St. Petersburg 5 Player Expansion

If there is one game that I don't seem to be able to figure out, it's St. Petersburg. I'm not sure why, but the strategy doesn't seem as clear to me as the ones for most of the games that I play. Since I haven't devoted the time necessary to overcome my deficit in understanding, I tend to shy away from participating when this title is called out. Steve wanted to try out the 5 person expansion, however, so I joined, him, Kat, Bob, and Ray.

The expansion introduces some slightly different rules to accomodate the 5 players and a few new cards. Examples include putting out 10 green cards for the first round of play, having a circular piece that awards two VP at the start of each round, and the 9 cost New Farmer which produces 3 rubles and 1 VP per green phase.

The hardest part of St Petersburg is all the little decisions that you have to make. Is it worth it to bury that blue card so you'll have a chance at buying a high cost orange card next round? The whole game is one big series of questions on what to buy and when to buy it.

I actually hung in there pretty well for most of this one. I got a few green, blue, and orange cards giving me VP each round and set up a pretty good money engine with green cards. I was only able to obtain 5 different aristocrats, however, which sealed my fate. Both Steve and Bob ended up shooting past me as the end of game bonus kicked in. I believe that Bob said it was his first time to win.

Shogun - First Play

It's been awhile since I made an entry because I haven't been to a game night in the last three weeks. Fortunately, Ed and I were able to make the one at Ray's on Saturday, and our first action was Shogun. Steve had just purchased it and was eager to play. He, Dee, and Ben joined Ed and I.

I had read about the Shogun's combat mechanic, but this was my first experience with the combat tower, which Ed promptly christened The Slide of Pain. I have to say that I like it. It's quick, and it's easy to figure out. Most of all, though, it's fun.

The game involves a lot of indepth thinking, which makes it good for players who like strategy. Having even one person who doesn't make decisions quickly, however, can slow the game down to sluglike proportions. I guess, however, that the same can be said for any one that requires a lot of thought.

While Shogun has the feel of Eurogame with combat, the metagame in my single experience devolved into Risk-like maneuvering for alliances. In fact, the whole game seemed to resemble Risk quite a bit. When we first set up the board, jokes were going around the table about how many bonus armies did you get for controlling the whole continent and who was going to get Australia.

Overall, I enjoyed my first experience with the game even if it did run a bit long. Ed claims that he won because he accomplished his goal of capturing and controlling Bitch'n (actually Bitchu, but who wants to quibble). The actual points leader was Dee, who came in two ahead of me and one ahead of Steve. I was knocked out of contention by a random attack from Ben, who was no where near having a chance to win and who later admitted to not having a clue what he was doing. Playing with him was like playing with a random chance element thrown in.

I need to play more times to get a better sense of how well I like Shogun, but my first impression was pretty positive. From a strategy standpoint, we debated a bit at the beginning whether it was better to control a region or have a bunch of territories spread out. After playing, I would lean toward controlling a region; it's a big advantage to be able to build and tax territories that you know cannot be attacked.