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