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