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mylescorcoran at 11:56am on 05/12/2005
mylescorcoran at 11:56am on 05/12/2005Last night (Sunday) was gaming night round our house when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alaimacerc and his friend Brian came over to play. A brought three games, Louis XIV, Attika and TransEuropa, to tempt us, and we picked Attika. . It's a tile-laying game on a randomly generated board of hexes and (sort-of) mega-hexes, with each player trying to lay either 1) all their building tiles or 2) lay their buildings in such a way as to connect two of the shrines that start the game roughly at the corners of the play area.
We got started after a quick read through the rules, which were pleasantly short and clear. I made what I thought might be a mistake at the beginning by playing my opening tiles in two different locations, which costs more than laying tiles adjacent to your previously placed one, but it proved worth the additional cost later in the game as I'd staked out a reasonable chunk of the edge of the board and could take advantage of the growth of the play area.
You see, there's a nice touch that allows for extra mega-hexes to be played, increasing the area of the board and adding new resources to exploit. We quickly figured out that actually playing one of these mega-hexes was a risky business, as it usually meant someone to your left would get the benefit of the new terrain. I cheekily grabbed a spot (at some additional cost for starting a third settlement) on the first new terrain laid, by the justifiably irkedalaimacerc, which proved a profitable little community.
The end game was quick, and I managed to get a nice run with streets onto a newly placed mega-hex that set me up to finish off the following turn with my last two buildings for free.
I liked Attika and not just because I won our first game. I liked the difficult choices between playing buildings now and stocking up on buildings on your player-board to plan a swift and cost-effective deployment later. I liked the balance of actions and forsaking actions to draw the cards you need to fuel later actions. I liked the art and production quality. It's a thin-theme sort of game, the Greek elements are almost Knizia or Colovini thinly applied, but it's an interesting thinky sort of game. I suspect it runs at quite different lengths depending on the number of players, and that it might well be a very good 2-player game.
Game design by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle. BGG has an entry for it, and several proper reviews and not just ramblings like this post.
alaimacerc and his friend Brian came over to play. A brought three games, Louis XIV, Attika and TransEuropa, to tempt us, and we picked Attika. . It's a tile-laying game on a randomly generated board of hexes and (sort-of) mega-hexes, with each player trying to lay either 1) all their building tiles or 2) lay their buildings in such a way as to connect two of the shrines that start the game roughly at the corners of the play area.We got started after a quick read through the rules, which were pleasantly short and clear. I made what I thought might be a mistake at the beginning by playing my opening tiles in two different locations, which costs more than laying tiles adjacent to your previously placed one, but it proved worth the additional cost later in the game as I'd staked out a reasonable chunk of the edge of the board and could take advantage of the growth of the play area.
You see, there's a nice touch that allows for extra mega-hexes to be played, increasing the area of the board and adding new resources to exploit. We quickly figured out that actually playing one of these mega-hexes was a risky business, as it usually meant someone to your left would get the benefit of the new terrain. I cheekily grabbed a spot (at some additional cost for starting a third settlement) on the first new terrain laid, by the justifiably irked
alaimacerc, which proved a profitable little community.The end game was quick, and I managed to get a nice run with streets onto a newly placed mega-hex that set me up to finish off the following turn with my last two buildings for free.
I liked Attika and not just because I won our first game. I liked the difficult choices between playing buildings now and stocking up on buildings on your player-board to plan a swift and cost-effective deployment later. I liked the balance of actions and forsaking actions to draw the cards you need to fuel later actions. I liked the art and production quality. It's a thin-theme sort of game, the Greek elements are almost Knizia or Colovini thinly applied, but it's an interesting thinky sort of game. I suspect it runs at quite different lengths depending on the number of players, and that it might well be a very good 2-player game.
Game design by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle. BGG has an entry for it, and several proper reviews and not just ramblings like this post.
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