Lords of Vegas

I just got my second play of Lords of Vegas in and I have to admit I'm very impressed with the design. Ernest's old world style shines through.

In both games I've gotten some really bad luck (rerolled a casino three times and got a 1 each time) but in spite of that there's opportunity to cut deals, something that is enhanced when you're in DFL.

The game this one most reminds me of is Monopoly and I think it takes the good stuff from Monopoly but leaves out the gray noise of the non-property locations. My kind of gaming, wide open wheeling and dealing, chances to invest in a luck shot to change your position, playing the odds on the card draw.

Anyone else playing this thing? It's been out four years and I just stumbled across it.

S.

I've always wanted to play it; never had the opportunity.

I really enjoy this game, I feel like it draws a lot from classic American family game designs of the 60s and 70s which isn't something many designers visit. It's more confrontational than it is lucky, I wish there were a stronger trading element, as in my games trades rarely happen, but overall this game is unique and a lot of fun.

Our second play saw much more trading, and there's really no rules restricting it. We had a couple of casinos swap hands yesterday, property swaps, cash kickers to close deals, the works. Game 1 didn't see that so much because we were still getting the hang of how it all works. My impression is that game three will start with deals on property tags much earlier, something that I needed to do yesterday since my prime building spots got cut into by the luck of the cards. I needed to mitigate those bad draws but didn't know enough to recognize it early on.

We have the expansion as well but haven't played with it yet and I'm glad for it. This is old-fashioned german gaming with a small ruleset and lots of open field play. One of the guys mentioned the expansion after the game last night (something I don't want to bring in) and I found an unlikely ally, one of my buds that is generally bullish on expansions. He expressed my opinion pretty clearly, "why bring in extra complexity when the game is working as is?" The expansion allows for two extra players but it adds more building to the mix and I think that isn't a useful addition. The board is crowded for a reason.

Ernest is an old-world designer. He produced a bunch of two-bit games (almost literally) that were more about catchy titles than catchy gameplay, but when he sets his mind to it he produces interesting stuff. Mike Selinker is a Hasbro guy with a bunch of good stuff to his name and the result when these two get together seems to be interesting ideas with solid polish on the final result. This is a mainstream game that plays better than Monopoly and scratches the same itch. The choices for categories here are Ameritrash, Wargames and Euros, but I think this one fits in the "Classic Design" category.

S.

I've borrowed it a few times from the local gaming club. I keep meaning to get a copy, because I like it and my family likes it. There's a lot of luck, but that shouldn't be a surprise, since you are in Vegas. You're right in that it fills a Monopoly-type niche.

Sagrilarus wrote: Ernest is an old-world designer. He produced a bunch of two-bit games (almost literally) that were more about catchy titles than catchy gameplay, but when he sets his mind to it he produces interesting stuff. Mike Selinker is a Hasbro guy with a bunch of good stuff to his name and the result when these two get together seems to be interesting ideas with solid polish on the final result. This is a mainstream game that plays better than Monopoly and scratches the same itch. The choices for categories here are Ameritrash, Wargames and Euros, but I think this one fits in the "Classic Design" category.

My take is that Ernest is a talented designer, but often stops short on development, and Selinker is a development guy (he's redeveloped Betrayal and Axis and Allies). They're a good pairing, they've done a few other games together, Veritas and Gloria Mundi. Has anyone played either of those?

I get more of an Acquire vibe than Monopoly, but I see your point. I can't really add much to what you've said other than it's probably my favorite game. Love the wide open play, the drive towards bigger casinos that forces deal-making, and the risk-taking.

That's what my buddy Sippi-Steve said. He saw it as more like Acquire because of the merging structures. That's solid provenance as well.

I'm trying to decide if I'm going to be done with this after five plays or if there's a broader appeal to it that will go the distance. I find that games like Lords of Vegas last longer due to the amount of chaos involved with how they play out, but that presumes there's sufficient decision complexity there to begin with.

A game like Bridge can teach you something new each time you play and to a certain extent I even get that kind of feeling from Settlers of Catan where you simply need to adjust to conditions in some way virtually every time you play. There's enough variability that you need to have a more heuristic understanding of the game to succeed. With two plays in Lords of Vegas appears to be in that mold, but the only way to find out is to get a few more games in to see if the learning continues.

It wouldn't hurt if I rolled a five or a six now and then as well.

S.

I played Gloria Mundi once, ages ago. I don't remember it being particularly good or bad.

Edit: Okay, that was useful to the forum. Anyway, I recall kind of a Caylus-with-a-twist thing, where you're building an engine while dealing with the possibility of having parts of it being destroyed. Lots of Euroglyphics, and slow just like Caylus. Afterwards, nothing really jumped out at me to make me want to play it again.

I think Lords of Vegas is an under-rated game and, yeah, like Sag I think it's a good Monopoly substitute. The design is so clean, allowing for a lot of negotiation but also some clever tactical moves from time to time, despite the randomness which is at least thematic. It has a good synergy between the play mechanisms and the theme.

I believe I have been insulted. Do I need to call Al out for a duel?

S.

That's just as well. Al is a younger man and very wiry.

Lords of Vegas is a great little hybrid eurotrash dice roller that should be popular here, and in general. I think Wheatons TV series might have helped it a little bit. It's snappy playing, easy to pick up and play, but has lots of little clever bits that keep it interesting, even if there's a good dose of chance with the cards and dice rolling but in this game it's very well tied to the theme and feel of the game. It's definitely got hints of Acquire in there, not only in the speculation aspect of "shares" (in this case casino company tiles) but also the way these islands of property swell and can merge, plus the dual edged cash/VP nature of the properties (though here, owning stuff gets you both, whereas in Acquire part of the skill is knowing when to generate cash by letting your smaller holdings get swallowed up and when to hang on to VP blocks). And in no way should this game be compared on an equal footing with the genius that is Acquire (which of course should have been the Monopoly we all grew up with).


Some interesting aspects of the rules give rise to some cool interaction, and even if late in the game it can devolve into throwing all your cash in desperate attempts (by all players) to wrest control of the larger/largest casino blocks, that still ties in nicely to the theme and provides fun, family drama. I don't use family as some do, as a negative.

such as:

- The scoring track, which should be more lauded, though to be honest I do not know if someone else already did this (I suppose you could say that in some ways, many games kind of have this without explicitly having it by making late game stuff become increasingly more dominant) - anyway, at the start you get a point every time you score a point - ownership of a casino (the player with the highest die placed within a single coloured block of tiles) gives you a point per tile in that casino every time that casino brand card is drawn. Whats clever is later in the track come "break points" so that soon you can only advance from 8 to 10 by making a full 2 point score. Everything that scores you 1 point is ignored. Later on the jumps go to 3, and then 4 etc. This means that early in the game owning small casinos scores you points but as the game develops you need to expand them to be able to get past those break points. It works really nicely as a semi comeback mechanism to avoid the early leaders running away but forces the game to be creative with expanding your casinos

- the limited number of casino tiles in each colour is very clever and causes much gnashing of teeth later on as they start to disappear and suddenly you're stuck needing 4 point casinos to advance on the score track, only have 3 tile casinos and no spare stock to be able to extend it. This also adds some cute early game tactics of bagging a diverse portfolio of small casinos because that lets you later on remodel those (to other colours) and thus free up the colours you might need to build onto your bigger casinos.

- sprawling which lets you extend your casinos onto spaces you don't "own" (normally you draw a card each turn, it refers to a board location which you then reserve with a marker to be able to build on later) - this lets you extend casinos for payouts but comes with the cost that later on the card with those spots comes up and now the player who drew that location takes over your spot there for free. This has come up several times in my games to amazing drama as a surefire winning points haul is ruined by the "rightful" owner of a key tile popping up at the death

- the mergers when coloured blocks meet. The highest player die is the "boss"of the casino and gets all the points payouts when a card showing that colour casino comes up. In the case of ties rerolls are done until only one is highest "There can be only one", hilariously this sometimes leads to a player not involved in the tiebreaker suddenly becoming boss (thematic explanation: the two warring bosses made such a mess of it all that someone else stepped in and took it over).

- you can also force rerolls of all the dice in the casino which becomes easier later in the game when more money is in the players hands, and coincides with increased need to take control of the key casinos. You can also do cool stuff like build small shit casinos near big powerful ones, and then "remodel" your little one to the same colour and if its adjacent it becomes part of the now even bigger one, you can then be the boss directly if you had a high dice in the old one, or at least force a reroll for ownership.

gambling - you can bet money at any other players casino, basically a double or nothing bet that they can also lay off half to the bank, but cannot refuse the gamble. Can be used to get that extra money needed to build the expensive lots (properties adjacent to the strip for example which payout a few extra times due to the special strip cards and at game end), or can be used to take away money from a player so they can not afford to buy a key spot on their turn

I've not seen a lot of trading but I'm sure in the right group it would definitely increase the tension, and because of the dice rolling and card drawing, it never feels like "kingmaking" in a bad way - of course you can see who needs to be reeled in, but you can't be sure the dice and cards will go your way.


The new expansion adds bits for 5 and 6 players, probably the only downside to the base game is it supports 2-4 only (but play with 4 only), the expansion adds tiles that lift "up" the casinos vertically to make it easier to get more points from the smaller area casinos since with 5 and 6p layers theres less real estate per player, but Id have preferred an extra small board with some new casino spots and have done that for myself with a home build addition.


Really a nice, lightweight, confrontationally fun game with some interesting stuff to think about and try out, but never getting bogged down in calculation dullness because of the dice and cards (basically each colour casino has 9 cards in the deck, and these are laid out by the board so you see in real time which casinos are "due" for payouts - and you can build accordingly but it's no more complex than that. Owning dice in casinos gets you money for each pip but only the highest die - the boss - in each casino gets the point payout (based on casino size) when that colour is drawn from the deck


Easy to homebrew with a deck of regular cards and a hand draw grid of locations, some poker chips and dice. No excuse not to give it a try.