Yesterday a long over due Costa Gaming happened. Jonathan and I met up at the local Wisbech Costa on the Market Place to enjoy good beverages and hopefully some great games.

I had got there slightly early (had to get a birthday card for my Mum and a present, well it's kinda her birthday today), so I was looking through the games I'd bought with me. Oh why had I taken? Eight Minute Empire Legends, Traders of Osaka, Roll For It and Batman Fluxx. Traders of Osaka was out when Jonathan arrived.

So that is the game we played first. I've been wanting to get this to the table since it arrived.

It appears a simple game, on your turn you can do one of three actions, take a card for its monetary value, buy the whole market row, reserve a card.

Before playing and when explaining it the scoring of sets when a ship hits Edo sounds unnecessarily complicated using rounding up, multiplication and division. But when you start doing it, it actually isn't that much of a hassle.

There is a hidden depth and tactical decision making to the game. Having to decide when best to reserve a card, and when to take the card. Trying to manipulate the boats and when they arrive, or get stranded so they sink hopefully denying the other players of possible points.

I did like the game, it didn't disappoint. It worked really well as a two player game.

Our second game was a new arrival for Jonathan, Bohemian Villages.

This is a worker placement type game where your placement of your workers is controlled by the roll of four dice. You allocate those dice to generate a number, the only limitation is that you can't use a single dice to generate a number for placement. For instance if I rolled a 6, 2, 4 and a 3, I could use the 6 and 2 to make 8 and place one of my workers on farm or if I wanted a town hall I could use the 6 and 4 to give me 10, and then use the 3 and 2 to make 5 and allow me to place a worker on a tailor shop. As you can tell by that each building type is allocated to a number, for instance churches are 11. Some of these buildings give immediate scoring (which is in the form of money), others score at the end of the game (which is triggered when one player has no more workers to place), some like the inns once three other workers are in the village give reoccurring money at the start of your turn. Then you have mid game scoring that gets triggered when certain events happen.

At the end of the game the one with the most money is the winner.

Despite winning I like this game a lot. I like the rolling dice and combining them to allow you to place workers. There is a nice balance between immediate scoring, and end scoring opportunities. I like the art work. It's quick to learn. Jonathan and I did forget to claim some recurring money at the start of our turns once or twice. I think I lost about five points this way, Jonathan lost about three I think. Which brings me to the only “weak” spot of the game, and Jonathan and I both agree on this, the player aids could be improved, and made clearer about the recurring money, maybe some reminds to claim, and the wording on one or two is a little confusing.

After two great games Jonathan and I chewed the fat, righted wrongs, brainstormed before saying our farewells.

I had a great time in Costa, great games, great company. Can you ask for more?

Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app