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Hypermind BoardGame Night - May 2007
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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This is the next in my regular geek-logs detailing the journey of the Hypermind Boardgame group in Burlington, NC. We had a really good month in April, which saw both our first Game of the Month! and our first foray into playtesting. We continued the new tradition into May and hope to have another great month of gaming. Join me as I continue to chronicle our experiences!
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Posted Fri May 4, 2007 2:03 am
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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This is the original Geeklist for our BoardGame Night. Check it out to catch up on the players and how we got started!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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This is last month's Geek-Log (maybe I'll coin a new term here... how about "Glog" for a Geeklist blog?)
Game of the Month! - Tigris & Euphrates
Games played: Tigris & Euphrates, Bang!, Shogun, Taluva, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Munchkin Bites!, Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, The Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Vegas Showdown, Rumis, The Settlers of Catan, RoboRally, and a prototype of Ascendancy designed by Nigel Buckle.
Highlights: Start of the Game of the Month! program, playtesting of Ascendancy, and my first game ever of Puerto Rico!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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The Game of the Month! for may is The Princes of Florence. There were no other nominations, mainly because Princes was played almost as much as Tigris & Euphrates last month.
I know that Princes of Florence is going to be a great Game of the Month! first of all because everybody around here seems to love it. Even though it can be a little hard to pick up your first few times playing, it has been a regular hit that people continually want to play on a really frequent basis.
Princes also has a lot of depth and a lot of choices, as players deal with a constant selection of limited resources and try to make the best of their situation. It is also a good mix of strategy and tactics, with several different paths available for players to try out as they seek to earn the most prestige in all of Florence!
(And it doesn't hurt that it is my wife's favorite game.)
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 1, 2007
Gwen wasn't able to come this week, so I got to the store early. "Magic" Chris Ingersol and Mark were there already. Mark had just bought Struggle for Rome, so he pulled it all out and I drooled over how pretty it all was. I got tired of talking and just looking around, so I pulled out Taluva and we started a game. Mark, Chris, Denise, and I fought a quick game that Chris finally won by getting rid of his last hut in the same turn that he played the last tile.
As we were finishing the game, Ian and Chip came in, and Chip began to set up PitchCar, which I had never played or even actually seen in person before. After we finished up, he took the 87 seconds (approximately) required to explain the rules, and we got started.
You'd think that "flicking" would be an easy skill, but it was amazing how really terrible I was at it. In the first game were Chip, Ian, Denise, Chris, Mark, and me. Joe also jumped into the second game (which was played approximately 75 seconds after the first one ended with Ian's glorious victory). I finished the first game second to last, and didn't do much better in the second. I'm pretty sure that Chip won the second race.
It was a heck of a lot of fun, and it made me wonder why I don't have more non-gamer-friendly, dexterity-type games in my collection.
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 1, 2007 (continued)
So then we saddled up our shiny new Game of the Month! and took a ride!
Going clockwise around the table, the players were Mark, Chip, Chris, and me (behind the camera). We are all pretty experienced (at least a couple of games under our belt), so I was looking forward to a really good game.
I had toyed with a "no-building" strategy before, and decided from the get-go to do whatever it took to play with as many Jesters, professions, and completed works as I could this game. As a little taste of foreshadowing, it worked.
Over the first four turns, I managed to buy four Jesters at auction. We jokingly refered to my palazzo as the "La Cirque", and I couldn't stop singing that silly circus song in my head the whole time (which is actually called "Entrance of the Gladiators" of all things - infect your own brain with it at http://mama.indstate.edu/users/nizrael/midis/bigtop.mid). I had to pay up to 1000 Florin for one of them, but in general the rest of the guys didn't see how ugly it would get until a little later. Mark tried for a Builder-related stategy, while Chip and Chris went more balanced. The only things I ever bought to go on my palazzo were the "Freedom of Opinion" and a Lab. I used my other three auctions to get three recruiter cards (eventually stealing two of Chris' and one of Mark's completed works) and bought three more profession cards during action phases.
This was my final board along with the nine (!) works that I completed. I finished at 77 prestige points, 21 points more than the next player, and that was without using a single prestige card. Needless to say, I doubt that a Jester (especially a second or third one) will go for that little ever again in our group.
While we were trying to figure out what to play next, we jumped into another game of PitchCar, and Zack joined us this time. Again I showed a little promise early, but then sucked root later on and did horribly.
Then, for the first time ever in all our gaming lives, we played El Grande. I had picked it up pretty cheap on vacation a few weeks ago, but we had never managed to get it to the table. Now, I know that El Grande is a venerable staple in our hobby, and that many of you can hardly remember when you first played it, but to me this was like another rite of passage I needed to pass through in my quest to become a "real" boardgamer. of course, that made it even worse when I again sucked root in this game as well.
I had read the rules a few times, so I gave everybody the basics and we got started. Of course, there was a lot of referencing the rulebook to find out exactly what the action cards actually did, but everybody had the basic gameplay down by the end of the first turn. Those playing were Chip, Chris, Mark, Alton, and me.
Alton and Mark made used the Castillo early and often, which payed off from the first scoring turn. I just never could figure out how and when to use my power cards and which action cards to choose to make a significant impact, and frequently saw even my clever moves get nullified by other players. Chris was almost in the same boat as I was (though he didn't do nearly as miserably as I did), but he didn't seem to be able to make the best use of his "cube-alleros" either. Chip, however, seemed to get the hang of strategy in the midgame, and made a strong run at Mark, who continually pulled away from the rest of us. In the end, Mark won with like 99 points, Chip had 85, Alton had 84, Chris had 83, and I choked on their dust with a measley 73. Still, it was obvious to me how good a game it was, and I hope to play it again soon.
That pretty much wrapped up our first gaming session of May, and I can't wait until next Tuesday!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 8, 2007
I've been busy this week and haven't had the chance to update this Glog (Geeklist Blog) until today (Sunday), so I hope I remember everything that happened.
We started off with another cool dexterity game, Tumblin-Dice. Chip brought it, set it up, and taught us to play in no time. Everybody loved it, and it hardly went anytime all night when somebody or other wasn't playing or at least fiddling with the dice. All in all, it definitely has more luck involved than does PitchCar and (to me) is not quite as much fun, but it also seems to be more accessible to non-gamers and a wider range of ages. Plus, the game looks really great and attracts a lot of attention.
Next up, Mark, Chip, Ian, and Sherry set up and played Struggle for Rome, which Mark picked up last week. They made a little mistake in how resources were produced and how the turn order worked, so the game was more drawn out than it should have been. I'm not sure who won or what their impressions were...
Now, I also got a chance to play this game yesterday (Saturday, May 12), and in general I like it. There were a few things that seemed weird to me, and I wonder if it is just because I have an incomplete knowledge of the rules or how the game should be played. First of all, the differing strength of the cities seemed to be pretty inconsequential, and had almost no effect on play, especially after we moved into the "settlement" phase of the game. And it also seemed that once I started conquering and expanding my settlements, the game was over in just a few rounds (I wondered why we had waited so long, since that is the main way to get victory points). I won, but maybe I just need to play again to get a better feel for the game.
Anyway, while Struggle for Rome was going on, "Magic" Chris, his wife Kat, Gwen (my wife, of course), and I set up and played our Game of the Month!, The Princes of Florence. Since I had so much success last week with my Jester strategy, I decided to try for a Builder strategy this time. It was Kat's first game, so she was trying to figure things out. Gwen and Chris were both pretty balanced in their approach.
It seemed like we were all going for different things in almost every auction, so even Jesters and Presige cards went for relatively cheap prices all game long. In the end, Chris edged me out by 7 points, and Gwen was hot on my tail only 4 points behind. I finished with 3 completed prestige cards (most buildings, one building of each size, and least open space) and only 4 empty spaces left in my palazzo.
Meanwhile, there was just a lot of gaming going on all over the place. Here are a few pictures of the action:
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7.
Board Game: Amun-Re
[Average Rating:7.54 Overall Rank:57]
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 8, 2007 (continued)
After the game of Princes, Chris, Kat, Gwen, and I played a couple of games of To Court the King. I had played this twice with Gwen and we both really liked it, and our feelings were no different after playing it with four. Being a dice game, you'd think that luck plays a huge part in the game, but that's not really the case. Yes, luck has a presence here, but the meat of the game is figuring out how to use the characters you already have to modify and reroll the dice until you get a result needed to claim another character. Anyway, I think this is a great filler game that plays quickly and is a lot of fun.
About this time, the Struggle for Rome game had finished up and several people were calling it a night. Never ready to see the end of BoardGame Night, I convinced Chip, Brett, yet another Dude Named Chris, and Mark to join me in a game of Amun-Re.
I have played a few games of Amun-Re on SpielByWeb, so I taught it to the rest of the guys and we got started. There's a lot to keep up with in the game, but everybody did a good job picking up on the important aspects of play. In fact, I quickly found myself trailing in both VP and gold. In the end, Chris took the victory after pretty much all of us stole from the offering in round 6 to keep Mark from making a ridiculous amount of gold from the harvest.
As of right now, I'd have to say that I like playing this online better than in person. Of course, it may be because I felt rushed for the whole game (which ended just after 11pm) and had the added pressure of teaching and giving advice all along. Plus, I wasn't as familiar with the turn sequence and some small rules as I thought, mainly because the computer takes care of all that for you when you play online. I definitely want to give it another shot "in person" soon, and I hope that my feelings change a little as I play it under better circumstances.
See you next week!
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8.
Board Game: China
[Average Rating:7.20 Overall Rank:169]
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 15, 2007
This week we had a small crowd, but that just meant that we played most games in one, big group. When I arrived, "Magic" Chris, Brett, James, and Ian the Younger were just getting started with a game of To Court the King.
It is such a cool game! In the two games they played, Chris claimned victory in the first while James took the second. Both games took them only 40 minutes, and their average rating of the game was an 8.
I know these facts because I took a little time this week to develop a little record-keeping tool to help me keep track of what is played each week, as well as what everybody thinks of the games. It's not real complicated or anything, but here's the link if you're interested: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo/24396
Gwen and I took a minute to talk to Denise while Chip was coming in and getting settled. He had brought China, which I've wanted to play for a while now, so we set it up for a nice 3-player game and he explained it to us.
Play is exceedingly simple, but it takes a little time to really get your head around the different ways to score. In just 35 minutes, we managed to play the whole game, with Chip blowing us away with 61 points while Gwen and I stumbled to a final score of 44 and 46, respectively.
I really like the game, as did Gwen. After our first playing, I rate it an 8 while Gwen gives it a 7. It's one of Chip's favorite games, and he currently rates it a 9. Even cooler is that he also owns Web of Power (which is the game that China is based on/copied from, if you weren't aware), so he explained the differences to me and I hope we can get it to the table soon so I can compare the two in person. But anyway, I was very impressed with the depth of play from such a short and relatively simple game. It's now firmly planted on my Wishlist!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 15, 2007 (continued)
Chris had set up for our Game of the Month session of The Princes of Florence while we were finishing China, so he, Brett, Gwen, Chip, and I jumped right into it. It was Brett's first game, so I took a few minutes to explain the basics to him and then we got started.
Brett picked up on things pretty quickly, and was able to be competitive from the get-go. Since I had moderate success with a Builder strategy last week, I thought I'd give it another shot with a few tweaks to my original plan. During game play, Jesters finally began to bring a more reasonable price, going for 600-1000 Florin in most cases. Builders were also a hot commodity early, but I managed to nab two in the first couple of rounds.
I jumped out to the lead early, mainly through completing a couple of works while also using my builders to lay down a few buildings (and getting their resulting prestige). Chris and I pulled away a little, with Chip surging early and Gwen coming on strong late.
In the end, however, after just over an hour of play, my Builder/Works strategy proved victorious, with the final scores as follows:
Chris N (me) - 63, Chris I ("Magic") - 58, Gwen - 52, Chip - 52, Brett - 47
Princes is my favorite game, and I rate it at a 10, while Gwen and Chris rate it a 9. Both Chip and Brett rate it at a 7, for an average rating of 8.4.
Afterwards, Brett went and played some MtG with James, so the rest of us pulled out The Pillars of the Earth to give it our first try at BoardGame Night.
It took a little time to set it up and explain how to play (since only Gwen and I had played before), but the game is actually very simple so everybody had a good handle on things when we got started. I nabbed the money-producing Woodworker! early, and planned to just try and keep close until I could transform my extra gold into VP at the end.
Chip went repeatedly for the metal at the King's Court, and Gwen and I picked the starting player space a few times. We were all still basically learning, so there weren't a lot of advanced strategies going on. In the four-player game, the resources and craftsmen were a heck of a lot more scarce than with two-players, and if you wanted to get awnything in particular done, you just had to spend required gold to go early in the Master Builder phase if you were even lucky enough to have a pawn pulled early. The amount of luck involved here is probably the biggest flaw that I've heard about the game, and in the four-player game I definitely saw that. In fact, Gwen seemed to consistently fall prey to bad luck in the order of the pulls, which left a little bit of a bad taste in our mouths.
In the end, Chip pulled away to win with 47 victory points. I was next with 42, Gwen had 41, and Chris ended up with 37. Our average rating was only a 6.5 on the BGG scale after this game, with specific ratings of 8 (Chip), 7 (Me), 5 (Gwen), and 6 (Chris). It only took us an hour and 20 minutes, so I figure that an experienced group could easily blow through it in 45 minutes to an hour after a few plays.
After that, we finished up the night with a couple of games of Tier auf Tier, which is a very fun and simple stacking game. Of course, it's aimed at kids, but the cute little animals and the tension of both rolling the die and placing the pieces made for a lot of fun. Both games took only a total of 15 minutes, and my hand proved to be the steadiest as I won both games. Here are a few pictures to wrap up this week's entry:
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 22, 2007
Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to this week's BoardGame Night, so all my information is from the reporting sheets and a brief conversation with "Magic" Chris.
This week started and ended with what appears to be our new favorite opener/filler/ender, To Court the King. Denise, Brett and James got it started, and the "old lady" took it to them.
The "main event" of the week was the mandatory playing of the Game of the Month!, The Princes of Florence. Chris and Mark were the only experienced players, and had to teach Ian, Pam, and Rick the basics before they got started. The game was a marathon, running between an hour and a half to two hours total. In the end, Chris took the game with a final score of 59, followed by Mark with 52 (which was expected, I suppose, given their prior experience with the game) who both rate the game at a 9 out of 10. The new players obviously had a little trouble figuring things out, and their ratings fell more in the 6-7 range.
(images courtesy of Chris and his camera phone)
To wind up the evening, the group played two more games of To Court the King. Mark, Chris Brett, and James played in both sessions, with Brett taking game 1 with a roll of nine "2's", while James ran away with the second game rolling a staggering TEN "6's"!
I'll be back next time, as we say goodbye to The Princes of Florence and vote for the next Game of the Month!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 29, 2007
This week was a fantastic BoardGame Night! We played several games, both new and old, and everybody had a great time. As our start time rolled around, we were still missing a few of our regulars, so we attempted to kill a little time by pulling out For Sale. It is such a simple, quick, and fun little game, and everybody loved it.
We got in two games, with Pam kicking butt in first one (in her first game ever) and Mark winning the second. The full rundown was as follows:
Game 1: Pam 54, "Magic" Chris 51, Gwen 43, Rick 42, Mark 40, and Chris (Me) 29! (gee I sucked)
Game 2: Mark 50, Me 48, "Magic" Chris 43, Gwen 34, Pam 34, Rick 31.
Ratings were: Pam 8, Rick 8, Gwen 8, Mark 7, Chris 7, Me 6
Next was the farewell tour for The Princes of Florence, our second Game of the Month! It was a great game with all experienced players. Chris and I had each won two of the previous week' games, so it was also kind of a tie-breaker/championship game for us, while Gwen was wanting to return to her early domination over me. So, after enjoying the ice-cream birthday cake celebrating Mark's 30th birthday, we got into it.
I purposefully started a little slow, picking up a Jester and a Builder early and grabbing a couple of extra profession cards as well. Chris meanwhile jumped out to an early lead. Chip and Gwen surged in the midgame, with Chip picking up two Recruiter cards (which he used to take my Sculptor... twice) but Gwen also had the endgame in mind, picking up a pair of Prestige cards. I picked up a second Jester (for the standard Jester price of 600 Florin) and for most of the game just worked on my infrastructure and completed a few mid-value works.
In the 6th turn, I managed to complete two works to jump into the lead, with Gwen and Chris hot on my tail. After the final round, we began to reveal our prestige cards and total our scores. Gwen fulfulled both her cards and jumped 5 points ahead of me for a final score of 57. Chris ended up just one point shy of her total, and Chip was close behind with 53. So, what was my Prestige card? It was the "Most Jesters" which gave me 6 prestige points for a one-point win!
[Queen music] IIIIII am the champion, my friend... And IIIII'lll keep on... sponsoring artists and scholars... til the end!!![/Queen music]
Yes, I am the official Hypermind Princes of Florence champion! And here was my winning palazzo:
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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May 29, 2007 (continued)
It was pretty coincidental that I brought Mission: Red Planet this week, because Chip said that he had just watched the BookShelf Games episode about it and was going to ask me to bring it next week. So after we finished with Princes, we whooped it out and I taught him, Mark, "Magic" Chris, and Brett how to play.
Now, I'm pretty good at most games, but the whole "area majority" thing just sort of eludes me. So as we're all choosing our different roles and placing out little astronaut pieces all over Mars, I'm pretty much whining the whole time about how bad I suck. I especially whine every time someone blows up a rocket filled with my dudes or some soldier slaughters some of my innocent colonists... which happened a lot as you can see (I was blue)...
So imagine my surprise when, after round 10, I added up all the resources points I got along with the extra point for each of those "lost in space" astronauts (from my original bonus card) to find that I actually won the game! And again it was by exactly one point!
Final scores: Me 64, Chip 63, Mark 40, Brett 34, Chris 13.
Ratings: Chip 8, Me 7.5, Mark 7, Chris 6, Brett 6.
From there, we pulled out the hottest game in our group, Yahtzee: the Gathering, also known as To Court the King. We played one game, and in the end Chris claimed the king to start the final round with seven "6's". I think Brett was able to steal away the king with a roll of eight "5's", so it all came own to Chris being able to roll the eight 6's. It didn't take long, and he barely even needed the Queen to pull it off.
During this game, Alton finally rolled in and jumped into a game of Terra Nova with Denise. I haven't played this yet, but from reading the rules it seems akin to Hey! That's My Fish! with an area majority scoring mechanic.
Both of them loved it, managing each to win one of the two games they played, and both rating it at a 9. They said that it was very intense and abstract, but very enjoyable.
Meanwhile, I managed to cajole Chip, James, and Brett into trying out Tichu with me. None of us had ever played, but I had read the rules and had lots of experience with other partnership, trick-taking games in the past.
We played the first hand before I told them about the "calling Tichu" rules. I then called and made a small Tichu, giving us an early lead. Pretty soon, my partner James called and failed in a big Tichu to give the lead back to Chip and Brett. We battled back and forth, and with it getting pretty late we decided to only play to 500 points instead of 1000.
So then we ended up tied at 465 with what we figured would be the last hand. I almost called small tichu, but refrained because I wanted the game to be close one way or the other. As it turned out, James and I managed to get the first and only "double win" of the night to take the game 665 to 465. Everybody enjoyed the game, and rated it as follows: James 9, Me 8, Chip & Brett 7. So hopefully I'll be able to get it to the table again soon.
By the way, earlier in the evening (before people started leaving), we discussed what should be next month's Game of the Month!. From a short list that included Ra, Ticket to Ride, and To Court the King, we eventually decided on Taluva as our next featured game, so tune in next week as we kick off a new month of gaming!
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Chris Norwood
United States
Graham
North Carolina
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Our continuing adventures in Boardgaming!
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Posted Fri May 4, 2007 12:46 am
(it is boarderline murder and it should be fed to some of the inmates in a prison)
because you really do, in fact, suck at area majority games.
