Big game Saturday

After acquiring a bunch of games last week, this week was a bit of a gaming week off, as I worked through a cold. I have a bunch of big, long games that I've been wanting to play, and I've made the decision to try to set aside two weekend days a month to get some of them played in the next few weeks. I'm shooting for Shogun, Warrior Knights, and Lunatix Loop, in the upcoming time period.

I had Saturday completely open, so I called out to Dan and Tim to see what was up. We decided that we would meet at Dan's at 5 or so for History of the World. In the early afternoon, Tim and I got together at the store. Tim, Jerod, and I decided to unshrink my new copy of Through the Desert.

TtD is a fun, fast game, and it's odd how it bogs down as the store owner takes extended absences to work with customers... all the same, it played great, and we had a relaxed afternoon of chatting with each other and other customers. In the initial setup, we had a couple of like-colored camels get placed a little too close to each other. Tim and I also let Jerod have a easy access to a pretty large area in the middle. Tim went for the first edge area, with Jerod moving over to contain him. As that happened, I went for my own edge area on the other side. My purple camel got blocked off, and I started focussing on an alternative plan accross the board, using my pink camel to secure another edge area. Meanwhile, Jerod had managed to cordone off an uncontestable area in the middle, and set about circling it up. He underestimated the number of camels available, though, and ended up making his area 3-4 spaces smaller than it could have been. Tim got into a frustrating situation in which his caravans had mostly been cut off while he was building his edge area. He expanded a couple a little bit, and then managed to extend his pink caravan a long way because I miscalculated and didn't think I needed to cut him off. Everyone pretty much ran out of expansion possibility, and we limped into the endgame a little. Jerod had 2 longest caravans, and Tim and I each had 1.5. In the end, I edged it over Jerod by only a few points, making him rue not having gone for the bigger area.

After TtD, Tim and I broke out Lost Cities. This was each of our first time really playing the game. It's simple and fast, and really engages the two player tension. There's plenty of hidden information, and it's hard to know if things you discard will help your opponent. I won the first couple round by twenty some points each time, but then in the third round Tim managed a really big expedition and caught up, edging my by 4 points, I think. This was entertaining and fun, and playing three rounds really helps with evening out the game.

After cleaning up our archaeological surveys, we headed back to meet up with Dan and the others (Drew, Eric, and Ziggy) for History of the World. I haven't played since High School, and Ziggy had never played, so there was some rules explaining to do. After the others getting food, cleaining up the table, and explaining rules, we finally got started around 6:30. I ended up going 3rd in the first round, and took control of the Shang. This was not much of a turn, but I got the idea of the game down. I like the shifting board control, and the possibilities for bringing the leader down. The randomness of the empire draw doesn't really help this too much, though, as someone can just luck into something great despite the odds. That makes the game exciting, though, and this was one of the more exciting games I've played lately. *Something I've been thinking about a little is how the more analytical, less random games just don't seem to have the "fun" capacity of some of the more random, unpredictable games. Just another thing to think about when deciding what comes off the shelf* Turn two I got lucky with the Persians, and had a pretty good turn, although my combat card, Jihad, didn't pay off too well. The real luck came as I wheeled into the Macedonians, and had a big, early turn to follow up the strong Persian turn. This put me into first, passing Tim who had been first in the second turn. I ended up with the Goths in the fourth epoch, and they did just fine, with a little help from my minor Anglo-Saxon kingdom. I edged past a lot of hate, and kept first place by a narrow margin. In the fifth age, I was handed the Chola, and it looked like I was destined to go down. However, I didn't lose a fight, and I ended up retaining first place by one point, helped immensely by that little Malian kingdom. By this point, it was looking like the three dominance chips, or whatever they're called, would be a big factor for me in the endgame. In the 6th epoch, I was passed another loser, the Incas/Aztecs. With the help of siegecraft the two little armies made good on some points, and I managed to stay in 2nd, only one point off the pace. The final round saw the Netherlands getting dished my way, and the small number of builds was going to be a problem. I used reallocation to get a bunch of coins, and threw down the leader I had been saving. I didn't lose a fight this turn either, and ended up spending all my coins on forts. I ended up with a pretty good turn, just three behind Ziggy, who had had an absolutely amazing worst-to-first turn, with Ottoman Turks and the Japanese minor kingdom. His one dominance token wasn't enough, as my three caught up and passed him for the win. A fun game with an exciting finish, it is marred, of course, by it's playing time. You really have to set aside 6-7 hours for this game. We ended up finishing around 1 am, and I stumbled off home to set the clock ahead and get some sleep.

This morning Kristin obliged me with a game of Lost Cities. Oddly, it went very similarly to my game with Tim yesterday. I won the first two rounds, the first by around twenty, the second by around 40, but then had a miserable turn the last round, while Kristin built a huge expedition and surged past me for the victory. The hilight of this game was in the third round, when I started the Egyptian expedition with investment/2/3/4/5 in my hand, and then Kristin drew into investment/investment/6/7/8/9/10 for a huge expedition that made me lost points to boot...

Tonight: A Game of Thrones CCG draft that promises to be well attended, as it is one of Lucas's last drafts in town before he moves up to Minnesota to start his new job at FFG.

GG, GL