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: Games Galore!

Ryan, Louis and Kevin joined us for games on Friday.  Kevin was late, so he sat out the first game, Quarriors.

Gina and I had never played it, so it took us both a little time to figure out.  The game is kind of like Dominion or Nightfall, in that you are trying to build a “deck”, but instead of cards, there are dice.  Each die represents a spell, a monster or the currency of the game.  The monsters attack the other players and get points, and the currency is used to buy more dice.  Ryan started the game strongly, getting enough to buy some big monsters on his first two turns.  This put the rest of us in a position where we couldn’t defeat his monsters and he was scoring a bunch of points.  This put him quickly into the lead.  I tried to go on the offense, but my monsters then couldn’t stick around long enough to score points.  Louis a strong showing, but in the end, Ryan was able to squeak out the win.

The next game was Infinite City.  It had been quite a while since we had played, so again there was a bit of a learning curve.  I started the game out with a tile that let me draw a bunch of tiles.  I then lost those tiles to Ryan due to a “swap tiles” tile.  A few turns later, I used my own tile to swap tiles with Louis and got a huge pile of tiles in return.  This ended up being less that great, because I wasn’t able to draw any new tiles for the rest of the game.  In the end, I was barely able to squeak out 11 points.  Louis won with 17, while Gina and Kevin weren’t far behind.

We then broke out Ryan’s copy of Nightfall.  I had drafted a decent combo of a vampire that let me bounce cards back, and an action that would do direct damage to players.  I then bought a couple copies of another vampire that would double the ability of the first vampire.  The only problem with this, was that I wasn’t able to combo of any of Louis’ cards to my right.  This meant that I was forced to play most of my cards on my turn, and they were never alive by the time my turn came around.  Ryan had a strong combo of a big werewolf and an ability to do direct damage to all of a player’s monsters.  He ended up getting ganged up a bit because of that.  Louis ended up taking the least damage and won the game.

We finished the night with a game of Zombie Dice.  I started things off with a good run to 7 Brains.  Ryan got to 8.  Kevin was slowly building, one or two at a time.  Louis hit 7 and then stalled out for a few turns.  I eventually made it to 11, and Ryan hit 12.  I wasn’t willing to go out with 15 and went for it, busting out.  Louis and Kevin managed to catch up, while Gina was still trying to get past 1.  I managed to hit another good run, and got to 17 Brains.  I felt safe there, kept it.  Ryan made it 16, but then got shotgunned.  Kevin and Gina got blasted quickly.  Louis managed to get to 17, but decided to go for it rather than trying for a tie breaker.  He ended up getting blasted, giving me the win.

It was a nice night with a variety of games.  It was great to go back and play a couple games we hadn’t played in a while.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: It’s a Small World Full of Monsters

Joe, Jaime, Louis and Kevin joined us on Saturday for some new games.  I had picked up Nightfall: Martial Law last week, and Louis had brought Small World: Underground.  I hadn’t played Small World in ages, so I was pretty excited for that one.

We started the night off with Nightfall.  Jaime sat out so we had the five players.  I had a very powerful wall minion in Legion Ten, but I wasn’t able to consistently get him into play.  Joe was able to build up a big army, but even then it wasn’t enough.  He made himself a bit of a target, so everyone ganged up on him.  I had left myself too open and took a few big hits.  All the while, people were pretty much ignoring Gina.  She finished the game with only three wounds, for the victory.  Kevin was a close second with five.  Nightfall with five players is a bit crazy.  I think if we played it a bit more, we’d get the strategies figured out more, but right now, there seems to be a few people that get hit hard, and one or two that get ignored and end up winning.  It can be a bit odd at times.

After that, Jaime joined back in for a couple games of 7 Wonders.  The first game I was doing quite well with a bit of everything.  I was able to get to 60 points, but Joe edged me out with a 62 point game made up of mostly Guilds, Civilian buildings and military points.  In fact he had 30 points just from Civilian buildings alone.  The second game I ran into a bit of a snag.  I was really limited for resources, and while I was trying to go with a Science strategy, it just wasn’t going my way.  On the final turn, I was able to grab a couple more Science structures and scored 34 points on them, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Louis’ 64 points.

For the final game, we setup for some Small World: Underground.  Jaime sat out again, so it was just the five of us.  I started out the game as the Wise Ogres.  My plan was to use the Ogres ability to attack with fewer tiles and spread out quick, then go into decline and use the bonus from the Wise ability.  Luckily I was able to get a bonus location early that basically my one of my regions immune to attack, so I was able to ride that bonus for the entire game.  Sadly, my second race was less than effective.  I had taken the Vengeful Liches because everyone had been skipping over, so there was a bunch of points on them.  I didn’t get to use either of their abilities, and the points I was getting from the Ogres was too good to pass up at that point.  At the end I had a respectable 83 points, but it wasn’t anywhere close to Louis’s 104 or Kevin’s 99.  Both of them had been able to consistently get 15-18 points each turn.  It was a lot of fun.  I really like Small World and Underground added a bunch of fun new combinations and Relics that add a bit more excitement to the game.

Overall it was a good weekend.  Good games were played, and I was able to get my ‘Ard Boyz army finished up, so expect a post on that before the big tournament next weekend.

Until next time, happy gaming.

Weekend Gaming and the Deathly Hallows

Friday night, Joe offered to watch the kids so Jaime Gina and I could go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  The movie was great.  I loved every minute of it, and it was definitely the best of the Harry Potter movies, and even better than the book in my opinion.  When we got back home, we were too wired to go to bed, so we played a quick game of Puerto Rico.  I was able to make a killing selling coffee and was able to buy a couple big buildings, taking the game.

After that we still had time for one more, so since we had 4 people we were able to break out Thurn and Taxis.  Joe was able to grab the big points for the center of the board, but I grabbed the points for one in each zone and was able to speed to the biggest cart.  Gina and Jaime both cam close and in the end the game was only won by a couple points.

On Saturday, Joe was running late, so Gina, Kevin, Ryan and I played some Nightfall.  I had draft Vulko (a big defensive monster) and a card that let me change the target of other players’ cards.  My deck ended up with Vulko, the target changer and another card that directly damaged all opponents.  Things were going well at first.  I was able to prevent all damage to myself, while still damaging the rest.  Sadly I ended up leaving myself very vulnerable one turn and took a real beating.  I ended up in last place with 13 wounds, while Kevin had 6.  I’m really liking the game, and there really seems to be quite some depth.

 

Once Joe and Jaime showed up, we broke out 7 Wonders.  We played two quick games of this.  The first game was won with a very balanced strategy by everyone.  Ryan, though, had a stronger science position and took the game by a few points.  The second game was a lot more lopsided.  Ryan and I both started off with some weak resource positions, but luckily our neighbors were able to help us out.  Ryan and I took strong military positions, Joe had a ton of Civilian structures and Kevin had a bunch of Science.  I was also able to snag 3 different guilds that really pushed my score up.  In the end, Ryan had 20 points from the Giza wonder, Kevin had 30+ points of Science, Joe had 32 points of Civilian, and I had 35 points from my Guilds.  After the final tally, I was able to squeak by Ryan by three points for the victory.

Ryan took off and we finished the night with another game of Puerto Rico.  I made the mistake of grabbing a Large Market right away thinking that I would be able to sell everything for good money.  Sadly, I wasn’t able to produce anything for the first few turns.  Joe ended up making tons of cash and bought three of the large buildings and took the lead easily.

Sunday was crazy hot out, but I still played in a disc golf tournament that was put on by Ryan.  I played in the recreational division and ended up tied for second place.  It was a really nice day, and luckily we finished before the big storm hit.  I played with some great local guys and had a ton of fun.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: New Game Weekend!

I hope everyone had a good 4th of July, even if it wasn’t a holiday.

Due to the 4th falling on a Monday, I had both Monday and Tuesday off of work, so I had plenty of time this weekend for games, barbeques and home improvements.

On Friday night we had Louis, Kevin and Ryan over and started the night off with a couple games of 7 Wonders.  Gina and I had played a couple hands of the two player variant earlier in the week, so we were pretty familiar with how things worked.  The first game, though, was taken by Ryan.  He had ton of military and civilian structures and no competition on the military front.  He also managed to snag the Guild that provides bonus points for the number of defeat tokens his neighbors had, so that just boosted his score further.

I was able to win the second game with a much more balanced setup.  I only won military victories in the second age, but I had a bunch of science points and points from my wonder to squeeze past Kevin for a one point victory.

Kevin managed to take the last game, again with a pretty heavy military strategy that he decided to try after basically ignoring military all night.

After that, we played a game of Race for the Galaxy (with the expansions), which Ryan had brought over.  Gina and I hadn’t played it in ages, and it was only our third play through.  I started off the game with a planet that provided me with some military bonus, along with some military worlds in my hand.  I decided to stick with that strategy, and it worked out quite well for me.  I was getting to draw 5 to 7 cards each explore phase due to some bonuses and was able to really dig for the military cards.  I didn’t need cards to pay resource prices, typically, so I could pretty much ignore the Consume and Processing phases.  And I had a bonus card in the Rebel Alliance that gave me some significant military power.  I was able to build to 15 settlements and developments (needing 14 to end the game due to the Rebel Alliance).  This gave me a ton of points at the end of the game, placing me well in the lead.

After spending the day putting in some new hardwood flooring in my entryway on Saturday, I was ready for some games that evening.  The group was the same as Friday but with the addition of Joe.  We started off with another round of 7 Wonders.  This one was a little goofy because there was an alternating pattern of military power.  Joe, Kevin and I all had some military power, while Gina, Louis and Ryan had very little, if any.  The people with no military, though, were sitting between those who did, so Joe, Kevin and I were all able to max out our military points.  Ryan was going hard into Science, and Louis had a lot of Civilian points.  Gina had a bit of everything, with a heavy focus on Guilds at the end.  I can’t honestly recall exactly who ended up winning, but I know it was one of the closest games yet.

Next, we went about learning to play Ryan’s new game, Nightfall.  The game itself is a deck building game like Dominion, but instead of building a kingdom, you’re building an army of werewolves, vampires and zombies to attack your neighbors.  It’s pretty cool.  The biggest issue we had learning is that we missed the rule about discarding cards for influence.  Like Dominion, there are cards available to buy.  You need influence to do this, and you only get two influence per turn, while most cards cost three or four.  So the first few turns were painfully slow.  We finally figured out that you can discard cards from your hand for more influence, and then we were finally able to get some better cards into our decks.  It was a fun game, but learning it was a bit painful.

We finished off the night with a game of Dominion, using the new Cornucopia set.  We combined the Intrigue and Cornucopia sets to play the Spice of Life setup.  I’m not sure if it was the lack or buys available, the Young Witch passing out Curses, or a lack of money in general, but the game seemed to drag on a bit.  No Tournaments were won, and while I was able to grab a couple Fairgrounds, I wasn’t quite able to push them to 6 points.  I think Kevin or Ryan ended up winning, but it was a pretty low scoring game.

Sunday was just spend finishing up some projects and playing some video games.  But then on Monday, we spent all afternoon and into the evening barbequing and gaming.  Ryan, Louis, Kevin, Joe, and Dana all joined us.  Ryan, Louis, Joe, Kevin and I played a game of Nightfall before dinner.  Knowing the rules and such made for a much smoother game.  I was trying to get a direct damage and unblockable monster combo going, but it didn’t work as well as I’d like, plus it let Louis combo a card that could mess my stuff up, so I wasn’t having much luck getting anything going.  Luckily I wasn’t looking like much of a threat, so while I took a beating early, I was ignored late in the game and finished up with the least Wounds for the win.

After a dinner of brats and burgers, we played some Princes of Florence.  Louis and I were able to trade some works back and forth, but I messed up in the auctioning and bought the wrong thing one turn.  I’m not sure it was a huge factor, but it did mess up my flow.  Ryan was able to build up a ton of building with his three builders, but Louis ended up winning, with me in second and Joe a close third after getting about 20 points just from Prestige cards.

That was all for this weekend.  Plenty of new games and lots of fun.  I will try and get reviews of 7 Wonders and Nightfall up later this week.  Both games were a lot of fun, and 7 Wonders was definitely a hit with the group.

Until next time, happy gaming!