Citadels and Stone Age

I went to Hobbytown again last night for their game night. Once again, I had a good time, despite the fact I’d been feeling under the weather earlier in the day.

I played two games:

I have a copy of Citadels at home, but I never had a chance to play it. It turns out to be a fun and quick game; it took about half an hour to play. Its plot vaguely resembles Kingsburg in that you’re a governor trying to influence nobles to help you construct a district. However, Citadels is purely a card game. The roles and interactions between the players change rapidly as the game progresses, but the choice of role is part of a player’s strategy. I had fun with this one, and I hope to play it at one of my own game nights.

Most of the other gamers then started a game of Dominion, but there were too many gamers just for that game. One of the other gamers suggested Stone Age, and I joined in. The gamer referred to it as a “worker placement” game; I learned that meant Stone Age is similar to Agricola: You start with some base number of workers, then gather resources to improve your situation and earn victory points. We played with the Style is the Goal expansion, and this lead to a fairly long game; I think it took 150-180 minutes. In that same amount of time, the other gamers played three games of Dominion.

I enjoyed the game mechanics of Stone Age (even though I came in last in victory points), but I discovered that, given a choice, I’d rather not play a worker placement game. I like my science fiction and fantasy. Working to harvest a field or make clay bricks doesn’t interest me as much.

There’s a bit of contradiction here, since I enjoy Settlers of Catan. However, Settlers is abstract enough that it feels as close to the actual milking of cows or quarrying of stone as Chess does to a warfare simulation.

On the other hand: a gamer games, by definition. If I go to another game night and I find myself with a group of folks who want to play Caylus, I’ll join in and do my best.

Next time, I think I’ll bring Mage Knight and see if I can interest anyone in a game. I checked, and this is within the boundaries of good gaming behavior at Hobbytown. If no wants to play that particular game, then there are plenty of others… including Agricola.

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