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Following up on my earlier post, here are some brief impressions of some other board games from PAX Prime. These are all games about taking over the world—be it a small island, the New World, or Earth itself.
- Invasion from Outer Space
- Microsoft Surface: Settlers of Catan
- Small World
- Conquest of Planet Earth
- Settlers of America
Next up, Part Three: Dungeon Crawl (like a pub crawl, only with more monsters and less beer).
I've been a fan of Flying Frog's Last Night on Earth
Invasion from Outer Space uses the same type of setup as LNoE, with modular boards, a huge cast of characters, and semi-cooperative gameplay (one team plays the Eartlhings and the other controls the invading Martians). What I hadn't realized until I saw the demo copies is that it's not just Martians vs. humans. It's Martians vs. carnies. That's right—the spot these particular Martians decide to take over is a circus, and so they come face to face with characters like Archibald the Human Cannonball, Angelica the Bearded Lady and even Jo Jo the Dancing Bear. Awesome.
I played an abridged version of one of the scenarios, and was quite pleased with what I saw. (Plus we kicked the Martians' butts, after losing Archibald.) Invasion from Outer Space isn't available until October, but you can pre-order it now (non-US customers use this link). I'm definitely looking forward to playing this one some more once it's available.
We've mentioned before some very cool things being done with the Microsoft Surface table, and at PAX the Catan folks were showing off Settlers of Catan. While I didn't get to play a full game, I did watch some other players trying it out and then fiddled with it for a few rounds on the very last day just before they kicked everyone out. The game uses little physical shields that hide your resources from the other players, and also optional clear acrylic dice that have chips that the table reads when you toss them. Each player's menu can be repositioned and moved around, and all of the fiddly parts of the game (distributing resource cards, trading in cards to build things, etc.) have been automated. However, you still get a bit of the tactile feel of the game because placing settlements and roads still requires dragging the piece to its proper place. There were also a few issues with the screen depending on the light source—it sometimes interpreted shadows as finger-touches—but overall this incarnation of Settlers of Catan was pretty eye-catching and well-implemented.
One nice thing about the digital version is that there aren't any bits to lose, but I think I might miss the little wooden bits. It's sort of a moot point anyway, because the tables aren't generally available to the public for purchase yet.
Saturday evening, we decided to try Small World
The world is quite literally too small: you use different boards depending on the number of players, and they're designed to have not enough room for everyone, so almost immediately you'll be wiping each other off the board to claim territories. There are a number of different races (Elves, Dwarves, Amazons, Giants, Ratmen, and so on) paired with various special abilities (Berserking, Fortified, Bivouacing, Forest, Flying ...). Since the combinations are random, it makes for a pretty interesting game with a lot of potential variations.
The actual conquest part is actually much simpler than Risk: there's no die rolling except on your very last conquest, so the strategy is more about how to use your available armies to gain as much territory as possible, while still having enough to defend against the other players. The races and abilities all offer some sort of advantage, so at times it feels like a clash of superheroes—you know you can take a bunch of territory on your turn, but that you'll lose a bunch to the next player as well.
Our game took about an hour and a half to play, but it went by quickly. Although I'd gotten a big head start with my Merchant Ratmen, Dave ended up with the most points at the end with his Sorcerors and Trolls.
On Sunday we stopped by Flying Frog's booth again so Dave and I could play a round of Last Night on Earth (sadly, the zombies did me in rather quickly), and then I noticed a couple guys playing this game. Conquest of Planet Earth isn't out yet, but they had a prototype to demo at PAX. Each player is a space alien bent on taking over Earth. I didn't get a chance to actually play, but I did get a walk-through of how the game works, and the artwork and theme are terrific. They really capture the feel of old sci-fi movies but they have a lot of fun with the aliens races, throwing in a lot of different tropes. It definitely has a different feel from both Last Night on Earth and Invasion from Outer Space, and I'm eager to see more.
I first spotted Mayfair's Settlers of America
Unlike Catan, the board for America doesn't change from game to game other than a few of the die-roll tokens. However, it is a much larger board and in keeping with the western expansion, you start in the eastern half of the country and make your way west. Instead of building settlements and roads, you actually build settlers (represented by a little covered wagon), use wheat to move them across the board, and then if they land on a city site, they found that city. In addition, you build railroads between cities in order to transport goods to the other players' cities. The goal of the game is to be the first to deliver all your goods, so for the first time there aren't victory point conditions.
While there is a lot of similarity to Catan, America introduces some new mechanics which really allow for a broad range of actions, and it's important to keep your eye on each of the different aspects of the game. I was pretty impressed (and I'm not just saying that because I won).
