish and a housekeeping turn at the end of each year. You play on different sides of the board depending on whether it’s Summer or Winter and the actions are different on each side of the board so while you can plant in Summer, you can only harvest and crush in Winter. You do need to factor this timing into your gameplay.

Green cards are to be used in Summer while Purple cards in Winter.

Viticulture also comes with a turn order mechanic similar to FRESCO. You choose where you want to start and each turn order position comes with its own bonus. Naturally you would expect a lower turn order comes with better bonus but we all felt getting an early turn order is much more important than the bonus that comes with the position.

There’s err a family growth action in this game also. Unlike the other farming game, here your family members need not be fed… and since each family member equates an action, you might think we should just go and extend our family as much as possible. Yeah we all thought so too and gifted Boon Khim a 5-pt bonus when he played a card that allows each player to add a family member (at the cost of giving a free VP to Boon Khim). That 5-pt bonus almost proved to be our collective downfall. And everyone felt getting the extra family member – while useful – did not counter-balance the early 5-pt shift (this game ends when someone passes the 21-VP mark so it’s a race of VP).

Picture of Yellow Player’s vineyard – he has three vineyards but only made use of one (but has planted deep in this vineyard with three vine cards). Plenty of cute custom meeples provided with the Kickstarter version of this game… like Agricola, it brings the flavour out for this game.

It’s a much lighter game than VINHOS. It scales well from 4-6 and not many of today’s new games can play 5-6 players. It’s certainly not in the heavy realm as Agricola or Vinhos and more in the weight of Stone Age. The same designers have just successfully closed their 2nd Kickstarter EUPHORIA.

If you wish to book your copy of EUPHORIA (Kickstarter Edition), drop us an email. We’ll have some copies to let go.

For more photos of this gaming session, visit our Facebook Album.
For more boardgaming reports, visit our Boardgamecafe.net Blog.

To discuss this gaming session, join us in our Facebook Page.

To buy the games played in this meetup, please visit our Web Store.
To view a listing of all games in stock, please visit our (blog) Webstore Listing page.

We carry over 800+ games and provide prompt and free delivery to anywhere in West Malaysia. Min order applies for free delivery. If you are a retail store looking to sell boardgames, you are most welcome to get in touch with us.