2016 Stats Total Plays 469 Unique Games Played 129 New Games (to me) 83 Best Month November (66 plays) Worst Month February (15 plays)
Most Played Games Exploding Kittens 25 Don’t Mess with Cthulhu 21 King of New York 16 Spyfall 16 Saboteur 14 Coup: Deluxe Edition 13 Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension 11 Port Royal 11 Incan Gold 10 Nevermore 10 Star Wars: Imperial Assault 10
World’s Fair 1893 is a light area-control game, with aspects of card-drafting and set-collection.
Your goal is to collect sets of Approved Exhibits (coloured tokens) over three rounds. During each round you’ll be working to collect proposed Main Exhibits (coloured cards) whilst aiming to have the most supporters (player cubes) in one or more areas matching the colour of your proposed exhibits.
There are also Influential Figures allowing the placement of extra supporters, and sometimes moving any one supporter from one area to another.
The gameplay is very easy to pick up; non-gamers should be up and running in a couple of minutes.
The subtleties of the game mechanics start to surface after the first round of scoring: controlling areas leads to opportunities for Approved Exhibits; you need to collect the proposed Main Exhibits to be able to convert them.
It’s an interesting balancing act; trying to optimise the areas you control whilst actually having Main Exhibits for approval.
Gameplay
Each turn consists of the following steps:
place a supporter (player cube)
play influential figures
collect cards (from the area the cube was placed in step 1)
add new cards
During the round, you will also be collecting Midway Tickets. These move the Ferris wheel car one space on the central board.
The round ends when the Ferris wheel car reaches the start space.
End-of-round scoring takes place giving points for:
Midway Tickets
Area majority
It’s also an opportunity to exchange proposed Exhibits for Approved Exhibit tokens.
Components
The game comes with good quality card tokens and wooden cubes.
The artwork is very good, with plenty of themed content on the Main Exhibit cards.
The modular board looks fantastic. It’s cleverly designed to modify the round length by using a double sided board combined with a double sided top-wedge.
The theme isn’t crucial for gameplay but makes for a lovely experience, preventing the game from being completely abstract.
One small improvement would be to have meeples representing the supporters instead of plain cubes. (If you’re in Europe you can purchase small meeples for under €10 + p&p)
Rulebook
Thanks in part to the beautifully simple gameplay, the rulebook is easy to follow. It’s very well laid out, with clear instructions and examples throughout.
It’s well-spaced with excellent diagrams and artwork.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a light area control game with no direct conflict and free from dice rolls this is a very strong contender.
It’s a good introductory game for new gamers while remaining interesting and challenging for more experienced players. (In the first session I lost two games to one with someone who’s had almost no exposure to tabletop games.)
It’s one that I’m happy to have added to my collection and once I’ve introduced it to a few colleagues it’s something I might suggest during lunchtime game sessions.
This is not a review of the game. Go and read any of the glowing reviews of it; believe them. It’s a great game.
I had another lucky win, and it made me think some more about what I enjoy when gaming, and my approach to games.
Another Win
As always, I was pottering along. Building my tableau with very little planning ahead. I quite enjoyed trying to win with a military victory (essentially acquiring as many red cards as I could get my hands on).
During the third round Mr Opponent paused, looked at me and smiled, “I'm about to win.”
I stopped to take stock. Three ways to win. Military victory - not possible with my position on that front. Civilian win - that’s points at the end of the game.
I tried to remember the remaining win condition. “The third one ... a set of ... something ...”. Luckily I didn't have to think too hard, or too long; Mr Opponent spelled out his winning move to me, “If I get that card I have the six different symbols I need.” He indicated one of the two cards he would be able to use once I chose the only card available to me.
What he hadn't realised was that I was able to use the card I was forced to play to trigger an action giving me a second turn. Unsurprisingly I made sure to acquire Mr Opponent’s winning card. Once again I’d been brought out of my unfocussed, non-competitive stupor by someone else pointing out what I was missing.
I stayed on high-alert until the end of the round. Points counted. A win for me.
Mr Opponent got so excited that he successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Self-contemplation
Tonight’s win made me even more aware of how awful I am at strategising and playing to win. Once again, I had no idea that a win was imminent. Somehow it’s not at the forefront of my mind when I'm playing.
I've previously stated that I classify my psychographic profile as “mostly Kim”:
Kim is an exploratory player. Her goal is to just see what happens when she takes the road less travelled. No game in her collection is more than two years old.
It’s not true that I've got no games more than two years old in my collection. I ascribe this to the fact that I'm a compulsive hoarder. The exploratory playing style I have might explain my desire to experience, play and explore as many new games as possible. My desire to be independent fuels my purchasing compulsion. My compulsion to hoard prevents me from trading out older or less-played games; “you never know when you’ll find a group that wants to play this one.”
Having fun losing
I'm reminded of something I say quite often:
I had great fun not winning.
Some of my most enjoyable sessions have been where I was about as far from winning as it’s possible to be while still technically having played the game.
One of my favourites, Flash Point: Fire Rescue, is a co-operative game where the players are doing their utmost to rescue a minimum number of people from a burning building. The game has a tendency to surprise you with a chain of explosions just when you think, “hey, this is easy - we've nearly put all the fire out”. There’s a phase in each player’s turn called Advance Fire; I call it Make It Worse. Very quickly new players do too.
I expect to win roughly one game in four. I'm happy if I win or lose. The experience on the route to victory, crispy civilians, or fire-fighters under the rubble of the collapsed building is a wonderful one.
There are other games where I enjoy the experience and don’t mind to much about the final outcome. Keep an eye out for mention of these in future posts.
Sharing the joy
Another aspect I enjoy about gaming is introducing people to the hobby. Ask me about (tabletop) gaming and you run the risk of being trapped by an over-excited, middle-aged man.
Tell me, “I'm interested in finding out more, but I've never played games like that.” and I’ll be reassuring you that there are games to suit almost every interest and experience level, as well as encouraging you to drop in on one of the many gaming sessions I attend.
I don’t believe that it’s beneficial to encourage people to dip their toe in the water and then scare them off by being so focussed on winning that the new players are just scratching their head wondering what on earth is happening and why they agreed to spend their valuable time this way.
It’s not a case of giving newcomers a free pass for an easy win. It’s more about making sure they don’t feel cheated.
Make them feel welcome. Build their confidence. When they’re more experienced (in a particular game), sit back, focus more on winning - or messing up their plans in fun ways and still losing myself.
In Conclusion
If you are the competitive type you should:
approach me as an inexperienced gamer
choose a game that’s more than “oh, look, points!”
never, never, never, never ever point out that you, or someone else is about to take the win
We’ll all have a great time. You winning. Me losing.
Hopefully some great gaming tales to reminisce over at a later date.
Tonight was my second play of a recent addition to my collection: Cyclades
Technically, it’s my second play of a game from the Cyclades family and my first of Cyclades: Titans.
I won.
I should be pleased with myself. I'm not. I feel “dirty”.
Cyclades could be described as Risk set in Ancient Greece, with Gods, offerings, mystical creatures and battles for territory. Instead of playing to conquer every country in the world, you are trying to build two metropolises.
The Titans expansion adds, unsurprisingly, titans to the game. It also adds artefacts. One of these artefacts was the key to my unexpected and ultimately unsatisfying win.
What Happened?
As is usually the case, I was pootling along at my own merry pace, doing my own thing with very little thought or strategy; I classify my psychographic profile as “mostly Kim”.
A few turns in it was pointed out that Mr Green was scarily close to hitting the win condition. Everyone else conspired to prevent that from happening.
Almost immediately Mr Purple was discovered to be not very far behind.
I kicked my Kim persona to the side and put my (figurative) “How do I stop this from happening?” hat on.
Somehow the other three players had let me amble along and stumble into having a fairly strong ground force.
Somehow the perfect artefact was sitting on the mythological creature track begging to be purchased: the Winged Sandals; these allowed my troops to skip the pesky part of travel and just fly from one territory to another.
I paid my single gold to the Gods, flapped my winged sandals, and dropped a whole army of hurt on Mr Purple’s head. My intention was to capture his first metropolis just before he completed his second, winning, metropolis.
What I didn't realise at the time was that I’d also taken out his sole source of income (barring the rather mediocre Apollo) effectively eliminating him from the game.
One down, one to go.
After a lot of head-scratching and quadruple rule-checking we couldn't find a reason why my attack was disallowed, and after paying the difference to make up an accidental discount on the purchase of the sandals, we saw that Mr Green was in an equally vulnerable position.
Uh-oh!
On the next round I was very well positioned to make a substantial offering to Ares, the God that allowed another ground-based assault. Ground-based after using the winged sandals to fly to Mr Green.
Two down, none to go.
Two turns. Two attacks. Now I had the winning two metropolises.
The other players had until the end of the round to undo my good fortune and prevent the win. Mr Green and Mr Purple had little choice but to pay their respects to Apollo; a bit of gold and no actions. It was all down to Mr Blue.
Would Mr Blue be lucky and use his God’s power to replace a weak mythical creature with something to save the day? Sadly, no.
Game over. Mr Red wins.
Why It Happened
I’d like to claim the win was due to my incredible board-game experience and immense strategic prowess.
It wasn't. It was luck. Pure and simple.
I was lucky that:
... I meandered my way to a strong ground force
... I went unchallenged most of the game
... the Winged Sandals happened to be available
... two metropolises were undefended to the surprise aerial invasion
... other players were paying attention to how close people were to winning
... the replacement creature wasn't more harmful
Overpowered Sandals
I'm not sure there are many Greek legends about the fall of an army to legions of flying soldiers. If there are, there shouldn't be.
The Winged Sandals added an attack vector that was impossible to defend against; nor could it be planned for.
Mr Purple was reasonably well defended on the ground-only route to his metropolis. If I’d been forced to take that route it would have taken at least two rounds for me to get there. Time enough to prepare and reinforce.
The Winged Sandals effectively gave me Neo-in-the-Matrix level abilities.
If we haven’t misunderstood or missed a rule, they are an insane addition to this otherwise excellent game.
If/when this game hits the table again we've agreed that the artefacts will be mysteriously absent from the game universe.
The Boarding Party is a blog about the wonderful world of tabletop gaming. The intention is to share our thoughts on anything related to tabletop gaming: reviews, views, recruitment, and anything else we can think of.
