7 Wonders Duel, Imhotep, and Lord of the Ice Garden
7 Wonders Duel: I've never played 7 Wonders, but 7 Wonders Duel is a neat little 2-player only game of tableau building. On your turn you have 3 options: construct a wonder, or choose a building (card) from the playing field and build it if you have the resources or sell it for gold. Your built buildings become your "city" and they provide you benefits and resources for the rest of the game, which you can use to build new buildings or wonders (this is where the tableau building comes in). The game plays over 3 ages and there are 3 victory conditions - military, scientific, and point counting if you get to the end of Age 3. My first game was won by a military victory, but if it had gone to the end the other player would have won with double the number of victory points I had! 7 Wonders Duel is an award-winning game that I liked quite a bit since it's easy to pick up and play and requires some thinking and planning ahead, but the person playing with me wasn't that into it, unfortunately.
Imhotep: Imhotep was nominated for Spiel des Jahres in 2016, which tells you immediately that it's a great family and gateway game. It's a fairly simple 2 to 4-player game of placing blocks on ships and sailing the ships to various locations. It gets its name from the famous Egyptian architect known for building the first pyramid, and one of the locations you can sail ships to has the players building pyramids for points. You can also sail to a burial chamber where your blocks are locked away until the end of the game when they're scored for points, or head to a site where you can build tall obelisks for points, or build up a shrine for points. The last place you can sail to is the market, which gives you cards that offer various effects that can be played immediately or saved for end-game scoring.
Although the box says there's a lot of strategy to the game, I felt there really wasn't that much going on. It didn't seem to matter too much which ship you put your blocks on or what site the ships sailed to, though there is the possibility of screwing over your opponent (for instance, in our 2-player game my opponent had the obelisk points pretty much secured from the beginning, so if he would put a block on a 1 or 2-block ship I would always sail it to the obelisks so he couldn't get points elsewhere). In the end I won, but it didn't feel like much of a hard-earned victory. The fun of the game comes in building the various structures over the course of 6 rounds, and although not exactly a brain-burner, it plays quickly and offers a couple of interesting decisions from time to time. I have a feeling it's a better game with more players, though it could get quite chaotic. It's probably also a great game to play with kids since the rules are very simple and it's fun to build things.
Although the box says there's a lot of strategy to the game, I felt there really wasn't that much going on. It didn't seem to matter too much which ship you put your blocks on or what site the ships sailed to, though there is the possibility of screwing over your opponent (for instance, in our 2-player game my opponent had the obelisk points pretty much secured from the beginning, so if he would put a block on a 1 or 2-block ship I would always sail it to the obelisks so he couldn't get points elsewhere). In the end I won, but it didn't feel like much of a hard-earned victory. The fun of the game comes in building the various structures over the course of 6 rounds, and although not exactly a brain-burner, it plays quickly and offers a couple of interesting decisions from time to time. I have a feeling it's a better game with more players, though it could get quite chaotic. It's probably also a great game to play with kids since the rules are very simple and it's fun to build things.
Lord of the Ice Garden: Where to even begin with this game...? Lord of the Ice Garden is a worker placement game of area control/influence with 2 - 4 players playing characters with asymmetrical powers and individual win conditions. The only luck to the game comes in the randomized setup and choosing of the first player prior to starting the game - the rest is a chess-like match of wits in a game where there's more ways to lose than win and your brain is constantly challenged with focusing on meeting your own victory conditions while trying to anticipate what others are doing to stop them from meeting their victory conditions, all while keeping track of the various other counters that could also end the game.
On top of that, the theme of the game is amazing but hard to explain since it's based on an obscure (to an American) Polish novel about scientists from Earth that inhabit a planet with magical powers who become corrupt and are in a battle to take over the planet. Apparently Earthlings didn't like this and sent someone (something?) called Vuko to try to police the scientists a bit and get them to calm down with all of their child-stealing and plundering. Child-stealing? Yes, this is explained in the rule book - you're not actually stealing children in the game, but it's there in the back-story. No, this isn't a game for everyone, but by GOLLY is this a game for me! So much going on, so much to think about, and so many ways for your carefully-laid plans to come crashing down.
Our first game was with 4 players who mostly were trying to figure out what the eff was going on, so there weren't any battles/warfare and we mostly kept to ourselves. It ended much sooner than I would have anticipated, with 2 people meeting individual victory conditions at the same time (me, and one other who won the game, decided by victory points since there was a tie). I realized later that I could have moved some crab-dudes (don't ask, just go with it) into her territory and easily killed her unit so she couldn't win, but it's a sign of a good game when you're still thinking about your moves hours and days later! I can't wait to play this one again, but it requires a special group of people somewhat equally matched in skill. It looks like it should scale well for 2-players, so I'd like to try it with 2 sometime as well. Critics of the game say it's not that great and similar games pull off the same mechanics better (eg, Blood Rage, El Grande, Chaos in the Old World), but I haven't played any of those games so I really can't compare. Personally, I highly recommend this game after 1 play, but it's a heavy game that takes several reads of the rule book to even begin so prepare yourself!
On top of that, the theme of the game is amazing but hard to explain since it's based on an obscure (to an American) Polish novel about scientists from Earth that inhabit a planet with magical powers who become corrupt and are in a battle to take over the planet. Apparently Earthlings didn't like this and sent someone (something?) called Vuko to try to police the scientists a bit and get them to calm down with all of their child-stealing and plundering. Child-stealing? Yes, this is explained in the rule book - you're not actually stealing children in the game, but it's there in the back-story. No, this isn't a game for everyone, but by GOLLY is this a game for me! So much going on, so much to think about, and so many ways for your carefully-laid plans to come crashing down.
Our first game was with 4 players who mostly were trying to figure out what the eff was going on, so there weren't any battles/warfare and we mostly kept to ourselves. It ended much sooner than I would have anticipated, with 2 people meeting individual victory conditions at the same time (me, and one other who won the game, decided by victory points since there was a tie). I realized later that I could have moved some crab-dudes (don't ask, just go with it) into her territory and easily killed her unit so she couldn't win, but it's a sign of a good game when you're still thinking about your moves hours and days later! I can't wait to play this one again, but it requires a special group of people somewhat equally matched in skill. It looks like it should scale well for 2-players, so I'd like to try it with 2 sometime as well. Critics of the game say it's not that great and similar games pull off the same mechanics better (eg, Blood Rage, El Grande, Chaos in the Old World), but I haven't played any of those games so I really can't compare. Personally, I highly recommend this game after 1 play, but it's a heavy game that takes several reads of the rule book to even begin so prepare yourself!
*These are first impressions of recently played "new to me" games.*
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