Please tell me what to think about these euros

Oh yeah, one more recommend for Wallenstein. I missed that because I don't really consider it a Euro...at *most*, it's a AT/Euro hybrid, and the best of its class at that. War, economy, building, feeding your people, pissing off your people with taxes...all in 90 minutes or so. Fantastic game.

I missed commenting on a few:

El Grande was absolutely amazing at the time it came out. And it is still relatively enjoyable as a basic majority game. It has since been supplanted by Chaos in the Old World in my heart. (Chaos gets props here because of the AT theme. At its heart is a sophisticated multipath Euro with asymmetric player powers, and really not THAT much wackiness. Total work of art, that one. )

The line that kills me is the Primordial Soup. One of my favorites. It is basically just enough of a game to support the tech tree of special powers, has solid interaction, a certain level of brutality, and with a cyclical nature that forces you to discard mutations and grow and shrink in population over time. Completely breaks the cycle of grow-encounter-others-attack-a-bit-then-the-game-ends model of a lot fo those kinds of games.

ptkw wrote:
"'I compulsively bought La Citta yesterday for a very good price - I'm eager to see how it plays, though Barnes' comment is somewhat discouraging."
Well, I'll counter Michael's La CItta comment since I forgot to comment on it. I've played it a few times and was reasonably impressed. (I bought it.)

" There's a store in Poland where I can buy a retail copy of Lost Valley for about $20, but I guess I should better hurry with that."
Especially now you've given everyone a clue about the store...

By the way, does ptkw stand for Part-Time Kiwi Wrangler?

Notahandle wrote: Especially now you've given everyone a clue about the store...

Now you made me nervous, but the people in Poland should already know about it, and the others will be scared away by their shipping fees. Or so I hope.

Notahandle wrote: By the way, does ptkw stand for Part-Time Kiwi Wrangler?

It does now! Although I'd prefer you come up with something that would fit better in the banner (I had to remove the spaces).

Here's the thing PTKW...and I may get crucified for saying this...but theme can be a little overrated here. Sure, I understand seeing the business aspects of a game like Acquire or whatever and being turned off, but given your list of likes I would feel totally comfortable with giving you a copy of it for your birthday. The gameplay is incredibly solid, and I think your folks would totally see the T&E connection. But the thing is, it plays smoother, quicker, and more fun than T&E (although I do love T&E myself).

Likewise with Ra...you and your folks seem to like a lot of the classic "German game" qualities, and Ra definitely has them.

I would agree with Branham- don't write off Primordial Soup so easy. Evo is a very different kind of game.

As to Domaine/Lowenherz...I bought Lowenherz at an FLGS back in '97 at an exorbitant import price. I knew it was Teuber, and we were all still in Settlers mania so it seemed like a can't miss proposition. We HATED it. But years later, I got Domaine and LOVED it. Taking out that ridiculous action selection thing and cleaning up some of the less-than-good bits made a huge difference. Plus, the production quality of Domaine is so much higher- I took it out the other day and I just love the way it looks on the table. Lowenherz looks like medieval toilet paper.

Chaos in the Old World is a solid recommendation given your comments too...one of the best games of the past decade. I don't agree with Branham that it overwrites El Grande so much, it still has its own things going on but there are some similarities.

Michael, thanks for all your further points and clarifications.

If not for this thread, I would happily go on thinking that Acquire is a dull game made exclusively for MBAs; now that I've read some more about it, I agree we might enjoy it indeed.

Ra & Ursuppe: I'm not really writing off any of them; my “summing up” post in fact contained some generalizations just for the sake of writing a short comment about every game (as I felt obliged to do so after reading all your in-depth posts). The thing is, my want list is now ridiculously long (as it contains many Ameritrash titles that were not discussed here as well) and I just know that I might not be able to purchase some of the titles until next summer or so. What I'm trying to say is that I'm not going to ignore any of the recommendations given in this thread, as it's becoming for me a goldmine of useful opinion.

Domaine: I agree about the visual presentation of both versions; Domaine initially has caught my attention only because of it looks, and only later I read about its rules. Unfortunately, there's only one Polish store that sells it, and that's at a ludicrously high price.

CitOW: my friend has it and now I'm waiting for him to come back from holiday to finally play it with him.

Acquire is REALLY a majorites/speculation investment game. OK, that sounds MBA-ish too.

But what you do is you get a hand of six tiles. There's one tile for every square on the board (1-A, 2-A, 1-B, 2-B, and so on). Every turn you put one down. If you put one adjacent to another, they form a company. Then, players can buy shares in that company. When a larger company is joined to a smaller company, the big one eats the little one and everybody invested gets paid and the defunct company's shareholders bail their stocks for current value based on size or trade-ups to stock in the acquiring company. That's pretty much it. There's a lot more subtletly to it, like holding on to key tiles to screw everybody at the right moment and switching strategies from short-term "junk bonds" buying and selling in small companies with bad prospects to going for the larger blue chip-class stocks. It's EXTREMELY simple- easier than T&E by a longshot.

If you think of T&E as a business game but where the four colors represent businesses and the leaders CEOs, it's not that much of a jump to Acquire.

Counterpoint: Acquire sucks and T&E is awesome.

Why? Acquire only lets you play tiles where they match on the board. T&E lets you play tiles almost wherever you want (with the exception of the river). Also, T&E has combat!

Quiet, you!

Both games are great. Their aims are different and there are some differences in conflict resolution and tile placement, sure. But they're totally different strategically. I own both, and that's sayin ' something.

All up I think you got the right advice here ptkw...but the only two things I see in this thread that make me sad...YOU think Thunderstone is out due to too much math?!? Seriously???

And the rest of you here for not standing up for Fucking Reef Encounter! One day I am going to re-write the theme so people can quit crying over the fish talk and really see how tough as nails this game is! It is NOT "too complicated" Mr Barnes...and any talk from anyone here suggesting it is might as well walk away from the hobby due to lack of cognitive reasoning!

It IS multi pathed...it IS tough to get good...it IS full of choices and interdependencies that can cause the lazy mind trouble...it IS momma slapping tough so maybe I should quit tring to convince people who think addition ruin a game to play.

Wallenstein is indeed the pick of the bunch from your list...but beware...you WILL have to use addition yet again.