Weekend Gaming: Mother’s Day!

Happy late Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

On Saturday, Louis, Kevin, Ryan and Dana joined us for games.  While we were waiting for Dana to show up, we played a game of Dominion using a random set of cards from Dominion, Intrigue and Prosperity.  I was able to us a Chapel to basically trash my entire deck and then build it back up with Quarries and a Workshop.  I was able to build a very efficient engine with Festivals, Cities and Conspirators, and finished the game buying up three Colonies and a Duchy over the last three turns for the win.

Then we broke out 7 Wonders, and I was doing alright, but had spent a bit too much on resources early.  That was necessary, though, as Ryan was to my right and hadn’t grabbed any resources.  That plan didn’t work out too well, as he ended up in last place, while Louis had a nicely balanced kingdom for the win.

Next up was Acquire.  We had taken my in-law’s copy of the game that is about 40 years old last time we visited them.  I had to buy some replacement stock cards on Ebay, but otherwise the game was wonderfully intact.  Conversations were flowing pretty well at this point of the evening, and I wasn’t really paying attention to how the stocks were being distributed.  I ended up with a majority share in the second largest company at the end, but it was Dana who managed to run away with the lead by holding large shares in the two largest end game companies.

Ryan, Louis, Kevin and I decided to play some Nightfall: Martial Law, and while I won, it was a very odd game.  I was able to get a combo where I could exile the top card from everyone’s deck.  I did this three times, and each time I got one of the cards that Ryan had bought.  This meant that after he had played out all of the starter deck cards, he only had 3 cards total left in his deck.

We finished up the night with two games of Monty Python Fluxx, which were both won by Louis.

On Sunday evening, Gina and I played a couple games of Ticket to Ride: Europe with the Big Cities expansion cards.  We each won a game, but the Big Cities cards definitely made the games interesting.  Because everyone is making connections to the same cities, there is a lot more conflict for the routes and more opportunities to use the Stations.  It also means that once you connect a few of the major cities, there is a very good chance that drawing more routes will provide routes that you have already completed, making for a very high scoring game.  The first game Gina won with 13 completed routes and a score of about 190.  I won the second with 18! competed routes and a score of 220.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Football Weekend!

Pretty fun weekend around here.  On Friday we spent the afternoon over at our friends’ house where we celebrated their daughter’s first birthday and watch the NDSU Bison football team win the FCS championship.  It was a blast.

That evening, Louis, Kevin, Ryan and Joe joined us for games.  First up was Acquire.  I started one of the smaller companies, and then it immediately grew to the point where it wasn’t going away until the end of the game.  Because of this, I wasn’t able to get into any other companies.  I barely had enough money to get into a tie for the most shares in my company.  In the end, Joe and I tied for that one, and he had controlled enough of the smaller mergers to easily take the win.

Next up was Railways of the Western U.S.  My baron required that I connect and industrialize Dodge City and Santa Fe.  Because of this I was doing a lot of shipping in and around Denver.  Sadly, because I went last on the first turn, I wasn’t able to snag the Hotel for Denver.  Louis go that card, so I was feeding him a bunch of points even while I was making points for myself.  Kevin and Gina had control of the West coast and were making some deliveries there, while Ryan had decided to go for the Golden Spike bonus and built all the way from Omaha to San Fransisco.  Joe was all alone in the lower Midwest, and Louis had a solid grip on the Salt Lake City region.  Louis was making consistent 3-4 point deliveries and with the bonus points I was providing him, he easily won the game.  Over all, though, it was a pretty low scoring game, with all of us sitting at just over 20 points (Louis had about 30).

We followed that up with a quick game of 7 Wonders.  I was playing Rhodes, and focused pretty heavily on military.  I was having difficulties, though, as I wasn’t able to get Stone until the end of Age 2, so I wasn’t able to start on my Wonder.  Then I forgot about Iron and wasn’t able to build the second stage of my Wonder.  Regardless, I still did alright with maximum military points and two very strong Guilds.  It wasn’t enough, though, as Ryan had pulled off 38 points worth of Science and edged me out by 3 points.

The last game of the night was Puerto Rico, with Ryan sitting out.  I went heavily into a Trading/Building strategy.  I was able to grab both Markets, and was routinely selling Coffee and Tobacco for big money.  I was able to build three of the big buildings.  Louis was doing a very strong shipping strategy, while Kevin and Gina were more balanced.  Joe was also doing a lot of Trading and Buying.  In the end, I was able to put up 43 points, which just barely beat out Louis’ 41 points.

Sunday was spent watching more football, while I worked on painting some Razorbacks for my Space Wolves army.  I am nearly done with one, which just needs detailing and weathering.  Here is a work-in-progress picture:

Overall a great first weekend of 2012.  Happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Father’s Day!

The gaming started Saturday night with Joe, Phil, Kevin joining us.  Phil brought along his copy of Agricola at my request.  I hadn’t played the game in quite a while, and this would be only my second time playing.  In Agicola you take the role of a farmer trying to build the best farm over the course of 14 turns.  Each turn you have a number of actions equal to the number of people in your family.  You can grow you family, but you need to build a bigger house first, plus every few turns there will be a harvest, and at that point you need to ensure that you have enough food to feed your family.  Food and points are acquired through growing wheat and vegetables for cooking, or by raising various animals.  There are a ton of things you can do each turn, along with bonuses supplied by a random hand of cards dealt at the beginning of the game.

In my game, I was dealt a hand with a few cards that gave me bonuses for planting and harvesting wheat and vegetables.  I didn’t own any livestock until the very end of the game.  I was able to easily produce enough food that way to feed my family, but the work was a bit time consuming and I wasn’t able to put enough effort into upgrading my house or really expanding my family.  I had a strong game from that, but without the big bonus from my house, I wasn’t able to get enough points for the win.  Kevin ended up focusing heavily on building his house and family and then grabbed a bunch of sheep late in the game which propelled him into the lead.  It really is an interesting game with a lot of strategic depth.  There is a nice variety to the actions so that it doesn’t get too stale.

Louis had joined us part way through Agricola, so we launched into a six player game of Acquire.  I was able to get into a large company early this time, but it grew very quickly, and I was tapped out of cash fairly early on.  Luckily, I was able to sneak in a couple of smaller mergers with Phil’s help that provided me some liquidity.  It was not enough, though, as at the end of the game there were three large companies, and I only held an interest in one of them.  I placed a close third, but Phil and Kevin were neck-and-neck for first place with Kevin eeking out the win by $400.

We finished up the night as usual with a couple games of Dominion.  In the first set, I was able to quickly setup my deck with a Chapel and a Vault.  This allowed me to pare down my deck to the bare essentials.  i then added in some Mining Villages for extra actions, and an Expand.  These allowed me to quickly more my money up to Platinum and start buying Colonies.  I was buying them up almost every turn until they ran out.  This is when I made the mistake of getting complacent.  I stared buying action cards to try and end the game quickly, rather than buy more points.  I was worried that my wife, who had started buying a lot of Provinces, would catch me.  Little did I realize that Joe had nearly as many Colonies as I did, along with a few provinces.  At the end of the game, I had an even 60 points, while he had 68.

The second set was rather annoying.  My wife and Kevin were able to get Torturers early, and were annoying the rest of us.  In retaliation, Joe and I bought into them late with some extra buys allowing us to grab a bunch at once.  At this point both of us had decent engines running with Cities and Grand Markets allowing extra actions and draws.  We were regularly playing out our entire decks forcing everyone at the to either take Curses or Discard their entire hand.  I finally decided to put the game out of its misery by emptying one of the action piles rather than buy more points.  Sadly, it tended to make things worse, because most of the people at the table had been taking Curses rather than discard because they expected to get another turn.  It was an interesting set, but with no way to really counteract the Curses or discard mechanic it just became annoying when they happened repeatedly.

On Sunday, Phil’s daughter was getting baptized so we spent part of the day over at their place.  It was a nice way to celebrate Father’s Day and we were able to get in a game of Railways of the Western US as well.  Joe was able to get a bunch of the early bonuses and also monopolize the West Coast.  I could have countered that, but I was too focused on trying to complete my Baron (San Fransisco to Demming) an the San Fran to Promontory route.  Phil was controlling the lower Midwest with a couple long routes and some well placed hotels, while my wife had the Eastern edge of the Rockies in her control.  Jaime was building in the Northwestern Rockies getting points in Salt Lake City and Butte.  I was able to complete the Golden Spike bonus for building from Omaha to San Fransisco, but it was only after taking on way too much debt and basically conceding the game to Joe.  he had been making long shipments all along the west coast, and won by a sizable margin.

Overall it was a very nice, relaxing weekend.  Happy Gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Acquisitions

On Saturday, Joe, Ryan, Kevin, and Phil joined us for some gaming.  We started the night off with some Acquire, which I hadn’t played in quite some time.  I was able to start off decently, creating a couple companies.  I fell behind, though, when I neglected one of my companies, and focused on the wrong one of my companies.  I was able to make a decent profit holding on to the top position in two of the larger companies that merged prior to the end of the game, but I had no holding in the largest company at the end of the game.  My wife was just able to overcome my profits with her proceeds from that stock at the end.

Next up was a game of Railways of the Eastern US.  I had actually planned to play Railways of the Western US, but I had grabbed the wrong board.  So we played Eastern with the rotating city tiles from the Western US game.  We placed the rotating demands on Chicago, New York, Charleston,  Pittsburgh and New Orleans.  The biggest difference between the two games was made apparent from the first turn, when in the initial batch of cards, four Service Bounties and a Railroad Executive (allows a player to take two actions instead of one on that turn) showed up.  Joe took a significant amount of debt, but he was able to win the first turn and secured two of the Service Bounties to immediately jump to an 11 point lead.  Phil and I were able to get the other two Service Bounties, while Ryan went for the Passenger Lines bonus initially.  After a few turns, he decided to go for the Major Line from Richmond to Atlanta for the bigger points instead.  This allowed Joe to get the Passenger Lines bonus.  At this point I was working around the Chicago area, due to my Baron giving bonus points for connections into Chicago along with there being a lot of red cubes in the area.  I was able to get the Hotel Chicago early, and that provided a good number of points from everyone shipping there.  I was also able to get the New York to Kansas City major line for 20 points.  Sadly I was forced to do this a turn earlier than I wanted, giving me a bit more debt.  In the end, I wasn’t quite able to catch Joe.  I only got four points for my Baron, and had a bit more debt than he did.  It ended up being a very close game, that really highlighted the differences between the Eastern and Western games.

As an afterthought, I will say that the rotating demands really made a difference.  Chicago was a lot more useful with the ability to ship different colors there.  New Orleans was also a more viable destinations.  The other locations didn’t get as much use, due to there being more cities of different colors within a close proximity.

We followed that up with a couple games of Dominion.  The first included a Witch with no defenses, so we ended up with a lot of extra cards in our decks, and no one could really get anything going.  I ended up with negative points, and Kevin managed to sneak out a win, buying up a bunch of Estates and Duchies while no one was looking.  The second game was a bit more reasonable, but I wasn’t able to get much rolling.  I was blowing away my copper with Loans and Mines, but I wasn’t replacing them fast enough.  I was eventually able to get into a good engine, but it was too late, as Joe was able to get things rolling with Laboratories and Conspirators and bought up a bunch of Provinces.

Overall it was a fun night with some close games.  Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Dominion

Nothing new on the table this weekend.  Instead, we stuck to some old favorites that get a lot of play.

We had 6 people initially and were waiting on a 7th, so we started the night off with a game of Dominion.  I own the original and the Intrigue and Prosperity expansions, so I just randomized the card selection from all three.  Nothing really interesting from that, as the card selection wasn’t too exciting.

Once we had all 7, it was tough to decide what game to play next.  We have a lot of 5 and 6 player games in the group, but few work with more than that, and we weren’t really motivated to split the group.  So Louis sat out and we played a game of Acquire.  This game ended up a lot closer than I expected.  The game was close between Ryan, Joe and I.  I held a position on one of the smaller companies, and Ryan held the majority of the largest company.  Joe was always a factor in almost every other company.  Luckily because of some early mergers and some good blocking, I was able to pull a majority out of the last few companies on the board, and got a pretty significant payout at the end, while Ryan only held the one company.  I ended up squeaking out a win by about $3000, much to my surprise.

After that, Ryan sat out while we played a couple more games of Dominion.  The first two were played using the “The Good Life” setup from the Prosperity set.  We played two games back to back with that setup because about halfway through, a couple of the combos with the Counting House became clear to us and we wanted to try them out.

For the last game, Phil wanted to use all of the cards that could possibly give Curses.  So we had the Witch, Swindler, Torturer, and Mountebank.  Then to round out the set we had the Great Hall, Harem, Trade Route, City, Masquerade, and the King’s Court.  Trade Routes were pretty popular, since they were one of the ways to get rid of curses.  Masquerades were less so, but did get some play.  Lots of Swindlers and Witches were played.  I ended up not taking any of the attacks, and just focused on Trade Routes, Cities and Harems.  With that many people and Swindlers, the Ctities got very powerful very quickly.  I was able to use my Trade Routes to dump my Copper and Curses.  My Cities let me do that multiple times, so twice I was able to play two Trade Routes on a turn and buy Colonies.  At the end I had 29 points, Joe had 25, and the others had between 1-10 because of all the curses flying around.

It was a good weekend of gaming and it was nice to just play some old favorites again.