Game Night at David’s: Railroad Tycoon

Tuesday, September 26th

David was one of the other Meetup group members that made it to TBGT. At the con, one of the games we both played in was Amun-Re, which David subsequently bought, and was putting on the table. I knew I’d be ready to play again, and rode to the event with Chris, who was hoping to run Railroad Tycoon, knowing that I’d be happy with either game. The gaming out here is pretty spread out, and it’s really nice to have someone to ride with and talk to on all these half-hour treks.

We got to David’s a little early, and had a nice time just chatting about games, Meetup, and life in general. The rest of the evening’s attendees trickled in, eventually putting us at ten participants. People looked at the two games on offer, and Amun-Re filled up quickly, so I found myself sitting down to my second new (to me) Martin Wallace rail game, in as many days. Players for our game were Chris, Ben, myself, Nate, and Jan.

Railroad Tycoon looks really cool, with all the nice bits. As closely as it’s related to Age of Steam, it should certainly be high on my list right now, given the current scarcity of AoS, and my relatively high desire to own it. However, RT has what, to me, is one major drawback: the titanic board. I really find it unwieldy and prohibitive, and I just don’t see wanting to spread it out all that often.

So, since RT hasn’t been in the blog before… It’s a rail game, showing the Eastern half of the USA. It’s very similar to AoS, if you hadn’t gathered that. Players bid for turn order, and, each turn, run through three rounds of actions, in which each player gets to choose one of six actions. Players sell shares, which they have to pay interest on, to make money, which they use to build track. Once they have track built, they can make money from shipping goods, which can make them profitable. One big difference with RT from AoS is that you can take shares at absolutely any time. Another is the presence of a couple different sets of cards, that add an additional element of chance to the game.

Chris ran through the rules, then ran through them again, as Nate showed up late. Somehow, in the process, a couple of the players, who’d never played AoS, were somehow not made aware that shares would be subtracted from their scores at the end of the game. This, of course, made a big difference in game play, as it didn’t come up until I mentioned it about halfway through the game. It also turned out that Chris was playing some of the cards (this was the first time he’d used them) the wrong way, which also had had a huge impact on the game. As much as these discrepancies affected the outcome, it was still a good learning game, and a fun one (at least for me) at that.

I learned a lot about RT in the opening couple turns. The guy to my right won the auction to go first, and took an action card. I built, on a space in the middle/North of the board, where I could deliver three goods between two cities. This was not even the best place to build, as the road to Baltimore was much more profitable. However, I had a Tycoon card that wanted me to build out of Chicago, so I thought I should stay close. Jan didn’t miss the Baltimore connection, though it took her until, I think, the second turn, to realize how great the Baltimore Hotel card would be for her, which was something I didn’t realize until about the same time, when Chris used the first hotel and we figured out what a big impact they could have on the early game. She snatched the hotel, and proceeded to get up to making about $12 in a couple of turns, while only having taken out a couple shares.

Nate and Ben were going wild on shares, and Chris and Ben were barking right at Jan’s heels. I was trying to be pretty conservative with my money, and Nate and I were bringing up the rear the whole game. I had a big plan for my network, which was unfortunately disrupted by Ben when he first built through one of the routes I wanted, and then inserted a new city of a very unfortunate color right on my route. I was suddenly left with a few less cubes to deliver for a few less points than I expected, and I was wishing I’d headed East. Nobody really contested Jan for the North East, or Chris for the South East.

Despite Jan’s huge early lead, and Nate and Ben’s relative lack of a chance, we boldly played on. To cut a long story shorter, some interesting stuff ended, and we triggered the game end. Jan won, Chris followed a ways back in second, I was one space behind him, and then Ben and Nate brought up the rear.

I enjoyed the game, but I need to read the rules. I look forward to playing it again someday, hopefully with more experienced individuals. Right now, I’ll continue to keep my eyes open for Age of Steam.

The other table finished, and started Winner’s Circle. However, it was late, and I couldn’t afford a second extra-late night in a row, so we headed off home, full of game talk.

GG, GL
JW

Game Night at Lee’s: Volldampf, Niagara, Vegas Showdown, Cranium Hoopla
Monday, September 25th

I’ve become more and more focused on gaming, especially board gaming, over the past couple years. These recent weeks, since we’ve moved to North Carolina, have only heightened that focus, as I continue to meet new gamers and explore new games. Despite being pretty short of cash, I’ve somehow managed to acquire some new games recently. I didn’t get out for any gaming activities last week, but, over the weekend, while spending quiet time around the house with Kristin, I managed to teach myself Euro Rails and Volldampf (both from eBay), as well as Vegas Showdown (TRU sale). I’ve also recently acquired Detroit Cleveland Grand Prix and 1870. Both of these came from Amazon, at 50% off with free shipping. I don’t think 1870 will hit the table real soon, but I was happy to add a representative of that series of rail games to my collection.

With all these new games to possibly play, and not having done any gaming in the past week or so, I was pretty anxious for Game Night at Lee’s to roll around. I packed up my box, with Volldampf, Funny Friends, Santiago, and Vegas Showdown, and waited for Chris, who had generously agreed to drive.

Chris was pretty interested in Volldampf, as he’s a fan of Martin Wallace and Age of Steam. We made our way down to RTP, to pick up Lori, Chris’s girlfriend, and chatted about acquiring games on eBay. I only ended up getting Volldampf because I miss-entered my maximum bid, neglecting to put in a decimal, and bid $3,879.00 on it, rather than $38.79. In the end, I ended up paying about $48 for it, I think, which, I guess, is lucky. I got a good game, and wasn’t completely financially wiped out…

We got to Lee’s, and groups started dividing up. Chris wanted to play Volldampf, so it was on the table right away. Unfortunately, only Chris, Lori, and myself ended up playing, while most others played Barbarossa. It seemed this crowd was not heavy on strategy game lovers. Next time, I’ll have to bring something lighter.

Volldampf

Chris and Lori had both played Age of Steam, so the explanation was pretty quick, as the games have some similar mechanics. I had done a full solo of the game, but was glad I’d printed out new rules from the ‘geek and browsed them during the car ride down – there were some corrections, and an important tidbit I’d missed. I was also happy to have found downloadable English-language versions of the event cards. I printed a deck and sleaved them – they were very helpful. I need to make sure I get that guy a gg tip!

In V. you bid for turn order, in a similar fashion to AoS. The winner gets first choice of a set of face-up track cards, as well as first chance to build and ship goods cubes. Event cards are a nice catchup mechanism, given to the player in last place, or to someone who misses a goods cube move. I won the first auction, and took the one set of cards that would provide stuff to ship on turn one. Chris and Lori took the other two, we all built in different areas, and I was the only one who ended up with any income.

They caught up fairly quickly, though. I managed to stay in the lead for a couple turns, but while I was building solo, they were building into each other, and scoring off of each other’s moves. A turning point came when Chris used an event card to block a big, six point goods cube move, which was subsequently moved “out from under” me. This really slowed me down, and allowed Lori to pass me. Things were looking pretty tight, but some lucky cards came up, and I managed to win them. I think Chris and Lori felt that bidding for turn order had been too high early, and basically let me have them. I got a nice long network, and made some big cube shipments over the last couple of turns to catch up, and pass, Lori, which is how it ended.

The game was quite fast. I might say, given the basic similarities to AoS(and our subsequent assumptions), that it went very quickly. On reflection, though, this is a quite different game. It seems to me that the way the board is constructed, and the way the card comes out, this game might be much more about getting involved with other peoples’ networks, and utilizing negotiation skills to make things work for you. In AoS you really want to build a big network for yourself, but, the way the cards come out, that’s much less likely in V., making negotiation and sharing much more of a focus.

The other group was done, and Chris was wanting to get Niagara on the table. He had the expansion, but most of the people who were going to play hadn’t played the basic game, so we stuck with that. It was only my second play, so I was fine with that. We moved over to the couches, while the other table busted out, I think, Things in a Box.

Niagara

I’ve been trying to get away from my green pieces fixation (it was actually causing me to make errors in the games in which I ended up not being green), and ended up playing red for the second time tonight. The table was myself, Lee (the host), Lee’s friend (whose name, I think, was Spencer), Lori, and Chris. I was in the third seat to start.

I opened with a cloud, looking to get it out of my hand while both of my boats were off the river. I also just like to see the water move more. Second turn, I used a one to get my boat off the dock, wanting to save the bigger ones for more impact with two boats. Chris and Lee were picking up gems.

In the next couple turns, Chris grabbed a lot of purple gems, and got in a position to win. I was sitting on three different colored gems. I went for the two other colors, hoping someone could stop him, and open the door for me. Lori managed a steal from Chris, sacrificing one of her boats in the process. I got my gems, and headed back up river. I got in a position to win, but then Lee managed a steal from me. Chris got the last gem he needed, but, apparently, didn’t have the right card left to get to the dock. Nobody was paying attention to Lee, and it was a big surprise to us all when he delivered a gem and said “I win,” showing us four clear gems!

I think Niagara is fine. It seems to get a lot of knocks from people who think it’s too light. While I feel there’s not a lot of control, especially with five players, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This is a nice, fairly light game, that is fun for non-gamers, looks cool, and provides some opportunities (card counting, planning ahead) for the thinking gamer to stretch out her grey matter.

There was a migration toward the other table, on which Pit was getting set up. We had more than the max number for stock trading, so another game had to be put forward. I pulled out Vegas Showdown, wanting to get another new acquisition on the table. Chris and Lori were up for it, and happy to stay in the couch area. Somewhat unhappily, nobody seemed interested in leaving the big table to join us for this (or, apparently, any other) game, so we ended up playing just the three of us again.

Vegas Showdown

Red again! V.S. hasn’t been in the blog before, so I’ll give a little description. It’s one of the newer Avalon Hill games, and does a pretty good job of being an American Euro. The players take the roles of a group of mega-wealthy people who have decided to have a competition involving who can have the most popular hotel/casino in Vegas. You participate in an auction for tiles that represent hotel/casino features like slots, lounges, and restaurants, and then place them strategically on your player board, which has limited space. There are a variety of special scoring opportunities. The game ends when a player fills her board, or when a type of tile can’t be replaced. Most “fame” points wins.

The explanation for this was a little longer, as it’s not overly similar to any one particular game that the three of us knew. This one also suffered a little more than Volldampf from “teacher advantage” – In the end, Lori and Chris were a little surprised by the game end (they were focusing on the other game end condition). Also, I think just having had the experience of putting the tiles on the player boards, and seeing them, was a big advantage for me here.

Early bidding saw competition for slots, which I won and probably overpaid for. Early lounges and Restaurants were constructed by Chris and Lori. As the game progressed, some nice tiles came out quickly. Chris picked up fancy restaurants and fancy slots that he couldn’t play, saving them for later. When they did come out, they gave him a big bump. I outbid Lori on a high-roller’s room, which would have given her a huge hike in income, and I didn’t feel I could let her have it cheaply. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bit of a drag for me, as the next table games tiles proved to be pretty far away, due to cards and the luck of the stack.

I grabbed the lion’s share of the “diamond” bonus tiles, and a card giving me points for them came up. I also got a really lucky draw when the space-age sports book came up. I had to pay a ton for it, but it let me get to within one tile of filling up my board, and it gave me a load of points. Chris let me have it, I think, because he knew if he got it, then he would be paying a lot of money for something he couldn’t play, and then I would just take the other sports book, which was up. As it was, I grabbed a slot to kill the game, and won handily. Chris and Lori were pretty close to each other, a ways behind.

This was pretty fun with three. You could almost always get something useful. I think I’d like it a bit more with four or five, as the competition for tiles would make it a lot more tense, and the publicity action would become more important. I would call this a big success for the designer, although I’m not sure if it’s sales will match Hasbro’s expectations.

Lee and Nate were the only ones left at the other table, and they were playing set. Nate wanted to get Cranium Hoopla going, which Lee and Lori were also enthusiastic about. It was way past my bedtime, and I was pretty tired, so I sat out and just watched. They had a pretty fun game, the pinnacle of which was Nate trying to convey “milky way” through charades, with Lee’s running chatter guesses working up to the phrase “…looking in space… milking… milking a cow… milking in space.” You had to be there. Actually, watching the group electronic word games at TBGT, and this, have made me want to dedicate some time to “party”-style games. I’m taking suggestions, if you’ve got any…

GG, GL
JW

Game Night at Rick & Marnee's - Hacienda and Power Grid

The third Friday of every month, Rick and Marnee host a game night at their house. There's lots of room to play, and generally 16-18 gamers. This was my second time attending, and I had a lot of fun again. Lew Pulsipher was there with a couple of prototypes, but I didn't get to play either of them. Instead, I ended up in the basement, chatting with Chris, who wanted to play Hacienda, after having watched part of the game I played in last Sunday. We gathered up a couple of other stragglers, Vicki and Dave, and were later joined by David Phipps.

Hacienda

It was nice to get another chance to teach and play this hard on the heels of my first teaching game, at TBGT. I got to make sure I went over everything that I felt I might have underemphasized on Sunday. This basically included the later-game market connection scoring and the scoring of Haciendas. I got Vicki and Dave taught up, paused to answer questions, we set up the dogbone map, and we got going.

This game saw a lot of action in the middle. Chris and Dave went for connecting to the outside markets, and then moving toward the middle. Vicki and I went for water on opposite sides of the board, and David P. started a nice land chain on one of the corners of the middle section.

As the game developed, we saw the board get cut in half by Chris, Dave, and David. David was successful working out of just one land chain, and created a long herd of cattle that basically blocked others from one of the markets. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to connect to a lot of markets himself. Chris and Dave moved out from the middle, with Dave coming out from a corner, and Chris starting new herds from the edges of the board. Dave did a nice job of cutting off my growing pig herd. Vicki was kind of building in her own area in one of the corners. The first scoring round hit, and I made a big mistake, not buying a hacienda. I had an action that I could use to play another pig, that would make me about eight pesos and a water vp, basically two points. However, the hacienda would have made me five, netting me three over the pig play. I really needed every play after the first scoring round, and never got the hacienda down, consequently costing me 6-8 total vp, which would have put me in the lead at the end of the game.

After the first scoring round, people really had a good idea of how the game worked, and began to race for markets and make moves that cut people off. Things started to get much tighter, and planning for each turn was very interesting. The players also started to build with water in mind, and David in particular was very successful placing water. As the final scoring round was coming up, I had repeatedly had my plans shattered by the players in front of me, but had flexible enough backup ideas to still make things happen. One thing I noticed, though, was that these plans might have been too flexible. I ended the game with several land cards in my hand, meaning that I'd perhaps wasted the two actions I spent buying land, which certainly could have netted me 8-10 vp in the second scoring round. This is the big danger of starting out by the water, I think - you have to work so hard to get connected to multiple markets, while people in the middle have 2-3 markets very quickly.

In the end, Chris emerged victorious, with Dave shortly behind him, and me on Dave's heels. David, with a lack of market connections, was a bit behind in fourth, with Vicki, who had a lot of money left, close behind him in fifth. Vicki also simply forgot about the haciendas, I think, as she could have netted 7-9 vp off of one with one of her last actions, and, I guess, just didn't think of it (like me...).

This was a fun game, and we sat around for a while chatting about it, and other things, lacking the impetus to start another game. Someone, I think Chris, was interested in Power Grid, but Dave didn't want to play. I went upstairs to see the state of the other games, then grabbed PG and brought it downstairs to set up. Just as we were getting into rules explanation, Leo came down from the finished Formula De game and joined us.

Power Grid

I've played PG a few times, but not a lot lately. I guess the last time was with Chris at Sci Fi Genre, which I think I won. This time, though, we had five players, which would make it a tighter game. We chose the U.S. map, as people thought they'd be more familiar with the geography, and left out the Southwest section. I won the number four plant and was seond to build, and ended up in the North East, after Leo went in the mid South-East. Chris went into the Northern mid West and David set up in the middle South, and Vicki took the cheap spots in the South-East. So, Vicki looked like she might get cut off, and Leo looked a little surrounded. I felt like I had just enough room to expand, if things went right.

Things did go right, for a little while. I had a hard decision in the second turn, when the 26 was actually in the market, due to freakishly large plants coming into the future market. This plant was two oil for five cities. I was bidding on it with Chris, when I had to make a decision over whether to keep bidding and not build, or let Chris have the plant and build. Looking at my position, I thought I needed to expand rapidly, so I let him have it. Of course, this meant he didn't have the money to build, and would be in the "worst" position, which looked like it would pay off for him. I built out as rapidly as possible, and led the pack up to five cities, and had plants to power seven and money to build. At this point, Chris had gotten back into the game and made a surge of building. His choices, along with Vicki's and Leo's, hemmed me in at six cities. Vicki, though, was stuck on five, and Leo on four, with Chris and David the only ones who could economically build to seven. Fortunately, David wanted the game to play quickly, and it had been going fairly slowly, so he forced step two the next turn. I had to debate paying 40 to build through a few connections to get to seven. This would have really opened things up for me, but would use up a lot of money that otherwise might take me through the cheap connections down the East coast, to the South. So, I sat on the cash.

I had moved a little down the turn order now, but I really had to worry about Leo building into me. Thankfully, he chose to build into cheaper initial connections to the West. I'm not sure if he didn't sense that he would subsequently have cheaper routes to the South, or if he thought moving that way was a better way to open up his network. Anyway, since he didn't block me, I was able to take the second spot in most of Vicki's cities, going South. I almost messed up and took the last two, when I realized I risked getting hemmed in. So, instead I worked out to the West for a couple more expensive connections, figuring anyone who wanted to go into Florida was going to have a pretty expensive build through me anyway. Chris had made some excellent builds moving West. If you are playing with the Pacific Northwest area, a person who plays in the Northern Midwest will have first access to what turn into relatively reasonable builds in step two, provided nobody is silly enough to start out on the Pacific.

I had, at this point, plants to power eleven cities. I gambled on the power plant auction and passed on a four and five, knowing that I really needed the six to come down. Thankfully, I really got some luck, and a six did make it, and I got it for not too bad a price. This would let me power fifteen. Step three came up at the end of this bidding phase, and it looked like the game was going to open up a bit. Around this time, I realized that if people didn't decide to block me, I was probably going to be able to build to fifteen, triggering the end and winning, as I was the only one able to power fifteen at that point. Thankfully, nobody was thinking about that, and they didn't pay to build through me into the areas I needed. I was just able to build four after buying fuel, and I took that game. I think Vicki was second, Chris third, David fourth, and Leo fifth.

This was a pretty interesting session. Chris's starting position was very powerful, and getting the good five plant so early was a great advantage. I really thought he was going to take the game, but I think his money just got a little too tight. If I would have built into Florida too early, he probably would have had it. Getting blocked in is worrisome, and you have to be really careful about your placement. I think Leo's inexperience hurt here, as he set up in an area that was easily surrounded. Other than that, a pretty standard game of fairly good decisions, made quite interesting by the randomness of the power plants that come up.

GG, GL

JW

TBGT Day 4 – Seven Games!

Ma Ni Ki, Sticheln, Ingenious, Amun-Re, Princes of Florence, Caylus, Hacienda

My eyes snapped open at about ten minutes to eight in the morning, despite having gone to bed only approximately six hours earlier. Who knows why it happened, but there was nothing for it but to get up, shower, write my post from the day before, get coffee, and head to the Comfort Suites RTP.

With convention badge proudly hanging from my neck, I strode into the meeting room looking for some game. There were a couple tables going already by the time I got there, around ten, and a couple people sitting around. Many of them were only staying a while, needing to check out of the hotel and hit the road or catch flights. We decided to play some quick ones while we waited for the hall to fill up.

Ma Ni Ki

Mike, a person I hadn’t met yet during the event, was one of the ones waiting for an event, and he pulled this down and taught it to Chris, Dwayne, and myself. It’s really a cute game, and we played pretty casually and had some fun. Basically, there are three neat wooden circus animals, and the game board has two spaces, signifying circus risers. You draw a card which shows a configuration of animals, and then use some preset commands to move the animals from their current position to the desired one. First person to come up with a working program takes the card. A nice warm-up game. I felt like I caught on pretty well, although at times Mike got sick of waiting for us and was blurting out programs while I was still re-reading them. I think in a couple years my niece will love this.

Sticheln

Next, Mike pulled down Sticheln, which he described as an “anti-trick taking game.” I had a similar experience with this as I had with Bottle Imp the night before – I developed a simple strategy, did fairly well, then flopped. We only played a few hands, with three and then with four when Eric joined. Things really went downhill with the fourth player, and I made at least one embarrassingly bad play. In this simple card game, you have cards in a few colors. At the beginning of the hand, you put down a card, the color of which will be your “misery color.” Any of these cards you end up with at the end of the round score their value, negative, from your score. All other cards are worth one point each. Consequently, you have to balance the cards you have to try to make it so that you can get rid of misery cards without taking them, but still take some tricks to make a positive score. Any color than the one lead is trump, and you don’t have to follow suit. Really, a pretty neat game, although it probably gets a little too hard to plan successfully when you play with more than three people.

The room was starting to fill up, and it was time for some people to get going, so we decided to abandon Sticheln in search of other games. There wasn’t anything we could really get into, so we started a game of Ingenious, with Christopher, Sarah, and myself taking part.

Ingenious

I haven’t played this in a while, and I’ve actually been kind of anxious to get it on the table again. This is one of the games that my track record is very poor at, though. I certainly need some work with my strategy on this one. In Ingenious, the players take turns playing tiles that take up two spaces on a hexagonal board, and have two colored symbols on them. They score for rays of like colored pieces that touch their edges when played. Your ending score is the lowest score you earn from the six or so colors. Consequently, you need to try to develop evenly, as one huge score and several very small ones won’t do you much good. We were all fairly even starting out. However, Chris and Sarah were able to explode to max out a color for an extra play much earlier than myself. Chris especially did a very good job of blocking me from colors that he knew he was ahead of me on. I think I definitely need to work on spreading the board more in the early game. I ended up making some big lines that other people got to capitalize on and cap before I could use them. I also need to do this to make sure I can keep my colors going. In the end, Chris took it, followed very closely by Sarah, with me bringing up the rear a considerable distance off.

A little after we finished, Chris wandered off, really hoping to get in a heavy rail game, which he seems to have become obsessed with. There were a couple 18XX games played this week, and I think he only got in on one of them, and really liked it. I don’t think he had any luck on Sunday, but I certainly started to have some from this point on. At least in some ways. I think it was, at this point, Sarah and myself, and David. We were looking for something that one of us could teach, and that we’d still be excited about playing. We were waffling over Amun Re when we were joined by LuAnn, who said she’d teach, and Dan. I had never played this game, but I’d played games with all these people, and I was expecting this one would be pretty fun.

Amun-Re

In Amun-Re, another Knizia game, this time a little less abstract, but with the familiar Egyptian theme that he somehow failed to paste onto Ingenious, players develop provinces in ancient Egypt and vie for the favor of Amun-Re. Provinces are bought in an auction, then pyramids and farmers are built on them, money is earned through farmers, and vp’s are earned in a variety of ways. Some are procured from pyramids and temples on the board, and some from special power cards, that are purchased at the same time as the other items. There are three rounds of auctioning, then a scoring round, then the board is wiped clean of everything but pyramids, and you do it all again. I managed a slim lead after the first scoring round, with the special worker card, the most pyramids in one of the provinces, and ownership of the two temple region. In the second round, I overbid a couple of regions, and found myself unfortunately short of cash. However, I was still able to have an effective turn, and pulled off some decent maneuvering. I scored more for pyramids, one less temple, and no special cards. However, I did have the third most money, and I ended up just squeaking the victory by three points or so. It was a very enjoyable game, and a good crowd. Sarah, at one point, referred to Amun-Re as “Amun-Joy,” which prompted a barrage of humorous comments, and resurfaced at the end of the game for even more laughs. I’d play again, and maybe pick it up. For me, important strategies involved being balanced between income and all the things you could buy or score victory points from. Pyramids were a big, big deal, especially being able to work into sets more easily in the second scoring round. The power cards were maybe a little too random for me, as I only ever saw one the whole game that affected scoring directly, which made some of the planning seem a little worthless.

Sarah and LuAnn dispersed to do other things. Dan and David and I were sitting around considering something they could play before they left when we were approached by a little lady from Georgia who wanted to squeeze another game in. Everyone agreed they had just over an hour to play, but we couldn’t seem to find a quick game that April, the nice woman from down South, would agree to. In the end, we acquiesced to her suggestion of Princes of Florence, even though it seemed like pushing the envelope on time a little bit. We all said we’d play fast to get through it, but this didn’t run out to be true in the end, unfortunately, as there were lots of slow turns. Dan ended up having to leave before the end of the game, which I felt bad about.

Princes of Florence

Similar to Amun-Re in that you have an auction round, followed by a development round. Very dissimilar in many other ways, though, as you make money differently, and are scoring victory points from various sources throughout the game, while you encourage artisans and scholars to create great works. I started off as second player, which is not bad. I won the jester on the first round, and bought a profession and a freedom. I had pretty much the exact same second turn. Things were going a little low, but I attributed that to there only being four players and to the aforementioned “fast play.” I think it may have had more to do with people just wanting to stick to an individual plan, though. I got both of the first two jesters for 900 each, and then picked up a third a couple turns later, for about 700, after I acquired the “most jesters” prestige card. Since I had such a big jester advantage, and also had taken extra profession cards, I was able to make good sized works. I won the largest work several times. Things were pretty tight up until twenty points or so, when April and I started to edge out in front. Dan had a bad turn, when he should have taken money, which put him behind. David was doing well. I made a mistake which was fairly costly. First, I didn’t anticipate any of the remaining people would fight me for the park I needed, but April did, and I ended up not having enough money to get it. Then, I bought a recruiting card, thinking I could recruit to get back something April had already taken from me. It turned out, though, that card was something I played early, and I didn’t have the building for it. I had taken a bonus card, so there was only one action left. I ended up scoring a work without the applicable building. I still got plenty of vps, and won best work. However, April and David were both able to build twice on the last turn, making fairly nice works and scoring lots of points. After they’d done all their scoring, it looked like they were tied for the lead, ahead of me, until I revealed the aforementioned prestige card, lurking in front of me, which put me one point ahead! A very good game with a near photo-finish. I just wish we could have finished ten minutes earlier so that Dan could still have been there.

Almost immediately after finishing Princes, I was approached by Geoff. They were playing Caylus, and one of the players had to leave, so they were looking for a player to take over. Now, I hate the idea of abandoning a game, and I’m not one to turn down a gamer in need, so I jumped over to the other table.

Caylus

The game was about two-thirds of the way done, and the guy I was taking over for was in the lead. We were, unfortunately, right in the middle of taking turns, going down the road. I made a couple of bad mistakes here, while I was adjusting to the game while trying to play simultaneously and effectively. I managed to keep the building on the plan, so to speak, and pick up a few points, just staying in the lead. I think everyone was starting to show the effects of gaming for several days straight, as we had a lot of minds wandering and people not concentrating (including me) during this session. Although I was in the pole position, I didn’t have much money, and wasn’t sitting on a lot of buildings that people would really feel the need to give me victory points by jumping upon. I did what any sane person would do and tried to push the provost forward, hastening the game end. On the last turn, I forgot that if I moved the provost back, past the point where peoples’ workers were, they wouldn’t get to do anything. Consequently, I was pretty much resigned to losing, as two people were going to build giant buildings, and one was probably going to build enough of a stone building to catch me. However, the player to my right didn’t forget, and made the move I should have, playing a worker to the move provost slot and passing, forcing people to pay more for their actions, and, consequently, be able to take fewer. I passed shortly after him, and, soon, everyone was out. We moved the provost back past the point where the big buildings could be built, and past the point where on of the players could get resources to build and score a lot. It was a masterful play, and, if I’d done it, I’d feel I deserved to win. In the end, though, I think I only won the game due to the excellent foundation laid by the first player. Good job, Tito.


Strange interlude

As we were finishing up the game, a voice behind me said “are you real?” Apparently, he was speaking to Geoff, who simply replied “yes.” The voice then said “am I real?”, and, at this point, I had turned to find myself looking at a very messed-up looking young man. We invited him to come and sit with us, so we could ascertain what sort of help he needed. He claimed to be paranoid schizophrenic, and off his meds. Thomas and I took him to the front desk, where it became clear he was checked in. I got the front desk guy to call his wife, to bring him his meds. While I stood there, the young man started talking about committing suicide, so I thought I should stay with him. He was clearly scattered on the mental front, and I was a little worried and, frankly, hoping that someone was calling 911. Thankfully, the desk had gotten through to his wife, who pulled up with his tearful mother, just minutes later. It came to light that he had been released from the hospital the night before, then snuck out, and left a suicide note. His mother was so happy to find him… I think it had been a very, very hard day for her. I have to say, it was a very strange way to spend a half an hour, but I’m glad the young man ended up in our meeting room, rather than someplace where he might have been ignored or treated even worse.

After that, it was just time for some clearing of the head. I sat around and talked with Paul and both of the Reinhardts for a while, just going over what had happened, as well as games in general, and the event. It turned out we weren’t done yet, though, as Rob spotted Hacienda in the box of games I was about to carry out to my car, and wanted to give it a go. Rob hasn’t, apparently, been gaming much the last year or so as he finished his graduate degree, and there really isn’t any way you can turn down a guy that nice. Before you know it, we had five players, and headed for the markets.

Hacienda

This is a game I picked up with store credit that I had, right before we left town. Of the games at Critical Hit, this was the one I wanted the most. I hadn’t gotten my copy on the table yet, though, as there has been so much else to play lately. I was pretty happy to give the cards a first shuffle, finally. Everyone seemed really scattered by this point, and the explanation took a while, as people chatted, got snacks, and gazed off into the distance longing for home. However, I think everyone got most of the game: buy lands or animals, add lands to your holdings or animals to your herds, connect your herds to market to make money, then have scoring rounds to make vp. Two things I learned I need to emphasize when I teach this game were, first – really take a look at the long term impact of connecting to multiple markets, on the scoring track. Second – haciendas only score land chains OR herds, third, and maybe most obvious most quickly, you score money from reaching a market edge, not victory points.

For all the stuff that individuals missed during the teaching, the game went pretty smoothly. I cut off a couple of players, but, in the long run, it forced them to get started connecting to other markets earlier, which the other players didn’t seem to be putting enough emphasis on. I rode it fairly tight on money, concentrating on the aforementioned connections. This was one of the better social games I played over the weekend – everyone was just really nice, even David, who really probably only said about fifteen words. The other players weren’t able to build one big herd, with the exception of Rob. On the other hand, even though he had the biggest herd, the biggest land chain, two haciendas, and more water than anyone, he had by far the fewest connections to cities. I think he’ll be quite dangerous the next time he plays. I scored a huge lead in the game, but, after me, the finish was pretty tight between everyone else, and I think that Rob, Lynn, Tom, and Dave seemed to have a good time. In fact, in spite of me being worried that I’d really messed up teaching them, they seemed anxious to play it again.

Well, it was past nine, and really time to call it a night. I rescued my copy of Santiago just as Lynn was about to get it on a table, which would have kept me there until who knew when. It was refreshing to walk out of the hotel and head for home. I felt pretty washed out though, and not ready for the week ahead of me.

What a week! Time to make a geeklist on BGG. I don’t think I’ll be gaming much for a while. Thanks for reading this far.

GG, GL

JW

TBGT - Day 3

I got up and took it easy on Saturday. Kristin had some errands to run, and I had a soccer game at 10:45. Got some games together, went to my game. It turned out there was a football game, and traffic was so bad I had to plan an alternate route to the soccer field. This was like my first game of the day...

My soccer team is huge, but that's actually quite nice right now. The humidity is killer. We play on a full size field, and, one 60-70 yard run, and I'm dizzy. I did not play very much in this game, as I don't like to be walking on the field, and I'll call a sub as soon as I'm tired. We were pretty disorganized and never found any rhythm, and lost 4-1.

I got cleaned up, ate lunch with Kristin, and headed over to the event. I ran into Rob, who was ready to play something, and we decided to get a table going. Rob hadn't played Thurn and Taxis yet, so I agreed to teach it. He tracked down Kevin and Dolly to fill up the game, and we got started.

I taught to Kevin and Rob. Dolly helped. She also got off to a strong start, taking the vp chip for the purple region immediately. Rob took his time getting a route down, to score some extra vp's with five cards. I wasn't getting anything too exciting for my routes, so I decided to push the coach upgrades. I was in the last seat, and stole a march on the other players by playing two cards two turns in a row to be the first to the four coach. I remained in the pole position the rest of the game. Dolly and Rob, however, were the big points earners, each building extra-long coach lines at times, and picking up lots of extra vp chips. Dolly filled the grey region, and Rob got the every region but Baern chip. I don't think I picked up my first vp chip until I scored to get my six coach, which is, of course, rather sad. I was in a funky place starting my seven route, two away from filling Baern, three away from every region, and one away from some other stuff. I finally hit a run of cards I needed, and Rob finally didn't take them, in the seat ahead of me. I wasted a turn when I got confused, something in my head misfiring and telling me I could grab Baern AND every region, grabbing an extra card when I could have played two. I waffled a bit on pushing the game end - I felt everyone was so far ahead of me - but Rob was also pretty close to seven, and Dolly only had three houses left, and, frankly, I didn't really care if I won, so I triggered the game end. Being the last player, nobody else would get their seven after me. This was a huge turn, in which I picked up, I think, 12 points. With the houses I got rid of, the combined total was actually enough to get me the game, with Rob, Dolly, and Kevin following in that order. I'm really happy I got a chance to play a game with Rob, as he is the primary organizer of the event, and I'd never met him before.

It turned out to be much later in the day than I thought, so there wasn't much time before the evening's special events. There was an ongoing "Pirate's Dice" competition, which I had played no games of. I decided to give it a shot. I'm pretty bad at bluffing, so I figured I'd just be giving some coins away... and that's what happened. I lost on about six "hands" in a row, and abdicated my seat, after going out first at a crowded table, in order to look into the puzzle competition.

We had been randomly assigned to teams, and we were supposed to get ourselves together over the course of the week to solve several pirate-themed puzzles that had been created by one of the attendees. I had found some teammates on Friday night, three of them had done no puzzles, and one said he had "worked on some." I went to go look for some of the puzzle sheets, but there were none left, so I figured it was a wash. About this time on Saturday, I ran into Kevin, who was looking for a word puzzle for his group. We managed to find one, made a copy at the front desk, and sat down to work on it. It was an interesting little puzzle, and I finished it in about twenty minutes. The time came to gather into teams, and it turned out a group of people had finished all the puzzles already. In fact, together, we'd finished the one I did three times, and two others twice each. I figured this boded well for our chances. Rob then gave each group a map and a bottle with some coded instructions in it, and we were off, racing to solve the final puzzle. Unfortunately, we over thought one of the clues, and spent way too much time on it. One of the groups was very quick, though, and finished before we were even close. They got plastic swords and copies of the map/poster used in the puzzle.

Next up was the "prize table." This took a long time. My name was called very late, and all the games that really interested me had gone. I picked up the Game of Thrones board game, which I had been sort of interested in for a while. On the second pass, in the "speed round," I grabbed Mammoth Hunters - it was a choice between that and Tortoise and Hare, neither of which I'd ever played. I didn't manage a third pick. Overall, it was a pretty interesting process, and I'm happy I participated.

Post-prize table, I wandered around until I ran into Justin, Fitch, and Ravindra starting Silk Road. I couldn't pass up that table, so I took a seat and was quickly joined by Brian. Ted Cheatham came over to teach us his game, and we were soon headed West. I wanted to take this game really easy - and it was easy to. The nature of the game, in which you are drawn steadily down the road, allows you to sort of sit back and deal with what happens, should you choose. The randomness of the turn order also can really get into your planning - you just need to go first a time or two, and really pick when that should happen. Other than that, you don't have a huge amount of control. I wanted to focus on being a little social, so I just tried to play my turn relattively quickly, and maintain diversity with, if possible, a focus on acquiring the goods that looked more saleable in the West. Well, I didn't get up to a significant number of anything, which hurt me a bit, in the Grand Vizier department. I also only got to sell one good. I was feeling pretty far back in the order up until the last turn - on the second to last turn, Ravindra had made an excellent move to sell 18 coins worth of goods, which was as much as I had total at the time. However, on the last turn, Brian went South when I expected whoever won to go North - there was one goods sale in the North, as opposed to two in the South, and two Grand Viziers in the South. I tied for the win on the last Grand Vizier, and then got the camel, to take the other GV as the last action, naming the same color I tied on, to get Brian and I both $10 total, a big turn for Brian. It ended up with him winning by a lot, I think 16, with me in second, then Mike, Justin, and Ravindra. I really have no idea how that happened, although I would guess it mostly had to do with how much money people made from the GV's.

We weren't done having fun yet. Eric came by with a copy of Every Man For Himself, which Justin described as a "must play." We got a table of six, with at least one player being turned away. In this game, you have sailors in lifeboats trying to make it to shore. The lifeboats are full of strife, and are sinking. Each turn you vote on which boats get leaks, who drowns if the boat was full when it got a leak, and which boat moves. You also have to jump a guy out of one boat and into another. This game was pretty fun, I had a good time trying to figure out which way to vote, boat to jump out of, etc. There was also a lot of interaction, which was good, although most of it was after the fact - in response to people's moves. I thought there would be a little more chatter leading up to the votes, but maybe people thought that would have slowed the game down. I managed to get a few of my guys to shore, although I think I rushed one of the boats, and should have maybe gambled to try and get someone else's piece kicked out before it came in. The biggest blow to my game was when one of my captains was kicked off the green boat, which I didn't end up with anyone on, and which somehow made it to shore, despite only having two colors on it at the end (I think). One thing I didn't like about this game was the endgame - it seemed just a little ignored - as though the designers made a system that would run, with some little inconsistencies that would develop in the end, and then just left it, when they could have played around with it a little more and made it more interesting/intuitive. Also, it sort of snuck up on me, and happened very quickly. Knowing how it works, I might plan better for it in the future, and enjoy it more. After getting my guy kicked out of the green (which was the highest scoring) boat in the second to last turn, I ended up in second, with Mike winning, Ravindra and Sarah tied for third, Eric in fifth, and Justin bringing up the rear after being the victim of too much drowning too early.

We went looking for something to play until Ravindra could leave, and, with typical enthusiasm, Justin chanced upon and grabbed The Bottle Imp, which he called "the best trick taking game ever." This was a cute little card game, with good illustrations and a story that went along with the game. The story was printed on some of the cards, illustrations on others, and was, I think, also included as a booklet in the game. Story gimmick aside, this was a cool little game. There are three suits (colors), you have to follow suit if you can, highest card wins the hand, unless someone plays under the Imp's number (starts at 19), in which case the highest number under that gets the trick, and the imp. Taking tricks is good, but having the imp is bad, as you don't score at the end of the round and, in fact, get negative points for cards people have discarded under the imp at the start. You also pass one card right and left after the start. We decided to play until either someone wanted to quit or Ravindra had to leave. I jumped out to a big lead over the course of the first three hands, then got stuck at 93 on the fourth hand while everyone else was below 50. I figured I had this one in the bag... (bottle?) Justin asked if we should keep going (earlier he had suggested maybe four hands). I said sure, I'll stop - meaning to say that, hey, I'll quit while I'm ahead. He took me seriously, but I said I'd play on until Ravindra had to go. So, we played a couple more hands, I finished with the imp both times, and ended up in last, with Mike just breaking one hundred. We had a lot of fun with this game. Oddly, whether it was due to the nature of the game or the lateness of the evening, all of us, at some point, made absolutely ridiculously foolish plays, which prompted much laughter, including my total brain failure on the last round, in which I completely lost myself the game by locking into the imp with three tricks to go.

I thought I was done, but my ride, Chris, was finishing up a game, and a couple people were trying to get Buccaneer going. They said it was fast, and it was a pirate game, so I was in. In this game you either build a crew, by putting one of your crew members on someone else's, or you board a ship with your crew. I could not get a ship boarded, and hence didn't get any treasure, although my crew members did set sail on other crews, earning me money. I ended up finally getting to board a ship with low value treasure, but it wasn't doing much for me. A couple of us had to skip turns, as our last crew member had been taken. The game indeed went quickly, and was fairly fun, but not, honestly, terribly interesting. It eneded up with Kasey and Sarah tied for first, Mike in third, and Jesse and I tied for fourth/last.

Chris had finished, so we were off for Durham, to get some sleep and return.

One more day!

GG, GL

JW

Friday: TGBT, Day Two

I took the day off today, primarily in order to sleep in from last night's moonlight adventures. I got up, took care of some business, snagged food and coffee, and was at the hotel about noon.

There were plenty of games going on, but not too many people looking unattached. I spotted Chris working on one of the puzzles, and sat down with him. We talked about starting a game, and soon had added Fitch, who was browsing the prize table. I needed the game to be fairly quick, as I had to leave by two pm to coach soccer. We put Through the Desert and Princes on the table, and none of us seemed anxious to make up our minds. During this time we were joined by Mike, and we decided on TtD, at which point Jake, who had been hovering around the table, sat down noting that he didn't play Princes of Florence. So, we suddenly had five.

Some of us (myself included) hadn't played for a while. We went over enough of the rules to get started, and got our caravans going. I must admit, I, as well as, I think, some others, had forgotten quite how the game end was triggered. Consequently, it snuck up on us, as several people worked the green stack. Before I was even awake, the game was over. One of the longest caravans was a three way tie, at three camels. On the other hand, I was beaten out of longest caravan in green by one camel, by Chris, when I had ten camels in it. This was certainly the quickest game of TtD that I've seen, and it didn't even really properly warm me up for gaming. Jake won handily, Chris and Mike tied for second, I was fourth, and Fitch brought up the rear, having forgotten entirely about area control scoring.

The players dispersed quickly to play other games that were forming, leaving just Fitch and myself. We were soon joined by Dwayne, and we scouted around for another "quickie." Hey, That's My Fish was discovered in David's game stack, and Dwayne agreed to teach me.

I grossly misinterpreted the penguin movement rules in the first game, and put myself in terrible positions. After Dwayne took all the fish, with me finishing far behind in last, we decided on another game. This one was quite different, and I was able to carve out a couple solitaire areas and win the game. I hadn't playe this before, and it was fun and wonderfully quick. I'd like to pick it up. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, you lay a bunch of tiles that have 1-3 fish on them. You put your penguins on the board. You take turns moving, in a straight line, removing, to your scoring pile, the ice floe that you leapt from. You can't jump over empty space or other penguins. You keep going until nobody can move, then add the tiles your penguins are standing on to your score. Very simple, you could easily make your own set, Dwayne mentioned knowing someone who played with poker chips and chess pawns.

I left, coached, cleaned up, ate, and returned around seven pm. This time, the room was much more crowded. A lot of games had just started. I wandered around a little, looking at what people were playing. I saw a group reading the Ticket to Ride rulebook, and offered to teach. They accepted, so I occupied myself getting them going for a few minutes. After that, a couple guys showed up with some Burger King, and, when they were done, we got together to get something started. Nobody had anything they really wanted to play, but El Grande came up from somewhere, and was agreed upon, although none of us had played many times, or for some time. We secured a copy, unpacked it, set it up, and consulted the rulebook. After a little discussion of the rules, and looking some things up, and finding our fifth player, we got started influencing Spain.

I had never met any of these fellows before, but they all seemed very friendly and willing gamers. Their names were Bert, Kendal, Kevin, and Ken. Kevin was the youngest, and got us started.

I started in Valencia, kind of out of the way. Old Castile was empty, as well as the Northeasternomost and Southeasternmost regions. I adopted a strategy of playing a middle number in the first turn of a cycle, trying to go last in the second turn, and trying to play a high number to take the king movement tile on the third turn. Surprisingly, it worked perfectly the first two rounds. For the first scoring round, Ken was in the lead, with a very good bonus scoring round that he capitalized on well. I was close behind. In the second scoring round, I passed Ken, dominating his home region to deny him points. However, Kevin passed both of us, with a huge bonus scoring round on the six and seven regions, making thirteen points. I committed to fighting him in Old Castile, and scored it once, but then Kendal whacked it with the replacement scoring tile. I won the Castille several times. I think I tied with Kendal on the first round, won it the second and third, and also won it on the two bonus scoring rounds we had for it. I think this was key, as it gave me a lot of extra points. I really like the hidden movement of the caballeros coming out of the Castille, too. I passed up Kevin with the bonus scores from the Castille, and then went well out into the lead on the third scoring round, by taking dominance of Old Castile back from him with my castille forces, and also by scoring secondary points in several regions. Ken and Kendal had put their castille caballeros in my home region, putting me third there, but not gaining Ken the points he had wanted. In the end, I won, followed, I think, by Kevin, Kendal, Ken, and Bert, in that order. I might have it mixed up, though, Ken might have ended up last. Bert made a big push at the end. I enjoyed this, my second (and first full - when I was taught the game, we played the short version) play of the game. We did have a fair amount of downtime, as some of the players seemed slow to come up with an overall strategy to approach the game with. I hope I get to break out my copy soon.

It was ten thirty, and I meandered about a bit, looking for somethign that wouldn't be terribly long. I ran into Justin, who introduced me to Gee, and we chatted for a bit, swapping stories and finally deciding to put a game on the table. We roamed around, looking at what was available, and, for some reason, the thing that seemed most exciting to them was learning Reef Encounter. On the way to the table, we were joined by Bob, who I also hadn't previously met. We got the game set up and taught, which was a bit of a combined effort by Bob and myself. I've played several times, but most of them were on Spiel by Web, which, of course, does all the setup and board management for you, so I had to refresh my knowledge on some particulars. Teaching didn't take as long as I feared it might, thankfully, and soon our parrotfish were swimming in the depths.

Credit to Gee and Justin, they picked up the game very quickly, and made quite good use of their turns. Much better than me on my first play... It was a nice group to play with, too. Bob was quiet and considering, while Gee and Justin kept the conversation flowing. I wish more of my games were like this, frankly; a mild amount of thinking with a fair portion of laughs thrown in. Gee lives in Durham, so, hopefully, we'll get to do some more gaming.

These guys played quite differently than the group I'm used to playing with, and I found myself getting hemmed in on several attempts to grow reefs. In face, I ended up eating both yellow and purple reefs, but only after abandoning the first one's I had started, after the other players had come in and locked me down on that board. People were playing pretty well, and opportunities to eat coral were limited. This was the case even though other people were forced into the same coral abandonment as myself. Gee had the hungriest parrotfish, and sated it with some pink coral, opening up some space on one of the boards. We slowly started to open the boards up, and I was able to keep pace, although my first coral was pretty small, only a seven. Someone abandoned four or five yellow tiles, and, with the four behind my screen and four in front, I was able to make a large, hard to assail coral. The eating continues, and some black tiles were abandoned on one of boards which, along with the free space, allowed me to make a second big coral. Even though I had to eat a coral for one, big scores on yellow, and especially black, allowed me to edge the game over Bob, who must have been wondering what more he had to do to make it hard for me to play (he made an excellent move to reduce to four and completely contain my first purple coral).

This was a lot of fun, espeicially considering the time, much more so than my first, and only other previous, in-person play. I will definitely try to pick this up. It was after 1:30 am, and I was pretty sure it was time to go home. Justin and Gee jumped over to play Catchphrase, which looked too crowded for me to get into. Dwayne and a friend of his took some time to explain the basic idea of Giganten, which they had set up, to me, but I didn't have time to play. I sleepily made my way back up the Durham Freeway, looking foward to today's soccer game, and a long evening of gaming...

Next up: Day three!

GG, GL
JW

That Boardgaming Thing (TBGT) Day 1

I needed to work today, so I couldn't hit the convention any earlier than seven. I got down there, and scoped things out. Rob showed me what was up, and got me my badge. There's a pirate theme, with an ongoing, group game of Pirates' Dice, as well as a Crew (team) game of puzzles. Everyones' name tags sport randomly generated pirate names, and mine was Poop Deck Bryant. I didn't realize until now that I should be trying to keep track of these names, as it could possibly make these reports much less dry... At the same time, some of the names are full of innuendo, and I try to keep it PG here... Anyway, after the intro I walked around, said hi to the three people I knew, and brought in some games. I had, unfortunately, gotten there just after games were starting, and so had to settle for watching Christopher's game of Canal Mania (there was also another game of this going on) develop.

It wasn't too long before Brian and Sarah, a couple that I'd played some games with at Rick and Marnee's last game night, showed up. We chatted about starting a game and I pulled out... Canal Mania. Here it was, the opening game of the evening, and I might get in the three player game I was hoping for... They were up for it, so we found a table and sat down. The three player game was not to be, though, as we were quickly joined by Thomas, another attendee. It was a little funny to see three games of CM being played at three adjacent tables... Maybe we should have had a tournament?

The teaching was a little faster than Tuesday, and everyone was attentive and interested. We got off to a quick start, breezing through the first couple turns, with people only really pausing to consider the contracts. These opening turns will go really fast with experienced players, as they will know the opening contracts. I ended up grabbing both of the same first two contracts as last time. There was a huge difference in this game (compared to Tuesday's - see last entry), as Thomas built a decent network out of Gloucester, and Sarah out of Birmingham, both pretty early in the game. This meant that I was seldom moving goods from either of these termini, keeping my points down.

I did get to an early lead, which encouraged them to cut into my ability to move goods. It's nice that there's a little bit of screw the leader potential in the game. Nobody that I've played with yet has tried to ignore shipping goods and just build lots of contracts with extra points pieces. I suppose this might work out all right, keeping you out of the lead in the beginning, and letting you develop into something more on the long term, while people fight the leader. I kind of doubt it, though, as you can potentially make so much from moving goods and, sometimes, by not moving them, you give others points. Nobody ever passed me, though, although I think Sarah tied me at one point, and was not far behind after the last turn.

So, things were a little less solitaire in the goods sharing department in this play. Also, Sarah and Brian succeeded in building fairly large networks, so there were some goods being moved for decent points all over. Thomas had a bit of a rough time in this area, as he missed running his network through a town that would have given him a five stop network. Consequently, he was stuck with four, and even got that somewhat late.

It was a nice, scrappy game, which I ended up winning. We all moved a fairly equivalent amount in the final goods movement, although I think I had an edge of 2-4 points there. I got most prolific builder, winning a tie breaker with, I think, Sarah, who finished second. Thomas lost his tie breaker to finish last.

We packed up, and Thomas and I sat to talk a bit. We talked about online games, which somehow led to Tikal (via sbw discussion). Thomas pulled out his copy to look at the rules for the auction version, and this drew David across the room, hoping that we were starting a game. It was past eleven, a little late to get going on Tikal, but, we said, what the heck?

I like Tikal quite a bit. I think I've played two or three times before, with two and four players, but never with three. I had expected this would be a nice number for the game, and I wasn't disappointed. One thing I was disappointed with was tile drawing. I just kept failing to draw tiles that I could really create big scoring opportunities off of - for instance, I did not draw a treasure tile until, I think, the fourth or fifth one, and I drew the first two volcanoes (which can be nice, but, also kind of hurt, as you can't use them to score). I drew none of the temples above a cost of four, and only one of the fours and one of the threes. In general, it just seemed that things came at the wrong time for me.

David built up treasures early, with Thomas developing a fairly quick set as well. David kept having good luck here, developing three sets with not too much work. I got stuck with two of a kind in three types, and it turned out that the two I needed to complete two of my sets were the last two drawn, which ended up on the last tile played in the game, which I couldn't really take advantage of. This was a bit of a bummer and, as it turned out, the game was certainly close enough that drawing different treasures would have made the difference. What really made the difference, though, was some inefficient action point distribution on my part. I really didn't want to think too much or bog down the game late in the night, but, as I thought about it on the way home, I think I probably could have safely spent about ten AP's differently, which probably would have scored me several more points. Again, I think I was a little loathe to think too much at that time, and I was also a little too worried about things that probably weren't going to happen. Example: capping two temples that were pretty hard to get to, just because David could have come in to tie me, and I didn't want to worry about the points. On the other hand, it would have taken him a lot of AP to do it, which he couldn't really afford as we were both a ways behind Thomas.

Thomas drew two good temples and placed them very well, and David and I failed to put much pressure on him to compete for control. Consequently, he was able to build up and guard them, fairly early, giving him the nine and the ten. This seemed like game, but Thomas really fell off on the treasures in the mid game. He also placed a second base camp, a little out of the way, which gave him some good points, but allowed me to effectively cut him off and make it very difficult for him to really play the far corner of the board. Thomas's scoring really slowed down, there, though he already had a lot on the board. David's treasures, as mentioned, developed very well. He didn't do as much with the temples on the board, but the treasures gave him a fair lead over me by the second to last scoring phase.

In the last scoring phase, Thomas got a decent number to put him at 111. I was second, and could make a lot of points, but not quite enough to catch up. I was only able to put up 107. David was lamenting that he didn't think he could match that, be he was forgetting that he was pretty well ahead of me before the round. He ended up getting to 110, just one point off the pace. It was a nice close game, and I think I learned some things about tactics for the game, including tile placement for area advantage, worker movement for potential future competition (a sort of deterrent - I think I did OK with this in this game, but could be quite a bit better - this also extends to movement of pieces that get stuck in out of the way places - although sometimes you need to leave them there in case you draw a one - gate temple or something...), and the need to calculate what other people can afford to/will do and how that effects the AP you need to spend. Sometimes a bit of a gamble, especially if you don't know the tiles and another player has a base camp left, but still necessary. All in all, this was a fun game, with two really nice guys who are good gamers.

I look forward to heading back, right now, by the way! Off to RTP!

GG, GL
JW

Game Night at Larry and Carlee's

So, time for another Tuesday in Cary. This time, Chris and I had agreed to car pool, and he swung by to pick me up about 5:15. It was pretty early, so we stopped and got some golden arches along the way, as well as picking up snacks to contribute. I bet L & C have a giant cache of chips and two litres in their basement somewhere, from all the leftovers...

We both had a box of games with us, but we were united in desire to play one game: Canal Mania. After arriving, chatting with people a bit, and sampling the snacks, we grabbed Larry Z, who grabbed Larry G, and then were joined by Adam, and, subsequently, Christy, who took Larry Z's spot. Halfway through the teaching, Christy abdicated her seat to get in on something simpler, and, then, we finally got started. This ended up being a learning game with a lot of chatting over moves, turning into almost a cooperative game for some of the players, with a lot of oppinions being asked and given, and several moves being made by consensus.

I grabbed Birmingham to... wait, I can't remember, and my copy is at TBGT... Suffice it to say, I grabbed two of the initial contracts that allowed me to build in such a way that I connected Birmingham and Gloucester, two of the major cities. I hadn't really looked at the chart in the rulebook, but, figured that B-ham was one of the more central cities, it might provide me with more options to connect. I never made this route any bigger, but, then, neither did anyone else...

One thing we noticed right away was that if someone starts with engineer number 5, it seems advantageous, as they will be drawing extra cards in the phase where you want to do just that, and then they can get rid of it for a building engineer. Later on, it's tough to take this guy, as you usually want the building advantages. Larry, the player to my right, started with this engineer, and his third phase face-up grabs were a bit of a pain to me. Larry led for the first third of the game or so, primarily due to this advantage, I think. However, my choice of contracts couldn't have been much more lucky. Having a connected network for five early was great, and, in the long run, had the added bonus that additional contracts to Gloucester and Birmingham didn't really come up, so I basically had a monoploy there. This let me ship goods for four and five while others were shipping for three.

To make a long story short, my early lead held up, and I cruised into the win. Larry was a bit behind me in second, and then Andy and Chris were pretty close together after him. Some general observations I had on the game were:
-The cards need sleeves.
-The little play aids on BGG are very helpful
-There can be a downtime problem
-Phase 1 can generate some AP
-The game played fairly smoothly, and is a nice design
-There's a lot left to discover for me, and I'm anxious to play again, especially if I can get a three player.
-Contract management is huge, as is the luck on which ones come up, when

After finishing, cleaning up, and discussing the game a little bit, it was getting sort of late, too late to jump in on the game of Shadows Over Camelot that was starting. Instead of trying to get in a quick game, we opted to head for home with the game fresh in our heads, with ample fodder for discussion.

Next up: TBGT

GG, GL
JW

Labor Day Gaming

So, no school at the public schools in Durham, but Duke had classes. So, that meant work for the wife and none for me, which generally equals gaming. I posted a message to the meetup group looking for similarly interested peers, and recieved only one reply, from Chris. We decided to get together for some two player goodness around noon.

I got back from a soccer game around eleven, and got busy tidying up the house a bit. Chris arrived, and we took a look at the games. Chris had brought along Carcassonne: The Castle, as well as Auf Asche, which I think was mainly for us to look at and dream about playing with more opponents. I hope we'll have a chance to play soon. Wolfgang Kramer roll and move pick up and deliver semi game - why not? We opted to start off with Tigris and Euphrates, which Chris hadn't actually played yet.

T & E has been on the blog before, so I shouldn't go into too much depth about the game. An elegant (Chris's term) tile-laying strategy game, loosely set in a Fertile Crescent Civ development theme. I'm pretty sure it's still ranked 2nd on Boardgamegeek. I've played a couple of games on BGG's e-mail based implementation, and I've been enjoying it. In my opinion, it's much better to play in real life - you just get more tuned in to the rhythm of the game.

I started off on the bottom of the board, and Chris, intelligently, took up a position in the middle, right above me. I was able to build West to the first treasure, and then North for a second. Chris picked up some treasures around the middle, and won the external conflict I initiated. Other than that, he couldn't really break through. I won some internal conflicts to change the board state in the middle a bit. I jumped into another treasure in the Northeast, and Chris built a monument, one of the colors of which I could get in on. I built a second monument and racked up points for a couple of turns. At that point, Chris decided to give me the last treasure to finish the game, basically.

Battle Line came out next. I just got it the other day, and wanted to give it a run. One thing about this game is that it needs sleeves, the cards abe very wimply. I'm going to have to do that soon. Chris and I had each played once before. The opening was pretty cagey, as it seems it generally will be. I was fortunate enough to be dealt one of the higher hands in the game, trip tens, and wanted to make them count. I sloughed off some poor cards on the right flank, including the one and four of yellow, leaving me three cards of the same color as my best possible hand. Chris declined to capitalize on this, though, preferring to battle on the other flank, and lay some cards down in the middle. I took a Tactics card early, and Chris decided not to. I like to have it asap, as it can have a big effect your plans. Chris spooked me a little by putting two fives right next to each other. I had to figure he had at least the better part of straight flush draws, so I couldn't really commit to those fights. He finally showed a poor hand, on my left flank, which I took with the three tens. My strategy card was companion cavalry, which I was able to use to good effect forming three eights, to take an adjacent column. Finally, I luckily drew into a straight flush, which let me shift from other columns I had been working on to just taking the third flag in a row by dominating the trip nines that Chris was building up in an attempt to block me.

We sat and chatted for a while, about games and life and health and stuff, and decided on one more game. Chris seemed up for trying stuff he'd never played before, so we got out Nexus Ops. This is one I'm always happy to teach, in the hope that I can get it on the table more easily. I really think there's a wide market for this game among the diverse gaming populations, and that it can be a good gateway game from different parts of the hobby, onto the boardgaming highway. I've never played it two player before, and was curious to give it a try.

Nexus Ops falls right into the post-Risk/MB GM series arena, and we arrayed our colorful little plastic dudes in preparation for combat and resource acquistion. I was going first, and moved out in a predictible fashion. Chris turned over enough free Rock Striders to compete in the race for the monolith, but chose to explore more territory instead. The landscape was a little off - all the lava on my right, all the crystal on my side of the board, most of the liquifungus on his side. Aside from lava, the right turned out basically empty of mines, and the left had three adjacent two-yield mines, making it the only front worth fighting for. I jumped onto the monolith first, and got to the two-yield mines first. Both of these things were big advantages for me. Chris contested the monolith for a turn, but then abandoned it to fight on the ground. Things were tense for a couple of turns, but my Energize card advantage began to prove telling. I hit a big turn, making ten extra rubium off of a start of turn energize card, and getting a lot of small stuff on the table. Chris was clearly feeling experimental, and upped the ante on the arms race early, buying into dragons on repeated turns. He was able to kill some of my units with dragon breath, but he lacked enough fodder units for cover, and I was able to counterattack, kill the dragons, and press forward into his territory. My income began to grow, and his, of course, consequently shrank. He had a brief resurgence, playing some big point victory cards, which was a reminder that it's possible to be in the game even if it looks like you're really behind. However, I had too much of a lead and it was just a matter of winning a couple more battles.

I'm not sure about Nexus Ops as a two player. A big stage of just filling out space, followed by a standoff and some engagements over important territory. It also seemed it would be fairly easy for someone to get out to a big lead. That said, it may not be the most purely strategic exercise in the boardgaming hobby, but it's still a good time.

Chris had to take off to have dinner with his gf, but we made plans to ride to Larry's the next night. Hopefully, we'll be able to find a third for Canal Mania.

GG, GL

JW