Five of us began the evening- me, Paul, Sam, Joe and Adam. We ooohed and ahhed as we unboxed Paul’s game, marvelling at the containers, the cards and the credits. Then Paul talked us through the rules, and we were off on a non-leaderboard adventure with heavy goods vehicles! We quickly decided that having plenty of lorries was a good idea, but then we got stung by road tax! Oh no! Also, different value cards were good, if you wanted to avoid the fate of Adam, who had two routes needing similar scores and could complete neither of them.
Andrew 45
Paul 44
Sam 40
Joe 19
Adam 15
At this point Sam gave in to his persistent illness and so Paul and I took him home, leaving Adam and Joe to play the game of Fit The Game Back In The Box. Once Paul and I returned, we perused Joe’s games cupboard and decided on Skulls and Roses and then Santiago as being new for Paul, and also easy to teach.
Skulls and Roses is like a simple version of Perudo, without all the clattering. We bet on whether we have skulls or roses on the underside of our beer mats. It’s a game of bluffing, which I’m very bad at. Paul, though, with his steely glare and poker face did very well, winning the requisite two rounds. Joe and Adam managed to win one each, while I was played for a fool, and didn’t win any at all.
1. Paul
2= Joe
2= Adam
3. Andrew
Santiago got another outing, again without the presence of Sam. We will play it one day when he’s here, honest. I tried to be as mean as possible when I was the Canal Overseer, and Adam seemed to go through the whole game with almost no money at all. Until the last round when I bribed him a lot to save one of my fields and lose one of his.
I bemoaned my fate of twice taking potato tiles, only for them to lose its only man or go arid that same go: “These potatoes have been a curse to me. You could say they’ve been a blight.” Oh, I’m hilarious. In the end, Adam took first place comfortably.
Adam 77
Andrew 67
Paul 58
Joe 54
Not much movement on the form table, except Anja edging upwards and Paul taking his place among us.
| Points | ||||||
| Steve | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| Adam | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| Anja | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| Sam | 3 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 13 |
| Hannah | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 13 |
| Andrew | 2 | 3 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 14 |
| Joe | 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 16 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Jonny | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Paul | 3 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Sally | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
I'm not usually a fan of dice games as they can be very unforgiving. It takes something like Stone Age's "loads of dice" mechanic or Perudo's bluff and counterbluff to turn them from arbitrary "roll a six to start" frustration into a test of skill.
ReplyDeleteCargo has enough other stuff going on to mean that unlucky rolling isn't decisive and I was enjoying myself until I got a hand where the smallest combination I could make was 9 (I wasn't sure how to get rid of cards in my hand I didn't want - is it one action to discard each card? - looking back I should have got rid of some). I thought going for two shipments of 10-12 and spending longer trying to roll the right numbers would make up for it. It didn't and I spent the last three rounds forlornly rolling dice as my trucks idled in front of me...
So things that could help with the dice (not necessarily all at the same time):
- Make the number needed to make a delivery a minimum (say if you have a 2 and a 6 you need to roll 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12), meaning better deliveries are harder to get. Then you could give the greedy player a way of getting to roll more dice if they have an expensive load...
- Make the +/- cards free to add to loads you've already set up as soon as they arrive in your hand, rather than costing a precious action.
- Give the +/- cards a cost - so you can buy them from the truck dealer as well as or instead of getting them randomly in your hand.
- I also didn't like having discarded +/- cards available to pick up like they were regular cards as it means the guy next around the table grabs them if he's got space in his hand.
Other things:
- Too many different shipping firms - you can't really keep track of and compete with what everyone else is doing, if you just had four or so it would make it easier to learn and more competitive
- Getting paid in the "Shares" of each firm - have a peg board with each firm's shares on it, and you can treat them as cash when you want to buy stuff
- Then the end condition could be when one player tops out a single share track.
Hope that helps, I look forward to playing again and not screwing up as badly as last night!
Oh, and wasn't it the Sugar that 'caned' you Andrew?
ReplyDeleteSorry I had to bail chaps. Right decision though as I now lie in a+e eating grapes and awaiting possible surgeons knife. And missing games! Gad dang it!
ReplyDeleteJeez, get well soon, Sam.
ReplyDeleteThinking about the scoring system, I like keeping the destination cards, but the scoring system for credits was a bit confusing. Maybe some multiplier would be simpler such as total credits x number of different companies?
Also, maybe you could pay money to adjust the dice roll: one credit=one?
What about everyone having 6 dice which they can roll (2 at a time) and if its not immediately successful they can leave them face up on a truck/s of their choosing? Then bad rolls don't feel wasted or exasperating.
ReplyDelete(Because you can add to them on your next turn)
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing Cargo Paul, good to see you.
ReplyDeleteI felt that the buying and selling of trucks and loads could have been simplified a bit, perhaps. I was trying to get my head around it and found it just a touch too opaque.
As the game stands, I agree with Adam and Sam'a suggestions of giving the dice-rolls a bit of leeway.
That said, where the game really clicked for me was in the idea building an array of trucks, which you can trigger on dice-rolls. You can choose to build an array of different numbers, so maximising your chance of triggering something with each dice roll, or you can build a whole load of 6s and 7s, hoping to trigger lots at once with a single lucky roll.
Thematically I'm not sure about the dice-rolling; I struggled to work out what it could represent, beyond hold-ups and traffic jams. You've paid for your goods, you've loaded them up, you know where you're going, and now you just have to keep rolling til you get lucky.
Still, a very interesting thing, and them containers is mighty pretty. I took a couple of snaps so I'll add them to the blog.
I should add that Sam has had his appendix out and is now, I believe, back at home, trying to recover in time for Tuesday's games night.
ReplyDeleteI also want to say that I did enjoy Cargo! in case it looks like a misery-fest of complaints and criticisms. In its favour are the game mechanics, which I found to be quite new, and also the chunky meeples were satisfying to handle and slot into their respective spaces.
Thanks Andrew I hope to be back in the GNN fold soon, hard to say whether that'll be this week or not as currently I'm doing an awful lot of sleeping.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't in the best state to critique Cargo but I remember thinking This would be fun if didn't feel like this. For me it has much going for it and just needs the dice element tweaking somehow, so it feels thematically fitting and bad rolls don't hamper you.