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Gamesnight 9th July
Trapper by Kiesling and Kramer and Zooloretto by Michael Shacht.
Dicken arrives bearing gifts. Two black t-shirts embossed with the box-top illustration from A Brief History of the World. Kendall and Dicken will wear and wash these over the four days of Essen 2009. They look splendid, feel great and smell … a little odd – better start that washing early.
As Dicken sets up Trapper the doorbell rings and Derek and Jamie pile in, bearing gifts of a more edible and liquid nature. No sign of Roz; it later transpires that she has preferred to go to an Elvis tribute evening. Hmmm! Jamie will fill her place at the table.
The Ashes are underway and so is an accompanying Ragnar Fantasy league. Katich has done well for both Dicken and Derek. Little chance of anyone having a ‘unique’ player as there are a dozen players in this year’s league. Each player chooses five cricketers out of the twenty-two playing the match, so there’s plenty of duplication. The game is an RB design with the buying and selling having more of a stock-market feel than other Fantasy’s - more anon.
Trapper is a fairly straight-forward ‘move and collect’ game. In his turn a player uses cards to move one of four trappers across a grid of tiles. The tile reached is taken by the player. There are animals; moose, wolf etc. and canoes to carry them in. Fill your canoe and score for the animals (they have values 1-4). Extra points are gained for collecting herbs and fungi tiles.
Jamie begins and seems to have an endless supply of green cards; well, four at least. He promptly hurtles through the wilderness collecting a bear canoe and some bears. He then takes two cards to re-stock his hand.
Dicken is a little more circumspect, collecting a wolf (or is it a bob-cat?). Kendall manages to bag a 2 point fish and a canoe to put it in. Derek goes after a wolf canoe.
This is a fun game. There is plenty of opportunity for silly jokes about animals, canoes, fungi etc. and the turning over of tiles has a certain ‘heading into the unknown’ feel to it. One of those games where beer, crisps and dips go down a treat.
Derek fills a canoe. Its value is 8, so he takes $16. He also takes the 16 ‘canoe token’. There’s only one of these and it may allow Derek to score a bonus at game end. There are other tokens valued at 18, 20 etc. which players can collect if they complete such a value of canoe. Dead simple.
The game motors on. Soon there is but a handful of tiles left on the table. Dicken has filled three canoes, each with a different species of animal. He takes the 3 ‘different species token’. There are other such tokens valued 1-6. Kendall later claims the 4 token, leaving Derek and Dicken to hoover-up the 2 and 1 tokens respectively. These will also score bonuses at game end. Dead simple.
Kendall senses his moment has arrived. He moves the blue trapper with blue cards until it can move no further. This ‘isolated’ trapper may then move to any face up tile on the grid, of Kendall’s choosing – the ‘teleport’ rule. Finally, as he runs out of blue cards Kendall is able to play two white cards to move the blue trapper again. Could be a winning move.
But it isn’t. Jamie has the winning move when he collects his much needed fish canoe. Had he not done so he would have had some very smelly fish to pay for. As it is he cleans up with $66. Kendall has $61, Derek has $59 and Dicken has $44 – too many small scoring canoes for Dicken.
Trapper is packed away and it’s barely 9.30. As planned there will be a second game; Zooloretto. Having caught some animals, why not put some in a zoo?
Zooloretto (like Trapper) is a new game to Derek and Jamie, but it is considerably more well-known than Trapper. Moreover Zooloretto has already been reviewed on this site, so if you need to know more then check it out. Meanwhile, this review is fast-forwarding…..
Kendall cleans up with 31 points, Derek has 25 points, Jamie and Dicken have 21 points each.
Zooloretto is packed away and it’s barely 10.30. There is just time to chew over a vexing question; which of the two games is preferred? Jamie goes for Trapper, Derek goes for Zooloretto. Kendall and Dicken also beg to differ.
Kendall’s argument is that Zooloretto seems like a family game, but the rules (particularly buying and exchanging animals) generate a conundrum such that any gamer worth his salt should win hands down if playing with the rest of the family – but it requires a good deal of brain-burning. Moreover some of the rules seem a little forced and counter-intuitive. Trapper on the other hand has much cleaner systems.
However, Zooleretto’s popularity with the Ragnars suggests this has something that Trapper hasn’t (though it has received a warm enough response). Probably this boils down to the interactive tension generated by the filling / claiming of Zooleretto’s trucks. Trapper simply doesn’t have a moment when players ‘come together’ in this way.
You pays your money, you takes your choice; Ricky Ponting or Kevin Pieterson?
Derek and Jamie head on their way with the promise of playing Automobile at our next meeting.
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