Weekend Gaming: Thanksgiving

I hope you enjoyed your time this Thanksgiving holiday.

On Thursday, Gina and I played a quick game of Thurn and Taxis, followed by Star Trek Catan with Gina and her mom. I was able to win Catan, taking advantage of a few ill advised trades by Gina ‘s mom.

Then on Saturday, Joe and Kevin joined us. We played Village first. I was trying to avoid the market, and instead focused on using the council to feed my travel. I also had a bunch of family in the church.
I did well, but Kevin and Joe were working the market with Kevin getting the best deals. Kevin ended up tied with me for first, and had the tie-breaker with the market sales.

Kevin, Joe, and I followed that with Clash of Cultures. Things started off peaceful.  I was working to get taxation and trade routes to fulfill my objective. Kevin ended up surrounded by barbarians, so he went military first.

Joe and I were for next to each other, and it very enticing to attack. Instead I just used him for the trade routes, and built a big defensive army. Joe did try to attack twice, but I repelled him both times. Kevin was also mounting an offense in the other side, so I needed to defend there as well.
Joe and I both managed two wonders, but I had completed all of my objectives and had the bigger civilization. I took the win with 51 points.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Snow Day!

Saturday night started off with Louis, Kevin, Gina and I playing Thurn and Taxis.  I started off well by picking up the purples, but then slowed down.  Because of the cards available I decided to try to grab all of the central gray areas in one route.  I did manage to do it, but there was some slowdown when two of the locations didn’t turn up when I’d hoped.  Kevin ended the game with a big run through gray, but it was Louis with the most points at the end.

Joe and Dana had joined us at this point, so we broke out 7 Wonders. I wanted to go with science, but I never do well with that tactic. I ended up working with military and commercial. Joe was to my left and he had no military, but Dana had played a few so I actually had to work foot my victories. Louis on the other hand was able to maximize his military points with only two cards. The rest he spent on blue card picking up a ton of points. He also scored a bunch of points with a couple of guilds. He ended up with over 70 points and the win.

Dominion was next. The first game had a bunch of extra actions available but no extra buys. Everyone had a ton of money but could only get one card a turn. Platinum was very popular and I was having a tough time buying cheap cards because it seemed like a waste of the money in my hand. I eventually got a Minion engine running, but it was too late. Louis had been running Villages and Labs for a bunch of money and had the early lead on Colonies. He earned a big win in yet another game.

Another game of Dominion followed, but it was harder to get money. Joe was stocking up on King’s Courts, but rarely had anything to pair them with. Thieves were very popular, but they actually ended up helping Louis and I thin ours decks. I was trying to use the Forge to get Colonies, but rarely had the right combination of cards. Again Louis had the right idea using King’s Courts to triple Markets for big money. He was buying points left and right and ended with yet another win.

Dana and Louis took of at this point, so the rest of launched into a game of Agricola.  I had a decent grain/bread engine going for food, but I had little else.  Joe managed to pull the bookshelf and the occupation that gives food if other players randomly select which one to play.  This provided him tons of food just for doing a normal action.  He managed to easily fill his farm and maximize his family for the win.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Return to Gaming

After a couple weekends without much gaming, this weekend was a distinct change in the right direction.  On Friday, Gina and I played Thurn and Taxis, Hawaii and Eminent Domain.  Thurn and Taxis was relatively uneventful.  I was performing well with smaller routs, but quickly grabbing control all over the board.  I managed to get a size 7 cart on the same turn I ran out of offices, ending the game for a narrow win.

In Hawaii, both of us ended up getting a strong supply of fruit.  They were plentiful on the board, and I was able to use my one boat to get one as well.  We both ended up with two large villages on our islands, but I was able to score the bonus points on the end of the last round.  That combined with my end game bonuses were able to outscore Gina’s spear points and fruit bonuses.

 

We finished the night with Eminent Domain.  Gina was spread too thin, while she could have been doing well with a Produce/Trade game.  I was focused heavily in Survey, Colonize and Research.  I was able to get a bunch of planets colonized while also picking up a couple level three technologies for a dominant win.

Then on Saturday, Joe and Kevin joined us for Agricola and Lancaster.  I was feeding my people easily with grain and bread, and was able to quickly expand my family.  I didn’t really develop my farm all that well, but I did get a couple nice improvements with points.  I ended up limiting my negatives well enough and actually squeaked out a win.  It was pretty close between Kevin and I, but I always seemed to be taking exactly what Kevin needed one turn before he was about to do it.

Kevin had brought Lancaster, so we took some time to learn it.  It was an interesting combination of worker placement and voting that worked out pretty nicely.  There was some confusion with the order of voting and scoring, and we ended up playing the laws wrong so we didn’t have any voting in the last round.  It was a close game with Joe getting a decent lead from some conflicts and board locations, but I was positioning myself for the end game bonuses.  Kevin and I both mistook the order of actions in the last round and battled for some rewards that ended up not benefiting us in scoring.  because we wasted those resources, Joe was easily able to keep his lead at the end of the game.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: Prehistory

On Friday my wife and I decided to play a few games.  We started off with Power Grid: First Sparks.  The two-player game of First Sparks is a little different from the standard.  There are a few technologies removed and a 3rd “neutral” clan is controlled by whoever is in last place.

In our game, I picked up the Fire knowledge on the first turn and I was trying to us it to its fullest potential.  I was able to build slowly, always staying just behind Gina so I usually had control of the neutral clan.  I was also able to position myself just right on bear hunting grounds so by the last turn the bears were being refilled just enough so that I could sustain gathering 2 bears a turn with a low level bow.  On the last turn, I had saved up enough food to place 5 new clan members, which launched me from 9 to 14.  Gina was close behind, but she only had enough to place 3, which put her at 13.  A good close game, and it was interesting to see how the Fire strategy could work.

End game - Red (me), Green (Gina), White (neutral)

Next was Thurn and Taxis.  I was able to get Lodz and Pilsen early, but then couldn’t find anything in the green or blue regions for a long time, so Gina beat me to the All Regions points.  I was able to get all of grey in one fell swoop after digging through the deck to find Augsburg.  That combined with a big 7 route to end the game pushed me to the win.  Sadly I forgot to take a picture, though.

Saturday evening, Kevin, Joe, Phil and Louis joined us for Dominant Species.  This turned out to be a pretty epic game.  I was playing the mammals, and took a pretty sizable lead by being dominant in the lower right.  This was helped by very few meat elements being available for Adaptation.  Louis (playing reptiles) ended up going completely extinct when all of the Sun elements were removed from the board.  He ended up coming back strong, though with some nice end game Domination points.  I was able to maintain my lead by getting a lot of first or second place points on tiles where other species dominated, but I was dwindling toward the end.

On the last turn, I made a burst in the upper right by speciating and wanderlusting twice.  This gave me a couple locations where I was able to dominate and hold for points.  Gina (birds) was able to migrate all over the place, but ended up losing all of her domination to Joe or Louis (insects).  In the end, Louis put up 21 points through domination and both he and Gina got a bunch of points from the final scoring.  It wasn’t quite enough, though, and I ended up winning by a single point.

Dominant Species - Me (White), Gina (Blue), Louis (Black), Kevin (Green), Phil (Yellow), Joe (Red)

A great weekend of games with an interesting game of Dominant Species to finish it up.  Much better than the blowouts we’ve had in the past.

Until next time, happy gaming!

Weekend Gaming: The Muppets!

On Saturday morning, we took the kids to The Muppet movie, which was being shown as part of my company’s Kids Christmas Party.  The kids got to sit on Santa’s lap and then we watch the movie.  Everyone absolutely loved it.  It was a wonderful movie.

That night, Louis joined us for a game of Caylus.  It started out a little rough for Louis as he lost a couple points for not supplying any goods to build the castle, but then he got rolling.  I built a bunch of civilian buildings and earning a bunch of money, but Louis was building buildings every turn.  It game down to the very end, and Louis was able to accelerate the end of the game before I could build the 25 point Cathedral.  I had to settle for a lower monument and then supplied 5 loads to the castle for 15 points.  I ended up just four points short of Louis.

Louis took after that, and Gina and I played games of Thurn and Taxis, and Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers.  Thurn and Taxis was a close game where I ended up getting an easy route for the center of the map, while Gina got one in each section.  It came down to a last round route where I managed to hit six locations for an upgrade to my cart to win by two.

In Carcassonne, I managed to snatch a big hunting area away from Gina using the monument tile.  If it weren’t for that one area, it was a very close game.

It was a slower weekend, but everyone had fun, and we got to take the kids to a great movie.  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!