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The 8th Mind Sports Olympiad Hobby Games Festival
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HOBBY GAMES FESTIVAL
(Prize fund TBA)
- For MSO8 we are inaugurating this festival within a festival over the bank holiday weekend (to be precise from the evening of Friday August 27 to Monday August 30).
- This will allow us to better cater for enthusiasts of what we now call "Hobby Games".
- There will be an all-in entry fee of £15 (£8) for which participants may play in as many or as few of these "Hobby Games" tournaments as they wish.
ACQUIRE
(Prize fund TBA)
- Olympiad Championship
- Sunday 29, 9:30am-5:30pm
- Entry fee: £18 (£9) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 7 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
This is an economic game about the development of hotel chains. As the game progresses, tiles are placed on the board, slowly forming hotel chains, in which you can buy shares. As turns go by, the chains get bigger, and larger companies take over smaller ones, giving payouts to the shareholders of the companies taken over, whilst increasing the capital value of the now larger conglomerate.
The trick of the game is balancing the two. You need to manage cashflow, getting payouts from companies taken over, whilst at the same time increasing the capital value of the shares you own. Everything you do is a trade off between capital growth and revenue income, and you need to successfully combine the two to win the game.
AGE OF STEAM
(Prize fund TBA)
- Olympiad Championship
- Friday 27, 2pm-10pm
- Entry fee: £18 (£9) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 7 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
Age of Steam is regarded as one of the most interesting new games of 2002. Players operate companies laying railway track in the American Midwest, aiming to build track which will be used to make valuable and profitable commodity shipments from city to city. Balancing your books is both tricky and essential.
CARCASSONNE
(Prize fund TBA)
- Olympiad Championship
- Sunday 29, 6pm-10pm
- Entry fee: £14 (£7) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 4 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
This is a tile-laying game in which players pull a tile from the pool and then place it against one of the previously played tiles. If your tile creates a new object (like a city, a road or a farm) then you can place one of your control markers on the tile to denote your exclusive control. As subsequent tiles are added to the board, objects become bigger or even merge. As only one control marker may be on any one object, much of the skill of the game involves merging small items of which you have control with bigger ones that you did not previously control. Once certain objects are completed, like cities and roads, then you score points for them and the control marker is returned to you; alternatively, it's possible to have all of your control markers locked on the board on incomplete objects. Your decision on each turn isn't which tile to place, but instead how to place the tile that you drew. The goal is to score the most points at the end.
LOST CITIES
(Prize fund TBA)
- Olympiad Championship
- Friday 27, 9:30am-1pm
- Entry fee: £14 (£7) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 3.5 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
This card game uses a special deck of cards that is divided into five suits. Each suit represents an area into which you can send an expedition: Underwater, Desert, Volcano, Jungle and Tundra. Within each suit the cards are numbered 2-10 together with three "handshake" cards for each colour. On your turn, you either discard a card from your hand or play a card from your hand. You then replenish either from the deck or a face up discard.
When playing a card you must play it so that each of your five expeditions is played in ascending sequence, with all handshakes going before any numbers. At the end of the hand, when the deck runs out, you will score for every expedition you have started. Each expedition will score the value of the cards played in that expedition less 20 and thus may be negative. A handshake will double the score, two handshakes triple it and three quadruple it. In addition there is a 20 point bonus for playing 8 or more cards in a given expedition.
When discarding there is a separate discard pile for each suit. Thus there is plenty of possibility for your opponent to pick up one of your discarded cards and use it effectively. Lost Cities has an element of bluff involved as a result of the above mechanics and has surprising depth as a result.
PUERTO RICO
(Prize fund TBA)
- Olympiad Championship
- Monday 30, 9:30am-5:30pm
- Entry fee: £14 (£7) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 7 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
In this 90-minute game with almost no random elements, the players take the role of plantation owners in Puerto Rico centuries ago. Growing up to five different kind of crops (corn, indigo, coffee, sugar and tobacco) they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors.
A unique game system lets the players choose the order of the phases in each turn, and the player who employs these most effectively will win the game.
SETTLERS OF CATAN
(Prize fund TBA)
- Beginners' Introduction and Junior Championship
- Saturday 28, 9:30am-1pm
- Free entry
- No medals, no prizes
- No experience necessary - suitable for complete novices
- The top three players in the Junior Championship will be allowed to compete in the Olympiad Championship. This number may be increased if the number of entries for the Junior Championship is large.
- Pentamind: no credit
- Olympiad Championship
- Saturday 28, 2pm-10pm
- Entry fee: £18 (£9) but see Hobby Games Festival all-in entry fee
- Pentamind: 7 hours (no more than two Hobby Games Festival events to count per entrant)
As you might expect from the name, the game is all about settling the island of Catan, an island built by the random placement of 19 hexagonal tiles. Each hex produces one of five different commodities (brick, wood, sheep, ore and wheat) and each hex has a number from 2 to 12. When that number is rolled on two dice then the hex produces that commodity for the player(s) working it.
Of course, you're unlikely to roll the right numbers to produce the commodities you are after, so you have the opportunity to trade with the other players to gain resources, or with the bank, if other players don't have what you're looking for (or won't part with it). Having got the resources you're looking for you can then build up your settlements before passing the dice on.
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