Weekend Gaming: Birthday Party!

Nick and Laura were in town visiting for my daughter’s third birthday over the weekend.  On Saturday, they, Kevin and us played some Princes of Florence.  We were slightly distracted with chatting, while Laura and Nick hadn’t played in a while, so Kevin was getting away with some cheap auctions (primarily Jesters) because we weren’t keeping him honest.  I was able to get things going a bit as the game went on, and only needed a Forest and eventually a Lake for landscapes to play my Works.  I was forced to buy an unplayable recruitment card on the last turn in order to make the minimum score, but even using my last 6 actions to score Works, it wasn’t enough.  Kevin’s Jesters put his works over the top of mine, and he was able to finish with a bunch as well.  He ended up beating me by 5 points, while the rest struggled to reach 50.

By then, Joe, Jaime and Ryan had shown up.  Ryan, Joe and Nick just wanted to socialize, so the rest of us played Ticket to Ride: Europe.  I had a grand plan that involved travelling from Cadiz to Stockholm by way of Athens, but it wasn’t to be.  I was collecting a bunch of cards to be able to do play a bunch of routes in succession, and I wasn’t really getting everything I needed for the key routes.  By the time I was able to get what I needed, someone else *cough*Laura*cough* had taken the route.  Even the 8-long tunnel route in the North was taken by Kevin the turn before I could take it.  I was able to finish my starting routes with the help of some stations, but when I went to grab more routes to bolster my score I was doomed.  Laura cut me off from the one route I was able to complete, and my last action gamble only had incomplete routes.  I ended up with a whopping 10 points from routes.  Kevin won that one rather handily as well.

Kevin (Black), Jaime (Red), Laura (Yellow), Gina (Green), Me (Blue)

Until next time, happy gaming!

 

Weekend Gaming: Post April Fools

On Saturday we played Ticket to Ride, Hansa Teutonica and Princes of Florence with Joe, Jaime and Kevin.

I hadn’t played Ticket to Ride in ages, so it was a lot of fun to get a chance to play.  My routes were from Canada all the way down to Texas.  I was able to hit quite a few long links in between and had a sizable lead coming into the end.  It almost went bad for me when Jaime and Gina all converged on some of the links in Texas, but I was able to squeak through and finish all but one route and won Longest Train.

Jaime sat out for Hansa Teutonica, while the rest of us played using the expansion.  Kevin managed to empty out almost all of his board, and Joe had pretty unhindered access to the Merchants.  I managed to claim offices in the city for extra actions, and a bunch of the cities around it.  I was a bit slow, though, and didn’t expect Joe to finish off the bonus route across the top of the board.  I wasn’t quite able to get my key upgraded, so my links that I was going for was a bit lacking.  Joe ended up winning while Kevin was a close second.

The last game of the night was Princes of Florence.  I had a pretty good selection of works and I was able to set myself to play four of them out over my last 4 actions.  I wasn’t quite able to keep up with Kevin, though, and ended up just a few points short.

On Sunday, Joe called and wanted to play some more games.  Ryan joined him and we started it out with another game of Hansa Teutonica.  Again I managed to get an office in the Actions/Bag city.  This provided me a bunch of points while I went to gather a bunch of bonus markers.  I was able to pick up six bonus markers and some offices across the board.  I managed to pull off enough points to take the win.  Joe’s game was pretty impressive as well.  He managed to pull off second place while only getting a single upgrade and playing the entire game with only two actions.

The last game of the night was Power Grid: First Sparks.  I tried to corner the market on bears, but there wasn’t much of a market to corner.  Ryan managed to be the only one with a spear and access to the bison, so he was able to fairly easily grab a lead.  Gina and I were both having trouble making enough, while Joe was able to catch Ryan on the last turn.  It wasn’t enough for a win, though, as Ryan had some food leftover for the tie-breaker.

All-in-all it was a fun weekend full of games.

Weekend Gaming: Jet Lag

I got home from Paris Friday evening, and  crashed pretty hard after spending 20+ hours in airports and on planes.

Joe and Britta joined us Saturday night, and none of use were up for learning a new game, so we broke out some Dominion.  We played the Lucky 7’s setup from the Prosperity and Intrigue sets.  I had a terrible time getting anything going, while Joe and Britta were cruising along pretty well.  We all thought Joe had the game well in hand, as he had bought a couple Colonies, but Britta actually managed to overtake him by buying a bunch of Provinces.

Ryan showed up at this point, and we played some 7 Wonders.  Again I was having a tough time doing anything, and finished the game in last place.  Britta and Joe both did very well, and Joe ended up winning by a point.

After that, Britta called it a night, so we played some Princes of Florence.  I was able to get a strong setup needing only the large buildings to do my works.  I was also able to pick up a couple of Recruiting cards to get the others that I needed.  I spent the last two rounds just playing Works, which was enough to put me in first.  It was close, though, as Gina picked up 18 points with a single work using Bonus cards, and Joe had 3 Prestige cards for 21 points.  I ended up winning by only a couple points.

We finished up the night with a couple games of Euchre.  I had to teach the game to Ryan and Joe, but they caught on pretty quickly.  Both games were surprisingly quick.  I was getting very lucky hands and managed to get a couple of 6 point hands in each game, and managed to win both.

Overall it was a nice relaxing weekend, and I’m very happy to be home.  Until next time, happy gaming.

Weekend Gaming: Business as Usual

After putting in extra hours at work on Saturday, I was ready for some games that night.  Louis was the first to show up, and we weren’t sure if anyone else was going to join us, so we started to setup Settlers of America.  Just as we were getting ready to start, though, Ryan, Kevin, Joe and Phil joined us.  Joe, Kevin and Ryan volunteered to watch.

Settlers combines the basic Catan gameplay of rolling for goods and trading with other players, and Railways of the World’s need to deliver goods from one place to another.  The interesting thing, is that the player’s available goods are limited by the number of settlements they control.  The game starts everyone off in the Eastern US, and we needed to travel West to create new settlements.  I started off between Phil and Gina and I was able to quickly ship goods to both of them before needing to expand much further.  Louis had delivered to most of the Southeast before expanding to the Montana region.  I followed Louis up there, and I was  able to expand onto some good numbers.  I was getting quite a few materials each round and I was able to easily deliver to Louis’ settlements.  At the end, Phil had started to resettle some available locations in the East, so I was able to make tracks to them and finish the game by delivering my last goods to them.

Overall, it’s a pretty neat game.  There’s a lot more game to it than the basic Catan without losing a lot of what makes Catan great.  My only worry is that the static board would get a bit dull after a while compared to the ever changing board in standard Catan.

We followed that up with Princes of Florence with Gina, Phil, Joe, Louis and I playing.  Nothing really of note happened in the game.  I was having a tough time getting a Lake due to Joe monopolizing them.  I also couldn’t get a Recruiting card when I needed on because of Phil.  The game ended with Phil pulling off the most Works and seizing the game by a few points.

It was getting late, so we decided to play a quick game of Zombie Dice.  Gina was able to get a big run after a couple rounds and got to 18 brains.  I was the next closest with 11 and no one was able to get anything going, so she won with ease.

Following that, Kevin, Louis, and Ryan called it a night, but Phil and Joe were interested in playing another game.  Since I don’t get to play it often enough, I broke out Revolution!  The game started off well with Joe taking up a strong position in the Fortress, while I took the Harbor.  Gina and Phil were sharing the Cathedral.  Phil was picking up a strong lead with the Printer, but it wouldn’t be enough.  The game came down to what I thought would be the last turn, as there was only one spot left in the Cathedral.  Sadly for me, Joe was able to force a tie for the Priest with Phil, and the Cathedral was left empty.  In doing this, Joe had left himself prepared with more Blackmail and Force than anyone.  He was easily able to take the Spy and Apothecary on the last turn.  He moved some of my cubes around causing me to lose the Market and Town Hall.  This was a 80+ point swing in his favor and gave him the game.  It was definitely one of the more exciting games we’ve played and good end to the evening.

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!