Game Day at Chris & Edie's April 23rd

I messed up the time on this one, and arrived quite late, about 1:00 pm. Consequently, I missed out on Caylus, which, of course, sucks. On the positive side, I got some cleaning done and had a nice lunch.

When I got there, a big game of Bang! was going on. Eric had also arrived late, so we decided to play a quick two player while we waited for people to get gunned down. He pulled Battle Line off the shelf, and we sat down in the kitchen to take a look at it. Neither of us had played it before, so Kurt ducked the flying lead, ran in, and gave us a quick rundown of the rules.

BATTLE LINE
It took some time for me to settle on a strategy. This game felt a lot like Lost Cities to me, looking at these different colored/numbered cards, trying to make the best decision for the future with limited information. However, the addition of a direct confrontation aspect lent it an added edge and another dimension (I realize that could be read to mean the same thing, but I mean it the other way...). I drew first blood on the left flank, and took the second pawn on the right flank. So much for three in a row. I got the left flank with 1-2-3 of different colors, as Eric had started a hand with two twos there, and all the other twos were played. On the right, he started three of a kind with fives, and I countered with nines. I settled in to trying to leave myself multiple outs on hands whenever possible, and playing a waiting game, trying to wait for him to commit more cards to an area before I made a choice. I got a third pawn, Eric took a couple, and then I took a fourth and fifth for the win. Not very exciting on paper, but it was a pretty fun, tense game. A little more interaction than Lost Cities. I think it's interesting that each of us only drew one tactics card, and Eric never played his. Perhaps the game is supposed to get to a late game in which the tactics cards become very important, and we just skipped it. I'll have to read up on this game a bit.

EVO
The gunfight in the living room finally ended (to see who won you'll have to check Chris's geeklist), and we got some new games going. We (Chris, Mark, Gare, Erin, and myself) settled on Evo, while a group went to play card games in the other room. They ended up playing Blokus, too, and I think they got several games done in the time it took us to play Evo. I'd never played before, the only new player out of five, so Chris had to take the time to explain the game to me. Pretty simple, it seemed, except for the weird track for the meteor/changing climate, which really isn't that complex, just odd looking. I was a little worried, I generally have a tough time with my first play of any game with an auction element, as it seems I need some time to get a general sense of appropriate bidding in the system, and by the time I get it (if I ever do), it's often too late. First round I ended up passing on the bidding, sensing that people thought the bidding was getting high. I think I was just sensing a general vibe of gaming anxiety that a couple of the players give off normally, though. Right away, at the end of the first turn if you start with two or the second turn if you start with one dinosaur (I just know I had three), I got reduced to one dino by Gare's climate card. This put me in the whole quite heavily, as I was behind on mutations and victory points at that point. I bid heavily to get something on turn two, the mutant gene I think. The following turn, I bid hard on an egg to try to get my population going. I started getting some triceratops on the table, but I was way behind on vp's, and was going to need several turns to catch up. I got a few points ahead of Mark, but then the game ended on the first possible turn, leaving me in fourth. I don't know how much I could have caught up given a couple more turns. Maybe I had an outside chance at third, but first or second were way ahead of me. Chris ended up winning, with Erin in second and Gare in third. All the upgrades seemed good, but I think Chris's early egg paid off the most. I liked this game, it has several random elements, but a high fun factor, and it still leaves you with a lot of good decisions to make. I probably won't seek it out, but I'd definitely play again.

ST. PETERSBURG
We re-combined and split up again, and I ended up teaching St. Petersburg in the front room. I had three new players with me; Suke, James, and Chiara, the latter two being first-time Game Day attendees. Chiara and James lent some flavor to the discussion of the game, as the two of them had actually visited St. Pete, and were familiar with some of the buildings and history. We went over the rules and some basic strategy. As happens with many games, I think each person missed a little bit. I think it's pretty common for new players to underestimate the endgame Aristocrat scoring, and I told them as much. In the early game, there was a lot of spending on buildings. The Mistress of Ceremonies and Judge both came up, and I got to buy the Mistress, people passed the judge around, and he went to my hand, not to be played for three more turns. The next turn, there was only one worker, bought by Chiara who was in first position. I thought this would give her a big advantage over the course of the game, but she consistently spent money on buildings and didn't have enough to get more workers on the next turn. I built up a worker advantage, and soon had a huge money lead. I kept manipulating the aristocrat market looking for endgame scoring. Chiara's buildings started making her a big lead. We ended up ending pretty quickly on workers, and in the last turn I bought ten victory with pubs, and an aristocrat, and ended up passing Chiara by a long way in the endgame scoring with my 9 aristocrats. I thik everyone had fun, and would probably do a lot better on the second play. In the end, after me, it was Chiara, Suke, and James.

TICKET TO RIDE
Chiara and James had to leave, and a couple of new players showed up, so Suke and I went in to join Eric, Elaine, and Karen for Ticket to Ride. I ended up keeping LA-Miami and Miami-Boston. I spent a long time gathering train cars, and got to building. We had some congestion in Texas, but I got the routes I needed. Suke made me detour on the East Coast, around Charleston. Eric had a lead, but I was right behind him, and I probably had longest route. We both had two tickets. I figured my tickets were better, but I got a little worried, for some reason, about the six tickets that Elaine was holding, so I took more tickets. Looking at the tickets, there were two I could complete. In fact, I had just enough trains to finish them both (13), and everyone else had more trains than me. Everyone, that is, except Eric, who had 12. I should have actually counted the trains and the number of cards in his hand before I made my decision, but I didn't, so oh well. I considered for a moment and thought, no guts, no glory, and kept both of the tickets. On the subsequent three turns, Eric claimed five route, five route (triggering the endgame), and two route. This left me one turn short of completing either ticket (I had spent the first turn taking a locomotive, the last card I needed to complete both tickets), so I claimed a six route on my last turn. In the final scoring, I had longest route, plus 32 and minus 26 tickets. Eric only had like plus 12 tickets, and he ended up winning by two points. There were so many scenarios under which I could have won with a different decision, it was comical. Another message on paying attention to the whole board... The other three were quite a way behind, and finished in this order: Elaine, Suke/Karen (tie).

ZENDO
It was getting a little late, and most people had left. We sat down for a couple rounds of Zendo to round out the night. I had played a couple turns of this before, but not a "serious" game. It was Eric, Chris, Elaine, Karen, and myself. The many dimensions of possible solutions for each rule in this game can lead to some comical conversation, as people become frustrated trying to guess and build their own koans. This was fun, and really an eye-opener, as I was surprised every few turns by something I hadn't considered. A couple times, I think each of us did it in some way, people built koans or asked questions that they could already have known the answer to. Chris, Eric, and Karen each won a round, and we called it a night.

The night ended up, as the last Game Day did, with Chris, Eric, and myself sitting around chatting about gaming for a while. We had a talk about Magic, and playing draft formats, so I think I might get some packs and try to teach some people to draft over there one of these days. The big problem with this, I guess, is that it takes a while to play out a tournament, but I suppose we could play a multiplater variant or something. Maybe 3v3 team draft.

I drove home quite satisfied. Although I didn't play as many new games this time as last (2 as opposed to 7), and I played fewer games, I think I enjoyed the games more today, as I didn't have time to really get tired out. Hopefully, I'll be able to make it to the next one.

GG, GL