Weekend Gaming: Busy Days

Things have been busy lately, but I did get some gaming in over the past few weekends.  Last weekend was a bachelor party for one of my friends and we spent most of Saturday playing disc golf.  The weather was beautiful and we had a lot of fun playing.  That evening was spent playing Railways of the World, Five Tribes, Hawaii, and Cards Against Humanity.  Everyone had a great time.

This weekend, after spending time making minor repairs to the house to address inspection issues, Joe, Louis, Kevin, Brent, and I were able to get some gaming in as well with Eminent Domain and Lords of Xidit.  I ended up winning Eminent Domain with a ton of planets and a focus on colonization.  Louis had a really nice production/trade engine going, and was a close second.

In Lords of Xidit, I played horribly.  I seemed to be a step behind most turns, and had a couple rounds where I didn’t progress at all.  Kevin had the strongest showing with reputation, while Joe had a ton of gold.  In the final categories, I took last in every one.  Joe and Kevin made it to the final category of Mage Towers, but since Kevin had mostly ignored them, Joe took the victory.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Eminent Domain and Lords of Waterdeep

Joe, Kevin, Louis, Gina and I kicked off games Saturday evening with Eminent Domain along with the expansion.  I decided to focus on colonization and research.  I quickly settled my first planet and then picked up a Peace Treaty to benefit from Joe and Louis’ warfare roles.  The others were quickly expanding their empires, while I focused on the research.  I managed to get two metalic planets, but the technologies available weren’t terribly useful.  I picked up a bunch of points early with the Peace Treaties, and then finished the game with a bunch of technology and a prestige planet that I picked up using the planet recon technology.  I had a sizable lead in point and handily took the win with 42.  The next closest was 26.

We followed that with Lords of Waterdeep with the Scoundrels of Skullport expansion.  I was aiming for Warfare and Commerce quests.  I managed to get 10 of them completed, but most were smaller points.  Joe was able to build a building that provided 10 points for three adventurers.  Plus he had a quest that let him get the owner bonus when he used his own buildings.  He was consistently getting 12 points from that building, since everyone was focused on their own quests and didn’t bother to contest the building.

Corruption flew off the board, and the building that removed it from the game was available.  There were a couple points late where I had to take a 10 point hit to do an action, which ended up hurting my score significantly.  Louis, Kevin and Gina were doing well, but couldn’t catch Joe.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Chicago Express and Eminent Domain

I was joined by Joe, his friend Brent, Kevin, and Louis on Saturday.  We started off with Chicago Express.  I wanted to take the green line across country to Chicago and I did manage to get the first share of it, but things didn’t quite go as planned.  Joe, who didn’t have any shares quickly put the second share up for bid and it ended up with Brent.  Louis had sole control of Red, but Brent and I were making it difficult for red to continue.  Blue was pretty much halted after its first expansion.

Brent and I were working well on green.  Eventually, though, I lost any semblance of control when Kevin picked up a share and Brent bought a second.  At this point I knew I was out of it, so I tried to derail green, but was unable to before Kevin connected it to Chicago.  Brent picked up the first black share, and I quickly bought the second.  It didn’t end up mattering much.  Kevin quietly had control of green and yellow and was making quite a bit each dividend.  He finished with over $70 and the victory.

We followed that with Eminent Domain including the Escalation expansion.  It was interesting.  It took a bit to explain everything, since Brent hadn’t played before.  Once we got going, it was a little slow as well.  Adding a fifth player seemed to add a bit if you weren’t following the other players’ action often.  Joe was doing some warfare, while Kevin and Brent each had Peace Treaties in play for bonus points.  Louis and I were working with production and trade, but I was slow to get started due to expensive planets.  Kevin had picked up a bunch of research cards and got a nice combination being able to get replenishing fighters and the ability to trade fighters like resources.  Kevin won with a score in the 40’s.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Cards and More

Louis, Kevin and I kicked Saturday off with Terra Mystica.  Louis was playing the Giants, I had the Halflings and Kevin the Merfolk.  With only three players, it was tougher to build next to each other, but we all managed to cluster in the upper center of the board with our initial buildings.  I was the first to get a town, with a Sanctuary and two trading posts.  Once I got that completed, I went to work digging in the lower right of the board.  Kevin had taken control of the fire and water cults, while I had my hands in air and earth.  Louis had built a decent lead, but I was able to catch up.  My expansion was able to challenge Kevin for largest empire, but I was one short.  I thought I could keep him out of the lead in both earth and air, but ended up losing out in air anyways.  That effort cost me a couple points from not building my last dwelling, and Kevin beat me by three points.

Dana, Gina and Joe joined us, and we busted out Dominion, with the Intrigue and Prosperity expansions.  I was the first to buy an Expand and proceeded to use it to transform many of my Estates into Duchies, and further.  My deck worked quite well, with a King’s Court providing a couple extra expansions.  I managed to finish the game with three Colonies, only one of which I had actually purchased.  My 41 points was enough for the win.

We followed that up with 7 Wonders.  I thought I was doing well with science, picking up four compasses, four tablets and a gear, but I missed out on the clay needed to get my third wonder entry.  Louis was next to me, and he was grabbing all of the Civilian cards available.  He finished with 40 points just from that, and another 18 from military.  He won with a solid 71 points.

Louis and Dana took off, but the rest of us stuck around for one last game of Eminent Domain.  I focused heavily on military, while the rest mostly were colonizing.  There was a lot of surveying as well, especially by Joe who was trying to survey and colonize as much as possible, while trashing as many cards as he could.  All of their surveying helped me get a decent number of planets, so I could focus on warfare and research.  I ended up with six colonized planets and a level two research card.  I ended the game relatively quickly with the last survey card, so my 19 points was just enough to get the victory.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Exploring New Worlds

I taught Archipelago to Joe, Kevin, Louis, and Phil Saturday evening. There was a fair bit of confusion, and no one really had a defined strategy. Joe was being disruptive with the barbarian card, so that didn’t help anything. The surplus worker market was also getting pretty full from all of the exploration we were doing. We ended up losing after about four rounds. It was interesting. We all agreed that a learning game like this was needed, and that things should be smoother next time.

Louis took off, so the rest of us broke out Railways of Europe. Phil quickly went into debt connecting to Moscow. I had the baron for fewest books, so I picked up a couple of hotels early to keep my expenses down. Joe grabbed the other hotel available, while Kevin started in the Berlin and Paris region.

Joe was building in Italy and was keeping his debt low, forcing me to carefully consider every expense. I did get some good routes into my hotels, and managed to be the first to deliver four different goods. I also completed the Berlin to Rome line.

We were all very close on scores, but Joe was my biggest concern with his low debt. I noticed late that the Paris to Constantinople was available, and quickly started that direction. One the last turn, a service bounty into Constantinople came up, but I didn’t have any goods to deliver. Joe won the bid and quickly built and delivered the bounty. I had other deliveries, though and wasn’t terribly concerned.
The game finished, and I had completed my baron. Joe did not have the most advanced train, and I managed to win by two.

We finished the night with Eminent Domain. Joe was the only one going military and was making headway that way. Kevin was researching, and Phil was just colonizing everything. I had picked up a couple good production planets, and focused heavily production and trade. I managed to score 11 points from trade and another 11 for my planets, just barely beating Kevin and his 21 points.

Until next time, happy gaming.

Weekend Gaming: Village and More

With Gina sitting the night out, and Phil and Louis out of town, it was up to Kevin, Joe and I to play games Saturday.  We kicked things off with a quick game of Village.  I decided to go straight for the market, spending my time in the crafting area building stuff to sell.  Joe was working in the Council House and Kevin was travelling.  I spent a lot of time, and ended up with five family members in the book, and one in the  unmarked graves.  This was all done in the crafting house and I was able to pick up 46 points worth of sales.  Joe tried to jump in and interrupt my game, but I had things timed well and with Kevin going first most of the game I was always able to score the high point sales before Joe could.  I ended up winning with 62.

Next up was The Manhattan Project.  There were a ton of universities available in the market, so extra workers weren’t much of a problem.  Yellow cake was tougher to get, though, with Joe and I having the best sources.  There was a fair bit of espionage because of that.  The bombs available early, were mostly plutonium, but I did get my hands on the two low point uranium bombs and was able to build and load them rather early.  Joe had a medium plutonium bomb and Kevin had tested a bomb by this point.  I was setting up for another small bomb and managed to build that about the time Kevin had built his big plutonium bomb.  I was 13 points away, and Kevin was pretty well setup to get his second big bomb built to win on his next action, but he had to recall first.  When he recalled, I was able to use my spy to get into his plutonium plant to get the four that I needed to build and subsequently load a bomb for 14 points and the victory.

We followed that with Spyrium.  I was pushing for residences and the blue tokens early, but I didn’t have much going in my tableau.  Kevin was mining a bunch, wasn’t scoring many points, while Joe was setup with factories.  Eventually I was able to get a bunch of points with a factory and university.  It wasn’t quite enough, though.  Kevin had started scoring points with a factory, and while I managed to grab a nice mansion in the last round, I still ended up a point shy of Kevin at the end.

We finished the night with Eminent Domain.  We were all pushing for colonies, so grabbing planets was critical.  I surveyed early and often, which provided two prestige planets and two planets with colonize bonuses.  I was also able to score a few nice research cards with the help of Joe’s research actions.  Kevin was trying to get a production and trading engine going, but the research and colonize cards were disappearing too quickly.  Joe had a bunch of planets as well, but hadn’t been able to colonize them.  I won the game with a score of 31.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Terra Mystica

Joe, Kevin and Louis joined Gina and I Saturday for a game of Terra Mystica.  Louis was playing as the Chaos Magicians, Kevin the Mermaids, Joe the Witches, Gina the Hobbits and I had the Darklings.

Gina got off to a very fast start taking advantage of her digging bonuses and the round bonus for building dwellings.  Louis and I were lagging behind a fair bit, but we were getting power from Joe on the left side of the board.  I went straight for a Temple to start powering my terraforming.

I wasn’t able to really take advantage of the round bonus, as the second and third rounds rewarded building the big buildings.  I just didn’t have the income until the fourth round.  Then I really got moving.  I was able to get two towns built, and then upgraded to the big buildings on the second to last round.  I then started heavily using my priests to take over the cult board.

Joe had managed three towns by the end, and spent the last round positioning himself on the cult tracks, which he had ignored for the rest of the game.  He didn’t have enough to get ahead of me in any but water, but he was second in the rest.  Louis took the earth track, while I held fire and air.

The final scores were rather close.  Kevin had the biggest empire, but Gina and I tied for second.  I had enough on the cult track to overcome her lead, and was able to score the win by just a few points.

Gina and Louis called it quits, so Joe, Kevin and I played Eminent Domain.  Joe and I were pressing the Survey and Colonize fairly heavily early, while Kevin was going the Warfare route.  Once I had a couple planets colonized, though, I was able to get into the Produce/Trade business.  I was drawing cards perfectly, and rarely missed a chance to score with my goods.  At the end of the game I had 15 points from goods along with my 15 from my four planets.  Kevin and Joe each had 27; Kevin from Planets and research; Joe from mostly planets, though he did have a few from trade.

I finished the weekend off with a game of Trajan with Joe and Louis.  It was my first time playing, so there was definitely a learning curve.  I was working the legionaires and the senate for my bonus tiles.  Louis was grabbing up trajan tiles and the shipping tiles, while Joe was left to run free in the workman area.  That was a big mistake, as Joe pulled in 40 points of bonuses just from the workmen.  I did end up in second with a strong endgame and finished a couple points ahead of Louis.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Independence Day

Wednesday before the 4th, we were joined by Joe and Kevin for Eminent Domain, Hansa Teutonica and Caylus.  Joe missed Eminent Domain, and it came down to Kevin and I tied for points.  He had the tie-breaker, though, with a few extra resources.

I didn’t fare much better in Hansa Teutonica.  I started off slowly, getting my library upgrades complete.  I wasn’t getting much movement, while Kevin and Joe had some nice shorter routes that they were using to rack up points.  I did manage to complete the major route between the two red cities, and upgraded my key.  It wasn’t enough, though.  Kevin had a large network and a bunch of bonus tokens.  He took his second game of the night.

 

We finished with Caylus.  Kevin and I had moved up the lowest favor track, allowing us both access to the houses even with the lawyer in play.  It was still slow going for me, though as Joe was building tons of the other buildings.  I was going last for most of the game, but I had access to the Inn so I was able to use 5 of my workers nearly every turn.  The game progressed rather quickly as we were building in the castle often.  I had positioned myself to make a huge build in the castle, but I mistimed my action and ended up in the third position.  I wasn’t able to build any and while I doubt it would have been enough, it was still a disappointment.  Joe ended up taking the last game of the night after using the point favors as much as possible.

 

We played again on Saturday.  This time Phil joined us along with Joe and Kevin.

We kicked things off with Village.  I had a plan to run as many workers as possible into the Council House.  I managed to get three workers in and upgraded, but got a bit distracted along the way.  I had two in the church getting me points throughout the game, and a couple working to get the scrolls needed for the Council House.  I decided part way through, that rather than just upgrade, I would get some coin from grain and then turn it into points using the last spot in the Council.  I managed to do that twice, but would have liked more.

It ended up being a very close game, but Kevin had a bunch of points from the market and came out ahead in the end.

Ad Astra was up next.  I started the game in a weak position just getting energy, and rather than focusing on ships like I should have, I built a factory early.  This ended up hurting as I had trouble building anything.  Kevin had built extra ships early and used that to his advantage getting early points for ships and star systems, and continued this trend throughout the game.  Gina and Phil made strong plays using terraformers, but ended up just short.  Kevins ships were too much to overcome.

 

Again we finished up with Caylus.  This time I had planned to work the castle building heavily.  That turned out to be a bad idea, as the resource spots were quickly snatched up.  In fact no one was able to get much done in the castle as the Provost was moving around quite a bit.  Joe built the Lawyer tile with the intent to use it, but I had position to get there first, so I invested heavily.  I built three houses throughout the game, and upgraded two to the taverns.  I was never in a position to win, though.  I had tried to build the cathedral, but miscounted the number of gold needed and came up one short.

Kevin and Phil had been building resource buildings like crazy and were the only ones doing much in the castle.  So they were able to build a substantial lead.  The final score came down to Kevin managing to build on of the blue buildings, putting his score just out of reach of Phil.  Kevin won his third game of the evening.

Until next time, happy gaming!

 

 

Weekend Gaming: Busy Days

This was a busy holiday weekend for us. Saturday was spent in the yard doing some gardening and playing. Then in the evening, the games started.

It began with Joe, Kevin, Gina and I played Ad Astra and Terra Mystica.  Kevin and I were playing similar terraforming strategies in Ad Astra, but his was more balanced and edged me out in the end.

Then in Terra Mystica, Kevin again managed to beat us all.  He was playing as the Cultists and took advantage of the cult tracks while still managing to create a large empire.  I was playing as the Engineers and at one point built a bridge expecting to be able to terraform and build on the other side, but Joe beat me to it with his Nomads when I realized I lacked the right resources.  With one bridge wasted, I had a hard time recovering.

On Sunday, Gina and I played another game of Terra Mystica in the afternoon.  I was trying the Dwarves, while she was using the Mermaids.  I was happily expanding my empire across the board, but she was more focused.  I never managed to build a town and that ended up costing me.  While I had a large empire, she had me on the cults and score in general.

Joe joined us for another round of Terra Mystica after that.  I tried the Witches this time, and boy were they fun.  Joe had the Chaos Magicians, and Gina had Halflings.  I managed to use my Witches to fly all over the world to build houses.  With that I managed to build three towns for the bonuses, and then on the last round, I upgraded my shipping twice to score the largest empire with all but two of my buildings on the board.

Joe joined us again that evening for even more games, starting with Ginkopolis.  I was planning to go with a construction focus, but that never panned out.  Joe was constructing a bunch, but I did manage to do a fair bit of urbanizing.  On the last turn, though, I decided to exploit rather than urbanize, looking to score some quick points.  Joe, though, managed to steal a district from me, costing me the game.

Eminent Domain was next.  I was focused on colonization and research, and managed to do it well.  It just wasn’t enough.  Joe and Gina were both producing and trading, and I just couldn’t keep up.  There wasn’t much surveying, and I just couldn’t get the planets.  It was a close game, but Joe did managed to have the winning score.

Gina’s last game of the evening was Village.  I didn’t get a picture of the game, but Joe and Gina again had similar plans, while I was out on my own.  They were using the Council Chambers to get goods to trade, while I was out traveling.  I did manage to get a couple family members into the church and plenty into the book, but Joe’s trading resources were too much for us to overcome.

After Gina went to bed, Joe and I stayed up for one last game of Terra Mystica (I’m really liking this game, if you hadn’t guessed).  I was playing the Fakirs, and Joe had the Engineers.  After building my Stronghold on the first turn, I was struggling with gold for a long time.  Joe was racking up points building Trading Houses, and getting his bridges built.  I was about 35 point behind coming into the last round.

I had gathered my resources and was ready for a big build.  I managed to build a temple and four dwellings, maximizing the round bonus and my bonuses to score 30 points in that round.  I also had the bonus for my Stronghold and Sanctuary that I turned in for another 8 points.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough. We were evenly matched on the cult tracks and  Joe’s score on the last turn was enough to keep him ahead of my even with my empire.  Joe managed to win his fourth game of the evening.

 

We ended the weekend with a rather lazy holiday Monday.  We did go and see Star Trek: Into Darkness, which we both thoroughly enjoyed.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Men’s Night

The wives were all out of town this weekend for a shopping trip.  So Saturday night was just Ryan, Kevin, Louis and myself.  The night started out with Lords of Waterdeep.  Louis and Kevin got out to a quick lead with some big quests, while I was struggling to find quests that would appease my lord.  Ryan was lagging behind, but just biding his time.

Early on, I managed to complete a quest that would give me bonus points for playing Intrigue cards, which I then tried to maximize.  Eventually some Skulduggery quests starte

Eminent Domain was the second and final game of the night.  I wanted to get into the Produce/Trade side of things, but it was pretty slow going.  Louis was doing it a bit more efficiently, early on, but I had a couple good turns toward the end where I was able to catch up.  Ryan was pushing a Research game, but had one hiccup with the wrong king of planet that slowed him down.  Kevin was pushing the military hard, but wasn’t surveying a ton of planets.  The final score ended up being very close.  Kevin had 18 from his planets and Ryan had 20 from planets and research.  Louis and I had nearly identical boards, but I had one more Influence chip and one of my planets was worth a point more.  He finished with 20 and I had 22 for the lead.d showing up, and I was able to complete a bunch and sneak into the lead.  Ryan was positioning himself for a huge quest turn-in, but Louis ended up getting in the way.  At the end, my Lord gave me just enough to edge out Kevin for first place, followed up by Ryan and Louis.

Until next time, happy gaming!