There were a lot of people feeding and food was a little delayed, so we didn’t start until gone 8pm. At this point, people were keen to chat and almost everyone seemed interested in giving the “Feature Game”, Lords of Vegas, a go. Although it involves dice, it is totally different to our old favourite, Las Vegas, and in fact, very different to pretty much anything else we have played too. Although the game is very “rules-light”, it is still a bit of a “brain-burner” with the potential for inducing “analysis paralysis”.
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The idea of the game is that players are developers in Las Vegas in 1941. The board depicts Highway 91, what will become known as “The Strip”, and the blocks either side, each divided into plots. Players acquire these plots, build casinos, improve their casinos, take-over other casinos, and when desperate, gamble. At the start of their turn, the active player turns over a card which indicates one plot and one of the five casinos. The active player claims the plot by placing a clear plastic counter in their colour on it and then everyone receives income: every plot owner gets $1,000,000 per plot, and then every casino that matches the card pays out cash (in our case, in poker chips) and points.
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After everyone has received their income, the active player can do as many actions as they like, the only limit is what they can afford. The first action is build on a plot they own: they pay the amount of money listed on the board, chose a coloured casino tile and place it on the board together with a die of their colour showing the face depicted on the board. The number shown is important for many reasons, but initially it indicates the income that the player will get when that casino pays out: one million dollars per pip shown. The casino colour chosen can be the same as casino adjacent casinos, or different, which is a critical decision. If it is the same, the two (or more) casinos merge and the owner of the die with the highest face value becomes The Boss of that casino.
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The Boss gets victory points when that casino colour pays out, receiving points equal to the total number of plots the casino occupies. Since The Boss controls the casino, their are things they can do that others cannot. For example, they can choose to “remodel” the casino, changing the colour of all the tiles. There is a cost, of course, five million dollars per space, but it can be worth it to force mergers giving more points. The Boss can also “sprawl” their casino which means expand into neighbouring, unoccupied plots. This is both costly and risky, but can be worth it to give a short term benefit or to merge casinos. It is costly because the cost to build is twice the usual fee, and it is risky, because if the card that shows that plot is drawn later in the game, the player who draws the card replaces the die with one of their own.
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Merging casinos are a vital part of the game because unusually, increments in the score track progressively increase. So, at the bottom, the steps increase by a single point, but after eight, each step is two points, and after twenty the steps increase to three. Since the points are added casino by casino (rather than summing them and adding them all at the same time), it is critical to match casino size to the current increment. For example, two casinos of size “three” would add six points if the player were below eight points or above twenty. However, if they were between eight and twenty, the same casinos would only be worth two each as the remainder would be lost as each casino is added.
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Thus, with the merging and taking over, the game is highly strategic with a sprinkle of luck from the card draw. Perhaps the most important part of Lords of Vegas though are the gambling aspects. There are two: firstly, once per turn, the active player can gamble at any casino by rolling two dice. The odds are slightly in favour of The House, but it can be a good source of cash, as well as providing the opportunity to damage an opponent, as The Boss of that casino provides the pay out (though they can lay this off with the bank). More importantly, any player can choose to “Reorganise” any casino they have a stake in, by paying a million dollars per pip to re-roll all the dice in that casino with the chance of control changing hands.
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So the game is not especially difficult to understand, but small changes can have a large impact. As well as the mix of strategy, luck and gambling, there are a number of little things that really make the game sing. For example, almost anything can be traded for almost anything else at any time, which enables players at the back to gang up on a run-away leader and neutralise the effect of overtly bad (or good) draws and dice rolls. The quick description had most people interested in playing it, but Burgundy (who had played before) felt that it would be very chaotic with five, so in the end, Pine, Black, Red, Lime and Ivory left Blue, Burgundy, Mulberry and Purple to their visit to Nevada.
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The game started very slowly, with incomes small and investment correspondingly small. Blue tried to increase her income by building her number of plots. That probably wasn’t a good move, though she was able to build some cash and then invest heavily a couple of turns later. Despite the lack of rules complexity, the groups still managed to make a mess of it: when Reorganising, each die can only be rolled once per turn. It was perhaps a good thing the messed this up though as otherwise Purple, Blue and Mulberry would have been deprived the chance of seeing Burgundy attempt to Reorganise a single two and re-roll a two three times. Hilarity ensued when, a few turns later the casino had merged to form two-plot casino now with a two and a three and Burgundy chose to try Reorganising again, this time getting a two and a three and then a double three before finally settling for a one and a four!
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As the game progressed, the casinos merged and grew, with one particularly large “Sphynx Casino”, occupying five plots. Blue, Burgundy and Mulberry all had an interest and re-rolled the five dice many, many times during the game, but despite his lack of success elsewhere, Burgundy mostly retained control. The other side of Flamingo Road, Mulberry built a lovely casino, mostly uncontested. The “Vega Casino” cards came out a lot at the start and since some cards are removed at random, it didn’t look a good gamble. As a result, only Purple took the risk of investing and made a killing with her “Big Purple Casino” when the group kept drawing the Vega cards ending up with all nine putting in an appearance.
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Mulberry and Burgundy stole a slight early march, but when the steps in the scoring track increased it became clear that this was an illusion and it was in fact a very close game as the leader’s jersey kept changing hands. The balance of power was held by whoever was in charge of the Big Sphinx Casino, and Blue and Mulberry ganged up on Burgundy to try to break his hold on it. First Blue rolled the dice and gave control to Mulberry only for Burgundy to wrest if from her and Mulberry to then give control to Blue. In what turned out to be the final turn of the game, Blue gambled in Purple’s Big Green Vega Casino, won $10,000,000 and used it to remodel her small Sphinx Casinos and sprawl the Big Sphinx Casino into one extra space.
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This turned out to be critical, because the game ends when the “End of Game” card is drawn and all the casinos on the strip score for one final time. That final sprawl gave an extra three points for the Big Sphinx which was just enough to cross the boundary from twenty-nine to thirty-two, breaking what would otherwise have been a three way tie. Money is the tie-breaker, which meant that Burgundy just sneaked into second place $7,000,000 ahead of Purple, who would have been $20,000,000 better off if Blue had not won when she bet in her casino.
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All in all, it had been a lot of fun and everyone was agreed that they’d like to play it again, and that they’d play it differently next time. It had been a really slow burner though and while the foursome had been gambling property in Vegas, the others had had time to play two games and get up to date with the Brexit riots and discuss all the possible outcomes—some people even had time to check out the proxy voting and postal vote options and evaluate both options!
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The group had started the evening with Ticket to Ride, the original USA version, rather than the more usual Europe version or the relatively new, New York edition, which had also been also an option. It is relatively rare that the USA edition gets played because it can be quite unforgiving, this time though, everyone was quite experienced, and knew what they were letting themselves in for. The game rules are much the same as for every other version of Ticket to Ride: on their turn players can take any two two cards from the face up market or blind from the draw deck; place some of their plastic trains to score points paying for them with appropriately coloured cards, or draw more ticket cards which score points at the end of the game if completed.
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There are no tunnels, ferries or stations in the original USA version, and Locomotive cards can be used as wild under any circumstances, but only one face up Locomotive card can be drawn per turn. It was a very tight game with everyone obstructing each other a bit, though Red got the worst of it. Green prioritised trying to get the ten point bonus for the longest continuous set of trains, while Black was concentrated on completing his tickets from Los Angeles to Miami and Winnipeg to Boston. It was very clear it was going to be a close, high scoring game where completed tickets were going to be essential to the final scores.
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Pine completed his first two tickets and started on his third route, from Montreal to Vancouver. As the game came to a finish, everyone put the finishing touches to their plans: Green added a couple of trains to his longest route, and Pine just managed to complete his third route before the game ended. As players totalled up their extras, it turned out that Green had just managed to take the longest route bonus by a single carriage, and red had been Red totally stymied—someone was always likely get stuffed in a five player game that was so very, very close. In fact, in the final accounting there was just nine points between first and fourth place. Black topped the podium with a hundred and four points, a single point ahead of Green with Pine a few points behind him.
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There was a bit of debate as to what to play next, but as Ivory had never played it before, the group eventually settled on Carcassonne, with the River expansion. This is one of the most popular “gateway” game so it was quite remarkable that Ivory had managed to avoid it for so long. The rules of the game are really simple, though they generate a surprising amount of depth, especially when played with two. With five, there is less control, but it can still be a lot of fun. On their turn, the active player draws a tile from one of the available stacks and adds it to the central map, making sure that any features on the edge of the map are preserved. The active player may then place one of their Meeples on the tile they’ve just added to the tableau.
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The Meeple is placed on a feature – a Road, a City, a Monastery or Farm. The key rule, however, is that a Meeple cannot be placed on a feature that already has a Meeple on it. So if the tile is added in a way that means it extends an occupied pre-existing City for example, the player cannot place his Meeple on that City, though if it were unoccupied it would be fair game. Once the player has finished placing their tile and Meeple, any features that were completed are scored and the associated Meeples returned to their owner. When complete, Cities score one point per tile they occupy, double for every tile with a blue and white shield on it; Roads also score one point for every tile that contributes to them.
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Monasteries are rather different and when completely surrounded by eight tiles, score nine points. Farms are a little different, only scoring at the end of the game, giving three points for every city it supplies. These are usually a crucial source of points and the player who controls the biggest Farm usually wins. Again, a Meeple cannot be added to a farm if there is already a Meeple occupying it, so this aspect of the game is all about joining Farms together and sharing or ideally, taking control of other people’s Farms. Adding the River expansion helps to reduce the dominance of Farming by helping to prevent one single super-Farm forming, though Farms are still a very important part of the game and timing is crucial.
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This time, the game was played very quickly, especially given who was playing. As a result, poor Ivory, on his first experience, had no idea what was going and really struggled to follow some of the more subtle parts of the game. The game began as the Battle of the Cities, with Red and Ivory merging their Cities to increase their points haul,, and Black and Green sharing another City to do the same. At the end, however, it all came down to eating and praying, i.e. Farms and Monasteries, in what was also a very close game. Again, there was just one point between first and second and again the top two places were held by Black and Green, with Black once again pipping Green to the win. This time it was Red who took a very close third, just three points behind. Black’s comment as Ivory left, was that the game had been “Quite vicious,” and as the group waited for Lords of Vegas to finish and caught up on the votes in the House of Commons, that would be an appropriate description for the happenings in Parliament too.
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Learning Outcome: It doesn’t take many rules to make a really good game, just the right rules.
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