Despite a game-filled convention weekend just behind many of the members of our group (I was in Canada, sadly), we had seven people show to play games at my place this past Tuesday. Present were Eric, Tim, Carrie, Carey (oh, this will get confusing later), Laurent, Mike, and myself. On the table: Ticket to Ride: Europe, Carcassone: The Discovery, San Juan, and Traumfabrik.
While Tim, Carrie, and Eric went into the Temple of Conspicuous Consumerism to play Carc: Discovery Channel Edition, the rest of us pulled out Ticket to Ride: Europe. I'd only gotten in one game of this earlier with three players, and it felt like multiplayer solitaire. We all had separate regions of the board we were claiming, and even with the rules about no double tracks (which are all in the west anyway), there was no real competition.
This game felt quite a bit different, at least for me. Carey and I started building out of Madrid early, but fortunately we were the only ones. Laurent built along the eastern edge of the board, with an early run from Palermo along the 6-space ferry line. He also scored the long 21-point run from Petrograd late in the game after Carey failed to have the necessary cards to finish the tunnel line there. Mike started out a bit west of Laurent, but did an awful lot of blind draws in the early game (and later).
I kept all four of my starting tickets, as they were all in a nice line. My biggie was Lisbon to Berlin, with other stops including Rome, Zurich, Riga, Bucharest, and Budapest. However, I had a horrible time finding green cards, and Mike stole the Budapest/Bucharest run out from under me. Thank goodness for stations. Still, I managed to hook everything up, and thought I had enough time to steal another ticket or two. Since Laurent scored 36 points just off of two long lines, I figured I better do something if I wanted to win. Sadly, not a single one of the three tickets worked well for me, nor were there any lines going to these cities! I finally chose the Brest to Marseilles line, although it would require at least two lines to complete and I didn't have the necessary cards in hand to finish it.
As it was, Laurent won handily. With little competition in his chosen area, two of the three big-point runs, and easily the longest rail line, it wasn't close. Carey and I finished within a handful of points of each other with me getting the edge for second, and Mike brought up the rear, the usual result when you have to resort to blind draws (although he had a *lot* of cards in hand).
I'm still not sure I like this one as much as the original, which I've played several times and always enjoy. It's light, but very satisfying. Europe feels more like everything depends upon whether you are competing with others for your long route, but perhaps I simply haven't played enough to explore other strategies such as just doing lots of shorties.
Carc finished around the same time, so we shuffled personnel a bit. Eric, Tim, and myself tried out Traumfabrik, one of my favorites to play with anyone but Dave - he's a machine at computing the value of tiles - while the others played San Juan. This was the first playing of Traum for Eric, and Tim had only played once before. It had been a while for me, so I did my usual "one rule short" trick and neglected to mention the value of money at game end.
Eric and Tim were very aggressive in finishing movies early, while I wanted to bide my time and go for the endgame points. this strategy actually worked quite well, although I don't know that an 18 point movie would win Best Picture much of the time. Guest Stars were very sparse, I think only three or four came up the entire game (we also missed the rule about Guest Stars having the stars behind their faces, I had thought it was the red borders, but we caught this early in the game and I don't think it had a big effect). I was also aggressive about getting good directors, scoring two of the four big boys.
While Eric ended up with the extra movie in the draw pile, I had the benefit of having two of the three best pictures at game end, one of the best pictures at the end of the quarter, the best director, and the worst movie (at 3 points, tough to do without Reiner). That was 45 points at game end, plus 5 completed movies that were done by the first party in the last round. Biding my time definitely helped, as I managed to get a particularly important set of tiles in the third round when I had collected 27 of the 36 scripts (money). At game end, I had won handily, exceeding more than 100 points compared to Eric's 80-something and Tim's 60-something.
All tainted by my failure to remember the part about scripts being worth points at the end. Still, I felt that waiting for the right tiles worked in my favor.
After a little discussion of Gamestorm, the recent Portland con, we called it a night. I've mentioned before how fortunate I am to be a part of such a great group of people, and this was a very entertaining and enjoyable evening. Thanks to all who attended after what was surely a game-filled weekend just two days before!
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Sunday, March 19, 2006
24 Hours
With a trip to Canada to celebrate my 20th anniversary coming up, I knew that gaming opportunities at the end of March would be far and few between, so I took advantage of two sessions within a 24 hour period, separated only by some sleep and a performance by my church choir at the American Choral Director's Association regional conference. I've almost recovered.
Friday night we had a gaming session at a local Starbucks. The idea is mostly to expose others in the public to quality boardgaming (and we did have a couple of people show up), but we also got to "audition" a new gamer who is interested in joining the group. Mike, KC, and Chris joined myself and Ben to play first one of KC's Diamant variants and then Pirate's Cove.
This was my first playing of Diamant, even if it was using homebrew components (to accomodate the variants, KC owns a copy of the game). The game is basically a Chicken variant, where you can stick it out in the mines at the risk of Bad Things happening. I was a big Chicken (although to be honest I didn't know the card distribution) in most of the chambers, and I had a miserable score as a result. The first two or three tunnels never saw anyone getting any points at all, as we tended to turn up two Die, Miner, Die cards of the same suit pretty quickly.
The two variants were a) "artifact" cards that went to the last players in a given tunnel, and b) the Personal Doom variant, where in the final tunnel each player gets one hazard card. If your card comes up, down you go (although the first three cards you are "safe".
This is a cute little game that should fit in a standard card game box and cost $10 retail. The fact that it costs $25 and has a ton of superfluous components makes it a game I'm unlikely to purchase, and there are enough people in the group who own it.
With five players, we took the opportunity to try out Pirate's Cove, DoW's reprint of Amigo's Piratenbucht. I am a huge fan of the original, and I think the few changes made by DoW are good ones. While the Island of the Fabio's (sailor's island) doesn't have the same cachet as in Piratenbucht, the components are great. I particularly like the plastic pirate ship models.
I had a great start in this game, getting the parrot that lets you roll six dice in combat, and I became feared. Then I whiffed badly, lost the parrot, lost two fame (one of the changes), and stalled for pretty much the rest of the game. I had almost 20 fame points within a couple of turns of starting, then I sucked air so bad I managed perhaps another 8 points total. KC was doing quite well, and even Ben's late run wasn't enough to catch him.
I own the original, but am considering buying the DoW edition just because it looks so cool and the changes are well considered.
After my concert on Saturday morning, I made the trek out to Eric's for Third Saturday of the Month. Because of the concert, I didn't get out until around noon, so Chuck, Dave, and Eric played the Italy map of Age of Steam and had good things to say about it.
After lunch, we tried out Reef Encounter, the new Richard Breese title that's gotten a lot of positive buzz. Like most Breese games, the basic focus is on doing a variety of actions that chain together to achieve the game's goals. In this case, the goal is to a) feed your parrotfish with a reef you control, and b) improve the viability of those reefs (that were, uhm, eaten) through algae. Really.
And that's just how you win. In order to get to this point, you have to build reefs with polyp tiles in conjunction with larvae cubes, protect them with your shrimp, eat other reefs (some of which may be yours), and jockey for position over which color reefs eat other reefs through the algae. Put bluntly, this game is a bitch to explain, and after using the words "algae," "larvae," and "polyp" you can see the other gamers' eyes glazing over.
With that much rules explanation, it better be a good game. And, frankly, I think it is, although I think the game would be much better with three players, or even two (although with two I'd expect a little too much reacting over planning). Every turn, you need to examine what tiles and cubes you have, what the board position looks like, what your choices are for tile/cube draws at the end of the turn, and what polyps can eat other polyps. For such an involved system, it really does work pretty well, albeit with a certain amount of downtime.
One of the problems is that of defensive play. You can only "harvest" one reef on your turn, and chances are very good, especially early, that any reefs big enough will be beat down by other players before it comes around to your turn. However, if you can get a reef eaten early, you can "freeze" which reefs eat other reefs, which can have a big tactical advantage. Still, chances are good that whatever specific plan you had during your turn isn't going to work by the time your turn comes around again, so flexibility is also important.
Some tactics quickly showed their value. Building a reef in a corner of one of the playing boards is a good idea, as is leaving single square holes in your reef to limit where players can bring in new threatening reefs. Playing the Algae board that controls which polyps eat which other polyps can be huge, not only for protecting your reefs but also for points at game end and for stopping the game. I found that choosing a set of tiles and a cube at the end of the turn hinged primarily on which cube to get, which was important as you had to have a cube to place the matching tiles unless you had previously consumed a tile of the correct color.
Chuck was clearly unimpressed with the game pretty much from the start, and perhaps he didn't get the necessary shots at tiles and cubes to do what he needed to do. For the rest of us, it wasn't immediately clear at what point you should harvest a reef. I typically bit when the size got to seven, although Dave had two large reefs harvested where he got nine or ten (you lose the first four, so it's an even bigger difference than it seems). If you can manage to get a large enough reef, better yet two, it tends to create an unassailable position, and Dave did just that.
Yet, at the end, Dave lost the tiebreaker (consumed polyps not played) to Eric, both tying at 42 points. I was fairly close behind with 36 points, partly because I had collected four different colors of polyps (you really should be focusing on two if possible). Chuck, who I think was lucky to get three of his reefs collected, had 32 points.
Since defensive play is so critical in this game, I'm a bit concerned that the game will work with three, although the game will go a lot faster. Without defense, I'm worried that the game will move faster and thus be more affected by the tiles/cubes available for draw at the end of the turn.
Still, I think this game has tremendous potential, and I definitely think it will require a few plays to get my head around it. I can definitely see this game playable in 90 minutes with four players, so it could see table time at weeknight sessions, not just on weekends or at our Sunriver retreat.
With that, I turned into a pumpkin and headed home to nap for an hour before heading out for dinner with friends. Perhaps it will be good to have a break from games for several days...
Nah.
Friday night we had a gaming session at a local Starbucks. The idea is mostly to expose others in the public to quality boardgaming (and we did have a couple of people show up), but we also got to "audition" a new gamer who is interested in joining the group. Mike, KC, and Chris joined myself and Ben to play first one of KC's Diamant variants and then Pirate's Cove.
This was my first playing of Diamant, even if it was using homebrew components (to accomodate the variants, KC owns a copy of the game). The game is basically a Chicken variant, where you can stick it out in the mines at the risk of Bad Things happening. I was a big Chicken (although to be honest I didn't know the card distribution) in most of the chambers, and I had a miserable score as a result. The first two or three tunnels never saw anyone getting any points at all, as we tended to turn up two Die, Miner, Die cards of the same suit pretty quickly.
The two variants were a) "artifact" cards that went to the last players in a given tunnel, and b) the Personal Doom variant, where in the final tunnel each player gets one hazard card. If your card comes up, down you go (although the first three cards you are "safe".
This is a cute little game that should fit in a standard card game box and cost $10 retail. The fact that it costs $25 and has a ton of superfluous components makes it a game I'm unlikely to purchase, and there are enough people in the group who own it.
With five players, we took the opportunity to try out Pirate's Cove, DoW's reprint of Amigo's Piratenbucht. I am a huge fan of the original, and I think the few changes made by DoW are good ones. While the Island of the Fabio's (sailor's island) doesn't have the same cachet as in Piratenbucht, the components are great. I particularly like the plastic pirate ship models.
I had a great start in this game, getting the parrot that lets you roll six dice in combat, and I became feared. Then I whiffed badly, lost the parrot, lost two fame (one of the changes), and stalled for pretty much the rest of the game. I had almost 20 fame points within a couple of turns of starting, then I sucked air so bad I managed perhaps another 8 points total. KC was doing quite well, and even Ben's late run wasn't enough to catch him.
I own the original, but am considering buying the DoW edition just because it looks so cool and the changes are well considered.
After my concert on Saturday morning, I made the trek out to Eric's for Third Saturday of the Month. Because of the concert, I didn't get out until around noon, so Chuck, Dave, and Eric played the Italy map of Age of Steam and had good things to say about it.
After lunch, we tried out Reef Encounter, the new Richard Breese title that's gotten a lot of positive buzz. Like most Breese games, the basic focus is on doing a variety of actions that chain together to achieve the game's goals. In this case, the goal is to a) feed your parrotfish with a reef you control, and b) improve the viability of those reefs (that were, uhm, eaten) through algae. Really.
And that's just how you win. In order to get to this point, you have to build reefs with polyp tiles in conjunction with larvae cubes, protect them with your shrimp, eat other reefs (some of which may be yours), and jockey for position over which color reefs eat other reefs through the algae. Put bluntly, this game is a bitch to explain, and after using the words "algae," "larvae," and "polyp" you can see the other gamers' eyes glazing over.
With that much rules explanation, it better be a good game. And, frankly, I think it is, although I think the game would be much better with three players, or even two (although with two I'd expect a little too much reacting over planning). Every turn, you need to examine what tiles and cubes you have, what the board position looks like, what your choices are for tile/cube draws at the end of the turn, and what polyps can eat other polyps. For such an involved system, it really does work pretty well, albeit with a certain amount of downtime.
One of the problems is that of defensive play. You can only "harvest" one reef on your turn, and chances are very good, especially early, that any reefs big enough will be beat down by other players before it comes around to your turn. However, if you can get a reef eaten early, you can "freeze" which reefs eat other reefs, which can have a big tactical advantage. Still, chances are good that whatever specific plan you had during your turn isn't going to work by the time your turn comes around again, so flexibility is also important.
Some tactics quickly showed their value. Building a reef in a corner of one of the playing boards is a good idea, as is leaving single square holes in your reef to limit where players can bring in new threatening reefs. Playing the Algae board that controls which polyps eat which other polyps can be huge, not only for protecting your reefs but also for points at game end and for stopping the game. I found that choosing a set of tiles and a cube at the end of the turn hinged primarily on which cube to get, which was important as you had to have a cube to place the matching tiles unless you had previously consumed a tile of the correct color.
Chuck was clearly unimpressed with the game pretty much from the start, and perhaps he didn't get the necessary shots at tiles and cubes to do what he needed to do. For the rest of us, it wasn't immediately clear at what point you should harvest a reef. I typically bit when the size got to seven, although Dave had two large reefs harvested where he got nine or ten (you lose the first four, so it's an even bigger difference than it seems). If you can manage to get a large enough reef, better yet two, it tends to create an unassailable position, and Dave did just that.
Yet, at the end, Dave lost the tiebreaker (consumed polyps not played) to Eric, both tying at 42 points. I was fairly close behind with 36 points, partly because I had collected four different colors of polyps (you really should be focusing on two if possible). Chuck, who I think was lucky to get three of his reefs collected, had 32 points.
Since defensive play is so critical in this game, I'm a bit concerned that the game will work with three, although the game will go a lot faster. Without defense, I'm worried that the game will move faster and thus be more affected by the tiles/cubes available for draw at the end of the turn.
Still, I think this game has tremendous potential, and I definitely think it will require a few plays to get my head around it. I can definitely see this game playable in 90 minutes with four players, so it could see table time at weeknight sessions, not just on weekends or at our Sunriver retreat.
With that, I turned into a pumpkin and headed home to nap for an hour before heading out for dinner with friends. Perhaps it will be good to have a break from games for several days...
Nah.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Central Tuesday Session, 3/14/06
A bit thin this week, with only Matt, Dave, and myself attending. On the table, Candamir (so that Dave can refresh on play for Gamestorm) and Attila.
Candamir got played several months ago by Jake, Mike, Chris, and myself. I had an early copy of the Mayfair edition that had the misprinted tileset, so our initial four-player game took nearly three hours, way too long for what this game is. Dave had the newer tileset, and we were playing with three, so I had high hopes that it would improve the game.
I got out to an early lead, but got Meaded so much that I only had 2 stamina to work with in any given turn. After Dave took the lead in events, he was pretty much unstoppable and the game just ground on. Even with new tiles and three players, two hours is about twice as long as the game should be. It’s really too bad, as the game seems to have the right mix of elements, but in practice they just don’t pan out. I will try the game once more with two players, but to be frank I think it’s simply multi-player solitaire. Only made worse by the fact that we could have been playing Reef Encounter instead...
With less than an hour left, we pulled out Attila, the underrated area/faction control game. This is a gem with three players, and in fact there were several turns of fortune in our game that made it at least 10 times as interesting as the previous two hours. Matt and Dave got off to a small lead after the first scoring round, with four of the six colors in any abundance, and two in particular. By the second scoring, I passed on a clear ending to the round, hoping that Matt would place a yellow meeple and shut Dave out of that particular color, which he did. A good thing, as I ended up moving into second.
The third round saw a four-color race, with a fourth color in play because of the large number of meeples but not so many provinces. This time, I did play the double card chit to enable scoring, and in fact ended up in first place by a few points, with Dave close behind. The game ended with Matt ringing the bell on the Blue meeples, which turned out to not be that great of an idea even though we all had no idea who was going to win going into the final scoring. When the dust cleared, Dave had won over me by two points, with Matt another eight points back. A very close game, and I spent the first half not having the vaguest idea of what I was doing.
The game was unusual in that two colors never really got started - I think there were a total of four green and red meeples on the board at game end. I believe that what happened was yellow and blue had a lot of pieces placed on the board early, then everyone felt they needed to be in the game for those two as we got to the last couple of rounds. Even Matt’s huge round 2 lead in black was eroded quickly when I drew four black cards late in the round, jumping ahead quickly to catch up in that particular color.
Like I say, this is a great three player game that doesn’t work so well with more. A lot like another favorite of mine, Ra.
Thanks to Matt for hosting, and to Dave for coming (although I think I might have requested Descent for two had Dave not shown).
With any luck, I’ll make our Third Saturday Of The Month session and get the chance to pull out Reef Encounter then. With a 7:15am call to sing at a Choral Music conference in the area, though, I don’t know how awake I’ll be...
Candamir got played several months ago by Jake, Mike, Chris, and myself. I had an early copy of the Mayfair edition that had the misprinted tileset, so our initial four-player game took nearly three hours, way too long for what this game is. Dave had the newer tileset, and we were playing with three, so I had high hopes that it would improve the game.
I got out to an early lead, but got Meaded so much that I only had 2 stamina to work with in any given turn. After Dave took the lead in events, he was pretty much unstoppable and the game just ground on. Even with new tiles and three players, two hours is about twice as long as the game should be. It’s really too bad, as the game seems to have the right mix of elements, but in practice they just don’t pan out. I will try the game once more with two players, but to be frank I think it’s simply multi-player solitaire. Only made worse by the fact that we could have been playing Reef Encounter instead...
With less than an hour left, we pulled out Attila, the underrated area/faction control game. This is a gem with three players, and in fact there were several turns of fortune in our game that made it at least 10 times as interesting as the previous two hours. Matt and Dave got off to a small lead after the first scoring round, with four of the six colors in any abundance, and two in particular. By the second scoring, I passed on a clear ending to the round, hoping that Matt would place a yellow meeple and shut Dave out of that particular color, which he did. A good thing, as I ended up moving into second.
The third round saw a four-color race, with a fourth color in play because of the large number of meeples but not so many provinces. This time, I did play the double card chit to enable scoring, and in fact ended up in first place by a few points, with Dave close behind. The game ended with Matt ringing the bell on the Blue meeples, which turned out to not be that great of an idea even though we all had no idea who was going to win going into the final scoring. When the dust cleared, Dave had won over me by two points, with Matt another eight points back. A very close game, and I spent the first half not having the vaguest idea of what I was doing.
The game was unusual in that two colors never really got started - I think there were a total of four green and red meeples on the board at game end. I believe that what happened was yellow and blue had a lot of pieces placed on the board early, then everyone felt they needed to be in the game for those two as we got to the last couple of rounds. Even Matt’s huge round 2 lead in black was eroded quickly when I drew four black cards late in the round, jumping ahead quickly to catch up in that particular color.
Like I say, this is a great three player game that doesn’t work so well with more. A lot like another favorite of mine, Ra.
Thanks to Matt for hosting, and to Dave for coming (although I think I might have requested Descent for two had Dave not shown).
With any luck, I’ll make our Third Saturday Of The Month session and get the chance to pull out Reef Encounter then. With a 7:15am call to sing at a Choral Music conference in the area, though, I don’t know how awake I’ll be...
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Here I (Finally) Stand
Several members of our group were anxious to give this game a real ftf playing, so Chuck, Eric, George, Patrick, Michael, and myself sat down to give it a shot. Eric and I had the most experience, me with a couple of solo ventures (where I mangled the naval rules quite badly), and Eric in a pbem game with the designer. Everyone else had given the rules a quick look, so Eric and I went over the very basic ideas of the game. We also took the Papacy and the Protestants to avoid having to explain all of the religious struggle rules, a very good idea as these two powers are harder to play for beginners. After about 45 minutes of explaining, we got started.
Things went fairly predictably in the first turn, with the French prepping to assault Metz for the key and the Ottoman moving quickly up to Buda and triggering war with the Hapsburgs quickly. Eric's Protestants did a miserable job of converting spaces after Luther's Theses, but rocked the Diet of Worms to make up for it. Meanwhile, the exploring powers got going in the New World, with Chuck's Hapsburgs discovering the Pacific Strait (but being captured by the Portuguese after attempting Cirumnavigation), and also conquering the Incas and getting a colony in place. Chuck did extremely well in the New World, we figured he ended up with about 8 cards over turns 2-4, never missing a colony/conquest roll for cards.
In turn 2, I as the Papacy was doing a good job of avoiding allowing play of the Schmalkaldic League, which came up early in turn 3. Sadly, it came up while Chuck still controlled four of the six electorates, so he found himself way out in front. Charles was a madman, first knocking back the Ottomans from the gates of Vienna after losing a battle in Pressburg, then taking Buda and capturing Suleiman. He had so many cards every turn, and all of them seemed to be 5's. In fact, the only really good luck I had against the Hapsburgs (yes, everyone but George "The X Factor" declared war against them in turn 4 to try to avert their victory), was in forcing a card discard that turned out to be Sack Of Rome - Whew! I did manage to take Florence and activate the Venetians, but when the Ottomans took Vienna and Tunis but left Belgrade open, then Chuck managed to conquer the Aztecs, he went well over 25 points and won the game. We had decided to end the game that turn, which may have had something to do with Michael's Ottomans choosing to leave their city open, but in the end it really didn't matter that much.
What was great was that everyone, even George and Patrick who had little to do because of small card hands (I think the English have to go after the New World and the Scots in a big way in turn one). The Protestants were doing quite well until the Hapsburgs took out the two electorates they did have, even though Germany was pretty much all Protestant by then. The French did well enough in the New World to sneak by for second place with around 19 points, with me right behind, followed by the Ottomans and English.
There is a lot of interest in playing this at our Sunriver gathering in early May, and I'm hoping that we can get up at least a tournament scenario game (3 turns). We clocked in at around an hour a turn, although I think that Chuck's enormous hand sizes (he had 12 cards, count 'em, in turn 4) slowed things down just a bit. As it was, I felt the game was great fun, and it showed how strong the Hapsburgs are, although getting eight extra cards in three turns is hard to fight, especially when everyone else plays CP (and my only 4 card of the hand) just for the DoW. It will be interesting to see how the diplomacy phase plays out in the next game, in ours very little happened other than the occasional DoW.
Thanks for coming over, guys. I'm looking forward to the next game!
Things went fairly predictably in the first turn, with the French prepping to assault Metz for the key and the Ottoman moving quickly up to Buda and triggering war with the Hapsburgs quickly. Eric's Protestants did a miserable job of converting spaces after Luther's Theses, but rocked the Diet of Worms to make up for it. Meanwhile, the exploring powers got going in the New World, with Chuck's Hapsburgs discovering the Pacific Strait (but being captured by the Portuguese after attempting Cirumnavigation), and also conquering the Incas and getting a colony in place. Chuck did extremely well in the New World, we figured he ended up with about 8 cards over turns 2-4, never missing a colony/conquest roll for cards.
In turn 2, I as the Papacy was doing a good job of avoiding allowing play of the Schmalkaldic League, which came up early in turn 3. Sadly, it came up while Chuck still controlled four of the six electorates, so he found himself way out in front. Charles was a madman, first knocking back the Ottomans from the gates of Vienna after losing a battle in Pressburg, then taking Buda and capturing Suleiman. He had so many cards every turn, and all of them seemed to be 5's. In fact, the only really good luck I had against the Hapsburgs (yes, everyone but George "The X Factor" declared war against them in turn 4 to try to avert their victory), was in forcing a card discard that turned out to be Sack Of Rome - Whew! I did manage to take Florence and activate the Venetians, but when the Ottomans took Vienna and Tunis but left Belgrade open, then Chuck managed to conquer the Aztecs, he went well over 25 points and won the game. We had decided to end the game that turn, which may have had something to do with Michael's Ottomans choosing to leave their city open, but in the end it really didn't matter that much.
What was great was that everyone, even George and Patrick who had little to do because of small card hands (I think the English have to go after the New World and the Scots in a big way in turn one). The Protestants were doing quite well until the Hapsburgs took out the two electorates they did have, even though Germany was pretty much all Protestant by then. The French did well enough in the New World to sneak by for second place with around 19 points, with me right behind, followed by the Ottomans and English.
There is a lot of interest in playing this at our Sunriver gathering in early May, and I'm hoping that we can get up at least a tournament scenario game (3 turns). We clocked in at around an hour a turn, although I think that Chuck's enormous hand sizes (he had 12 cards, count 'em, in turn 4) slowed things down just a bit. As it was, I felt the game was great fun, and it showed how strong the Hapsburgs are, although getting eight extra cards in three turns is hard to fight, especially when everyone else plays CP (and my only 4 card of the hand) just for the DoW. It will be interesting to see how the diplomacy phase plays out in the next game, in ours very little happened other than the occasional DoW.
Thanks for coming over, guys. I'm looking forward to the next game!
South Tuesday Session, 2/28/06
Six of us (although George was pretty late and didn't end up gaming) showed up at Mike's for our weekly session. Since we were waiting for George, we played 6 Nimmt, which is a fun little light card game. It hasn't seen much table action at my place since I got Hornochsen, although to be honest that doesn't get out much either. This is a very simply game where everyone plays a card face down, then when they are revealed they go onto one of four piles if they are above the topmost number on that pile but below the next pile's topmost number. Cards are played in numeric order, and once a pile hits six cards, the person who played the card is stuck with all of the points on all of the previous cards. It's wacky fun, and a good "waiting for George" game.
In our game, Mike was doing great, with only six points garnered over several hands. While no one really was trying to screw him (and in this game it's really not something you can actively do), he ended up taking pile after pile in the final hand. I was all set to win the game, but on the very last card I ended up with around 8 points to come in third. Mike tied for the win with Carey even after garnering something like 30 points. A good filler, I'll have to bring Hornochsen so that we can compare the different versions.
George was still not there (he'd left a message with Mike's teenage sons, never a reliable method with almost any family), so the five of us pulled out El Grande. This doesn't see enough table time in our group, but that can be said about so many games. Tim has been playing this game for, I kid you not, 12 years, so he got off to an amazing lead. Partly because no one had tried the old 2-1-13 power card sequence in the first round, so he just played his 13 on turn 3 when his turn came up. When I tried to play my 2-1-13 combo, he screwed me by playing his 1 under my 2, and it went downhill from there. Well, not entirely...
By the last turn, Tim was a good 20 points in the lead, but a fortuitous group of action cards gave me quite a few points for scoring various regions, and I made a good run of it, but in the end Tim still won by 11 points.
Astonishingly, this was the first time Mike's copy had seen play, and this was one of the first Euros he had bought way back when. So old, that the scoring track was one that didn't have any reference numbers on it. Wow.
Thanks for hosting, Mike!
In our game, Mike was doing great, with only six points garnered over several hands. While no one really was trying to screw him (and in this game it's really not something you can actively do), he ended up taking pile after pile in the final hand. I was all set to win the game, but on the very last card I ended up with around 8 points to come in third. Mike tied for the win with Carey even after garnering something like 30 points. A good filler, I'll have to bring Hornochsen so that we can compare the different versions.
George was still not there (he'd left a message with Mike's teenage sons, never a reliable method with almost any family), so the five of us pulled out El Grande. This doesn't see enough table time in our group, but that can be said about so many games. Tim has been playing this game for, I kid you not, 12 years, so he got off to an amazing lead. Partly because no one had tried the old 2-1-13 power card sequence in the first round, so he just played his 13 on turn 3 when his turn came up. When I tried to play my 2-1-13 combo, he screwed me by playing his 1 under my 2, and it went downhill from there. Well, not entirely...
By the last turn, Tim was a good 20 points in the lead, but a fortuitous group of action cards gave me quite a few points for scoring various regions, and I made a good run of it, but in the end Tim still won by 11 points.
Astonishingly, this was the first time Mike's copy had seen play, and this was one of the first Euros he had bought way back when. So old, that the scoring track was one that didn't have any reference numbers on it. Wow.
Thanks for hosting, Mike!
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