Thoughts of Chairman Mike

One of the games I bought for my iPad early on was Days of Wonder’s Small World, based on their board game of the same name (BGG entry). Whilst it looked pretty nice, I never got around to actually playing it because it was 2-player only, a point that Doug also mentioned in his blog post on iPad Euro games. However, DoW had promised that the next version would have an AI to allow solo play, so when I saw that there was an update available, I jumped on it to see. Sure enough, DoW were as good as their word, and there is now the option to play solo against an AI.

After three games I’m more than impressed with the game. The graphics are busy, but clear, the interface is very easy to understand and operate, and anyone who’s played the board game version should be able to jump right in and play. I’m not a good Small World player, but I comfortably won my first game, and I was concerned that the AI wasn’t particularly good. However, after getting spanked in my next two games that doesn’t appear to be a concern.  The game is very stable, with no crashes or hangs so far, and I haven’t identified a single issue with incorrect game play.

There are a few things that I’d like to see changed, but they’re all fairly minor. First is that when you are playing solo, it still has the AI’s turn showing as ‘upside down’ as if it were playing opposite you like a human player. It does make it hard to read the race/skill that has been selected. You can use the screen lock button for this, however. The other thing that I didn’t like is that there appears to be no way to quit a game in the middle and return to the menu.. Finally, I’d like some way to turn off the music in the game and listen to my own music, as the game music gets a bit wearing after a while.

However, none of those are enough to really detract from my enjoyment of Small World. A definite two thumbs up on this one – go download it from the iTunes App Store, and you’ll soon be as hooked on it as I am.

One of my traditions is that I host an all-day gaming session between Christmas and New Year, and this year was no different. One of the targets was to play the new Railways of the World, the updated version of Railroad Tycoon, which I first played at Doug and Mimi’s a few years ago. This time around it was with Doug, Mimi, JD and Greg, and Wes.

Railways of the world

A few of us started in the northeast, but all but me changed focus to other areas, and I was the only one delivering cubes. Although I built the fewest links in the game, I was delivering like billie-o, scoring a lot of points, and ended the clear winner, despite a late rush as JD went for the Western Link. In the end I didn’t score any points for my Rail Baron card (I drew the ones that gave me 2 points for each link into Mobile, and extra points for the Western Link.), as I stayed in the NE.

I’d offer a comparison with RT, but, to be quite honest, it’s so long since I played RT that I’m not sure I could spot the differences now. The board is certainly smaller, to my recollection anyway, and I believe the cards have been settled a bit. (The deck in the original had some very powerful cards.) You now draw two Rail Baron cards at the start, choosing one to keep,and they have been balanced a bit.

I certainly liked the game. I liked the original, the Steam/Age of Steam parent, and generally enjoy train-style delivery games, so I fully expected to have a favorable view. I’d like to try this again, and I’m hoping to get to the Rails of Europe and Railways of England and Wales at some point. Especially the latter, as it introduces shares and stock trading, and can be compared to Steam Barons (expansion to Steam) and the 18xx games, which I really like.

After that JD, Doug, Wes, Jonathan and myself played Power Grid: Factory Manager, The new game from Friedeman Friese. Although this uses the Power Grid name, it really doesn’t have  a lot in common with that game, although the graphics are very similar in style. Doug was the only one who had played before, and they’d played it totally wrong, so it took a while to get into the swing.

By the time we’d finished we were all enjoying it, a definite thumbs up. Interesting mechanisms, and we were never sure who was really winning (Doug won in the end.) I really want to get this one back to the table soon. And often.

By this time the snow had started, and was getting quite heavy, and lying. Dave had already bugged out, and Wes, KC, Doug and Mimi headed off, leaving Greg, JD and Jonathan for one more, and I asked for Small World. I’ve always been a fan of Vinci, and the one play at Chris’ left me liking the newer version, but being very unsure of the graphics, which hindered rather than helped the game play.

Anyway, I plumped for a copy, plus the expansions, and I’m glad I did. As Greg says, it’s Vinci, just in a tighter package, playing in an hour instead of 2. Yes, the graphics are poorly thought out in places (it can be really hard to tell the differences between the races when they’re in decline), the storage solution sucks (a tray for the race tokens where you can’t tell which is which), and the usual Days of Wonder box insert that is useless for including the expansions. However, I do like the game. I just suck at it.

And that was the end of the day. By that time the roads were really getting bad, and I was thinking that perhaps that last game was a bad idea. I got a call from KC a couple hours later to say that they were just getting off I5 – a 30 minute journey (at most) had taken almost 3 hours.

I got to take 3 games off the Burndown List, which was great, and the games we played were fabby. Undoubtedly the biggest disappointment in the day was that a few people were unable to make it, for various reasons. You were all missed. Roll on next year!