Back to the boardgame café.
Just two of us tonight due to illness, and a selection of short
games starting with
Orbito. The board is
clearly the gimmick here, but its job is simple: at the end of each
turn (during which you've moved an opponent's stone orthogonally and
placed one of your own, move each of the marbles one step
anticlockwise along its track (inner or outer). The goal is to get
four in a row after that move.
It's slight but still fun; even in the three games we played, we could
start to see forks and forced moves. I was concerned about the phase
lock (inner track is four spaces long, outer is twelve) but the games
didn't last long enough for that to be a concern. We did speculate
about the possibility of a Grand Orbito, adding an outer 20-space
track and requiring you to get six in a row…
Next, Odin's Ravens (Second
Edition), a racing game.
The two-part cards form a two-sided track; we each race up our near
side and back down the far. One plays one's own cards, either matching
the next terrain type or in a pair to move to any terrain, but if
there are several of the same terrain in a row one card can move
through all of them. Where it gets interesting is the Loki cards,
which variously rearrange, shorten or extend the track; unlike the
movement cards, each of the eight can only be used once in the game,
and you have to divide your card draws between them and the normal
movement cards. That forced division is really the magic at the heart
of this game; the rest is fun (and obviously I'm in favour of anything
that involves ravens) but I could see that mechanism being adapted to
a different game entirely.
Finally, General Orders: World War
II, which I played at
Stabcon last month and lost about as comprehensively as it is possible
to lose. This time I got a better handle on what was going on, and
indeed didn't lose (a very cheesy parachute assault as the final
action, to grab some victory points my opponent wouldn't be able to do
anything about, certainly helped). I'm still not in love with this,
but I had a good time anyway.
While there have certainly been trips to Thirsty Meeples that spurred
me to buy games, I enjoy visits like this too, with games that won't
find a place in my collection but are still fun to play once in a
while.